Feedback: Priests

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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How can we have so few changes when the problems that need to be addressed have been around for so long? Completely baffling.

Figuring out the lack of class cohesion having both light and void.

Figuring out the shadow versus void theme divide.

Figuring out the old shadow style versus legion shadow playstyle.

Figuring out our offensive cooldowns and having cast times.

Shadow Crash.

The interrupt issue.

Mobility issue.

These are just the consistent, long time issues that aren’t being addressed. Not even getting into changes for talents, pathing, hero talents….

Some of these have had plenty of solutions provided and would be easy to fix. The first three are certainly more challenging, but the next four are just not fixed out of stubbornness?

The team has come so, so far on moving on from nonsense holdover ideals. We’ve got cross faction, cross server, getting warbands and account wide. Just fix those simple issues at minimum that have no good reasons not to be fixed.

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Oracle feedback

I play priest with the three specs to know one thing or two and I do watch the forums and many content creators/ Mythic raiders and M+ players feedback closely, besides me being a game developer so I think this should help.

Main issue

The problem with Oracle is the lackluster buffs and the misconception of Premonition, mainly exacerbated, probably, by being the only two healer hero talent tree.
While the first iteration was amazing for the conception, it was gameplaywise horrendous to play with, and this last one is easy to manage but horrible in the fantasy/power aspect.
Both the specs play too different, but we can find middle ground if we take a closer look at their core gameplay and spec fantasy to make something useful for both while being achiavable for devs in due time and enhancing gameplay enough for the players.

Possible solutions

Holy this last expansion has mainly revolved around Prayer of Mending and steady heals, while discipline had it’s shield powers cut off coming to dragonflight but kept it’s burst element.
Assured Safety does make one tap into another for a bit and have been met quite fondly for the community, perhaps this talent tree should revolve around it, making one spec tap into another, mainly because we are the only class with two healing specs that play that much different.

Here are some ideas that accomplish my statements: Hero talent fantasy, development easiness and powerful enough but not disruptive:

  1. My first idea is to turn Premonition into this active buff:

For Discipline: Makes your healing spells seize the future for 10 sec. X amount of your heal/overheal converts into an Ward for 20sec. The next time the player takes damage, an amount of the Ward is consumed to heal the player for a maximum of Y% of player’s total health (0.Zs ICD).

For Holy: Makes your healing spells seize the future for 15 sec. X amount of your heal/overheal converts into an Ward for 20sec. Every Z seconds an amount of your Ward is consumed to form an absorbtion shield for Y% of player’s total health.

  1. Delete Premonition of Insight and Premonition of Solace buffs and leave Premonition of Piety be the only buff, tuning accordingly.

  2. Make Premonition be a passive buff that converts X amount of overheal into shielding for a maximum of Y% player’s health (like Empowered Chrysalis)

Nonetheless a change is needed for Oracle so it can be at least useful and coherent.

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Alright, I’ve been aiming to post this for a while now, but many IRL commitments got in the way.

I have quite a bit of feedback regarding Shadow right now, positive and negative, and pertaining to both the core spec itself and both of its Hero Talent trees.

Voidweaver

For the most part, Voidweaver’s been one of the best-received Hero Talents thus far and I tend to agree with that wider sentiment. I really love Void Torrent as a button, I’m glad to see it receive significant buffs to make it feel extremely meaty, and I love that this tree doubles down on Void Torrent’s importance.

Pros:

  • For the most part, Voidweaver’s visual effects are stunning, and the artwork for its talent icon is downright gorgeous. While I’m much more competitively-focused due to a CE/high M+ background, I really can’t discuss Voidweaver without talking about the incredible VFX that went into Void Blast and especially the incredible Entropic Rift. The Void Torrent visual still needs something extra, but the Hero Talents make the spec look extremely cool, and makes me vibe with it a lot more even though Voidweaver doesn’t completely change how we play the spec in any capacity.
  • Dark Energy allowing Void Torrent to be channeled while moving fixes an issue that plagued this button for years and makes Void Torrent much, much easier to commit to. Nothing feels worse than clipping a Void Torrent cast.
  • Depth of Shadows and Voidwraith offer a meaningful, interesting choice node where both talents have realistic and meaningful use cases in theory, although this is dependent upon tuning for both.
  • Void Blast feels incredibly meaty. The spell isn’t functionally all that different from Mind Blast but hits considerably harder so it feels very satisfying.
  • While Embrace the Shadow is overwhelmingly superior except in extremely specific cases (i.e. Sludgefist), Void Leech is a very thematically fitting talent and it really isn’t terrible in its own right.
  • Devour Matter’s a strong situational talent in PvE and I’m glad to see more classes/specs with options to shred through absorb shields, though they’re not super frequent in PvE. I’m picturing a Deathspeaker proc into a Raszageth shield and I really can’t deny that it would feel incredibly satisfying to just annihilate a big chunk of that shield with a gigantic damage buff.
  • Voidweaver generally doesn’t alter our rotation too much, instead just making the spec better at the things it already does. I don’t think Shadow’s core rotation is where issues with the spec lies.

Cons:

  • Void Blast has the unfortunate issue of doubling down too hard on Dark Ascension’s strengths which leaves Void Eruption feeling extremely lackluster by comparison. VOIDweaver not having particularly strong synergy with Void Eruption, which unfortunately seems to be quite uncompetitive at this point on the Beta outside of very high target counts, is an absolute travesty and I’d really like for there to be some added synergy between Void Blast and Void Eruption to make it a much more desirable option.
  • The spec doesn’t feel nearly as smooth to play with early-expansion Haste values being so low. With 16k Haste (which clocks in at 24% unbuffed) the spec still feels a tad too slow and I’ll occasionally have issues trying to fit three Void Blasts into an Entropic Rift window unless I specifically pool Mind Blasts for it, but pooling Mind Blasts and possibly wasting a Shadowy Insight proc feels unsatisfying as well.
  • No Escape feels quite lackluster because you’re giving up the incredible QoL benefit of a mobile Void Torrent. An AoE slow that clocks in at up to 70% sounds very strong on paper, but in practice mobile VoiT is a far more compelling talent. Even if Dark Energy’s 20% movement speed buff got slapped onto No Escape instead I’d easily be taking Dark Energy exclusively for the mobile VoiT.
  • Void Empowerment doesn’t feel as great as getting a longer Entropic Rift window through Darkening Horizon, and while Darkening Horizon has some issues I think it’s the more compelling choice between the two.

Archon

I think Archon isn’t quite as exciting as Voidweaver in any capacity, although making Halo a more important button rotationally is an interesting goal. That said, I think this one needs something extra; it just cannot compete with Voidweaver thematically which would make me feel a lot less satisfied if it was the superior option.

Pros:

  • Archon doubles down on a clearly-defined 1-minute burst niche which can give this a more defined niche on paper.
  • The focus on Surge of Insanity procs makes Mind Spike: Insanity feel incredibly strong to press, especially with the sheer frequency of procs generated within our burst windows, although this isn’t free from its fair share of issues.
  • The Hero Talent artwork is also really well-done; all of them are, honestly.
  • The stronger self-PI feels great. I missed this tremendously and would really love for the class to have its stronger personal PI back; Twins can remain as is if we’re truly gonna keep it around.

Cons:

  • Archon feels extremely lacking visually compared to the magnificent Voidweaver. The Hero Talent’s artwork implies something very different from what we’re actually getting with Archon right now; the pulsing Halos look pretty cool, but Archon needs something to compete on that front or else people just have a compelling reason to play it from a thematic standpoint.
  • The Hero Talent tree that actually does have noteworthy Voidform synergy still doesn’t seem to want to gravitate towards Void Eruption, which just leaves Void Eruption relegated to being a fringe option for extremely large trash pulls.
  • The enhanced focus on Surge of Insanity procs might put too much focus on them, to the point where spending them before overcapping on them might be too high of a priority and may cannibalize other parts of the rotation.
  • Heightened Alteration might be the the least-compelling choice node across both talent trees, not just because the alternative is far superior but because it’s just a genuinely bad talent in its own right. Word of Supremacy granting us a free extra 5% Stamina is so much better than a mere two seconds of Dispersion that it just puts this talent to shame.

Shadow Class and Spec Tree Feedback:

I’ve mostly grown fond of the 10.1 rework by this point, although it’s been an absolute nightmare from a balancing perspective courtesy of Psychic Link and especially Tormented Spirits both being incredibly hard talents to balance in multi-target situations. Shadow has a niche unlike any other spec and I actively like that niche.

However, my issues with Shadow right now boil down to the following key points:

  • Void Eruption is currently (as in, on Beta) not a very compelling choice, which is a shame because it offers a far more engaging gameplay loop compared to Dark Ascension, which is a painfully bland talent. A big part of this stems from the fact that Void Eruption just doesn’t have any synergy with Voidweaver (which is, again, a travesty) and doesn’t really make as much sense in the context of Archon emphasizing 1-minute burst windows. Regardless, I think the choice node between Void Eruption and Dark Ascension is still a bad choice to make.
  • Silence and especially Last Word/Psychic Horror are horrific talents to take where they currently are. There’s absolutely no world in which we drop Dispersion, and Mental Fortitude offers us some much-needed passive defensiveness, which means that we have to either lose out on some tankiness or some damage to simply spec into our abysmal interrupt. Last Word and Psychic Horror are, in a PvE environment, utterly useless talents that simply cannot justify their existence currently. They’re far, far too expensive to take.
  • Unfurling Darkness is just as abysmal a talent as Last Word/Psychic Horror in that it has absolutely no place on the Shadow tree (unless it’s as a choice node alongside Misery). This talent is never taken in PvE, but it has a purpose in a PvP environment iirc. If it’s actually used in PvP and has never been taken in the entire live history (it was used a bit on the early DF Beta) of its existence in PvE, shouldn’t it just get the Mindgames treatment by getting turned into a PvP talent? I just don’t see any justification for keeping this talent around; all the other talents besides this and Last Word/Psychic Horror are used for some build on live; this one, however, just hasn’t been taken, is in a terrible place on the spec tree, and probably won’t ever be a good investment of one point since it’s surrounded on three sides by mandatory talents with the fourth side being a talent that’s just mandatory in any situation involving more than one target.
  • Insidious Ire being a 2-pointer and being where it is on the tree makes absolutely no sense. If we want to play a triple Idol setup we’d actually have considered taking this if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a frustrating 2-point node that leads to the exact same Idol of C’thun that Malediction (a 1-point node) leads to. This should change.
  • Dark Evangelism is a horrifically boring talent that doesn’t need to exist, especially as a 2-point talent. Mind Devourer and Phantasmal Pathogen shouldn’t be 2-point talents either, but those talents do have meaningful impacts on our gameplay. By comparison, Dark Evangelism just fails as a talent on multiple levels and should be replaced with something that has a similar impact on our gameplay as PP/MD do. I think Mastermind and Screams of the Void are perfectly fine as 2-point nodes, and my issue with Tormented Spirits doesn’t stem from it being a 2-point node but rather from it being the core of our AoE scaling issues.
  • Tormented Spirits is a cool talent, but it has too much potential to be problematic in high target counts and needs to be reevaluated a bit due to the absurd scaling potential it enables in higher keys. I think this talent is by far the biggest culprit when it comes to balancing issues this spec has experienced since its rework; it’s fine up to a certain point (like, I think it’s a reasonable talent in 4-target cleave, where we’re very strong but still competitive with several other specs on live) but once we start having our DoTs rolling on 8+ targets it gets absurdly powerful and inevitably leads to Psychic Link and/or sources of single-target damage getting nerfed, us becoming major underperformers in AoE, and then us getting buffed on this front and becoming dominant in AoE again.
  • Idol of Y’shaarj is very undertuned and our idols generally feel quite lackluster outside of heavy AoE (where Yogg and N’zoth are quite solid). There should NEVER be a world where taking a single Idol is the correct choice.
  • The Flay/Spike dynamic is still problematic as it exists now. Mind Spike gets a huge amount of added incentives (particularly Mind Melt), which helps push DA even further ahead, while Mind Flay gets… nothing, really.
  • Expanding on the Flay/Spike dynamic a bit, I think Mind Flay: Insanity getting its channel time lowered to 2 seconds is a good idea that just hasn’t been taken far enough yet. Other folks here have mentioned that it doesn’t neatly line up with the GCD so I won’t echo it even more since that dead horse is currently a fine red mist at best, but if MF:I was a 1.5 second channel this would fix all these issues immediately and would likely make MF:I a significantly more desirable alternative to MS:I.

And to touch upon the recent changes we saw to the Class Tree: the Class Tree is what it is, so I’m not expecting a huge overhaul, but I’m extremely glad to see Mindgames get the boot. This talent did nothing but generate a little Insanity, do a little damage, and contribute massively to the spec’s button bloat. That said, the talents we got to replace it need some work:

  • Phantom Reach is awesome; having a 46yd range is a nice QoL thing that will feel nice to have once it’s fixed to work alongside Psychic Link (and it really needs this).
  • Cauterizing Shadows is a bit problematic and doesn’t interact meaningfully with how Shadow’s DoTs work. If a target dying doesn’t trigger Cauterizing Shadows, this talent is worthless for us.
  • Manipulation is an atrocious investment of 2 points with current tuning. I don’t mind Priests having even more passive DR since that’s where our defensive utility shines the most. Dispersion is fine obviously, but always having just enough to survive a more frequent one-shot in high M+ is nice and this/Spell Warding add to that a little and this would be a much more compelling talent if it wasn’t such a poor 2-point investment.

And, lastly, regarding the stuff in the Priest class tree that hasn’t changed that I think should change:

  • Spell Warding being locked behind Holy Nova feels bad for us; the fullest extent of Holy Nova’s usefulness for Shadow is going back into Firelands or Icecrown Citadel and one-shotting a bunch of low-level trash mobs yet we have to take Holy Nova in order to take what otherwise an incredibly important defensive talent for us.

  • Angel’s Mercy being locked behind Unwavering Will feels bad for similar reasons. Technically Unwavering Will isn’t useless for us like Holy Nova is, since we can get that 10% DR from Flash Heal ever so slightly faster, but Angel’s Mercy is a pretty key component of our survivability and having two talent points to work with would make it easier for us to tap into our utility options like Phantasm (RIP Entangling), Purify Disease, Void Tendrils, etc.

  • Pathing to PWL/Benevolence (I doubt we’d use these for the most part) and the new Phantom Reach is greatly improved thanks to the removal of Mindgames, which is… honestly just a good change. I don’t need to spend three points on the other two lackluster talents added this build to get a far more interesting talent since I can just easily take it after taking the already-strong Improved Fade. That’s partially a testament to those other two new additions being really bad investments, though.

Anyway, that’s my feedback. If nothing else, I really hope we get to see more love for Voidform in the Voidweaver tree since I know many priests would really, really like Void Eruption to feel competitive.

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If premonition for oracle is supposed to be a healing cool down like halo is for archon can it please have a static effect as well as it’s current effects? If you got a cool down free holy word/radiance or something static like that as well as the rotating buff it would add some sort of baseline power you could count on every time you hit the cool down, not just every 2nd or 3rd time.

Comparing it to archon right now as holy:
-archon 5 free halos every minute and up to 10% healing on everyone.
-oracle: 3 free prayer of mendings or 10 seconds off a couple holy word cooldowns

Using numbers from premade beta characters atm premonition could grant you 2 free holy word sanctify and still do less healing than halo every minute and you wouldn’t have to squish everyone into the tiny little sanctify circle to get it (please increase the size of sanctify, it’s depressingly under tuned in dungeons if everyone isn’t stacked in melee range, please compare it to emerald blossom)

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This guy really be posting on an alt just begging for nerfs to Priests every day lol

Someone’s salty.

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After raid testing and some Mythic+ testing today I wanted to give my updated thoughts on Voidweaver and Archon from a Shadow Priest perspective.

Voidweaver

Overall this spec feels pretty great, but there are a couple of things that if changed could make it play even better.

One of the most frustrating moments right now when playing Voidweaver is getting Shadowy Insight procs while banking up for your next Entropic Rift. Because of a change made to make Shadowy Insight no longer grant a temporary charge of Mind Blast, these procs can often be completely wasted. We are incentivized to bank of Mind Blasts right before Void Torrents but these procs happening right before can end up being very frustrating.

The other thing that is still a bit weird is the emphasis around Shadow Word: Death and Shadowfiend spells. Neither of these are particularly related to the Void but do end up in several places on the tree: Devour Matter, Depth of Shadows, and Voidwraith. Personally I do not see how these fit together in the build and end up making our points in the spec tree feel even more restrictive. Devour Matter is definitely the odd one out here, it is a pretty boring node that I often forget even exists.

The last big thing with Voidweaver that does not feel very satisfying is the size of the Rift and the expansion. Because of how little we end up casting Devouring Plague rotationally this expansion is very minor, especially compared to Discipline. Making this work with ticks of Devouring Plague or adjusting how much it grows per cast would go a long way to making this be more usable. With the current size of the rift and positioning of a pack in Mythic+ it could be awkwardly missing a lot of mobs. This is also notably worse off because the Rift does not currently retarget if the original target dies.

Archon

Compared to Voidweaver, Archon is particularly uninspiring to play with. The playstyle is basically the baseline version of the spec we have in Dragonflight, you just now press Halo at the start of your cooldowns. It is possible this was the goal all along for Archon, but having a relatively small change to the spec for a whole Hero talent feel wise does not make it feel like a Hero Talent to me.

This is made even worse with the lack of distinct visual changes with Archon. Yes we spawn a few extra Halos and it radiates out and back to us, but for a spec themed around empowering our cooldowns this just misses the mark for me when our cooldowns are lacking any visual change. Even the Hero Talent icon itself looks amazing but feels really out of place considering the visuals and feel of the spec do not match.

Archon itself is likely suffering from an already existing problem the spec has with cooldowns that are not particularly exciting by themselves (particularly Dark Ascension).

The one thing that Archon has going for it that might even make us feel pulled to play it is the absolutely disgusting amount of off-healing we get from being centered around Halo. Not sure how this will be balanced but that is a strong positive.

General Shadow Priest

While I already covered recent changes here I wanted to discuss a few other points that I would love to see discussion or changes towards.

We have not seen any spec tree changes so I do not want to copy things from my previous post but these issues are generally all still present and would welcome any changes here to help improve our spec tree.

Shadow Crash and Void Crash

Adding in Void Crash as an alternative to Shadow Crash will be a welcomed change for some players, but also creates some anti-patterns with the current size of the spell. Because of the relatively small radius of Shadow and Void Crash (8 yards), having it be centered around a single enemy can easily make it difficult to target a full clump of adds. This can also be quite confusing for new players using the talent. Increasing this up to 10 or 12 yards (likely alongside Shadow Crash) would make it feel much better from a DoT management perspective.

Notable Bugs

  • Mind Soothe is currently not able to be cast at all. Just says “You can’t use that here”
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To be clear it’s not Just if the proc happens while you’re banking mind blast charges going towards a void torrent. It also happens if you get the proc inside the window as well if the cooldown was already recovered past a certain point. Getting the 3rd Void Blast into the rift window is already tight, and often a reset doesn’t give you enough back to get a 4th one anyway, making the gain from the proc negligible.

I’ll do some math / more rigorous testing but from talking to people and playing today I found myself being frustrated when I got an SI proc more often than anything else.

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Hello!

Gave my post above a big refresh after the 6/11/24 update and 6/13/24 raid test. I am having a blast playing oracle but there are still some MAJOR concerns that I hope are addressed.

Thank you everyone who takes time out of their day to read, test, and write these posts!

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Just did 3 mythic plus as Oracle Holy, here’s my feedback on it

Premonition of Insight: It feels good to cover the group in prayer of mendings with this. Doesn’t feel op, but is pretty cool. I used a build that heavily buffs PoM and it did do a pretty good amount of my healing overall. You can also use Insight on 4 holy fires for damage, but healing is a lot more important since our ilvl isn’t scaled high.

Premonition of Piety: This is the worst feeling one. I just don’t overheal enough to get good use out of this in a 5 man. Honestly, I’d love to see this become like cloudburst totem from shaman, store up a bunch of healing and burst it for aoe healing, which is something that holy priest lacks in(aoe healing).

Premonition of Solace: I wish the damage reduction didn’t go away with the absorb. That is all. Still pretty powerful regardless, is a good portion of my healing on the tank and makes them tanky for 3-5 sec at the start of the pull.

Also idk if it’s just me, but holy crap I go oom so fast, even running lightweaver and divine word just to use less mana. I have a strong feeling we’ll get some mana cost reductions at some point in beta.

edit: Some more thoughts on the hero talents themselves.
Assured Safety could be 100% power world shield, honestly. Shield was 1% of my healing and I was hitting POM on CD and using insight to get 4 out.
Waste No Time: I’d love to see this increase the healing of heal of prayer or healing by an amount as well. Instant radiances for disc feel a lot better than an instant heal does.

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BUG ALERT FOR HOLY PRIEST-

The free Flash Heal/Heals from the tier set are costing mana

4 Set- Heal, Flash Heal, and Prayer of Healing have a 50% chance to cast again at 35% effectiveness.

Even though the heal is at 35% effectiveness, the mana cost is 100%. Should be free

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Hello, just wanted to drop one selfish request if I could as a shadow priest enjoyer.
Could we pretty please get the ability to move while channeling mind flay and or mind flay insanity?
Being hard stuck channeling while standing still most of the time just doesn’t feel like retail with how much mobility every other spec has now.
Thats all ty <3

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Some general feedback from a Shadow Priest’s perspective.

This was one of the best visual talents we gained in War Within, thematically and visually incredible (I think the void Torrent lacks a bit of a more “blue void” collors, just to maintain similarity)
A glyph could also be added to change the color of the Halo to a more themed color. (Or even other types of energy, I find it strange that Halo still doesn’t have any glyphs and is visually beautiful).

In gameplay: Voidweaver looks good, but using Voidform with it seems to increase the number of buttons or the complexity of the rotation, but I honestly don’t know what could really be done besides adapting the rotation, but at the moment voidform doesn’t seem very attractive (Especially since we have low haste status at the current beta stage).
And as previously mentioned, the SI procs and the need to save Mindblast stacks to use Voidblast after invoking the rift is a little counterintuitive.

About the New Talents in Priest general Tree:
In general, these 3 talents don’t do much for shadow, in exchange we lose relatively good damage to a priority target and some extra insanity with mindgames.
Panthom Reach is a good quality of life in raid environments, but it doesn’t help much in PvP or M+ (In addition to the problems already mentioned involving Halo and Psylink)
Mindgames as a PvP talent limits us even more in our options and is a nerf in general for PvP, but Voidblast probably makes up for it overall (I haven’t tested it yet to say for sure, just an initial thought about pvp)
Cauterizing Shadow and Manipulation are terrible, especially manipulation, 2 points for it’s disappointing.

About ShadowSpec:
I believe the node between reducing silence CD time /or taking psychic terror is not interesting in PvE scenarios.
Perhaps moving Panthom Reach in place of manipulation by making it 2 points (7.5/15Y) and for silence as the final talent on the right side of the general priest tree would allow Disc and Holy to be more competitive with other healers who have the interrupt tool, especially in M+.
I know this change could represent an indirect buff for Spriest in PvP environments, but it could be fixed in PvP talents.
Mindgames is a low priority button for PvE, but very good in PvP, and considering that our PvP talent options are limited (Since Phase Shift is practically mandatory), turning it into a PvP talent is indirectly a nerf that can be compensated by freeing up some talent points for Shadow in silence.

idol of Y’shaarj needs to be rework, it seems very complex and of little use in general, it seems to me to be designed for single target builds, but it doesn’t seem much better than simply continuing to use Yogg-saron’s idol (even after the nerf) . Furthermore, the talents that precede him with Mindbender are not very interesting because the final talent is not. Maybe with Depth in Shadow and a new effect for the idol when mindbender is used on a “Dying” target it could be interesting. I love Sha’s Flavor, but the talent is simply much weaker than the other idols.

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Some more Spriest thoughts after playing a bit of M+ and solo’ing some delves.

Voidweaver is great for group content. Love it. The extra mobility from void torrent, the impactful visuals and audio hits of void blast, etc.

That said, I found it underwhelming for soloing some higher level delvs compared to Archon. Which is a shame because Archon, while useful and powerful, is just…boring.

What Archon has going for it in a solo PVE capacity like Delvs is a massive amount of passive healing and damage that lines up perfectly on a one-minute CD with Dark Ascension and Mind Bender.

What I noticed though, even as I was testing it, is that Archon feels good to play in situations like Delvs, but only if you’re running a very specific loadout (again, this is just my personal opinion).

It doesn’t line up as well with Void Form, which is a shame, and the pulsing halos which trigger the Insanity triggers come so fast during Void Form that you just don’t have time to use Mind Flay: Insanity, even with the lower 2 second channel time. If you’re not taking Mind Spike you’re losing procs more than likely, due to the already packed and rushed rotation inside of Void Form as-is without the extra procs.

So, basically, Archon feels good, but only if you’re using a specific build that is lining up with your use of Halo, and Dark Ascension and Mindbender all being one-minute cooldowns, which helps line them all up perfectly each time, and Mind Spike: Insanity allows you to not lose procs like I was with Mind Flay: Insanity.

This is fine, I guess. I mean Archon is already ‘forcing’ you into using Halo rather than Divine Star, so why not force a few more things. And I say “force” because of course you CAN take Void Form and Mind Flay with Archon, and you can take the 3 minute Shadow Fiend as well, but then you have a one-minute Halo cooldown, a two-minute Void Form, and a three-minute Shadow Fiend. Whereas if you take Mindbender and Dark Ascension you can line up your three cooldowns all at once. Power Infusion being the one outsider, but you can just use that every second round of your other three.

The three of those cooldowns lining up leads to some powerful DPS and healing.

On a 7 Delv Voidweaver just couldn’t hack it with some of the current tuning, even with the Void Torrent while moving. Some of the spaces are so tight that moving doesn’t really matter anyway, as there’s so much on the ground you have to watch out for depending on the Delv.

Additionally, because of all the movement you’re having to do, I found I was losing out on many Void Blast charges.

Archon, with the above set up of one-minute cooldowns, could just start every second or third pack with three meaty cooldowns, and again the passive healing cannot be overstated. Like it’s not heal-to-full or anything, but it’s passive while you’re doing your other rotation, or even just moving.

Anyway…TLDR: Voidweaver for group content, but really leaning towards Archon for solo with Spriest.

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I felt the same thing playing with the Archon (especially the insanity procs), maybe because Dark Ascension and the mindbender builds aren’t that interesting since Idol of Y’shaarj isn’t very interesting.

I can imagine a more interesting animation for Dark Ascension that makes me feel like an “archon” and some strong ST builds for raids too

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Yeah, the black wings with Dark Ascension are from like Cata I want to say? They’re very dated, and I wish they would update it to something more void-y, but I guess they’re trying to please two groups of people – fans of the void theme, and the traditional vampiric shadow priest/fallen angel archetype.

I’d love it to get an update (and have it carry over to Dark Archangel as well, since it uses the same wing effect for Disc).

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I like the fallen Angel archetype too
Maybe a Mawsworm theme for Dark Ascension, they’re fallen Kyrian and Kyrestia is the “archon” at the end.

It’s sad that shadow’s “Dark Ascension” has the same visual effect as the Discipline pvp talent we use to buff allies :confused:

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I was one of the people who kind of hated Mindgames- not the idea of it, which was pretty cool, but the execution. It’s four point strength should probably have been it’s base strength and doubling that but doubleing the CD could have made it into a more interesting strategic-deploy option. What it was instead mostly felt like rotational button bloat.

I’d have been 100% okay with it staying as a choice node with Phase Shift, but swapping them would give access to both, with each in more appropriate environments.

Phase Shift would be a nice defensive for PvE. Especially if it got boosted to last like 3 seconds - which feels more appropriate for a capstone.

Then get rid of Angelic Bulwark for Vault of heavens. :smiley:

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Premonition of Insight’s CDR is not affected by Apotheosis, testing it in and out of Apoth with Serenity/Sanctify had both doing 10s off (using the 40% talent). It could be cool to have Apoth affect it to machine gun out holy words in that window or even just as a consistency thing since it is a holy word CD reducing effect.

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I think with all hero trees of all classes you should change talents that push you into specific talents or choice talents in the other trees. It’s not even that hard, most of them would require minor changes to just give more options.

For priest for example, you could simply make the Archon tree’s power surge proc off of casting halo or divine star. Casting divine star every 5 seconds would probably be annoying, but you could easily make this talent proc off of casting either and still cast halos. IE: I cast divine star, power surge activates and casts halos.

For every other hero talent in the tree that specifically mentions halo, you could also add divine star. All of the buffs or effects would make sense procing off either of them I think. The second part of power surge that buffs halo’s radius could also buff divine star range as well.

I also don’t want to repeat this feedback in a bunch of other class threads so I’ll just say the same basic feedback applies across all classes. IE: Path of Resurgence should apply to both chi burst and chi wave, not just chi burst.

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Voidweaver feels very good as shadow and has a strong theme, there is some concern for the priority of spells getting a bit busy and not knowing really what is the best button to press in the entropic rift window especially if you are using deathspeaker/mind devourer.

I’m having a hard time even choosing archon, I feel like it lacks strength in any particular area and doesn’t really have a theme. It feels pretty bland. My main concern is that archon could potentially scale betterr in some situations like mythic+ especially the later the expansion goes) and it doesn’t really feel like we are using a hero talent but moreso just an extension of our spec tree.

Manifested Power is a bit strange to me because it pretty much guarantees you will be munching procs of surge of insanity which is something you already did when playing void eruption especially in AoE pulls. The node below it is nice to have extra damage on our mind flay insanity and spike insanity but again there are many times where you will munch procs and not see that extra damage.

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