The biggest bonus I’ve found going Dracthyr is the ability to negate knockbacks more than anything. It’s a very powerful racial to be able to ignore pushbacks and pull-ins. If I had this tool in DF, the bosses I disliked the most (Ras/Day) would have been far less frustrating.
I’ve been using speed enchants over leech enchants and found them more helpful as well. Having high speed really helps with mobility, but the random nature of getting it as a bonus on armor is frustrating. I had a ring and trinket which both had about +900 speed and was at 117% movement speed and had a lot less frustration getting around. Of course I eventually got a better ring and lost a bit of speed. 
I’d 100% be Dracthyr if I wasn’t tied down to the Shadowmeld life in M+ and also questing in the world. You can meld + drink, do meld skips, and also meld + cast regular resurrect in the back.
M Queen’s knockbacks aren’t obnoxious enough where I felt like you 100% need to be Dracthyr. The knockback on Raz was far worse.
2 Likes
Shadowmeld is an equally powerful racial. If I hadn’t been human and instead been a NE with years of using shadowmeld, I might feel different as well. Giving up every man for himself, err sorry, will to survive wasn’t painful.
I find the wing buffet, even on a long cooldown, is also helpful in open world, delves and pvp. Been having a lot of fun being the most annoying cloth tank in casual bgs with mostly pve gear and pvp trinkets.
The pull-ins on Queens platforms are also negated which I really found the best use of it on that fight. Same with getting pulled in on the council fight, super helpful.
New PTR build notes just went up.
Continuing the discussion from Undermine(d) Development Notes:
They made some big buffs to Disc, especially with the Harsh Discipline and Penance change. The Void Summoner talent is definitely back in play again…
Holy change’s are kind of mixed. Lightweaver got its overall hps effectiveness dropped by 28% which makes it not as desirable a pick anymore if you’re not using it with PoH. It’s not any more powerful of an hps gain then most of the end tree talents now.
The nerfs to Dispersing and Trail of Lights doesn’t make any sense because Flash Heal and Heal are baseline doing less healing without our 4-piece bonus.
The nerf to Eternal Sanctity hits us a bit hard because we can extend it to a 30-32s duration instead of 35-40s. They should have just nerfed Light in the Darkness instead.
PoH getting a +20% buff makes it our strongest filler spell which cements it as the dominate button to mash in raid.
3 Likes
IMO PoH still costs too much to just mindlessly smash, but given the mana cost it should be providing more hps than heal. This will lead to conscious decisions on when to mash it, I actually love that. Likely push it in apoth and decide out of apoth phases based on how much mana and heal is needed. Also with its insane cast speed, innervate is going to be even more appreciated!
I’m on the PTR now looking at stuff.
- Flash Heal is 480,284.
- Heal w/o Lightweaver is 575,825.
- Heal w/ Lightweaver is 679,474.
- PoH w/o Lightweaver is 148,010 * 5 = 740,050.
- PoH w/ Lightweaver is 174,652 * 5 = 873,260.
- Sanctify w/ Light in the Darkness is 415,234 * 5 = 2,076,170.
- Serenity w/ Light in the Darkness is 1.4 million.
The only real benefit Lightweaver has for PoH is reducing it from a 1.5s to 1s and making it heal for 133k extra (which may just be more overhealing). Lightweaver is still a +41% increase to Flash Heal which makes it viable.
Also, Prismatic Echoes Renew increase is still bugged. Empowered Renew doesn’t work with Lasting Words or Benediction.
With Lightweaver getting knocked down a peg and the nerf to Eternal Sanctity it makes my previous Lightweaver/Lightwell/Divine Image w/ LoTN build not as strong. This opens up potential builds centered around Answered Prayers.
1 Like
Some amazing QOL changes to Disc. Pretty much every change is an absolute banger. The sorest thumb is still the Expiation/Twilight Equilibrium branch of the tree.
I’m looking at the Disc stuff now.
- Evangelism does 5.4 mil healing to your targets with atonement.
- You can move around with Uppies with a 50% speed reduction. It’d be nice if Divine Hymn did this too SMH.
- Shadowfiend is a flat 1 minute cooldown and mindbender is a 30s cooldown. No abilities CDR them faster.
- Harsh Discipline is a +25/50% damage/healing increase to your next Penance cast which still makes it good.
- Expiation is still terrible. It’s literally an extra 150-250k damage for 2 points.
3 Likes
LOL the nerfs to hpriest…
Rip this new M+ season for the spec. It’ll be bottom tier healer again.
Still no good defensives.
Still no interrupt.
Still low mobility.
Still no unique utility.
And after the last nerfs our healing will still be the same profile with no DR’s and same weak cleave healing. The PoH buff isn’t enough to compensate.
RIP, staying in anniversary realms for this season
4 Likes
No interrupt but holy crap in archon we get 2 aoe fears every 30 seconds and if you’re playing aggressive, stuns are shooting out quite frequently. The sheer mass of disruption we can create is substantial
It’s significantly easier to budget for Censure now.
Thank you for the PTR changes today. Penance buff +Harsh Discipline stacking + moving during UP is wonderful!!! I cant express my gratitude enough. The last possible thing I could ask for is the CDR applied to UP. Either making it a 2 or 3 min or applying Heaven’s Wrath to something. The dmg isn’t high enough with the HP buffs that came in TWW to move bars up like it did in Dragonflight. At best it maintains them from my testing. Making it happen more often or buffing the dmg would be interstellar! Either way, Thank you Blizzard!!
1 Like
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s probably way worse now than it is on live.
On live, you get 24 seconds of dot damage instantly plus the bonus to MB once and SWD four times per “cycle” if you’re really pushing to maximize Expiation’s value.
With the new version of the talent you get 48 seconds of dot damage per cycle, but that additional dot damage from Expiation is exceeded by the SWD cast bonus damage alone when you’re not even in execution range, which means that you lose out on the bonus MB damage/healing and lose out on huge damage/healing from SWD if you are in execution range.
Nothing they can’t fix with tuning, but it is still impressive how they routinely make changes like this that were clearly done on a whim with no thought into how it plays out.
Also, still no class tree changes or shadow changes.
Edit: Somehow I missed that they decided to nerf the visceral feedback of Harsh Discipline on a class that already has the worst visual and audio feedback in the game. Harsh Discipline and Void Blast are the only priest abilities that feel awesome to use and they can’t help but make them feel less awesome.
Can PoM get the penance treatment next?
Developers’ notes: [Prayer of Mending] has many stacking modifiers that affect its power, which has made it feel weak when the player doesn’t have all these modifiers active. We would like [Prayer of Mending] to still feel good on its own, so we’re reducing the effectiveness of [Focused Mending] and [Divine Service] while also increasing the base [snip] healing of [Prayer of Mending].
Also: still celebrating being able to move during uppies. It’s such an epic-looking cooldown that I want to see more of it, even if I’m not playing discipline myself!
1 Like
Sort of take it or leave it kind of change, but I think the better part of this is just smoothing things out. I’m sure voidweaver will appreciate consistent 30s Benders, rather than having to maximize casts for ~20s benders. Makes casting PW:S feel like less of a waste. Also lets them fheal sometimes if needed.
For Oracle, this is just incredible mana gains. 1.5 min sfiend mana is great for them, even if they don’t plan to do IE.
YES
It’s… better. But not by much. Probably pretty OK for voidweaver now considering it’ll transfer atonement. All the buffs to SW:P, and this is like… 30-40% sp extra per cast.
I’m fairly certain it’s still never-take for meta build, but at least it’ll do enough to be something.
So this is a large buff.
Harsh Discipline is pretty much always better for M+ now. You’d pretty much never double radiance before, so this didn’t actually impact the talent’s value at all, but penance got a huge buff for it.
I’m pretty wary of it though because again, whenever penance is like a GOOD baseline spell, they nerf it heavily.
Also Uppies never benefited from POTDS, but DOES use baseline penance bolts for its damage/healing so this is just a 50% buff to uppies alongside being able to move in it. Kinda nuts.
Lmao I hate all of these.