I’m curious to hear what people think about the new tier sets. From what I can see, it looks like Oracle is going to be insanely overpowered. Am I correct that with every cast of a Premonition you will esentially get two casts of PoM? Like you’ll do Premonition, PoM, PoM, PoM, a few other spells and then another Premonition followed by PoM and PoM? That seems like it’s going to result in A LOT of PoM. Combined with the 1.4 million heal or whatever each one will do… I’m just having a hard time seeing how that’s NOT going to be the only way to play Holy Priest (in raid at least).
What am I missing? Two casts of PoM every 45 seconds? Half of those Premonitions granting a cast of it as well? So, essentially, an extra 2.5 PoM casts every 45 seconds AND they’re adding a decent heal to the PoM?
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Bonus Pom casts are on piety and solace only…. But insight and clairvoyance already have 3
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Oh. So it’s two casts instead of three. I guess I was thinking it was double the effect, which I guess would have been six casts, not two. I think I thought it was double the effectiveness of the other Premonitions. I see now that it’s not.
I really hope Archon is viable in raid still. I don’t like the Oracle playstyle.
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You are correct in your original statement though for holy. I don’t see how extras halos are going to compete the same way against extra PoM casts that also do a pretty huge heal on initial casts.
Archon is also further devalued knowing that the “free” flash of lights are now only going to be “50% off” mana costs. Also the additional reduction on holy word cooldowns from Archon suffer the same fate, as apotheosis is only “50% off” holy word casts now as well. All this says to me is “Archon = mana hog”
Apoth time in oracle will be longer than archon in S3. I’m assuming I’ll be in the 55-60% uptime range for many fights in oracle. Without the changes the mana consumption for both may have been a bit generous (with longer apoth times + more pom casts that are essentially replacing flash heals). Nonetheless Oracle looks to be dominate as the 2pc is quite strong for sure and archon may need a little something extra.
A lot of how Archon performs is going to depend on what the damage windows are like in the next raid. Halo is great for the raid-wide healing but as that gets extended out to up to five casts it may very well just be going off with nothing to heal. It already does a ton of overhealing. You’re right that the Surge of Light procs will be quite a bit less useful now that they’re only 50% off instead of 100% off.
I think Oracle might dominate the meters next season. The PoM is hard to beat. Archon will be slightly better in their ability to get people topped off with larger heals though their usefulness might now show as well on the meters. And, as the season goes on, the PoM is going to pull even further ahead as there is less healing required.
I guess we’ll see how this shakes out. I still hate the Oracle playstyle with the rotating buff. I simply can’t keep track of it or appreciate the long-term rotation of it.
Yeah Oracle certainly isn’t for everyone, I mainly PvP and I find it much easier to keep track of because I set up certain premonitions for team clashes in BGs and by the time that team fight is over I’ve basically cycled back through for another team clash. I love the PoM playstyle too for PvP because it can still heal a ton while I’m being CC spammed.
I did run a few M+ this season though and found it was kind of weak because PoM can just sit on a target who isn’t taking damage, but with the instant heal now at least it’ll also be more useful for topping up tanks while waiting for dps to take damage so it bounces as well.
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There’s an Oracle talent that applies PoM to a second party member when cast, does the instant heal apply to them as well or just the one you target with PoM?
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I wouldn’t say Archon is completely unviable, just that it doesn’t really make sense to run.
Oracle is incredibly strong for both holy and disc. I could see that tier set getting changes (or something changing with the spec) before release. I don’t think it SHOULD, tbh, but honestly there’s way too much synergy here that it wouldn’t be the go-to.
You also have to consider that Epiphany got reworked so you don’t waste charges anymore - which makes it a WAY better talent to take. We didn’t just get 2 extra PoMs every 45s, we also get a bunch of extra Epiphany PoMs which all come with tier set heals, and also feed into Answered Prayers.
PoM is also easily our most mana efficient heal already, so we get a lot of mana we can just burn if we need to. We legitimately have enough extra mana to do some PoH spamming if we wanted to.
Where Archon shines is if mythic has enough damage in short windows that we’d want the healing boost and halos to be covering longer. It’s “burst” healing, essentially, but the amount of sustained healing Oracle does is going to be hard to beat without some pretty specific fight design.
You’ll absolutely be able to play Archon, though. And when you only have 2 piece tier during prog, they really aren’t very far apart at all. Oracle’s 4p is where it really shines.
Also another ‘upside’ to how the oracle tier works is that you no longer have to do any kind of real decision making when hitting Prem if that was your issue with it (I know many didn’t like the moment to moment gameplay of differing buffs). They all come with insight and you’re basically gonna always want to spend it on PoM. So it’s basically free PoMs the button now.
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From my testing on the PTR it’s only the main cast of PoM not the offshoot ones from Oracle that benefit from the big heal. It would be way too overpowered to have it do it on both.
The same is also true for Oracle disc the 200% bonus damage is only on the target of the main Penance cast, not the offshoot one that Oracle provides.
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Thank you for the information.
I think Oracle is going to be very overpowered, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if it was even more broken with a double heal.
I wonder if they’re going to correctly nerf the tier set or if they’re going to just straight up nerf PoM (and hurt Archon as a result).
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I heard other healer sets are quite strong so the play may just to buff the archon set, not to mention the pom heal is going to be overwhelmingly overhealing on full or near full health chars
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