It is the same tradeoff that disc has had though. If I’m chasing my DPS around a pillar as he’s trying to catch up to a BM hunter I may have to penance myself to keep up. I have to decide, do I want to waste my penance on speed when it’s a huge heal or can I afford to give up a CD so I can press shield or Evang or PS or something. If I’m trying to get away from someone in PvP, I WANT BnS to be tied to penance because I need to get away and they’re also doing damage to me, so now I can penance, WnW big shield with BnS, rotate if I’m Oracle (priest being slow is a myth, disc isn’t slow if you know the tricks).
Holy didn’t have to make that tradeoff. You don’t have to waste your PoM charges. It’s just a do I waste a GCD on shield that does no healing but makes me fast or press PoM which does actual healing.
Getting rid of PW:S keeps the high level decision making with one less button, and aligns the decision making with disc. I have to say this so much around here, but more buttons != complexity. Complexity is when you have to decide, do I use this now or do I save this. Do I use it for utility or for damage or for healing. A well designed spec has the same amount of mental decisions as a spec that has more buttons but less overall though. A spec with more buttons can’t punish you for wasting all of your PoM charges and having nothing to press. Not running out of things to press IS the game.
But now you’ve just removed all the PvP counterplay of the 10% DR. We all know that if a shadow priest gets kicked on shadow he’s going to cast flash heal for 10% DR, and we know if he’s casting flash heal in your face he’s trying to bait a kick so he can press all his shadow buttons. You can’t kick a PW:S. You’re now giving priest a 10% constant damage reduc with no risk, no cost. It would immediately be a button you MUST press on CD because of how absolutely strong damage reduc is in PvP (dampening will make heals heal for less, but 10% will still be 10% less damage).
I’m also OKay with it just being 10% DR while the shield is up, so just purge it, if that’s the issue.
Edit: I’m also okay with it just being a chunky absorb that doesn’t scale with damage.
In M+, it would last through the incoming hit, and then that’d be that.
It had a hefty mana cost? It wasn’t just something you could just use in a long battle. That’s generally a reason it wasn’t used or people consider it “wrong” to have cast it before. It was not worth the mana cost for what it did, in most situations.
I don’t disagree. But then what that means is pruning doesn’t affect that.
A counter to this is if “this” picks up a bunch of functionality. Then it might become, well, before I would use this other thing to handle this situation, but now this button handles both situations, so I just always use this button. Prayer of Mending is one such button.
Fair. It probably does too much. I think it shouldn’t apply PW:S. That was a weird decision.
This is a monkey paw, now everyone is asking for a purge, trying to take our good utility
I think there is the emotional argument of, I want PW:S because it feels like losing something nostalgically priest, and, holy priest is really lacking that special something. Because I think the former I disagree with, we have to let stuff go. I’d rather see a real redesign that fixes stuff than make blizzard play by 20 year old constraints.
But if it’s the latter, then my compromise is holy priest needs some form of mitigation that feels like holy priest. Void shield is like sort of the right mechanic for holy priest, but delivered in a way that would conflict with disc’s direction. What holy needs is some sort of direct heal affect that leaves a lingering damage reduc that isn’t available all the time.
I don’t really think we need a ST shield affect. Priest to me feels tanky, MW has crazy healing rn but if someone catches you and you can’t port you’re like wet tissue paper. On priest I may be slow but it takes like 20 people to kill me through rotation SOTR, GS + serenity, fade and fear, etc. I don’t think PW:S has real value.
I will never make the argument that Holy Priest isn’t tanky … in PvP . That Focused Will is putting in work, and it’s almost impossible to be attacked by someone who isn’t meleeing you. So you’re “permanently” taking 30% less damage, on top of the additional DR from Fade and Protective Light , and then upping your health bar.
Now… if you were to encounter a solo caster… that might be a different matter, as long as they don’t sic a pet on you.
In M+… this isn’t the case. Now… they could make it so that Focused Will procs off of all damage. I think nerfing the DR, if this were to happen, would be fair. But then I’d still want Protective Light to go because it’d be passive DR on top of passive DR.
… Power Word: Shield . That is the role it is filling for Shadow Priest. Yes, I like Premonition of Solace , too, and I’d be Okay if it didn’t provide DR (for Holy), but that’s what the button (“Power Word: Shield”) became . I’d even take a 30 second or 1 minute CD. Just give it the Power Word: Shield icon, so I can put it on my 1 key, and continue to reflexively “PW:S” myself, with the PW:S sound effect, when I think I can’t run out of whatever bad, or impending doom is about to hit (yes, I still also hit Fade , and use Desperate Prayer ).
It’s still there for Shadow. I think you could possibly convince me of this if it were gone from Shadow Priest, too.
The problem with m+ isn’t you aren’t getting passively healed by atonement. You don’t even need to think about yourself because radiance will naturally hit you. Same thing with tank healing really.
That’s why I think PW:S isn’t really the answer is because what’s needed is more like a dome or pain suppression type thing that you would NOT be able to cast every X seconds, it would need to be something that you could only do during DH or apoth or something.
I’ve also always thought that there’s something ray of hopish that could fix this problem as well. Delayed damage could be holy priest’s thing so it’s a throughput spec. Like you just apply stagger to the whole party when you DH.
I’m not hitting Power Word: Shield every X seconds. I’m not asking to hit Power Word: Shield every X seconds. What I am hitting almost every X seconds is Fade . Power Word: Shield , for me, has generally been a last second reflex for eHP. On other people, it’s generally the, “uh oh, I have literally no other instant-cast ability to provide some healing, and is about to bleed out in a ~GCD.” Maybe I’ll throw it on a tank when they’re running off somewhere to pretend like it does something. That’s why I wouldn’t mind if the ability had a longer CD. I’m not advocating for it to ever be a rotational ability for Holy. I’m merely suggesting that it can fill the same role for us as it does for Shadow. Keep in mind Shadow has Dispersion on top of the same defensives we have. Yes, our equivalent button is Guardian Spirit , but it’s also meant to be used on others.
I’m definitely not arguing against other tools. Give me more buttons all the time, even if they’re
”useless.” I’m just saying, Shadow has it and it’s not part of Shadow’s kit, so just put it back for Holy. Then we all have it, the vast majority of people will not use it, and it can sit on my bars and I’ll be happy.
I guess that’s where we just have to disagree because I simply don’t believe that having a button for everything is necessary or good. Last night there were times where I spent too much and should have saved a serenity or PoM, but that was my mistake, and not feeling like I had a button to press made it much more of a “I could have played this better” rather than “I still feel like I did fine because I had something to press”. I don’t believe in feel good buttons or a button for every situation because I believe tradeoffs are good. Holy can’t spam dot, but disc can’t spam aoe. Yin and yang and that sort of thing.
I understand it’s not everyone’s cup of tea and it’s a very WoW classic kind of desire to have a huge kit of buttons. But huge kit of buttons just doesn’t mesh well with “and those buttons all have interactions you need to memorize and account for”.
I definitely think Blizzard thinks the same way I am thinking, because they talked a lot about opt-in complexity in talents and interactions versus keeping around spells you just press as upkeep. It’s popular to dunk on Blizzard, but they are game developers with degrees and experience and see things from the perspective of balancing the entire game instead of having a strong bias for priest, so I’m going to give it at shot.
If it doesn’t work out than we don’t need to worry, because pruning is cyclical and they will add more stuff back in over time to sell more expansions. If you’re the kind of person that never likes pruning you have to at least accept that the culling has to happen because at some point you simply can’t add more spells than their are bar splots and keys on a keyboard.
I made peace with a number of spells. A number of spells that I said, “this is one of my favorite spells they’ve added” or “this is a lot of fun for me,” like Power Word: Life and Divine Word . Sure, there is an upper limit. But we have, what, 8 action bars? I hadn’t even filled 4 of them with Holy Priest spells. There were still a couple of modifiers I had available, maybe start using CTRL for some.
Yes, we’re going to disagree because you keep trying to come at it from a logical stand-point. The problem there is I know the logic. I pay attention to the theorycrafting, sometimes have participated in it myself. I follow along in the Discords, read the guides, and watch several streamers. I know the optimal way to play. I actively choose not to do specific things if I don’t find it fun, because “fun” is different for everyone. I’m the kind of person who will sacrifice talent points for spells that I’ll cast for the animation more than the effect, so you can’t argue logic with me.
I don’t know if it’s been said around here already, but it would be soooo hot if they gave hpriest a talent for guardian spirit which gave it 2 charges. Like the Disc talent “Protector of the Frail” which gives pain suppression 2 charges (and slight CDR through pw: shield).
I’d love if they could find a way to give hpriest damage reduction somewhere in the tree that felt natural as well.
Sure, but people playing PvP are still just trying to have fun. People pushing keys are trying to have fun.
Having 4 action bars worth of abilities might be fine for someone who is casual, but at higher tiers of content every ability is going to be mathematically analyzer and incorporated. In PvP every button is a button you will probably have to press at some point.
I have been playing since Vanilla so again, I get it, having 8 action bars all completely full of toys, pots, abilities, things you never press is a valid way to want to play WOW.
The reality of the game today is that it’s not played that way. The kits are more complex. The game is insanely faster paced than it was. Game knowledge is immense. So what are you going to do for the people that just want their kit to be sized so they can fit it on 3 or less bars, doesn’t require tons of cognitive overhead and weird keybinds to press important spells, and still want interesting builder/spender interactions that most classes have now. Those people also deserve to have fun.
Hot take but dragonflight talents proved to just be the illusion of choice and MoP talents were a simple way to balance classes and also offer interesting dynamic choices without sort of giving players “permission” to make horrendous builds. I can live either way (DF talents or MoP ones). I’m just saying!
My actual preference would be the current talent trees, but trim off 25% of the bloat and actually give me more choice nodes and actives (or things that effected my actives) to choose between.
You’re one of the smarter more reasonable people here who has good ideas and does the research so that’s definitely not true. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.
You don’t have to be condescending, I’ve been having a thoughtful conversation and you want to slam dunk on me because I’m pointing out there’s nuance to these discussions that must be considered due the various competing requirements the user base of the game has.
I am not being condescending. If you feel that way, I am unsure why.
I’m just putting in input, I wasn’t even originally talking to you, you responded to my comment to another person with things I already know and understood such as, other people are playing the game to have fun so I am unsure who is being condescending.
I hope you enjoy your evening fellow priest posting on the priest forums about priest things!
I mean you responded directly to me implying I don’t know that people are playing WoW for fun. That’s pretty snarky. I’ll just assume I misread your tone. Good night.
Hey man, you quoted and responded to me joking with another player implying that I don’t understand that other people play the game to have fun as well! Pretty snarky if you ask me!
I’ll assume you misunderstood me speaking to someone else as speaking directly to you. Woopsies!
Have a priestly evening, many of Light’s Blessings!
It is supremely disappointing to lose multiple spells like this to passive mechanics and simplification. God I am going to miss the old holy toolkit. It was so tuned. This current version feels like priest has just been casualized into the ground. It’s so boring and empty. You guys have passived away a HoT, DoT, and shield. You completely removed a movement boost. You significantly slowed and limited the AoE. This completely changes how priest plays and feels. You ruined the rhythm. You took the utility. You didn’t free us up by making some things passive as you also slowed other things down. I’ve been here since day one and this is sadly the worst this class has ever felt.
That is the role it is filling for Shadow Priest. Yes, I like Premonition of Solace , too, and I’d be Okay if it didn’t provide DR (for Holy), but that’s what the button (“Power Word: Shield”) became . I’d even take a 30 second or 1 minute CD. Just give it the Power Word: Shield icon, so I can put it on my 1 key, and continue to reflexively “PW:S” myself, with the PW:S sound effect, when I think I can’t run out of whatever bad, or impending doom is about to hit (yes, I still also hit Fade , and use Desperate Prayer ).
I think you could possibly convince me of this if it were gone from Shadow Priest, too.
I’m just an idiot.