Priest Spell Visuals

[Fizzer-wyrmrest-accord (Fizzer)]

Summary: They fall flat.

This is just my subjective opinion but it feels like most offensive priest abilities lack the visual oomph that makes them feel like they’re powerful and dealing the damage they actually show. Casting Penance just feels like I’m firing shiny streamers at them, and with the “Purge the Wicked” talent removed, SW:Pain just looks like a purple poot.

In addition, everything is either holy gold or shadowy purple. Priests could easily be the most Glyph-heavy class in the game if they bothered to remember that Inscription exists. We have priests of every stripe and theme in the lore, with NPCs using all manner of spell visuals to accompany their class flavor, but players get none of it.

• Dwarves/Earthen (and maybe gnomes/mechagnomes?): Titanic runic visuals and pale blue/yellow spells instead of just pure holiness (Or like the visual styles of Titanic magic we see in DF and TWW).
• Nelves/NB: Silvery moonlight visuals and moon iconography. Shadow spells could be more starry/astral-themed.
• Belves/Tauren/Dark Irons/etc.: Sun visuals/Holy Fire.
• Trolls/Zandalari: Loa visuals. Maybe spells with a mingling of holy energy and green nature energy, or something similar.
• Humans/Kul Tirans: Watery visuals for Tidesages.

Just throwing out ideas. I could see them not doing that because it would result in demand for other classes to get similar visual customization but… I can’t stand playing priest just because of their outdated-looking spells.

At the very least, let me just lock into one visual style. SW:Pain or Renew should be holy when I’m holy and shadowy when I’m Shadow, y’know?

[Ralecgos-sargeras]

This reminds me of the “class skins” idea that would basically change your spell visuals and perhaps some animations as well.

I’d love this, and I agree Priests would especially benefit from something like this RP-wise. But I honestly don’t think Blizzard would or are even fully considering this. They’re very stuck in the idea that spell visuals must look a certain way or it could confuse players.

A recent example is when Warlocks had some pets added to the barbershop and they completely removed the Observer pet option for Felhunters.

@Linxy

Glyph of the Observer is being deprecated and will no longer be an available customization option for felhunters.

• Developers’ note: With the arrival of the new warlock pet customization system coming in Fractures in Time, we will deprecate the Glyph of the Observer customization. Our reason for this is to ensure that each demon retains a similar silhouette across all available customizations, so that each demon and the functionality or power they provide to the warlock is easily understood by other players as well as the warlock.

So would they ever do something like you suggested? Maybe. And I hope they do. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. They’re even stingy enough as it is adding basic visual class glyphs to the game.

[Providennce-tichondrius]

Spell effect skins would be such an easy win for Blizzard to cash in on. The glyph system is heavily underutilized, and although I understand the proposed reasons why, I don’t think those reasons are good enough to neglect how much fun people would have being able to customize their abilities. This kind of spell customization is found in so many games, even in PvP games where spell consistency is more vital to gameplay, and WoW just doesn’t have any great excuses not to do more.