Priest Rune Restructure; Updated (6/26/24)

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 19, 2024, 8:07pm

Edit: Updated July 26th, 2024 (6/26/24)

Introduction

Heya folks! After a ton of amazing feedback, I’ve revised my Priest Rune Restructure.

I’ll lead with a chart indicating where each rune falls in my restructure. Following that chart will be three collapsible drop-downs for the three play-styles I designed the runes around:

Shadow Priest
Smite Priest
Healing Priest

Each drop-down will have details for any runes that might be relevant to the play-style. I’ll include a master list in a fourth drop-down for people who want to see the entire thing. Please keep in mind that I tried to make changes using mechanics that exist in some form of the game to make it as easy as I could to implement them here in Season of Discovery. The easier they are to implement, the higher the likelihood that our suggestions will have positive influence.

A brief overview of the playstyles I designed around:

Playstyles

Healing Priests

The mainstay of priest gameplay. Priests are the only class with two talent trees dedicated to healing, but they currently suffer from intense mana management issues. Where other classes received mechanics that lean into mana conservation or regeneration tools, a healing Priests generally needs to run Dispersion to maintain their mana pool, locking them out of Pain Suppression or Spirit of the Redeemer. These mana issues are pervasive to the class, not just to healing priests. The changes made to healing runes have two goals in mind:

Make Priest runes competitive with mana regeneration effects available to other classes, but not a simple copy/past of other effects.
Offer a variety of approaches to playing a healer as a Priest that are interesting and effective.

Smite Priest

The Smite Priest - a dps priest focused on dealing Holy damage - has been a long-running desire of a small community of priest players. Season of Discovery provides the perfect opportunity to explore the space. Over various expansions Blizzard has added effects here and there that interacted with Smite and Holy Fire, but never really pulled the trigger on giving them the tools to deal competitive damage. Thankfully, many existing runes can be modified to support the play-style without hurting other flavors of play. I’ve collected a few ideas from other expansions that should serve as an adequate base and adapted a few existing runes to fill in a few gaps in the rune offerings for Smite Priests.

You may be thinking “Why bother with Holy DPS when we have Shadow?” Which is an entirely valid question. Ultimately, Holy DPS likely won’t offer anything that Shadow doesn’t already do, but it’s a different flavor to dealing damage in the class and I think that’s worth exploring.

Shadow Priest

With the recent update to Shadow Priest runes (on 6/21/24) I think they’re doing alright, so I toned down a lot of my previous suggestions to focus on a few specific runes. I’ve focused on changes that should help Shadow Priest damage scaling since they historically do well initially, but scale worse than other classes, eventually falling behind on damage. You’ll notice that there isn’t much that I’ll recommend, but I’m hoping the changes I do suggest are reasonable.

The Pain and Suffering update resolved a lot of button bloat that I had previously complained about, so my changes are more focused on allowing Shadow Priests to scale a little better.

Rune Slot Overview

In the following chart, runes that new or new to the slot are underlined. Any rune in regular text already exists in that slot, but may have changes to functionality that you’ll read about later on.

Slot
Helm	Divine Aegis	Archangel	Pain and Suffering
Back	Binding Heal	Light’s Wrath	Vampiric Touch
Chest	Prayer of Mending	Serendipity	Twisted Faith
Wrist	Power Word: Barrier	Well of Radiance	Void Zone	Shared Pain
Hands	Circle of Healing	Penance	Mind Sear	Shadow Word: Death
Waist	Soul Warding	Renewed Hope	Mind Spike	Improved Mind Flay
Legs	Eternal Renewal	Surge of Light	Void Plague
Feet	Pain Suppression	Spirit of the Redeemer	Dispersion
Base:	Empowered Renew	Despair	Strength of Soul
	Shadowfiend	Improved Fortitude
Retired:	~~Eye of the Void~~	~~Homunculi~~

A word on the Retired runes and Baseline runes before I dive into the three playstyles:

Retired Runes

It’s no secret that Eye of the Void and Homunculi aren’t well-liked, and many people have expressed that they want them gone entirely. I retired them because I had other things I wanted to do with the kit, but if they were to be kept, here’s what I’d do:

Homunculi is now a baseline rune with a 30 sec duration and cooldown. It no longer triggers a global cooldown.

Lowering the duration and taking them off of GCD solves two problems. First, after a fight they’re not likely to have enough duration left to get you into serious trouble with how aggressive they are. Second, removing the GCD cost lets the priest freely cast and recast the effect as necessary if their team is reliant on them for the armor reduction. These aren’t perfect solutions, but they are easy to implement relative to completely rewriting the AI for the buggers, which is why I suggest them.

Eye of the Void is now baseline and indicates that it cannot be active at the same time as Shadowfiend.

Perhaps there is room to rework the curses the eye offers a little, but I worry that making this guy baseline and including an effect like the current Warlock Mark of Chaos effect (-75 resists and +10% magic damage) would make that particular Warlock rune irrelevant. Perhaps swap Curse of Elements on this guy to a different Warlock support curse (Recklessness/Weakness?) to free those players up to do damage with their own Curse of Doom/Agony. I wouldn’t get rid of Curse of Shadow, since that’s the only damage increasing one that’s relevant to one of our play-styles and makes us not reliant on having a pocket Warlock around for Mark of Chaos.

Baseline Runes

Shadowfiend and Improved Fortitude (Increased duration/reduced cost on Power Word: Fortitude) are unchanged, but the following runes have been adjusted:


Empowered Renew	Base	Same effect as current version; now a baseline rune.
Strength of Soul	Base	~~Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec. In addition,~~ Targets of your Power Word: Shield will gain Rage from taking damage despite the damage being absorbed, and Righteous Fury will trigger from damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield as if it were a heal.
Despair	Base	Periodic damage from your abilities can now be critical strikes. Periodic critical strikes gain a 10% chance per talent point in the Spirit Tap talent to trigger the Spirit Tap effect.

Empowered Renew is a pretty boring rune choice that adds basic functionality to Renew (allowing multiple priests to renew a target). If changing it to become a baseline rune gives too much power, you can tone down the bonus healing effects it currently receives. I don’t really foresee this being an issue though.
Strength of Soul adds basic functionality to Power Word: Shield that is pretty uninteresting, but can hurt to lose. I’ve changed that basic functionality to be baseline and integrated component that reduces the duration of Weakened Soul duration into the Soul Warding rune. You’ll read about this later.
Despair becoming baseline was a toss-up decision for me, but ultimately I felt it made sense. Despair, like Empowered Renew and Strength of Soul, adds basic functionality that crowds out other choices in whatever slot it ends up in. Shadow Priests historically scale incredibly poorly, and making this rune baseline allowed for more interesting effects elsewhere in the optional runes.

You’ll notice that Despair has an extra effect now. Spirit Tap is a powerful effect, but is gated by needing to kill an opponent to trigger. I’ve added three ways for priests to trigger the effect in this rune restructure. Despair requires talent points to be invested in the Spirit Tap talent to function, but this is because the rune is baseline. The other two ways to trigger Spirit Tap do not require the talent to function, they simply have a chance to trigger the effect when a condition is met.

For reference, Spirit Tap does the following: “You gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit. For the duration, your Mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec.”

Obviously, Despair favors Shadow Priests as they have access to the most DoT effects. If having access to this effect sounds powerful, it’s because it is. Do keep in mind, however, that other classes have access to much more consistent mana management tools (Dreamstate on the Druid being an excellent example), and this is intended to help Priests compete with that level of mana regeneration. I elected to use Spirit Tap because the effect is a mana regeneration mechanic unique to Priests that already exists in the current WoW client. I’m hoping that by simply adding ways to trigger the effect, it is easier to implement.

Healing Priest

Rune Descriptions and Commentary

Here are all the relevant runes for Healing Priests. As before, changes are underlined. If the rune already exists but is underlined, it is in a different slot from what we currently have.

The idea with these runes is to allow for two distinct styles of play: One focused on raw healing and damage mitigation, the other mixing in some offensive attacks here and there to maintain mana while contributing damage in lower-difficulty content.

Divine Aegis Helm You have a 50% chance to trigger Spirit Tap when you shield an ally. Does not require points invested in the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 sec.

Archangel Helm Dealing Holy damage grants Evangelism. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 20 sec. Each stack of Evangelism increases your spell power by 5% of your total Spirit and reduces the mana cost of your offensive Holy spells by 10%. Activating Archangel consumes your Evangelism stacks to instantly restore 1% of your maximum mana and increase the damage of your Holy Spells by 5% for each stack consumed. Lasts 20 sec. 15 sec cooldown.

Divine Aegis gives your Power Word: Shield and critical heals a chance to trigger Spirit Tap. This effect is low-maintenance and just works.
Archangel offers more active mana management. This rune is primarily intended for Smite Priests, but certain spells in the Holy Priest’s arsenal like Holy Nova, Penance, or Holy Fire can quickly stack Evangelism by either hitting multiple enemies, hitting multiple times, or dealing damage over time. When combined with Spirit Tap (which doubles your Spirit for its duration), you can gain an impressive amount of spell power from this effect.

Binding Heal Back Same effect as current version.

Light’s Wrath Back Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Holy spells by 50%. You gain the Light’s Wrath ability."You unleash the divine fury of the Light on the targeted opponent, dealing heavy Holy damage and healing up to 5 wounded friendly targets within 15 yards of the enemy target for 100% of the damage dealt." 6 sec cast. 30 sec cooldown. Light’s Wrath benefits from talents and abilities that modify Holy Fire.

Binding Heal was not changed functionally, but with the changes I’ve made this may be too efficient of a heal right now. There could be an argument that the raw amount of healing it does could stand to be be reduced. Remember: Binding Heal currently benefits from all effects that modify Flash Heal.
Light’s Wrath is more oriented toward the Smite Priest playstyle than the Healing Priest playstyle, but is intended to be a valid option if the Healing Priest wants to lean into a more offensive style of play for group healing.

Prayer of Mending Chest Same effect as current version; Now located on the Chest slot.

Serendipity Chest Healing with Flash Heal or dealing damage with Smite reduces the cast time of your next Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Holy Fire by 20% for 20 sec, stacking up to 3 times.

Prayer of Mending Has been moved to the chest slot to make room on the legs for a new suggested rune. Prayer of Mending is intended to continue to be a solid choice to heal a large number of targets, contrasting with Serendipity.
Serendipity, in the context of a healing priest, is more focused on a single target and larger heals. The functionality for healers remains exactly the same as it is on live, but works well with the Archangel rune on the helm if you want to squeeze in a Holy Fire occasionally to stack Evangelism or run with Light’s Wrath to preserve some group healing capabilities.

Power Word: Barrier Wrist Same effect as current version.

Well of Radiance Wrist Modifies your Lightwell ability, causing it to last for 5 sec and radiate a Holy Nova from its location each sec. Lightwell can no longer be clicked on by party and raid members. 1.5 sec cast, 20 sec cooldown.

Power Word: Barrier is likely your default in this slot as a healer unless you choose to heal with talents invested deep into the Holy tree for Lightwell.
Well of Radiance causes 5 Holy Novas that emit from your Lightwell. This does roughly the same amount of healing as a full-duration generic Lightwell heal to each target in your party. You do lose the ability for people to interact with your Lightwells, but I’ve never had good luck with getting people to click on the well for a heal anyway, so preserving that mechanic seemed unwise. Keep in mind that Holy Nova only hits the Priest’s party currently.

Circle of Healing Hands Same effect as current version.

Penance Hands Same effect as current version.

Circle of Healing and Penance are unchanged.

Soul Warding Belt Your Power Word: Shield no longer has a cooldown, costs 15% less mana, gains 15% additional base value, and gains an additional 50% of your healing power. Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec.

Renewed Hope Belt Your heals from Flash Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets with Weakened Soul. Smite, Holy Fire, Penance, and Holy Nova have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets suffering from your Holy Fire effect.

Soul Warding lets you lean into dispensing shields to your allies, allowing you to give out larger shields and to dispense them more often. This rune inherited part of the Strength of Soul rune.
Renewed Hope increases the likelihood that you’re land a critical heal on your allies. Putting these runes on the same slot prevents a player from accidentally shooting themselves in the foot with runes that work against one another.

Eternal Renewal Leg The global cooldown of Renew is reduced by 0.5 seconds. Healing or Shielding a target under the effects of your Renew causes them to be instantly healed equal to 100% of the normal periodic healing of Renew. When Renew completes its duration or is dispelled, the Priest regains the full cost of the spell.

Surge of Light Legs Critical spellcasts cause your next Smite or Flash Heal cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana. Stacks up to 2 times.

Eternal Renewal is intended to offer a way for priests to focus on healing a wide number of targets while touting some of the mana savings of Surge of Light. This rune synergizes well with the shielding effect of Divine Aegis and abilities that can heal multiple targets at once like Circle of Healing, Holy Nova, and Prayer of Mending.
In all previous versions, Surge of Light provided the instant cast Smite/Flash Heal casts as free spells, but these free casts couldn’t crit. The version that’s live doesn’t offer this, but these instant spells can critically strike, and thus chain off one another. I don’t think there’s a huge problem with having both free and crit-capable casts off of this rune, though if someone sees a glaring issue I don’t, please let me know! This rune now lets you store up to two charges since abilities like Penance and Holy Nova can crit multiple times in a single cast.

Pain Suppression Boots Same effect as current version.

Spirit of the Redeemer Boots Critical spellcasts have a 25% chance to trigger the Spirit Tap effect, does not require investment into the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Activate to become the Spirit of Redemption for 10 sec. While in this form, you can cast any healing spell free of cost, but you cannot move, attack, be attacked, or be targeted by any spells or effects. Requires Spirit of Redemption talent to activate, and you will no longer enter Spirit of Redemption upon dying.

Pain Suppression is truly the premiere emergency action rune for healing priests. With the changes to Divine Aegis and inclusion of Archangel, the hope is that you have enough mana to feel comfortable selecting this rune.
Spirit of the Redeemer, while geared a little more toward Smite Priest, can serve as another source of Spirit Tap for any priest taking advantage of critical spellcasts. The active effect of Spirit of the Redeemer is still restricted to players that invest in the “Spirit of Redemption” talent in the Holy tree.

Smite Priest

Rune Descriptions and Commentary

Here are all the relevant runes for Smite Priests. As before, changes are underlined. If the rune already exists but is underlined, it is in a different slot from what we currently have.

If you went over the Healing Priest section, some of this will be a review to you since there’s a degree of overlap between the two rune sets.

Archangel Helm Dealing Holy damage grants Evangelism. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 20 sec. Each stack of Evangelism increases your spell power by 5% of your total Spirit and reduces the mana cost of your offensive Holy spells by 10%. Activating Archangel consumes your Evangelism stacks to instantly restore 1% of your maximum mana and increase the damage of your Holy Spells by 5% for each stack consumed. Lasts 20 sec. 15 sec cooldown.

Archangel works to improve both your mana economy and raw damage as a Smite Priest. Evangelism has strong synergies with Spirit Tap to provide some extra spell power for the Smite Priest. Note that every instance of Holy damage provides a stack of Evangelism, so each enemy hit by Holy Nova, or each periodic instance of damage from Holy Fire will grant you a stack. Shadow Priests have many multiplicative damage scalars, and this is intended to bring Smite Priests up to par with that. Definitely tune the numbers as necessary to accomplish this.

Light’s Wrath Back Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Holy spells by 50%. You gain the Light’s Wrath ability."You unleash the divine fury of the Light on the targeted opponent, dealing heavy Holy damage and healing up to 5 wounded friendly targets within 15 yards of the enemy target for 100% of the damage dealt." 6 sec cast. 30 sec cooldown. Light’s Wrath benefits from talents and abilities that modify Holy Fire.

Light’s Wrath is intended to function like Pyroblast or Soul Fire, but with the flair of a Holy Priest offering some mild group healing on a somewhat long cooldown. With the Holy Fire Talent and the adjusted Serendipity rune fully stacked, Light’s Wrath has a 2.2 sec cast time. The passive effect of this rune mirrors an effect that Shadow Priests get in their section, and is intended to help Smite Priests combat the same scaling issue that Shadow Priests have with gearing.

Serendipity Chest Healing with Flash Heal or dealing damage with Smite reduces the cast time of your next Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Holy Fire by 20% for 20 sec, stacking up to 3 times.

Serendipity now triggers when dealing damage with Smite and reduces the cast time of Holy Fire, allowing you to maintain the Holy Fire DoT more easily for the new effects of the Renewed Hope rune or reduce the cast time of Light’s Wrath.

Penance Hands Same effect as current version.

Penance has not changed.

Well of Radiance Wrist Modifies your Lightwell ability, causing it to last for 5 sec and radiate a Holy Nova from its location each sec. Lightwell can no longer be clicked on by party and raid members. 1.5 sec cast, 20 sec cooldown.

Well of Radiance is here to reward Smite Priests for diving deep into the Holy talent tree and leaning into the cool AoE they already have by building Holy Nova to the spell. This spell, as mentioned in the healing section, restores health to your party at about the same rate as the current max rank of Lightwell. The numbers probably need to be adjusted some to be properly balanced, but I thought this would be a fun and useful way to use the currently-neglected Lightwell talent.

Renewed Hope Belt Your heals from Flash Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets with Weakened Soul. Smite, Holy Fire, Penance, and Holy Nova have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets suffering from your Holy Fire effect.

Renewed Hope now increases your critical strike chance against enemies that are suffering from Holy Fire’s DoT effect, giving you a good reason to maintain it on your target!

Surge of Light Legs Critical spellcasts cause your next Smite or Flash Heal cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana. Stacks up to 2 times.

Surge of Light now stacks up to 2 times, allowing you to use Penance, Well of Radiance, or Holy Nova and not feel quite as bad about getting multiple critical hits with it. Surge of Light also now makes Smite free, which helps with mana conservation and has been a staple of every other version of Surge of Light throughout WoW’s history. Previous versions haven’t allowed the free instant spells to critically strike, but I think having both free and crit-capable casts shouldn’t be too powerful in most contexts.

Spirit of the Redeemer Boots Critical spellcasts have a 25% chance to trigger the Spirit Tap effect, does not require investment into the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Activate to become the Spirit of Redemption for 10 sec. While in this form, you can cast any healing spell free of cost, but you cannot move, attack, be attacked, or be targeted by any spells or effects. Requires Spirit of Redemption talent to activate, and you will no longer enter Spirit of Redemption upon dying.

Spirit of the Redeemer is the Smite Priest’s main method of triggering Spirit Tap. It could be activated for some clutch healing, but the primary purpose of this rune is to allow Healing and Smite priests access to Spirit Tap.

Shadow Priest

Rune Descriptions and Commentary

Here are all the relevant runes for Shadow Priests. As before, changes are underlined. If the rune already exists but is underlined, it is in a different slot from what we currently have.

Divine Aegis Helm You have a 50% chance to trigger Spirit Tap when you shield an ally. Does not require points invested in the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 sec.

Pain and Suffering Helm Same effect as current version.

You could technically take Divine Aegis you’re desperate for Spirit Tap or don’t have Pain and Suffering.
Pain and Suffering is definitely your mainstay. I think the recent changes on the PTR put this rune in a good spot.

Vampiric Touch Back Same effect as current version.

Vampiric Touch is unchanged. I think it’s in a good place with the Pain and Suffering changes.

Twisted Faith Chest Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Shadow spells by 50%. Mind Flay and Mind Blast deal 50% increased damage to targets afflicted with your Shadow Word: Pain.

Twisted Faith now also passively increases your critical strike damage bonus by 50%. This should help Shadow Priests scale a little better, which is a consistent problem they have in Classic and future expansions.

Mind Sear Hands Same effect as current version.

Shadow Word: Death Hands Same effect as current version.

Mind Sear and Shadow Word: Death are unchanged.

Mind Spike Belt Same effect as current version.

Improved Mind Flay Belt The base range of your Mind Flay ability is increased to 30 yards. Damaging a target suffering from Void Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, or Vampiric Touch with Mind Flay causes instant damage equal to 30% of the normal periodic damage of Void Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch.

Mind Spike is intended to be taken by a playstyle that focuses more on Mind Blast.
Improved Mind Flay has been added here to to double down on your damage over time effects and make Mind Flay a competitive choice with Mind Spike. The intention with this rune is to be roughly equivalent to Mind Spike/Mind Blast gameplay, ideally the damage should be roughly similar.

Void Zone Wrist Same effect as current version.

Shared Pain Wrist Your Shadow Word: Pain now also afflicts up to 2 additional nearby targets within 15 yards. If the primary target of your Shadow Word: Pain is afflicted with Void Plague, up to 2 additional targets within 15 yards are also afflicted with Void Plague.

Void Zone is here for simple no-nonsense AoE.
Shared Pain now spreads both Shadow Word: Pain and Void Plague in a group of enemies if the primary target of your Shadow Word: Pain is currently suffering from Void Plague.

Void Zone is probably better for quickly burning through trash packs, but Shared Pain is intended to work well on multi-target encounters that last awhile, allowing you to refresh both effects on a large group of enemies with a few Shadow Word: Pain casts. Both runes help trigger Despair’s new Spirit Tap triggering effect.

Void Plague Legs Same effect as current version.

Void Plague is now located on the Leg rune slot.

Pain Suppression Boots Same effect as current version.

Spirit of the Redeemer Boots Critical spellcasts have a 25% chance to trigger the Spirit Tap effect, does not require investment into the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Activate to become the Spirit of Redemption for 10 sec. While in this form, you can cast any healing spell free of cost, but you cannot move, attack, be attacked, or be targeted by any spells or effects. Requires Spirit of Redemption talent to activate, and you will no longer enter Spirit of Redemption upon dying.

Dispersion Boots Same effect as current version.

Dispersion is still a good defensive and regenerative tool.
Spirit of the Redeemer affords you another method of triggering Spirit Tap if you opt to go for the Mind Spike/Mind Blast route. Spirit of the Redeemer won’t trigger on periodic critical strikes of abilities like Mind Flay, any of your DoT effects, Void Zone, and so on.
Pain Suppression is available if you would prefer to take that instead of the other options for whatever reason.

Despair Baseline Periodic damage from your abilities can now be critical strikes. Periodic critical strikes gain a 10% chance per talent point in the Spirit Tap talent to trigger the Spirit Tap effect.

Despair, like I mentioned in the opening sections of this post, is now baseline.

Shadow Priests gain the most benefit from Despair since they field the highest number of DoT effects. Because Despair is baseline, your chance to trigger Spirit Tap is tied to your investment in the talent “Spirit Tap”. This shouldn’t be a problem for most PvE Shadow Priests because they need to get past that tier to access some of their core tools anyway. For Smite and Healing priests, it may be a decent incentive to invest points into this talent.

~~Homunculi~~ Retired No longer in use.

~~Eye of the Void~~ Retired No longer in use.

Homunculi and Eye of the Void, as mentioned in their own dedicated section, have been removed. I have ideas on how to make them less frustrating to use if they were to be made baseline runes, but they didn’t compete well with other options in any slot I ended up putting them into. I’ve seen a lot of feedback expressing frustration with these spells. If you’re interested in hearing more about these, go to the “Retired Runes” dropdown.

Master List

Rune Descriptions

Divine Aegis Helm You have a 50% chance to trigger Spirit Tap when you shield an ally. Does not require points invested in the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 sec.

Archangel Helm Dealing Holy damage grants Evangelism. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 20 sec. Each stack of Evangelism increases your spell power by 5% of your total Spirit and reduces the mana cost of your offensive Holy spells by 10%. Activating Archangel consumes your Evangelism stacks to instantly restore 1% of your maximum mana and increase the damage of your Holy Spells by 5% for each stack consumed. Lasts 20 sec. 15 sec cooldown.

Pain and Suffering Helm Same effect as current version.

Binding Heal Back Same effect as current version.

Light’s Wrath Back Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Holy spells by 50%. You gain the Light’s Wrath ability."You unleash the divine fury of the Light on the targeted opponent, dealing heavy Holy damage and healing up to 5 wounded friendly targets within 15 yards of the enemy target for 100% of the damage dealt." 6 sec cast. 30 sec cooldown. Light’s Wrath benefits from talents and abilities that modify Holy Fire.

Vampiric Touch Back Same effect as current version.

Prayer of Mending Chest Same effect as current version; Now located on the Chest slot.

Serendipity Chest Healing with Flash Heal or dealing damage with Smite reduces the cast time of your next Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Holy Fire by 20% for 20 sec, stacking up to 3 times.

Twisted Faith Chest Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Shadow spells by 50%. Mind Flay and Mind Blast deal 50% increased damage to targets afflicted with your Shadow Word: Pain.

Power Word: Barrier Wrist Same effect as current version.

Well of Radiance Wrist Modifies your Lightwell ability, causing it to last for 5 sec and radiate a Holy Nova from its location each sec. Lightwell can no longer be clicked on by party and raid members. 1.5 sec cast, 20 sec cooldown.

Void Zone Wrist Same effect as current version.

Shared Pain Wrist Your Shadow Word: Pain now also afflicts up to 2 additional nearby targets within 15 yards. If the primary target of your Shadow Word: Pain is afflicted with Void Plague, up to 2 additional targets within 15 yards are also afflicted with Void Plague.

Circle of Healing Hands Same effect as current version.

Penance Hands Same effect as current version.

Mind Sear Hands Same effect as current version.

Shadow Word: Death Hands Same effect as current version.

Soul Warding Belt Your Power Word: Shield no longer has a cooldown, costs 15% less mana, gains 15% additional base value, and gains an additional 50% of your healing power. Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec.

Renewed Hope Belt Your heals from Flash Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets with Weakened Soul. Smite, Holy Fire, Penance, and Holy Nova have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets suffering from your Holy Fire effect.

Mind Spike Belt Same effect as current version.

Improved Mind Flay Belt The base range of your Mind Flay ability is increased to 30 yards. Damaging a target suffering from Void Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, or Vampiric Touch with Mind Flay causes instant damage equal to 30% of the normal periodic damage of Void Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch.

Eternal Renewal Leg The global cooldown of Renew is reduced by 0.5 seconds. Healing or Shielding a target under the effects of your Renew causes them to be instantly healed equal to 100% of the normal periodic healing of Renew. When Renew completes its duration or is dispelled, the Priest regains the full cost of the spell.

Surge of Light Legs Critical spellcasts cause your next Smite or Flash Heal cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana. Stacks up to 2 times.

Void Plague Legs Same effect as current version.

Pain Suppression Boots Same effect as current version.

Spirit of the Redeemer Boots Critical spellcasts have a 25% chance to trigger the Spirit Tap effect, does not require investment into the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Activate to become the Spirit of Redemption for 10 sec. While in this form, you can cast any healing spell free of cost, but you cannot move, attack, be attacked, or be targeted by any spells or effects. Requires Spirit of Redemption talent to activate, and you will no longer enter Spirit of Redemption upon dying.

Dispersion Boots Same effect as current version.

Improved Fortitude Baseline Same effect as current version.

Shadowfiend Baseline Same effect as current version.

Empowered Renew Baseline Same effect as current version.

Strength of Soul Baseline ~~Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec. In addition,~~ Targets of your Power Word: Shield will gain Rage from taking damage despite the damage being absorbed, and Righteous Fury will trigger from damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield as if it were a heal.

Despair Baseline Periodic damage from your abilities can now be critical strikes. Periodic critical strikes gain a 10% chance per talent point in the Spirit Tap talent to trigger the Spirit Tap effect.

~~Homunculi~~ Retired No longer in use.

~~Eye of the Void~~ Retired No longer in use.

Commentary on these runes is located in the other three sections!

Concluding Thoughts

This post is huge, so thank you for taking the time to read through it. I realize there are many other considerations for Runes aside from how they play in endgame content (namely, how and when they are acquired), but I hope that these suggestions are useful to someone. I think leaning into the current effect that Spirit Tap provides could be a good call when it comes to helping Priests access the tools they need to manage their mana pools in SoD.

I don’t claim to have all the answers here but I hope that it sparks discussion that’s useful to the folks doing the actual work. Devs, thanks for all you’re doing. I’ve had a great time with SoD so far and appreciate the effort and time you’re putting into this. Best of luck!

Varnoc

Everyone-proudmoore · June 19, 2024, 9:10pm

I love a lot of it, mostly the clear design intention and goal for all the different roles, plus the holy smite priest love. Good formatting too! Do pally next, and show some love for shockadin too, bonus points if they dual wield

Pantsface-benediction · June 19, 2024, 9:15pm

From the shadow perspective I like a lot of this. The differentiation between gameplay styles is really smart and allows the shadow priest to tailor their gameplay towards their personal play/group needs.

What I Really like:

– Improved Mind Flay vs. Mind Spike runes. Although one will be mathematically better this allows shadow priests to bring Mind Flay back into their rotation without having a second filler in mind spike. If the tuning is done well then in PVE players can choose whatever they want to use. Really smart

– Vampiric Caress. Love the idea of Caress to nerf VE in favor of personal damage. One issue here is that “Single target periodic shadow damage effects” only applies to Mind Flay. Would need to broaden what this applies to and reduce the additional damage from 50% to 25% imo.

– Vampiric Touch is an elegant solution to increase scaling with crit and provide mana return. A+

– Eye of the void becoming a debuff applied through SWP. A+

– In this implementation I really like the idea on Void Plague going back to chest. It’s current iteration is a band-aid solution to help PVE while massively hurting PVP

Potential Issues:

– I dont like Despair and SWD competing for a slot. Despair being shadow’s main form of scaling means it will almost certainly overtake SWD at a certain threshold of gear. I’d much prefer to see this compete with another scaling or utility based rune. I think I would keep Despair as a Wrist rune, or move to boots, in this iteration

– Shared Pain. This is a little too strong and can nullify CC by randomly spreading. I think the multiple applications per cast and a DoT refresh component (i.e. merging the current Pain and Suffering) would make this perfect

– Homunculi lasting for 1 min with 2 min CD makes it kinda weird for debuff application. Homuculi should either be 1). Removed 2). Debuff removed so it’s purely a damage option 3). CD aligned with duration similar to how it is now. Homunculi already struggles to attack the target you want it to attack, so this implementation just makes debuff management even worse

Overall though I love your suggestions. I don’t think Blizzard will make sweeping changes like this based on what we’ve seen so far, but I would LOVE to have them take a look at shuffling runes around to open up gameplay options.

Great job!

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 19, 2024, 10:17pm

I definitely intended it to apply to Void Plague and Shadow Word: Pain in addition to Mind Flay, that’s a good catch. The wording on these can be tricky sometimes.
I’m happy with whatever percentage damage increase math out to feel good.

You might have noticed, but I edited that one to what you’re referring to shortly after posting. Someone else suggested it around the time I posted this and I liked it so much that I went back to add it in.

In this iteration I designed it with the idea that if you’re running SWD you’re also leaning into the Mind Blast playstyle rather than the DoT playstyle, so I was alright with Despair outpacing it in terms of raw damage.

I hadn’t thought much about this, but Despair and Vampiric Caress multiply off one another, but the Mind Blast/direct damage route only has Vampiric Touch. I can see where the direct damage approach would fall off at a certain point without some other force multiplier.

This competes directly with Mind Sear, so I wanted it to be pretty comparable in AoE damage settings. A simpler approach with multiple applications for both SWP and Void Plague would work, though I don’t think it would solve the randomly nullifying CC issue since the targeting can be bizarre on that sometimes.

I incorporated Pain and Suffering into the Twisted Faith rune already, but that’s in the Mind Blast line, so the DoT oriented spec wouldn’t likely be picking that up. Would you work it into this rune?

I’m not super happy with my changes to Homunculi if I’m being honest. I do think they have some interesting utility, but with how they behave now I understand why folks hate them.
What about an even shorter duration/cooldown? 30 sec for example. Homunculi don’t cost a global IIRC (I could be wrong on that?), and their debuff lasts for 15 seconds. The shorter duration addresses the issue folks have of them running off and trying the murder the world, and without a global cost it shouldn’t cost a lot of resources to maintain.
I’m not super attached to Homunculi overall, but I do find them amusing from time to time and I think they were a neat idea overall.

Thanks! I’m very much in the camp of “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” right now. Once they start moving in a particular direction I’ll probably have more focused suggestions, but I wanted to snag the opportunity to get a lot of the ideas I’ve been sitting on out there before that happens.

Thanks for the comments and insights, I appreciate how well thought out they were.

I’m (not so) secretly a sucker for the Smite Priest dream. It was one of my big hopes going into SoD.

Thanks for the feedback on the formatting! This is a lot of words to get down on paper and I’m hoping that the formatting makes it much easier to read.

We’ll see if I’ve got time. I was able to crank out the Priest runes today due to the holiday. I’m most familiar with Priest, Hunter, Paladin, and Druid though, so of all the classes that one is definitely more likely than not.

Jooda-grobbulus · June 19, 2024, 11:10pm

Initial Thoughts

Some really cool suggestions in here!

For me, subjectively, I’m not a fan of choosing a path between either “Burst” or "DoT’. Similar to another comment, I don’t want to choose between SW:D and Despair, nor VP and Twisted Faith.

The EotV change is an excellent idea!

The Shared Pain addition is cool! Spreading VP would be pretty powerful in multi-target fights.

Pantsface-benediction · June 19, 2024, 11:27pm

Homunculi don’t cost a global IIRC (I could be wrong on that?

It does cost a global which is part of the problem with rotation bloat at the start of an encounter. I do like the idea of taking it off the GCD and reducing the cd though, otherwise it makes the rotation even more unwieldy

Dewff-lone-wolf · June 20, 2024, 12:54am

I had a similar idea of removing pets and somehow tying the pet debuffs to 2 of your DoT spells passively like SW:P and VT. I really hope Blizz goes way farther and actually realizes and accepts that Spriest doesn’t scale, it’s been clearly demonstrated several times in Vanilla, TBC, and SoD, that everything they’re getting is so underwhelming compared to the other DPS specs, and that they need to add Shadow Priest runes that boost damage scaling.

Those improved mind flay and twisted faith buffs are great too.

edit: to be fair, SoD has been great to our AoE, very fun being top 1-3 in trash damage, credit where its due.

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 20, 2024, 2:24am

I think that’s pretty fair. While I do feel it would be healthier to have the two playstyles, I think it makes sense to want to be able to pick on the fly rather than opting for it with specific runes.

I’ll make that a change in the main post then. It doesn’t cost anything anyway, so I don’t think there should be an issue with removing it from the GCD. I quite like the reduced duration/cooldown, making them a little more active but not offensive to our button bloat.

You’re actually the one I shamelessly stole the Eye of the Void idea from! Thank you for that!
I think I’m going to settle on making Homunculi a baseline rune with a 30 sec duration/cooldown, but also allowing them to be summoned off of GCD so that they don’t add to button bloat.
I absolutely agree that Spriests need some sort of scaling. Many caster classes suffer from this problem.

I’m glad you like them!
I agree, trash packs have been great fun to mow through as Shadow. It’s one of the highlights of the class for me right now.

Momocchi-crusader-strike · June 20, 2024, 10:01pm

Interesting ideas but some things I disagree with for Spriest.

Eye of the Void sounds like it would be extremely OP in PvP if some kind of CD to it wasn’t added along side Shared Pain. Unfortunately this is something we need to keep in mind when thinking of ways to fix spriest.

Homunculi being a 30 sec duration and CD I also disagree with cause now we have to worry about it 4 times as often. The AI for pets just isn’t there and TBH this needs to be made into some kind of passive instead of applied via a pet.

Shadow Word: Death giving us 10% crit is interesting but would prob better fit onto a different rune. Also, it being on the same slot as Despair based on the damage its currently doing now (a 50 DPS loss) means we would never take it over Despair.

Mind Flay accelerating our DoTs time left I highly disagree with as it just means more time refreshing DoTs less time doing our other spells. Another idea would be to instead of accelerating it, make it like Malefic Grasp for Warlocks from MoP where each tick of Mind Flay triggers the DoTs on the target to tick for 30% of their normal tick damage for each tick of Mind Flay.
The Radiance rune added to the wrist slot for Holy I don’t see making holy any more viable than it currently is simply due to the fact it only emits one every 10 seconds. I feel like in order to make holy more viable, they would need to give something to holy priest to compete with Power Infusion. Something like making Lightwell give a damage buff along side the heal and not making it fall off when damaged as well as reducing the Cooldown significantly (to like 3-5 min or something).

I don’t like changing Twisted Faith to be SWD and MB instead of MF and MB as it takes makes MF back to being significantly worse.

Change to Vampiric Touch is interesting but as it would only work really for Mind Blast and Mind Spike if you take it, I think it will have significantly less impact than you’d think.

Vampiric Caress is just a straight no simply because of PvP. Unless this was reduced in PvP this isn’t happening.

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 20, 2024, 10:29pm

Bring it on! My primary purpose for posting is to facilitate discussion.

Fair. I’m not a big PvP player, so that perspective is really valuable. What part of it would be too powerful in PvP? The resist reduction?

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I could really go either way on the duration of Homunculi. The core of what I’d like to change on that spell is causing Homunculi to not trigger a GCD, allowing you to use it whenever you need to without disrupting your rotation.

The AI for guardian type pets not being there is the major reason I’m suggesting a reduced duration. Giving you four times the cast windows you’re able to have more control over who they attack, and since they don’t trigger GCD/can be used during GCD you have much more control over where your little murder minions go.

The only reason 10% crit is on SWD is because I gave that same stat to Despair. There are two distinct ability sets that I designed the shadow runes around in this post, a more DoT focused Mind Flay setup (hence, Despair) and a Mind Spike/Mind Blast setup (which SWD is intended to slot into). My main worry is that if you have two different 10% crit runes for these two playstyles, that players would try to snag both due to the raw power crit chance provides rather than the actual effects of runes. I’m pretty open to a better solution on this one.

I’ve heard this from a few folks over the last day and find myself agreeing more and more. I didn’t play any WoW past Cata for various reasons and so wasn’t familiar with Malefic Grasp as a mechanic. I’ll probably update my suggestions here later today when I have time to replace my current suggestion with this.

I think you misread the rune. It’s not once every 10 seconds, its once a second for 10 seconds, so it pulses 10 times over the life of the Lightwell (which is 10 sec). From raw base numbers, each pulse actually does more than Void Zone each second as the numbers stand right now, in addition to healing your party with each wave. I’m actually concerned that this is too powerful of an effect.

If they want Holy to be a purely supportive I’m chill with them going with a damage buff route, but I personally think that’s rather boring. Let the healing Priests bring PI.

This version of Twisted Faith is supposed to focus on the Mind Spike/Mind Blast/SWD playstyle, hence why MF was dropped. They have Void Plague as their preferred option in this slot.
Like I mention in the earlier part of the post, a major complaint that I’ve heard from many Spriest players (and I agree with) is that we have WAY too many buttons. Splitting the kit into a more DoT focused style (centered around Mind Flay) and a more burst focused style (centered around Mind Spike/Mind Blast) was my attempt to solve this.

This was the point. Again, two different playstyles.

I don’t think it would be that big of a deal, but reducing it in PvP should be pretty easy to do if it’s truly a problem. Again, I’m not much of a PvP player, so I’d defer to others on that subject.

Thanks for the feedback!

EDIT

Just an update for those following this thread; I’ve updated the following runes to read as follows:

Previously, the effect shortened the remaining duration of your DoT effects in exchange for dealing instant damage for the skipped time. This was dumb, I agree

I’ve adjusted this to make a little more sense and function slightly differently. Before, this would spread Void Plague every tick of Mind Flay. I’ve changed it to only spread Void Plague when you complete a channel of Mind Flay to keep it from becoming disgustingly powerful in PvP situations. I also added the ability for Shadow Word: Pain to refresh the duration of Void Plague when cast, allowing you to maintain both debuffs in a single cast during boss fights or keep your dots rolling when fighting groups of enemies!

Vashtí-area-52 · June 23, 2024, 2:50am

Speaking from a purely PvE standpoint, you’re putting the cart before the horse.

Priests don’t even have 1 good not completely oom all the time and has a single decent cooldown healing spec right now. They just spam PoM and Circle and everything else is a passive. Dispersion is only a “great” rune because it keeps us from ooming but guess what? Other healers don’t even need a cd for that.

Critical mana issues and the fact that we are gated from any decent cooldown rune (Barrier, Pain Supp) needs to be fixed before things like Smite priest or Radiance are even thought about.

The combo of Soul Warding and and Body and Soul is just asking for trolling/problems. People not expecting the speed boost and overshooting stack spots or blowing people up or running off platforms/cliffs. This could be replaced with Feathers or preferably another cooldown or healing tool. I had the suggestion of a Light’s Wrath type ability that heals all people with Weakened Soul and turns it into a raidwide AoE cooldown.

I very much agree that Strength of Soul needs to be made baseline. I’d even argue that Surge of Light needs to go baseline and stack on holy crits as right now you get max 1 charge.

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 23, 2024, 4:18am

Could you reword this? I genuinely can’t understand what you’re trying to get across here.

I find priest healing to be the least engaging of the healers we have in the game right now, which based on this comment I think we’d agree on.

Evocation and Innervate say hello. If you mean that other healers don’t need to take a rune for their mana regeneration effects, you’re right.

Are you often struggling to maintain mana during fights as a healing priest? I admit that sometimes my tank runs low, but I’ve always felt that playing around the 5 second rule and having spirit/mp5 gear has been plenty. I suppose if you enjoy constantly slinging healing spells I can see how you’d run out, but that’s simply not been my experience. If you have good suggestions on priest mana issues I’d be happy to hear them.

As for Barrier specifically, I have to wonder if you really read my original post.

Barrier shares a spot with Radiance and Void Zone in this version. I guess if you’re running full Holy Spec you could take Radiance, but to my knowledge most healing priests run 31/20/0, electing to snag Power Infusion. Really the best option for a priest seeking a defensive cooldown in this slot is pretty clearly Power Word: Barrier.

Pain Suppression still shares a slot with Dispersion on the boots, and your point about Dispersion being a strong choice for mana regeneration is entirely valid. I think we’ve yet to have any fights where Pain Suppression surpasses the value offered by Dispersion’s mana restoration effect. I do think Dispersion is generally more useful than Pain Suppression, which is more niche. Perhaps Pain Suppression needs a buff to compete, or like you indicate some deeper issue with mana restoration for healing priests needs to be addressed. I simply don’t know. Again, suggestions are welcome.

I haven’t generally heard a lot of clamor from healing priests about their runes or defensive cooldowns, and thus didn’t spend a lot of time focusing on them. It could be that healing priests have such glaring issues that indeed we must set aside such silliness as Smite Priests (and Radiance specifically, you seem rather focused on that rune in particular), but I do not believe that healing priests are in such dire straits that we can’t entertain the notion at the present time.

Smite Priest has been a fringe playstyle for over 20 years, and I’ve seen on more than one occasion people expressing hope that these spells finally get the tools they need to be a legitimate asset as a damage source. If Season of Discovery is not the time to explore the possibility, there never will be.

By contrast, the mana issues and defensive cooldowns of healing priests have never once come up in the conversations I’ve been a part of until today, with you. You’ll have to forgive me for placing such a (seemingly offensive) focus on smite priest when there are such deep problems to be addressed. Again, I welcome ideas and suggestions. I posted my ideas to help facilitate discussion so that in the event that people involved in developing SoD see this, they’ll have something thought provoking to read through.

I do not genuinely believe that a brief 30% movement speed buff will legitimately cause any of the problems you indicate here.

I have no idea what “Feathers” or “Light’s Wrath” are, you’ll have to forgive me. I stopped playing the retail version of WoW a few months into Cataclysm and took a break from the game until Classic became a reality in 2019. I don’t remember either of these mechanics. What expansion are they from? I’d be interested to look them up and understand how they work.

I’m glad we agree on something here with Strength of Soul. I suspect that they didn’t have the tech in place quite yet to make skill books work when phase 1 started, so effects like this had no choice to become a rune. That’s purely speculation on my part though.

We’d agree on Surge of Light getting multiple charges too it seems. That was something I included in my post. I’m not sure about it becoming baseline however. Why would you argue for this to be the case?

Vashtí-area-52 · June 23, 2024, 9:26am

Woo, lot to reply to. And I admit I am not as good as parcing things out on the forum as you are with quotes and such. I will do numbers.

First off, I want to admit that when I saw Radiance I saw “Power Word: Radiance” and went “Ahh! Why is this here??” Radiance actually sounds like something I suggested in a thread I wrote on these forums. Your version is a little different, mine is basically just the smart heal version of Lightwell.

I’d suggest a rename to prevent confusion though for the Priest OGs but aside from that I’d say there is more skill expression in your version with the placement but it also might have to be on a shorter cd or a longer duration/slightly longer cd since it will probably burst a few times (or several times…) before people even notice it and if the duration is too short by the time folk run over to it the duration will be half or expired. That’s just a balancing act but I expect folk to ignore it unless the animation is very pretty. Like exploding PW: Barrier animation on repeat pretty. (Source: 20 years dropping lightwells and watching them sit there lonely and sad.)

Now to your points and questions.

1.) Priests don’t even have 1 good not completely oom all the time and has a single decent cooldown healing spec right now.

To put this in readable language (Apologies lol) I want to offer the context that I speed run/occasionally go for faction firsts. We do not stop to drink once we’re on farm. In doing so, it reaaaally puts into perspective how much better the other healers baseline regen is. Just going around clearing the trash tonight before the first boss of ST I stayed in communication with our Rdruid and I asked her if she’d used a single mana cooldown and she said no. Meanwhile, I was chugging potions, I’d Dispersion’d twice, used Fiend and was about to call for an innervate. She was almost at a full bar, the shaman was chilling, it was just me pounding mana cooldowns and consumables to stay afloat. We’ve all worked together a long time, all respect each other’s play, but my class is just a mana hog compared to theirs.

As a result, I am locked out of Pain Suppression permanently. Which is a BIG oof as I am historically the MT healer. (On Horde, generally falls to a Priest but I’ve seen a Shaman few and far between.) I’d be less concerned if raids were 40 (we’d be able to field more Druids to innervate me) but with 20…it’s rough. Basically our offtank has to be a god with shifting forms and frankly I’m a liability crutching on other classes like that.

2.) They just spam PoM and Circle and everything else is a passive.

There is no skill expression in the “kit.” If you can call it a kit. There is no…clutch move I can do. I have no raid cd and not even access to a tank cd. There is no “save”. I don’t have an NS, a swiftmend, a barkskin. Just…nothing. A big reason why I continue to play Priest is in Vanilla there were the “Masters of healing and preservation” in the manual. I enjoy the class fantasy. And now I can’t even save myself.

Healing Priest should have an accessable skill floor and a very high skill ceiling. If you have the desire to push them, they should be able to do crazy things. At least that’s how they felt in original Vanilla.

3.) Evocation and Innervate say hello. If you mean that other healers don’t need to take a rune for their mana regeneration effects, you’re right.

Pretty much. Making Dispersion baseline is out of the question (even though I’m sure Spriests would rejoice) so the solution is make Pain Suppression accessible if it’s intended to be used and if the devs intend on keeping Dispersion mandatory for regen. Which I honestly dislike for the reasons you stated (rune) but…sigh. I also hate that it silences. When I need to be healing and there isn’t a pause in the fight and I NEED mana just…HNGH.

4.) Critical mana issues and the fact that we are gated from any decent cooldown rune (Barrier, Pain Supp) - Are you often struggling to maintain mana during fights as a healing priest?

Often. But I’m pretty sure I play at a level a lot of folks do not. We legit do not stop pulling. It’s torque down from the moment the gun fires. Honestly, if the class’s regen was just brought up to par with Druids in the same situation I’d be happy. I can manage it from there. But just being so clearly handicapped is just…it makes me not want to play anymore. Like I said earlier: Liability. It’s not even my guild being jerks, they’d never replace me but I would just feel terrible about the state and it’s impact on my performance knowing I could do so much more with an even playing field.

As far as suggestions…Perhaps making the Archangel mechanic desirable/select able for Healing Priests as well. Or a good mana regen Hymn of Hope baseline. Though I wouldn’t go with a channel, we already CC ourselves with Dispersion. Or ideally if Hymn is good enough we don’t need to take Dispersion and can grab Pain Supp.

Also Dispersion just…isn’t fun. It was intended to be a pvp cooldown for Shadow Priests who were exploding in arenas in TBC and they introduced it in Wrath (I remember being salty back then we didn’t have it in TBC lol) Like when I have to use Dispersion it’s like a chore rune I have to use that no other healer has to put up with. And I have to be very thoughtful and smart about it else I could lose a player or a tank while silenced. AND the whole time I wish I had Pain Supp back. Pain Supp IS fun and can be absolutely clutch. But druids have it now with Barkskin I guess.

It is absolutely a deeper issue with regen. When every healer (Of equal skill levels) has their back to the wall, pumping heals, no drinking and constantly on the move and you just…pitter out waaaay before they do the difference becomes so obvious and stark.

5.) [Mana issues and defensive cooldowns for healing priests] need to be fixed before things like Smite priest or Radiance are even thought about.

I think a lot of people are a bit shortsighted on this. They look at All-Star and see white names. They look at “PoM go brrr.” on healing meters and say “Priests are fine.” When they have a total lack of a kit and just…I’m sorry but that playstyle is awful. Here again, rolling back to the class fantasy bit, (btw part of why vanilla is so successful with it’s demographic is it’s nerdy rpg adjacent aspects) Priests were always known for being the healer with the tool for nearly every situation. Yeah, sure. A Druid could heal. But if you wanted to flex in that department you rolled a Priest. I’ve honestly been crying into the abyss about these issues because I saw them coming since Phase 2 but I refuse to post on the Musk machine so I just…don’t get seen. I wouldn’t mind a Smite priest. And yes, SoD is the time. I just don’t want the main thing Priests are known for to go by the wayside for it. I’m trying to squeeze in as many ideas and suggestions as I can.

6.) The combo of Soul Warding and and Body and Soul is just asking for trolling/problems. People not expecting the speed boost and overshooting stack spots or blowing people up or running off platforms/cliffs.

I’ve seen some derpy stuff in my time. Perhaps I am not giving the playerbase enough credit but I’ve also watched a lot of folk take lava baths, speed past a corner and pull imps or Surgers in MC, etc.

7.) This could be replaced with Feathers or preferably another cooldown or healing tool. I had the suggestion of a Light’s Wrath type ability that heals all people with Weakened Soul and turns it into a raidwide AoE cooldown.

Angelic Feather was introduced in Mists.

Angelic Feather
40 yd range
20 sec recharge
[Instant]
Places a feather at the target location, granting the first ally to walk through it 40% (it’s been 40,60 and 80% in diff xpacs) increased movement speed for 5 sec. Only 3 feathers can be placed at one time.

Body and Soul might be better. Feathers could maybe go baseline and Body and Soul could make way for a new rune. In my pipe dream. Tbh I’d take either.

Light’s Wrath was attached to the Disc Priest Artifact weapon in Legion. I’m struggling to find a comprehensive tooltip for it but back then AND now Disc priests apply Atonement to targets and damage they deal heals targets with Atonement on them. We aren’t applying Atonement here but I think the concept could still be valid in practice. Presumably with Soul Warding you’re putting out several shields. Instead of healing atonement targets, we make it heal targets with Weakened Soul. When you hit the button Light’s Wrath does the following:

Equip: [Grants the Light’s Wrath ability, which unleashes a torrent of Holy Fire upon an enemy. ]
40 yd range
2.5 sec cast 1.5 min cooldown
Draws upon the power of Light’s Wrath, dealing (175% of Spell power) Radiant damage to the target, increased by 10% per ally affected by your Atonement.

Every target with Atonement on them took a massive burst of healing corresponding to the damage Light’s Wrath did. It was difficult to setup though but so rewarding when you did. I was decent at it so I used it to counter boss raidwide damage as a cooldown. In SoD, we’d have to change the Atonement part to Weakened Soul as we are clearly not applying Atonement here.

8.) I’m not sure about it (Surge of Light) becoming baseline however. Why would you argue for this to be the case?

This is my misunderstanding but I thought the Flashes procced by this were free of mana charge. They are not. That is actually a change I would make and I think it would be very helpful for mana conservation. 2-3 free Flashes if it stacks. It sounds like a lot but without it those Flashes are 1000+ mana total which…encourages you to not use your procs which just feels really icky. “Yay, I have cool looking gold bars on my screen! …Which I shouldn’t use, f me I guess.” My reasoning was mana conservation/opening up spots for better runes. But I was misinformed on the mana part. I’m pretty sure versions of it in the past didn’t have mana cost.

Your spell criticals have a 50% chance to cause your next Smite or Flash Heal spell to be instant cast, cost no mana but be incapable of a critical hit. - WotLK version. This was what I was thinking of. I’m actually gonna go out on a limb here and say SoD might be the only version where Surge of Light has cost mana.

Also a Shadow Priest will never, if rarely proc this. Make it proc on holy/disc schools. Maybe they’ll drop form and cast 1 Flash and get another and use it…rarely. But I feel like if your Shadow priest is relying on RNG spamming Flash in ANY content you have bigger problems.

As far as other rune options I suggested from other versions of Priest I can make a small list here.

Apotheosis - Essentially a Holy form. You glow, get wings, float, etc. In SoD it’s best use would be just empowering holy/disc spells as we don’t have Holy Words and/or functioning as a kind of healing steroid unless you wanted to get real creative. Added in Legion.

Power Word: Life - Just an enormous instant heal that can only be cast when a target is below a certain percentage of health. Added in Dragonflight.

Good ol Divine Hymn - Would probably have to exist in some kind of scaled down way. Maybe lower the healing output and increase the healing received buff on those affected so it’s a true “raid cooldown” and other healers benefit. Added WotLk.

Guardian Spirit - Redundant with Pain Supp on the table but it exists. TBC.

I’ve honestly got so many ideas in my head (runes, set bonuses etc) it’s hard to write it all down and I’m headnodding. Gonna get some sleep but I hope this is readable and I’ll be watching the thread. Hopefully it gets eyes on it.

Vashtí-area-52 · June 24, 2024, 1:02am

I’ve thought some more and I keep coming back to Surge of Light costing mana. This is kind of an enormous oversight.

With full world buffs and the summer crit buff (floating around ~20% crit) my Surge of Light procced 216 times total in Sunken Temple last night. Now the buff does not stack and I know it just gets overwritten so just for sake of argument say I only used half of the procs. I probably used more of them than that so it’s worse but sake of the point here.

That is ~32,400 mana I expended in that raid that should have been free.

This is an enormous issue. I looked it up, Surge of Light has never cost mana in any other iteration of wow except SoD.

Kiltheals-arugal · June 24, 2024, 1:13am

I just want to say that. Priest is in a unique position in Classic with having two viable healing specs. There is no other class that fills this niche. Your proposed rune changes would kill Holy as a healing spec as it is. Which is the opposite of what we need today IMHO.

A Lightwell rune and a rework to the Spirit of the Redeemer rune I agree with. Spirit of the Redeemer simply needs to be reverted to its pre-patch duration of 30s, that would make it competitive enough for Holy to pick over Dispersion. Lightwell, could get a rune that make its effect pulse passively and no longer break on damage.

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 24, 2024, 1:14pm

It’s great! I was really excited to see the entire thing when I got up yesterday. Sorry that I didn’t respond sooner. Sunday is a busy day for me. Thanks for taking the time to clarify. In the future, if you’re interested in quoting someone just highlight the text you want to quote and a little “Quote” option shows up underneath it.

How’s “Well of Radiance?” Or should I drop the “Radiance” line of thought altogether? I definitely want to avoid confusion with other abilities that have existed out there, but I like the name because in my head the Lightwell would emit a Holy Nova animation with each pulse, making it hard to miss.

I’d already been playing with the idea of shortening the duration and cooldown some to avoid these issues. My idea with the rune is that you’re placing it for AoE as a Smite Priest rather than as a healing tool. I think that Holy Nova would need to hit the entire raid like Druid’s Efflorescence instead of just the party like it does now to be a legitimate healing option, but I do like that it could flex to both situations depending on what the player wants to do. I think I’d like it to be available more often but have a shorter duration/cooldown overall (like 6/8 seconds w/ a 18/24 sec cooldown respectively) if we’re accommodating both. The current numbers are just to mirror Void Zone’s duration/cooldown as a baseline.

I’ll just highlight the section to keep my reply from being miles long haha. So my huge takeaway is that priest healers, at a high level, struggle to maintain their mana pool relative to any other healing class, and Priests are supposed to be the best healers around. I love your perspective and hard facts here, it really helps me get a good idea of what the comparison between classes is at your level of play.

It sounds like solving mana issues on a rune outside of the Pain Supp/Dispersion slot would free you up to take Pain Suppression, given the mana management tools were good enough.

Hmm, I can see what you mean here. I play a druid healer and enjoy having Barkskin/Nature’s Swiftness/Swiftmend at my disposal to react to desperate situations. A decent start may be making “Inner Focus” also reduce your next spell’s cast time by 100%? I’ll have to think about this some more. It sounds like having Pain Suppression would be a huge step in the right direction here.

What if you had some way to trigger Spirit Tap in combat as a healer? The mechanic is already there as far as a mana regeneration tool, I think the tricky thing would be figuring out a good trigger criteria.

I’d be amendable to making Archangel accessible to healing priests as well. I did the reverse with Serendipity and Renewed Hope, and I like having options that are useful for both playstyles.

I definitely felt the way you describe. Priest healers just seemed “fine” to me and so I viewed it as a “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” type of situation. Seriously, thank you for commenting. The perspective is great. I’m working on revising my original post and this is great insight.

This is absoloutely fair; I have too. If I’m being honest, Body and Soul was my attempt to even out rune slots without giving healing priests something overtuned. I credit that approach to the perspective I mentioned in the previous section. Now that I have problems to solve, I can do something more useful with that slot.

Feathers sound interesting. One common factor between it and the “Radiant” Lightwell is that you’re placing objects on the field for your team, which I find compelling. Few other healers have spatial components to their play like that. It depends on how easy it would be to implement for me, as I’m trying to tailor my suggestions to be as easy to implement as I can manage.

I have a version of Atonement baked into the “Spirit of the Redeemer” rune in this setup, but it’s based off of the Cataclysm version and not exactly what you describe. The version you describe reminds me of how mages heal right now with Temporal Beacon, and I find that style of play really fun.

One worry I have is that the duration of Weakened Soul might be an issue if that’s what you’re using to determine who is getting healing. Mass Regeneration for the Mage applies TB on all targets in a party for 15 sec, and that feels really brief, but is balanced by the fact that you hit 5 people with it.
There’s also a concern that this mechanic combos poorly with the rune that reduces Weakened Soul’s duration each time you cast a heal on them directly.

Perhaps a rune that applies a separate “Atonement” buff to your target when you shield them? We could call this a 20/30 sec buff, depending on how often you want to have priests applying PW:S. I worry a little that this overlaps with how Mages heal, but I also really like the mechanic so I don’t mind too much.

As you mention in a follow-up post, SoD is indeed the only version where these instant casts aren’t free. I think the tradeoff was supposed to be that Surge of Light also lets your instant cast critically strike, so you can theoretically chain it. Obviously, I think if we had to pick one or the other, the free casts would be the pick. I’d personally like both because it works really well for Smite Priests, but I’d be willing to lose the ability to crit since that can be such a powerful tool for healing priests to conserve mana.

That is a crazy amount of mana to just outright lose. If these casts were free you’d be able to play around the 5 second rule more easily too and have much better long-term mana economy.

Excellent, excellent stuff. Thanks a ton for taking the time to write all this up. I’m excited to approach a revision of my suggestions with all this in mind.

I absoloutely don’t see this, could you explain? Divine Aegis is definitely gone, but every other rune dealing with hard-cast healing spells like Flash of Light or Greater Heal still exists. I don’t see anything stopping someone from going deep holy and taking runes to heal, I only see the additional option to play as a Smite dps if you’d like. Serendipity asks you to sacrifice Soul Warding, but you’re not focused on shields anyway as Holy. If you like how OG Lightwell works, you can take Power Word: Barrier and omit the Radiance rune. Renewed Hope and Empowered Renew still share a slot like on live. The only hard conflict is perhaps Prayer of Mending and Surge of Light, but the way it currently works Surge of Light is pretty horrible for your mana economy anyway. I’ll probably change this when I update my suggestions in the next few days, but that’s how it stands right now.

It’s a bit criminal that there’s been no real attention to Lightwell at all so far.

I’m no so certain that a duration change would make it competitive with Dispersion. You self-root for those 30 seconds, which definitely hurts in some fights. Yes, all your healing is free so you have 30 seconds of uninterrupted regeneration from Spirit and healing, but it also has a 5 min cooldown, which is 2.5 times Dispersion. Dispersion is giving you 90% of your max mana back in the equivalent time and is overall more flexible. Though you do self-silence with dispersion, it’s also a defensive tool. I’d have to figure out how much mana you’re saving in that 30 seconds to really get a good fix on how that stacks up.

That’s essentially what I’ve got now via Holy Nova casts originating from the Lightwell location via the “Radiance” rune.

Vashtí-area-52 · June 26, 2024, 1:59am

Light’s Wrath seems to just be a big nuke here, I don’t believe it’s healing in the notes. (Correct me if wrong.) It’s possible to turn it into a “% of damage done turns into a smart heal on 5-10 targets”. It’s my least favorite way of accomplishing it personally but I’m not sure how else to bake in the mechanic. The smart version is better than nothing and fits cleanly into a smite dmg/raid healing build.

The changes to Aegis and SoL would (God willing) sort out the mana problems.

Any healing related rune that is paired on a rune with Prayer of Mending will almost never be selected barring proper circumstances. PoM is just too valuable. With that in mind, a fix to this exists.

If I may make a suggestion, Desperate Mending seems like a very tank healing focused rune. When MT healing PoM is just superfluous. Raid Healers will always want PoM. If I was MT healing focused I would take Desperate Mending over PoM. I would swap Desperate Mending with Surge of Light. It’s the same concept as taking Penance vs. Circle.

The spirit tap effect on Aegis and Redeemer probably shouldn’t stack in case they do.

I’ll post more if I think of it but aside from above notes this looks like a very promising edit. Sadly, I do not know if I will play P4. Aggrend posted a bit today and it seems Healing Priests are not on his radar at all. It’s very disheartening. Perhaps tagging the post so we get seen here is possible:

With your modifications to the existing and new runes AND with the changes I noted above in this post, my loadouts would look like the following:

MT Healing:
Helm: Divine Aegis
Back: Binding
Chest: Surge of Light/Serendipity (Fight dependent. Sometimes you just need that GH bomb on the tank in the chamber.)
Wrist: PW:B
Hands: Penance
Waist: Soul Warding/Renewed Hope (Fight dependent. A content difficult scale/ an absolute tank massacre of a boss will probably demand Renewed Hope)
Legs: Desperate Mending
Feet: Pain Supp

Raid/Aoe Healing:
Helm: Divine Aegis
Back: Binding/LW (fight dependent on dmg I am taking)
Chest: Surge of Light
Wrist: Barrier/Well (Fight dependent on spec/if defensive or hps cd needed)
Hands: Circle of Healing
Waist: Soul Warding
Legs: Prayer of Mending
Feet: Pain Supp/Dispersion (Fight dependent on need of mana cd - AoE healing hoovers mana up)

Varnoc-wild-growth · June 26, 2024, 1:23pm

You’re right, Light’s Wrath the way I have it now is just a big nuke. I had my head in the weeds of the whole rune-set so much that I omitted the healing portion of the spell by accident. I like the idea that this big nuke also heals, since it sets it apart from other long cast-time spells like Pyroblast or Soul Fire.

I’ll probably go with something like the following:

“Light’s Wrath instantly heals up to 5 of the lowest health friendly targets within (15?) yards of the enemy target for 100% of the damage dealt.”

Wording borrowed from the “Atonement” talent in Cata. I can’t think of a better way to convert this into a more directed version without adding other mechanics elsewhere, but like you mention, this fits pretty nicely with the smite priest gameplay.

That’s my hope. I think Spirit Tap being made more accessible to use in the middle of fights would help immensely (much like Dreamstate for Druids). To clarify, if you trigger Spirit Tap via Aegis, then trigger it via Redeemer, my intention is that Spirit Tap just refreshes duration. I think it would be way out of line if you could have multiple Spirit Tap buffs going at once.

The free-cast version of Surge of Light falls into a bit of the same trap out you outline Prayer of Mending as having: Any healing-related rune it competes with it has a hard time putting up a fight. I initially paired up PoM and SoL because I saw PoM as a raid/group healing option and SoL as more of a MT focused rune, but I saw them as having similar levels of power, hence the pairing.

I dislike the idea of swapping Surge and Desperate Mending because putting Surge of Light and Serendipity on the same slot gives Smite Priests no offensive option on the legs. I suppose they still have Void Plague, but that feels wrong. It also forces them to choose between being rewarded for critical strikes with free smite casts or reduced cast time on Holy Fire, both critical elements of the gameplay loop I’ve built here.

A counter offer: Desperate Mending is, admittedly, an entirely filler rune that I came up with because I had an empty spot, and we can change it to be whatever we’d like. Now that I’ve got a better idea of what we need, here’s what I’m thinking:

Swap Prayer of Mending and Desperate Mending slots. PoM is now on the Chest, DM is now on the Legs. This lets you take PoM (Chest) and SoL (Legs) if you’d like, and if you’re MT healing Serendipity (Chest) fits the bill.
Desperate Mending (Legs) now does the following: “The global cooldown of Renew is reduced by 0.5 seconds. Healing or Shielding a target under the effects of your Renew causes them to be instantly healed equal to 100% of the normal periodic healing of Renew. When Renew completes its duration or is dispelled, the Priest regains the full cost of the spell.” (For reference: Normal Periodic Healing of Renew at max rank is ~200 before healing power.)

This version of Desperate Mending offers a way to conserve mana similar to Surge of Light, but is more oriented toward healing a group or raid rather than a single target.

It further synergizes with AoE healing effects like Well of Radiance, Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Mending by making those effects trigger a little extra healing across multiple targets. Divine Aegis would also cause critical heals with these abilities to trigger Desperate Mending twice since it adds a shield to the target on crit, further building in some synergy there.

I think the instant healing trigger probably shouldn’t be able to crit, or Aegis and Desperate Mending could technically infinitely chain and full-heal a player if you got lucky enough with crits.

What do you think? The different functionalities of this version of Desperate Mending all exist in different places already, it would just be a matter of bringing them together. I think it leans nicely into raid healing where Surge of Light is more oriented toward healing a single target. Finally, with Empowered Renew as a baseline rune you don’t have to worry about multiple priests trying to play around Desperate Mending and locking one another out of their rune.

All I got are hopes and dreams that they’re aware and have the bandwidth to do something.

One final thought: I’m thinking about amending Well of Radiance to passively reduce the healing of Holy Nova by 50% (and thus itself by extension), but allow it to hit both party and raid members. What do you think? The current healing values seem too powerful to be hitting an entire raid with, but I’d love a more expert opinion.

I’m going to stew on these ideas while I’m at work today. If I don’t come across anything better I’ll amend them into the original post later today.

Edit

I felt pretty good about the Renew rune (Now called “Eternal Renewal” and went ahead and put that in on the Legs, swapping Prayer of Mending to the chest slot. I also updated Light’s Wrath. Because it benefits from talents and effects that modify Holy Fire, I realize that it kinda strangely makes Serendipity a not-too-bad option for group healing. Prayer of Mending is obviously still better by a wide margin, but I like that it closes the gap there a little so that one set of runes isn’t so heavily skewed in one direction or another.

I wanted to wait on making any changes to Holy Nova until I had a different perspective on the idea.

Vashtí-area-52 · June 29, 2024, 12:44am

Bump for visibility and discussion.

Mynta-defias-pillager · June 29, 2024, 4:26am

love these smite priest ideas! I had some too

Engrave your bracers with the Zealotry rune:
Your damaging Holy spells consume a charge of Inner Fire to deal bonus damage equal to your total Spirit. In addition, your Smite ability refreshes Holy Fire’s damage-over-time effect.

Engrave your chest with the Sanctimonium rune:
Your Holy Nova and Holy Fire deal 100% increased damage, and Holy Fire’s damage-over-time component stacks up to 10 times.

Engrave your cloak with the Twin Apostles rune:
Mind Flay causes your pets to re-focus their attacks to that target and causes the target to take 5% additional damage from all pets for 30 seconds. In addition, Prayer of Mending now deals Holy damage instead of healing and can be cast on enemies.


Divine Aegis	Helm	You have a 50% chance to trigger Spirit Tap when you shield an ally. Does not require points invested in the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 sec.
Archangel	Helm	Dealing Holy damage grants Evangelism. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts 20 sec. Each stack of Evangelism increases your spell power by 5% of your total Spirit and reduces the mana cost of your offensive Holy spells by 10%. Activating Archangel consumes your Evangelism stacks to instantly restore 1% of your maximum mana and increase the damage of your Holy Spells by 5% for each stack consumed. Lasts 20 sec. 15 sec cooldown.


Binding Heal	Back	Same effect as current version.
Light’s Wrath	Back	Passively increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Holy spells by 50%. You gain the Light’s Wrath ability."You unleash the divine fury of the Light on the targeted opponent, dealing heavy Holy damage and healing up to 5 wounded friendly targets within 15 yards of the enemy target for 100% of the damage dealt." 6 sec cast. 30 sec cooldown. Light’s Wrath benefits from talents and abilities that modify Holy Fire.


Prayer of Mending	Chest	Same effect as current version; Now located on the Chest slot.
Serendipity	Chest	Healing with Flash Heal or dealing damage with Smite reduces the cast time of your next Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Holy Fire by 20% for 20 sec, stacking up to 3 times.


Power Word: Barrier	Wrist	Same effect as current version.
Well of Radiance	Wrist	Modifies your Lightwell ability, causing it to last for 5 sec and radiate a Holy Nova from its location each sec. Lightwell can no longer be clicked on by party and raid members. 1.5 sec cast, 20 sec cooldown.


Circle of Healing	Hands	Same effect as current version.
Penance	Hands	Same effect as current version.


Soul Warding	Belt	Your Power Word: Shield no longer has a cooldown, costs 15% less mana, gains 15% additional base value, and gains an additional 50% of your healing power. Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec.
Renewed Hope	Belt	Your heals from Flash Heal, Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets with Weakened Soul. Smite, Holy Fire, Penance, and Holy Nova have 10% increased critical effect chance when cast on targets suffering from your Holy Fire effect.


Eternal Renewal	Leg	The global cooldown of Renew is reduced by 0.5 seconds. Healing or Shielding a target under the effects of your Renew causes them to be instantly healed equal to 100% of the normal periodic healing of Renew. When Renew completes its duration or is dispelled, the Priest regains the full cost of the spell.
Surge of Light	Legs	Critical spellcasts cause your next Smite or Flash Heal cast within 15 sec to be instant cast and cost no mana. Stacks up to 2 times.


Pain Suppression	Boots	Same effect as current version.
Spirit of the Redeemer	Boots	Critical spellcasts have a 25% chance to trigger the Spirit Tap effect, does not require investment into the Spirit Tap talent to activate. Activate to become the Spirit of Redemption for 10 sec. While in this form, you can cast any healing spell free of cost, but you cannot move, attack, be attacked, or be targeted by any spells or effects. Requires Spirit of Redemption talent to activate, and you will no longer enter Spirit of Redemption upon dying.


~~Homunculi~~	Retired	No longer in use.
~~Eye of the Void~~	Retired	No longer in use.


Improved Fortitude	Baseline	Same effect as current version.
Shadowfiend	Baseline	Same effect as current version.
Empowered Renew	Baseline	Same effect as current version.
Strength of Soul	Baseline	~~Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, and Flash Heal reduce the remaining duration of Weakened Soul on targets they heal by 4 sec. In addition,~~ Targets of your Power Word: Shield will gain Rage from taking damage despite the damage being absorbed, and Righteous Fury will trigger from damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield as if it were a heal.
Despair	Baseline	Periodic damage from your abilities can now be critical strikes. Periodic critical strikes gain a 10% chance per talent point in the Spirit Tap talent to trigger the Spirit Tap effect.