Patch 11.1 Undermine(d) Development Notes - Class Changes, Holy Priest and

Classes Priest
21

I never really felt this was a “pain point” for the spec and if you are having so much of an issue applying atonement that you can’t do it effectively without a 1.5 minute CD than what you are doing for the 1.5 minutes Rapture was on CD? This just doesn’t make any sense. If it really is a pain point, now we every smite extends an atonement by 3 seconds which will help with this some in keeping them up.

Based on what I am seeing the changes seem like they are trying to take away some of our burst healing and shift it into our ability to constantly heal. This is a damn good change and in philosophy and something disc has needed for a long time. The focus on putting so much power into 30 second CDs, 1.5 minute CDs, etc etc has been a toxic AF design for far to long that has made an entire freaking spec of a class into a glorified raid CD instead of an actual healer.

It is good for M+ as well as, if they get the number tunning correct, we will have more constant healing instead of ping ponging between can’t heal a paper cut and curing all know worldly ailments that have ever or will ever exist when Rift is active like we do now.

You shield the tank, use a flash heal for spot damage and send out a Radiance when AoE is landing. This isn’t a lot of work, and applying and maintaining atonement is one of the easiest things any healing class in this game is asked to do. The idea that keeping out atonements is difficult when it has literally been made as braindead as possible is an exaggeration. I can understand not liking how it all flows, as stacking up modifiers upon modifiers and tracking them all tends to be much more mentally taxing over a dungeon or raid than anything else the spec needs to do.

The issue is exactly what I mentioned before and what they seem to want to move away from. You are stacking modifiers upon modifiers into penance, and into PW:S meaning so much of our healing it tied up into those two abilities. That is bad, it’s why so much of our kit feels bad outside of when we are actually using the modifiers to do good healing. Smite is a tickle, PtW is a joke, Renew’s only purpose is an insta-cast atonement applicator when we don’t have SoL and shield is on CD. All of this is bad because all of our power budge is tied to how big PW:S, Penance, and Rift are. I am all for them moving out of the current playstyle and feeling once again like we can do something and be relevant outside of limited windows of time.

EDIT–General question, we have 4 talents removed, Heaven’s Wrath, Rapture, Train of Thought and Contrition and they added 2 Inner Focus, and Divine Procession. That is going to really mess with the tree a fair bit, any chance you think they decouple Luminous Barrier and PW:B to have one of them take Rapture’s spot in the tree? They buffed LB as well…perhaps I’m just being a bit to optimistic there lol.

2 Likes
22

I really really really want Power Word: Life off of the Global Cool Down.

3 Likes
23

Maintaining Atonements is far from easy in any content that is actually taxing you. Radiance and Flash are cast times, slow to apply, cements you in place. It’s not impossible, but it is a stress, that stacks with other stress loads in an encounter. When a high-stress point requires Atonement maintenance, but also movement, but also immediate triage, you need tools to handle the crisis. Rapture was a good tool.

What is curious is that they moved Evangelism off Lenience, but kept Lenience- you know, the choice node for people who didn’t care for or need Evangelism.
What I could accept, is making new Evangelism and Rapture a choice node between themselves. I wouldn’t miss Lenience, and I don’t really want Evang.

Here’s the PTR talents.

25

So the 11.1.0 talent trees are up on wowhead for Holy Priest and honestly the bottom of the tree feels REALLY bad now because you are heavily compromising no matter how you spend your points.

26

Appreciate it, and it is really hard for me to look at those talents and think Voidweaver will continue to be the dominate spec. Really thinking Oracle is going to become the top for M+ which gives the option of instant radiance with using premonition if it’s really needed. It’s also going to extend atonement durations by 4 seconds which will help even more alleviate any issue you have with it.

Curious how Twinsight is going to play with them making Contrition baseline now since Penance will both heal and damage, so if you damage an enemy and heal an ally that would also proc Contrition? If so than Penance targeting becomes more linear as no matter who you target with it you will both damage and heal a good bit as you will get both atonement healing and Contrition every single time you cast it.

Flash tends to mostly be used with SOL procs, generally as disc if you are having to plant to cast Flash Heal you have already messed something up. As for Radiance myself personally I tend to take Enduring Luminescence which is 30% off the cast time and a slightly longer atonement value for it. Coupled with decent haste numbers, mine is 21%, and it comes out at a 1.2 seconds to cast. I don’t think there has ever been an encounter in this game in which you can’t find 1.2 seconds to get a cast off when needed.

Yes encounters can and do become high stess but if you issue is getting off a cast that short I don’t see how you can do “actually taxing” content.

27

Yeah, the bottom of the tree is hot garbage. The rest of the tree is good.

It’s physically impossible to get Answered Prayers, Lightweaver, and Divine Image. If you go Lightweaver you give up some serious power with the loss of Light in the Darkness, Prismatic Echoes, and Divine Image. Each of those talents is like a +5% passive hps increase.

Every single talent choice has some serious trade offs. The main culprit is Holy Celerity and Miracle Worker both being 2 separate talents, Divinity/Eternal Sanctity eats up 1 point, Light in the Darkness and Prismatic Echoes are 2 point nodes, Trail of Light is a bottom tree talent, and Answered Prayers is placed as an end tree talent now on the bottom right.

Not having Answered Prayers is crippling in a raid build and even for M+.

1 Like
28

The trade offs feel too severe. The more I play with the talents the more annoyed I get. I think I’d prefer our current build despite how dull it’s become without changes. Here’s to hoping this is not the final iteration. Surely, they did not do a blanket 8% nerf because of the power of these end talents when we won’t be able to get half of them.

I’d say Light in the Darkness is beyond mandatory and Lightwell is probably not worthwhile. I think empowered renew is trash and would never put a point in it.

29

They need to combine Miracle Worker and Holy Celerity into 1 talent or just bake them passively into Holy. With the new Apotheosis talent and Holy celerity we by default have 2 less talents to spend on the bottom.

Light in the Darkness needs to be removed and they can just bake those bonuses passively into those heals.

Answered Prayers needs to go where Holy Celerity is currently.

Trail of Light needs to be a choice node with Holy Mending up top.

Prismatic Echoes needs to be crunched down to 1 point and nerfed.

30

How did Epiphany avoid the purge? We hate that talent. After this long wait these proposed changes sure are disappointing. It’s going to be such a headache to optimize how you spend those last points, and I don’t think that is going to be a fun decision to make no matter what content you do.

31

Epiphany as a 1 point choice isn’t actually that bad and you save 1 point getting Answered Prayer since Desperate Times costs 2 points.

We just don’t have the talent points to spend in the tree.

32

Empowered Renew, Everlasting Light, and Epiphany all look like dead talents to me. I PVP though so Answered Prayer and heal efficiency don’t matter to me. Desperate Times used to always get points from me but now I think it would never be picked cause there are so many mandatory talents.

Hell I’m starting to wonder if Divinity is even worth a point.

33

Anecdotally, a few encounters come to mind. I pugged to +20 in S2 Dragonflight, so most of my trauma comes from there. Overpulling in the opening of Brackenhide, dragon boss in Vortex Pinnacle, Deios in Ulda. The biggest damage spikes were all paired with 1-shot forced movement abilities, but also tended to last a long time, so even with Atonement prep before the spike, Atonements started to fall off midway. Tried Evang, but the issue became the forced movement was still active, so I could never plant and cast Flash/Radiance, nor could I plant and cast Smite/Mind Blast either. When I did have plant-time, I had to pick between the two.
The insta-proc Radiances from the 4-set was a big help. So was Rapture, either preparing a longer Atonement window, or tiding over until the next one.

Evangelism and Rapture fulfill different niches, but one was kept and buffed and the other was removed, and that irritates me.
New Evang wants your Atonements out beforehand and then rewards you. It feels like a raid cooldown. Great for predictable bursts over a large group with no forced movement before or after- before so you can max out Atonement spreading, after so you can Smite spam/Schism etc.
Rapture was good for M+ and pugs. It rolled the Atonement spreading and triage stabilization into one ability, and made it mobile, which was useful for when things went sideways.

I am reeling a bit today from the patch notes, and a little bitter at how many beloved abilities could have been saved and still keep their design goals intact with simple choice nodes.

34

Well unfortunately we have to wait 3-4 weeks until we get any updates.

35

Ya I’m not liking any build I come up with right now…

36

The changes were good but the main problem still persists, holy priests can’t handle AOE damage bursts. It’s already difficult most of the time to keep everyone alive in a mythic+ where everyone isn’t close to each other or to do mechanics. Honestly, the season 2 tier set is terrible, but we still have survival problems. All healers have good defenses except holy priests. And where’s our interrupt and BREZ?

37

Also, since it’s not in the patch notes that I can see: Aegis of Wrath replaced by Eternal Barrier:
+20% absorption, +5 second duration to PW: Shield.

38

I’ll take your word on this, I played some in Dragonflight but not a lot and ran most of the dungeons as lower levels.

I think it’s fair to say you don’t like a change, or an adjustment, my issue was more with the idea that there was no attempt at compensation, or that atonement management was difficult without Rapture, neither do I feel are true.

Evang has always been a raid CD, and I don’t see this changing that, but I do feel like it will make it more viable for M+ as for those moments when you need to reposition but can’t refresh atonement getting a decent heal and extending your atonements by 6 seconds will give you breathing room until you can get back to it. Also if I’m right and Oracle does become the better option we will get Preemptive Care which makes our atonements 4 seconds longer further buying us time and easing the difficulty in maintaining atonement.

Once again fair and I think we have all been there at some point through-out the game. I hated seeing Mana Burn go back in Wraith, being forced into Atonement with Legion and watching disc go from being THE healing utility spec to see the entire class have the worst utility of any class in the game.

I feel like some of the changes at least have some decent thought behind them, namely shifting us away from stacking so much of our healing into specific windows of time and giving us more constant healing via SW:P changes, but there is still a lot I don’t like about the spec as a whole that these changes at best don’t address and at worse double down on.

Hopefully they will respond to feedback and continue to make changes but I’m not holding my breath.

1 Like
39

Came here to say this. Problem remains. In fact, I think they may have made it worse tbh.

40

Hopefully.
As I get some distance, it’s not the worst. I hope they bring back Rapture and Train of Thought. The rest was a lot of numbers tuning which I don’t care about. Twinsight sounds okay, and I was happy to see the Radiance radius buff. This is all livable for Disc.

The Markmans changes have me ready to quit WoW for the forseeable future.

41

RIP Fury
50% damage nerf
Yes 50%