Please, change the name of the Spellslinger tree. It lacks substance to a degree which no other trees suffer from. What do mages do if not sling spells?
My suggestion is to reflavor it as a Guardian of Tirisfal archetype. This fantasy has been explored before with Aluenth and Ebonchill; I’d love to explore it again.
Ok here’s a legitimate question for everyone else playing Holy and Disc right now. Do you actually like PI as a spell? Personally, I hate it, and its associated talent twins of the sun priestess. It’s a buff that is balanced based on how other classes interact with it. Which by itself feels terrible to have one of your very limited number of cooldowns handicapped because of how other classes power level changes. Proof is right here:
“Developers’ note: Power Infusion has proved to be too impactful due to how it stacks with cooldowns on specializations that excel at dealing damage in a short window. We’re reducing it’s duration and amplitude to balance our burst classes and keep them more in line with steady-state damage dealers.”
Like, they literally nerfed Priests power because of how other classes interacted with our spell. What a massive feelsbad. I kept hearing throughout this interview how priest is “still a healer” even with this Maintenance buff that has to now be cast twice as often. Why do we even have to say “priest is still a healer?” While every other class will be getting powerful buffs to their throughput via the Hero talents, priest is only getting buffs to allies. Nothing that legitimately helps what Disc or Holy is trying to do.
Here’s a quick example of some of the RESTO DRUID’s actually helpful additions to their healing kit from the hero tree:
Bounteous Bloom - Grove Guardians’ healing increased by 20%
Durability of Nature - Your Grove Guardians Nourish applies a minor Cenarion Ward
Expansiveness - 5% max mana
Protective Growth - Permanent 8% DR with Regrowth.
Harmony of the Grove - Each Grove guardian gives 3% healing done while active.
I mean, this isn’t even all of them that help what Rdruid is trying to do. What exactly did priest get to help them do what Disc (set up big ramps) and Holy (spam holy words to get Salv back) are trying to do? Let’s see:
Foreseen Circumstances - Pain Suppression reduces damage taken by an additional 10%, and Guardian spirit lasts for 12s instead of 10.
Preemptive Care - Increases the duration of atonement by 1s and Renew by 3s.
Choice node - 2s reduction on dispel or PI on feathers.
Perfect Vision - Reduces the CD of premonition to 50s so it will guaranteed line up with NOBODY’s cd’s.
All other talents basically interact with premonition.
Anyone else notice the GROSS discrepancy between how Resto Druid improves vs how Priest improves? Like, You would think that the Hero Tree that is a mix between 2 healing specs (only class that can do this btw) ACTUALLY INCREASES THE HEALING OF THE PRIEST. Wild concept I know. Whoever developed this Hero Tree is extremely out of touch with the priest community. I mean really, who doesn’t just auto cast feathers on themselves when they need it since our mobility is the worst in the game? Is anyone gonna be throwing feathers on the ground banking on someone stepping on it when needed? Yeah no.
This entire class tree needs to be gutted and redone. Trust me 99.9% of the priests who are wiping in their raid won’t be caring about the “fantasy” of seeing into the future when they’re looking at a terrible Hero Tree.
Here are some legitimate ideas on how to make a cool and flavorful Double Healing Hero Tree:
I’m sorry for the long winded post, but seeing this Hero Tree on my favorite healer right now is an abomination and really shows that the devs are out of touch with the priest community. They can do so much better. I’m curious to know others thoughts tho.
I just want priests to be the best they can be and feel good with their new Hero Talents.
Class Fantasy
The class fantasy of the Oracle Priest feels way off. I understand that oracles can divine the future, but that is very contrary to what a priest is all about. Priests are about faith and faith is meaningless if you can divine the future. Faith is all about not knowing the future and believing anyway. I mean pick Zealot or something. Maybe divining the future fantasy wise can work with Old-God stuff between Shadow/Disc.
Talents
Premonition
Sounds like a chore. Click a button, it starts spinning (slowly) like a slot machine and then you click again to cast that one. It will be distracting during raid times as either the player will have to look away from combat/frames or use sounds which will overlap with other sounds. You just decluttered disc and this sounds like clutter. It just doesn’t sound fun. During raid, this is a HPS bump for Disc due to increased magic damage. For Holy, none of the options directly give HPS bump to the healer. Advantage Disc.
Clairvoyance
Capstones are supposed to feel impactful. I am assuming this capstone is no different. However, the lack of agency will be frustrating to work with during raid prog. it will make raid performance and the impact of the capstone very RNG around lust timers.
Versatile Divinations
It’s not clear how this will interact with Clairvoyance. Meaning if I cast Premonition on a target, do the other allies also get the Haste buff? Oddly enough, I have met players (Rogues specifically) who do not like getting haste buffs. So this lack of agency on who gets the buff might frustrate players of other classes.
Divine Feathers
Because Angelic Feathers cannot be cast on a mouseover/target, most priests opt to simply cast it on themselves. I just don’t see this talent being useful. It should be obvious by now that players do not like the Angelic Feather mechanic and this just feels like a double down of “no you will do it”. But the only other option is lower Purify cd by 2s. So all around this feels like a wasted talent slot in raid.
Perfect Vision
Unlikely to be used in prog situations as there’s few (any?) DPS CDs that are 50s. 1min will align with many DPS CDs. Maybe PvP or questing?
Preventative Measures & Assured Safety
Overall I like the ideas here, only concern is that if you cast PW:S you get 1 stack of PoM at full value. So that’s 100% PW:S + 100% PoM charge for 1 GCD. And Disc cast a lot of shields during Rapture. Contrast that to cast PoM and get 20% PW:S. That’s 20% PW:S + 100% PoM charge for 1 GCD. Not remotely equivalent and Holy does not have a Rapture type talent to spam PW:S or PoM casts. Advantage Disc.
Waste No Time
PW:R, Heal and PoH are not equivalent from a throughput or mana cost perspective. PoH/PW:R are 4.5% mana-ish while Heal is 2.5% mana.
Foreseen Circumstances
Guardian Spirit +2s feels underwhelming for Hero talent honestly, which increases healing received. Not directly attributed to Holy in WCL. Compare that to increased DR for Disc which is. Advantage Disc.
Fatebender
Sounds like chore upon chore. Now not only do you need to pay attention to the slot machine but you need to remember what your last slot selection was.
Overall I like the idea of giving priest healers the ability to provide more utility. However, as a poster above pointed out priest is the only class with two healing specs. One would think that the combination of a Holy/Disc priest would focus on healing not utility buffs for the raid. I think the class fantasy is not a match and Premonition itself just sounds like it will be frustrating or annoying to use. Make them three distinct abilities or shift/alt/ctrl modifier. Provide some means of control over the capstone so that prog is not so RNG. All around it feels more focus was put on Disc than Holy in this.
True, but I think the intention is that they are actually clones. Their purpose is to distract (take aggro) of whomever you are fighting. My idea is that ideally, one should not be able to tell the difference between you and your clones.
Yeah the cross of the 2 beast specs is… a dark ranger? It should be a cross of MM and Survival.
We’ve seen 2 trees now that seem to be focused on support gameplay with priest and pally, so is this how we’re having more support specs added, an additional option to already existing specs instead of full specs themselves?
So have y’all started over with Oracle yet? Because you need to start over with Oracle. A rotating buff is one of the worst ideas ever in the game. I’m supposed to watch an icon swap through options for 5 seconds in the heat of battle while people need healing? Did you spend more than 5 minutes thinking about this? It’s a terrible idea. And the rng of clairvoyance? Awful. You wanna make PW:Shield apply a little bonus PoM? Fine. Literally everything else in the tree is garbage.
almost like it was designed with using a bot in mind. no way this was made for real life people to manage while needing to do mechanics every few seconds.
Considering you have this expansion available for pre-order shouldn’t you have done a pretty big preview by now? Release all the hero talents. No need for these just the tip previews to generate hype. All the talents at once will generate hype.
I actually don’t think they have all the talent trees ready to be showed off.
They might have partial talents and some idea and direction, but I’m sure many pieces are still missing and need to be fully fleshed out.
But in the event that I am wrong and they have all the talent trees built from a conceptual standpoint already, I think them just flooding the forums with all the trees at once will have direct and focused feedback lost in the noise of it all and many trees will not get the attention and dedication needed to be properly developed and implemented.
Oracle is not a good tree for one significant reason. As a holy priest I do not want to play a “support” role. I want to heal.
While I understand Archon is yet to be shown, the fact that it’s shared with Shadow insinuates it’ll be a dps buffing tree, so leave that aside.
Priest has 3 roles. Straight healer, straight dps, and hybrid healer and dps. Oracle, or whatever it winds up being called, should be a healing tree that mixes what holy and disc do. It should not introduce new mechanics such as slot machine buffing. It should not put a new onus on me the player to watch other people’s dps cooldowns and know which buff they need when.
I don’t find support fun. I play a healer to heal, not to help other dps do their jobs better. If I did enjoy that I’d play something else.
That doesn’t get into the technical issues of Premonition requiring an addon/Weak Aura to play. Even if they simplify the magic/physical damage into a main stat buff, you still need an alert to tell you when to hit the button when the roulette comes up. That also doesn’t touch into the social problems of whisper begging for buffs.
I don’t want Premonition. I want a spell that fills a gap in my healing rotation. Holy badly needs an external defensive cd. It’s one of two classes that doesn’t have an interrupt (the other being Disc of course). Fix the problems with the class before adding unneeded and unwanted experiments that add nothing beneficial.
Support skills are here to stay, if there are no new support specs for some classes it is because of this system, so it is logical that they improve the support of some classes that already provide it. Power Infusion right now in Df is already a support ability, and the oracle revolves around replacing that ability.
Also to consider the combinations of specs, currently we saw that the Oracle and the Lightsmith are “supports”.
Healer + Healer = OP Healer, or focus on something non-healer but that they share, which is what they did.
Healer + Tank = unkillable healer/tank, or focus on another general characteristic they have in common, which is what they did. (Paladins typically, and especially in their early days, gave buff)
Consider that they didn’t put the druid tank and healer together, it’s for a reason.
Whenever a combination seems problematic or unimaginative, they’ll take a turn toward some new or niche fantasy.
I don’t expect any hero talent is going to enhance what you already do, but it is going to add something, give a twist to your base spec.
I would like to give some ideas for talents that could be added to Keeper of the Grove that possibly are more interactive or interesting than what the previewed tree has:
These ideas are centered around the idea that Balance would be getting Treants back similar to how they were in MoP and WoD, and I think for this hero tree to work this absolutely needs to happen.
Treants spread your moonfire to nearby targets when they attack with wrath / Grove Guardians have a chance to spread your rejuvenation to a nearby injured ally when they heal with nourish.
Barkskin casts a lesser version of Barkskin on nearby allies.
Barkskin pulses nature damage.
Treants cast Thorns on nearby enemies, which damages them when they attack or cast spells. Grove Guardians cast thorns on nearby allies, which deal damage to melee attackers and generate extra threat if cast on a tank player.
Treants generate astral power when they attack with wrath. Grove guardians generate a small amount of mana when they heal with nourish.
Your Treants / Grove Guardians become afflicted with the nightmare, dealing 30% more damage / healing but losing 10% of their health every second.
Treants receive damage bonuses from your mastery. Grove Guardians add 1 stack of mastery to your target for 3 seconds when they heal with nourish.
Treants and Grove Guardians leave behind an area effect on the ground when they expire, dealing damage to enemies, healing allies, and slowing enemies by 30%.
Treants Wrath attacks have a high chance to explode, dealing 50% extra damage in an area. Grove Guardians nourish has a high chance to splash onto a nearby ally for 30% of its healing.
Treants and Grove Guardians become infested with pests, casting a lesser adaptive swarm at a nearby enemy or ally when they are summoned and when they expire. Lesser swarm lasts for 4 seconds, jumps twice, and provides an 8% modifier.
Treants and Grove Guardians cast mass entanglement when two are summoned within 3 seconds of each other.
Treants and Grove Guardians cast a channeled beam of nature at an enemy or ally when two are summoned within 3 seconds, dealing high damage or healing per second for 4 seconds.
Your treants / Grove Guardians take 8% of the damage you would take.
Spending x amount of astral power / mana makes your next entangling roots or regrowth / starfire instant cast.
Treant attacks grant stacking nature damage up to a certain amount, which is added to your next starsurge. Grove Guardian heals grant stacking healing bonus, which is added to your next swiftmend or initial cast of wild growth.
Celestial alignment summons a Treant every 10 seconds. Ironbark summons a Grove Guardian when cast.
These ideas are somewhat random and some could be included in choice nodes with each other, but the point is to stay with the keeper of the grove theme which is nature magic, roots, thorns, and trees.
I’m assuming they’re still being worked on. Which is fine, they have time to work on them, and they should use it.
They did say at Blizzcon these are subject to change based on player feedback. They also said previews of all Hero talent trees should be out before live testing begins, so that they can be adjusted once players can test.
Was testing supposed to start a month or two from now?
Either way, I have seen the devs use language which would suggest they’re listening to feedback, which is pretty nice.
Well, from the look of the Roadmap Alpha is supposed to start sometime after 10.2.6 comes out, which is slated for March release. So we’ll probably start seeing more previews soon.
Scrap hero talents while you still can
I don’t agree with you here because Velen is the character this is obviously based on.
Not to mention that there are many myths of deities and the like that offer visions of the future.
Furthermore, it is known that the Light and the Void can glimpse the future, even if it is limited.