The current issue with Void Torrent being tied so heavily into the Void Weaver hero tree is that Void Torrent is almost a capstone talent on the right side of the tree. It’s incredibly limiting in talent choice the way the tree is designed right now. I agree that Void Torrent is a great spell to use for this, it just needs to be repositioned on the tree to be less limiting.
The same applies to Halo for Archon. This problem doubles because Archon basically erases Divine Star from relevancy.
Please give Void/Shadow Crash a second charge. It feels extremely bad to be at the absolute tank’s mercy with being able to aoe, because if you get a tank that staggers pulling mobs after having already pulled a pack, your shadow/void crash is on cd and you are having no AOE on half the mobs.
Also, the void crash new animation is gorgeous, please extend it to the reticle target shadow crash or make it a glyph option.
I’ve been gone from the forums for quite a long time, and I plan to take a backseat in regards to providing massive amounts of feedback compared to how I have contributed in the past. I think Shot, Jak, Publik, and Eli have most of the pain points covered at this point (even though only one of them have posted here so far).
I am going to lightly touch on some of what Ryeshot said above.
The utility nerfs in season two of Dragonflight because Priests were excelling only for the need for that utility to drop drastically in the following seasons is absolutely baffling. This is an issue that I have repeatedly spoken out against, where classes and specs are nerfed because a meta is created as a response to the design of mobs, encounters, and dungeons and raids as a whole. Instead of addressing the root of the problem, which is the need for this utility in the content that has been made relevant, the class was nerfed; leaving the class feeling weaker in future content that did not require this utility.
The same applies to the damage nerfs that Shadow received. The gutting of Psychic Link only for that nerf to be reverted in its entirety in season 3 is laughable.
I cannot emphasize this enough: Stop nerfing players because they have found a solution to combat overtuned or overly difficult mechanics and address the design issues with the content that creates the discrepancy in class representation. And for the love of god stop nerfing classes that have become “overpowered” because of a tier set and nerf the tier set.
Why are Void Tendrils killable by NPC’s? This spell is almost useless. If we want them to break from NPC damage, maybe give them a hit counter. After receiving three attacks, the root breaks. As it is now, the spell is niche and choosing it is often a waste of a talent point.
The defensive creep looks like it is getting worse moving to The War Within. I’m hoping that there is a plan to address this issue overall, but looking at Priest specifically, why are we so soft? We are incredibly immobile compared to the other casters, so why are we both slow and weak? There is no compensation for this.
Also, Protective Light needs to be looked at. I cannot think of a single person, especially Shadow Priests, that think “You know what’s really awesome, interactive and fun? Interrupting my damage rotation every 10 seconds to cast Flash Heal on myself so I receive a 10% damage reduction buff, only for me to barely cling to life anyway.”
Like I stated in an above post, the talent trees need to be rearranged if the primary focus of Void Weaver is Void Torrent and if the primary focus of Archon is Halo. I think both of these spells are cool and fit well with the associated hero talent trees, but the position of these talents is incredibly limiting. Both talents are way too far down in the respective talent trees to not be an issue with talent selection based on the hero tree we choose.
If Halo is going to be the only focus for Archon, then the loss of relevancy of Divine Star needs to be addressed.
I think Archon is really cool. I don’t agree that the hero tree is creating an “ultimate version” of myself, but it’s cool. All of the Halo’s pulsing in and out looks awesome. Good job.
Oracle is quite boring compared to the other two hero trees. And Disc’s Foreseen Circumstances gaining 10% additional damage reduction on Pain Suppression vs 2 additional seconds on Guardian Spirit… Really? Those are not even remotely close in power.
I’m putting this here to spread the awareness as much as I can: The MoP Cloak toy effects do not work when you are in Shadowform. Plz fix. Ty.
Shadow Ravens when? Choosing from different Shadowforms from the past when?
Despite my complaints above, I am generally happy with Priest overall. Thanks for reading y’all.
I’d rather see it on mindgames
So, to start this off I made sure I ran several dungeons with Oracle and Archon as Holy, I used the new tier gear so that might skew things somewhat but the basics message should be the same.
Archon for Holy is fun. I could care less for the name and the description of the hero tree; you can call it the hula hoop healer and I would be fine with that because this tree works everything flows in together and game play and is a win.
I enjoyed the game play loop of halo giving free surges of light, extra healing from halo as they come in and out. All this feeding you extra serenity’s.
I don’t like Heighten alteration, In the game I feel you should be fighting to stay alive not just maybe getting your team over the goal line, so unless holy gets the PVP talent spirt of the redeemer as a new talent tree option I see no use for a defensive node.
And now Oracle
The short of this hero tree is it is bad. Below are my issues while playing
Frist off with the premonitions I am having trouble telling these cycling buff apart, can we get some major color distinction in these premonitions.
Premonition of piety, this was the one I thought would be good, but I found it just to be a weak bonus heal. Players have more HP, and my healing dose not move the bars relative to their health I out found. I rarely got any splash healing cause the tank was almost never at 100%.
Premonition of insight, this was the one I hit just to move the bar to the next buff I would hit this button and be like well I wish this reduced cool down my other spells not reduced the next three I press.
Premonition of Solace a weak cycling guardian spirt without the lifesaving mechanic.
And Finaly clairvoyance after cycling through those buff I am rewarded with all of them, this mostly just gave me 38.5% extra healing since I took the ability to increases the buff power, I rarely got splash healing and I didn’t notice the cooldown reduction.
The big problem here is all the talents noting brings it together, Oracle doesn’t help you with your mana, doesn’t solve your mobility problems premonition doesn’t have synergies with holy’s kit. And Some of the other talents are buff to our weakest spells, not making them any noticeably stronger.
And since nothing worked together, I noticed the power creep of the dungeons, where Archon got free flash heals from halo to deal out with bonus healing and damage from a single button. Oracle got a small window to maybe get some extra healing on a rotating yellowish buff. I would burn through mana as I desperately tried to keep people up.
I did like Desperate measures this was really good node, and Miraculous recovery was also really good, both of these would trigger a lot during a dungeon.
Also, there is a bug when you cast Prayer of healing twice it will keep a loop playing of the casting sound in a location. If you walk away from it gets harder to hear but walking back, you will hear it again.
Archon 9/10
Oracle 3/10
I am fully aware that Void is also shadow magic and just because something has been existent for a long time, doesn’t mean it cant change. (Go look at WW monk rework and Conduit of the celestial Hero spec then come back to me) It could of easily been a new spell school (cosmic) if that is a direction blizz wants to take. Since the creation of Beacon to the beyond trinket, we have now seen that a Cosmic spell school exists and Cosmic being related to the ‘Void’. I am not trying to replace shadow. but if the “Hero fantasy” being sold is to be achieved, then the class/spec trees need to be accommodating. If you want to look/be more conventional shadow priest, Archon is right next door otherwise if your going say we are a void mage, then give me void. I don’t care if the school is still shadow in its damage(since void is still part of the shadow spell school). That’s just flavor text that doesn’t really mean anything from damage calculations. but a new spell school would be interesting to a Hero fantasy.
Also it would help to not get spell locked from all your Shadow damage skills if we had shadow and cosmic spell schools.
This post is going to be mainly about Oracle priest, specifically for PvE Holy as that’s what I tested it on the most. My only ask for Archon is to maybe add a more distinctive visual to bring it up to par with the flashiness of Voidweaver and Oracle. Some nod to the higher beings from the description of the tree would be amazing.
As for Oracle, I think the buffs need be changed entirely as they currently don’t feel worth pressing - when testing, I found myself relying more on the free heal cast it gives than any functionality of the buff itself.
The overheal conversion is laughably bad with our inflated health pools, the only scenario where we would be intentionally overhealing would be if nothing was going on, making the distributed healing have virtually no use.
The CDR is alright, if a bit small. Changing it to a percentage so that it feels more worth it to use on big CDs like apotheosis or even our holy words would make this a lot more enjoyable.
The ST buff is also OK, if underwhelming since single target healing increases are typically much less valuable than a single target DR or cheat death, available to Disc and Holy respectively already.
As it stands, there is no real reason to play Oracle right now when Archon and Voidweaver exist as better, more fun alternatives. I had personally been really excited for this tree as it had the potential to be a cool skill expression for Holy, a typically straightforward healer, but the buffs are so irrelevant to the current state of the game & healing that I can’t see myself playing this in any serious content unless it’s changed.
Somewhat true for a lot of healers, but as a fellow monk player as well fistweaver does it just fine. Honestly disc could stand to be a little more like fistweaver.
Oracle talent feedback
Talents too weak
Premonition: at its basic core is a weak Guardian Spirt I would suggest cutting out the rotation of premonition, and buff Guarding spirt. You can buff Pain suppression to mirror Guardian Spirt. Maybe add cooldown reduction for these spells when you cast shield for Discipline and Prayer of mending for Holy.
Preventive Measure: This feels weak, when mobs are hitting people. Either add a bigger bonus to the healing to Prayer of Mending, a DR component or add in a damage component to Prayer of Mending target when hit by an enemy.
Waste No Time: need to feel more impactful its spells are filler. I would suggest either increases in the healing of those spells and or making the spell cost no mana.
Assured Safety: This shield is weak, an auto attack can pop it and still hurt the tank. I would say cast a Renew on Prayer of Mending’s target instead, this would have synergies with Holy’s kit vs a shield.
Divine Providence: This just feels weird, it is really not making anything better just pushing things along faster. Give an extra charge to Guardian Spirt or Pain Suppression.
Clairvoyance: Premonition doesn’t’ feel good to use so Clairvoyance doesn’t feel good either. I would say tie this back together with something improving Guardian Spirt/Pain suppression.
Talents that are confusing:
Preemptive Care: An extra second to atonement is meaningless for Holy. I say add a second to our Mastery (Echo of Light).
Save the Day: Why do I need two Leap of Faiths back-to-back. And why do I need to cast it within 6 sec, either give this an extra charge or allow people to leap to other party members.
More meaningful choices.
Fatebender and Perfect Visions: I say remove these and give a DPS ability boost to priest. This speck is lacking offensive albites, and this is the best spot.
Divine feather: is usually cast with an at player macro. If you wanted to grant others the bonus maybe adds a speed buff to the player who are closest to you when you use the Feather.
To start
Shadow
did a dungeon and quickly realized the apparitions build does not play well with entropic rift+ void blast, you’re generally overcapped on resources, trying to dump them then needing to chose to get voidblast out or mind flay/mind spike insanity out. void blast deals slightly more damage, but the two buttons almost feel like they are fight for place in the rotation. shared the build below.
Shadow Apparitions build (CIQAfp7YExid11E7qJ52nIBsVNMDDDAAAAAAAAAAAAwYmFzYmxCjZmZmlxMGYbMDzMzyYWwYMMWGTNzgFMjZGAIAz2ssFMbsB)
Button Bloat- Shadow feels really bloated especially with buttons changing I.E. void eruption changing to void bolt, mindflay/mindspike to MF/MS: insanity, now mind blast to void blast, its like youre constantly changing what you should be doing and when causing the rotation to lose fluidity, add in void torrent and mind games along with dr/ major cds and youre button chasing all the time.
personally mind games is a button that adds very little value/ relevance to the rotation and the class. The minimal damage could easily get baked into the rest of the damage kit. I kind of feel the same way with void torrent. the new animation looks great but feel like your could almost bake this in with mind flay to reduce button count and get the same desired effect (though this would cause rework with entropic rift).
vampiric touch and shadow word pain with a talent these are somewhat baked together but past about 3 targets its not worth casting vt on them and you default to sw-p. I feel like something could be done with this it just doesnt feel great pressing these. especially after playing some other classes (monk, dev voker, demo lock, pally, mage, etc) basically with the tool kit shadow priest have, are both of those buttons necessary beyond nostalgia.
Void Eruption- does this need a void bolt?
To some degree this spec feels like its having an identity crisis. Is it a shadow/ dot spec, or is it a consuming void spec (lore wise they sort of go hand in hand but feel like shadow needs a solid identity. Itll hurt losing somethings for one or the other but would likely lead to a more defined spec, with straight forward rotation.
power word shield- anyway we could get a glyph or something that changes this to a void/shadow barrier. like the mage barriers do.
spell warding/ blessed recovery- pathing wise it feels really weird to grab holy nova to get this Damage Reduction, maybe switching the two would make more sense.
movement- angelic feather just isnt it even with macro’d together with power word shield its still is just meh. Also the possibility that you can cast it on a friendly when you need to move just isnt fun.
some good things
Void weaver is just awesome thematically and animation wise.
entropic rift-awesome
void blast- awesome
void wraith- awesome.
ill try a few more builds but other than the weirdness with the apparitions build i really like void weaver. Definitely a job well done.
Disc:
Ive yet to play this on beta but from what ive saw and the way it plays on live i have a few things
I feel like disc needs to play a bit more like fistweaver monk. Fistweaver feels really good, really fluid for the most part. One big change that would seriously give disc much more fluidity would be making power word radiance work like jadefire stomp. it damages the target but gets your hots (in disc case attonements out) . It would feel 100x better.
Pain suppression- on live i dont even like to deal with this button due to all the other buttons im chasing. power word barrier as a major cd is okay doesnt really feel as good as a lot of other healers. Currently not taking ultimate penance either. this would almost be better as a mass individual bubble or just a flat heal like rivival/renewal. pain sup might be better served being like life cocoon. after playing fistweaver it just feels like disc could benefit from more of what fistweaver has going on.
The visual effect on Archon Halo looks fine after testing it on the beta. It provides plenty of feedback when it returns to you, with a nice visual effect. It also does a lot of healing. With iLvl 571 gear, each back-and-forth pulse healing for 80k per target + mastery non-crits. It’s easily upwards of 3-4 mil healing per cast on a 20+ player sized raid.
For 5-mans it doesn’t really move hp bars that much. It does half the healing of a Flash Heal per cast so you’re getting about 2.5-3 Flash Heals on people per cast which is about 20-25% of their hp bars. I think for 5-mans its healing should be increased a bit to make it more impactful.
Oracle in comparison just feels bad.
PVP - Nerf mana efficiency of priest by 30% , full mana after 16 minute fight. Nerf damage ~30% as they do more damage than rogues at the moment.
This is why I have feather macro’d @player and I don’t even have the ‘give it to someone else’ option on my bars. I need all the mobility I can get, and I ain’t sharing.
Kind of a throwaway thought, I guess, but the Disc PVP talent for Radiance is so good that it makes me hate when I have to go into a dungeon/pve instance. The extra healing is ok, it’s a nice bonus, but instant-cast Radiance is just so clutch for so many things.
I agree with what some of the above have said about bringing Disc more inline with how Fistweaving works, and if the Devs aren’t willing to go that far, they literally could just make the current PVP talent an option in the PVE Disc tree. Ideally baked into the talent that gives the 2nd charge of it, so we don’t have to waste another point to grab it.
Like the fluidity of it for PVE reasons alone is just so good. Like finishing a cast of Mind Blast, or a Penance channel, and then immediately into an instant Radiance to rebuff everyone and keep plugging away with your rotation.
Alright, thought done.
I’m no priest expert, but I have a level 70 shadow priest I like, and I’m working on leveling a Holy priest. The issue with me with Discipline is that is a variant of Holy healing. In my hunble opinion, it should do more DPS (but not as much as Shadow) as Holy, without the DPS to heal mechanic, and have fewer healing spells than it does. It feels too weak for leveling and solo play. Why have two healing specs, just because the class says Priest? It need a true hybrid spec that does overly focus on one role or the other. Currently, Discipline is highly slanted toward healing.
One thing I’d say is that Searing Light - as seen on Pandaria Remix - would make for a fantastic passive DPS for Holy priest. Tuned down to decent levels, it would help soften the dmg vs heal debate. I really like the idea of that ability.
Tiny bit of feedback, I’m a bit concerned with how little we might see our Entropic Rift when it comes to large bosses such as Terros, Rasz, Volcoross, or even like Magmorax.
I’m not sure what fix there is for this, if any, but not getting to see our rift would kinda suck.
Void Weavers feedback
-Updated audio/visual FX are superb. Void Blast sounds amazing in particular.
-I like that it feels like the Hero Tree is adding a lot to Spriest without really messing up the rotation and style that you finally brought into Dragonflight.
-I’m not sure if this is working as intended, but I have concern about how Void Torrent and Entropic Rift work. ER forms as soon as you start the channel for VT, however since ER exists for a very limited time, and you want to hit the target as much as possible with Void Blasts before ER collapses, how does the math work out? It feels like there is pressure to break your channel of VT in order to maximize your hits with Void Blast before ER ends.
If that’s the case, it feels bad. I don’t want to have to end the VT channel early, or there should be some ramp up in DMG to discourage it.
This is not the case. Once Void Torrent ends, Entropic Rift refreshes to max duration. There is no benefit to canceling it early.
Glad to hear it; cheers.