We’ve just posted a full rundown of how the re-imagined talent system will look for Priests in Dragonflight.
Once you’ve had a chance to consider it fully, please feel free to answer the following questions.
How do you feel the new talent system fits the Priest class overall?
If you have any concerns, what are your biggest concerns?
What about the new design do you like the most?
Do you feel like this will make Priests play differently than they do now?
Thank you!
My biggest concern will remain with Power Infusion. The spell itself is very strong and it doesn’t mention anywhere in the talent tree it will no longer be unable to be cast on friendly targets. There is although the talent so you can give it away and keep 50 or 100% of the effectiveness yourself.
Just go ahead and make it only be cast on yourself and remove “Twins of the Sun Priestess” or make it baseline so you don’t have to spend your points on it if you guys want to keep it so badly. This will be a mandatory talent to spec into and you’ll definitely give it away to another player where it’s the most useful.
This discussion has been a hot topic within the community for the past two years where from the only feedback I can read and hear it’s negative feedback.
Can you explain what this means?
Is this a debuff that we can see on the enemy? Is it random? How does this work or how are able to tell what the emotional state of a target is?
Whatever the case is, I can see many WeakAuras using this wonderful meme.
Twins of the Sun Priestess is pretty pointless in terms of talent strength. If I’m a disc priest and I give my PI to a dps to empower them, that effect on me is extremely negligible. If I’m a shadow priest, I need to find someone who either has a similar cd/pi time, which as we seen in CN, doesn’t really work well in practice.
It may be a cool flavor talent but that’s all it is and will be with the current strength of PI. It also ignores the fact that some classes may be egregious with PI like in SL. This issue seems to be ignored, for pointless flavor? I don’t think I’d feel awesome giving up my PI and getting its benefit when I don’t need it.
Power Infusion is a design hurdle. It’s seen as this cool flavor button until it makes 1 person “happy” in the sense their class feels a bit better in cd’s and it makes others feel worse. We can blame logs like it was done before, but that’s the world we live in. Both in casual and competitive play PI has more negative emotions tied to it than positive and that should mean something when considering keeping it in its current form.
I think that PI itself is a cool spell. On some classes, it feels amazing to get PI in the middle of your cooldowns and absolutely blast for some extra damage, but it obviously feels pretty bad for the rest of the group, and the casting priest (to not have it for themselves)
I wonder if we could talk about using it another way. What if PI gave your target a buff, that every spell/auto attack/ whatever hit dealt a small amount of Holy Damage to the target coming from the Priest, while giving the casting priest a small haste buff for the duration (maybe 10-15%)
Part of the issue with PI is the effect it has on logs and details, so if the damage were coming from the priest that would be rectified and the haste buff would stay with them as well.
That way it can be targetted onto high APM classes, still exist as an external offensive CD and give priests the haste buff that everyone fights over.
Just a few thoughts on the idea. I like getting PI as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to see it gone and I also don’t think it should stay in the game as it currently is.
Obviously it feels amazing to get another bloodlust. It’s fun with haste. It’s fun that way, yes - since it’s strong. It’s fun being powerful and do much damage. The design of the ability just simply isn’t fun. I think I’ve proposed the best way to resolve the issue.
a) Remove the ability
b) Make it only castable on yourself
c) Make it castable on others with Twins of the Sun Priestess not costing anything for the priest.
The discussion has been going on in any other threads so won’t be out here just repeating myself but there is so many issues not making it worth to keep the ability as it is now.
Idol of Y’Shaarj will receive a new tooltip as we get closer to Dragonflight. In the meantime though, here’s a breakdown of what it currently does:
If your target is…
Above 80% health? → Pride
Enraged? → Anger
Stunned? → Despair
Feared? → Fear
No conditions met? → Violence
The priority order is:
Anger/Despair/Fear → Pride → Violence
As with everything in the talent tree, these effects are subject to change. I hope this clears up some confusion. We’ll continue monitoring the community’s feedback and we look forward to sharing more Dragonflight details in the future!
I main Shadow on my priest, though I know the other 2 specs. Basic thoughts:
Smite being a baseline skill feels wrong - Shadow will have access to it, as well as the Improved Smite talent, even though they can’t cast it in Shadowform - this effectively creates trap skills/talents for new players, and those should never occur.
I do not see Mass Resurrection on the baseline spell list, class tree, OR spec trees - are you removing group resses?
You made 2 of Holy’s identity spells - Prayer of Mending & Renew, available to all 3 specs with talents, that’s… not okay to be blunt. It’d be like if you put Penance or Void Eruption in the class tree so the other 2 specs could access it. I understand the point is to focus more on the Power Words spells as Holy’s identity, it just feels gross to do this.
Taming the Shadows and Masochism feel like they’d work better as a combined talent. But that’s just me.
Power Infusion… just… ugh. You really don’t read feedback threads, do you?
Tools of the Cloth seems like a useless talent that probably doesn’t even need to exist. Who’s going to waste a talent point for 10% more damage on Holy Nova only while you have PW:S active on yourself? Holy Nova doesn’t do much damage, and chances are if a holy priest is using holy nova, there’s aoe damage going out that would instantly break the shield. Dead talents shouldn’t exist.
As with the last 2 classes, the spec trees seem to be mostly okay. My issues are mainly with the class trees and baseline skills. As I have said - I do not consider it good game design if you can not spec into required spells for a rotation - for instance, Devouring Plague for Shadow. That said, still have a few thoughts:
Holy:
I am grateful you did not bring back the Lightwell that required group members to click it, that was a nightmare. Lol. The auto-cast on raid members Lightwell was always fun.
I do notice the absence of one of the most loved Holy Legendary powers of the past though, which is saddening.
Discipline:
Inner Light and Shadow intrigues me, however, due to the nature of how Discipline heals, with the 6 second cooldown and presumably the GCD, I can’t imagine anyone ever using Inner Light.
Why are Shining Force and Psychic Voice not a choice talent like for Holy?
Castigation seems rather far down in the tree considering it’s a level 15 talent on live.
I like the change to Shadow Covenant. The live version is too punishing to be viable in most situations - making it nerf holy spells, rather than outright disallow them makes it a viable option again. (Not gonna lie, I do miss the “healing absorb” version of it. That was a great emergency healing option in a raid, which is something discipline lacks.
I’m sad that Luminous Barrier is not returning. As I said in my targeting reticle thread, I hate them because we can’t use @target. Luminous Barrier allowed me to ignore that and be able to shield for incoming damage rather than rely on me placing the barrier right and the raid actually getting into it. Like, why not have it be the option under barrier instead of Lenience.
Overall, some of the final talents feel very… underwhelming for Discipline compared to the other classes/specs we’ve seen. Why are two of them “Increases duration of Atonement with specific spell”? That’s so boring compared to how great the final talents have been for others.
(Just my thoughts: Personally, for final talents, I’d do [left to right] -
Harsh Discipline - Lenience - A Combined “Atonement Duration increased 3 seconds with Shield/Mend” - Light’s Wrath - Wickedness. But that’s just me. I’m sure others would disagree)
This would keep the left talents being healing, middle being a combo, and right talents being damage thing you have going.
Shadow:
Honestly, this is the least problematic tree I’ve seen so far - my only real issue is mentioned above - you can not spec into Devouring Plague and Void Eruption - it is weird there are talents that alter things like Void Bolt, when you can not spec into Void Eruption and thus not have Void Bolt.
Honestly, I think it’d be better if they made it so Power Infusion was self-cast only, but then Twins of the Sun Priestess granted like, 5-10% haste to your party while PI is active on you - effectively spreading out PI, but also giving the casting priest a bigger bonus. This would be akin to Windfury Totem for Enhancement, in that they give a buff to their party. And create way less scenarios of some specs overperforming because they essentially have 3-4 heroisms in one fight.
I know a few diehard priests in my guild super pumped for the new interaction and like giving it to someone slamming the meters
Regarding Holy Word: Life, I think it’s neat that it appears to be the inverse of Shadow Word: Death, but I don’t like the ability at all. If the target is not below 20% health, the caster takes damage equal to the amount healed.
My first thought is that if I were going to use this ability, I’d want to set up my grid2 profile to change a player’s bar color when they drop below 20%, so I know when a player is “safe” to cast the spell on. I wouldn’t want to cast it when they are at 21% health, especially in a case where the party is taking heavy AOE damage, because I could end up killing myself. And I think the last thing the game needs right now is another mechanic requiring a weakaura or specialized grid2 profile to use well.
Secondly, as a healer I don’t want the game to incentivize me to allow players to get low on health. Like say they’re at 25% and I want to use this spell but I need to wait for them to take more damage so they fall below 20%. In high keys that’s super dangerous unless the damage is extremely predictable. It’s also incompatible with the Grievous affix.
So I think this ability will not get much use. I might get a clutch save out of it every now and then, but on the whole it won’t feel great to play.
Oh, and one thing I do like is the Holy tree having some options that just buff damage. I’m one of those healers who likes to do some damage in dungeons, and if I play Holy I’ll be inclined to choose those talents.
Quite alot of spriests are not having fun playing with searing nightmare. Maybe there is a better option (e.g removing it for another ability) or a redesign of the ability is necessary?
Wickedness might be too strong , if Divine Stars CD remains at 15 seconds you’ll have a 2s long silence AoE every 15s.
I only play a priest to run old content and collect transmogs so I have very little to contribute here… However I will say I find it very odd that spriest has no reliable AoE ability. When I run old content I do it as Holy just for Holy Nova to AoE the trash down quickly. I’d be there all day to kill a pack of rats with a spriest. No idea if this has been addressed in the new talent tree or not but hopefully it has.
Just gonna go a bit by script here for a sec.
Also please note that these are my initial thoughts and i might change my mind after some more thinking.
I tried my best to put them into words and not ramble on to long about specific issues with specific buildpaths but there is quite a chunk i´d love to see changed concerning which talents are positioned where and what they are connected with.
How do you feel the new talent system fits the Priest class overall?
Very fitting. Lots of beloved themes of the class kept intact, return of some old favorites and my one true love, Light’s Wrath for Discpriest.
If you have any concerns, what are your biggest concerns?
Just to get it out of the way: Power Infusion.
Love that it’s still here, i´m a big advocate of supporting others with CDs as a skill aspect. Still, having talents like Twins doesnt mean a lot since giving the cd to others will in most cases mean it doesn’t work well with your own CDs. I´d love to be able to use the PI for myself at my own volition while also being able to support my team.
My suggestion would be to change the Twins of the Sun Priestress Talent in a way that lets you recast PI on yourself/an ally depending on whom you casted the initial spell on. (also move the talents place in the tree to be directly connected to PI, the current placement is just weird and unintuitive)
Let’s talk about the Holy PoV first:
Holy feels a bit like it got the short end of the stick.
The class tree has 2-3 dead paths from Row 8 onwards unless you care about Damage (Mindbender will be okay but there is no real incentive on the healing side to go for Shadowflame except for mana).
You historically rarely use Power Word: Shield at all as Holy so i can’t see this row ever becoming remotely interesting outside of PvP (where you’d rather go mindgames/shadowflame imo) so you´re basically left with Holy Word: Life 90% of the time and the remaining 10% going for Mindgames. Yes these Options are cool for Damage, but i can see a lot of more casual healers that don’t embrace the offensive aspects of their class left longing for another choice outside of HW: Life.
The holy tree itself:
I´m not feeling very good about the left side, the AoE healing path, of the tree. Since the start of BFA Prayer of Healing has been one of the most underwhelming spells in HPriests kit and i see little about that changing. Please give us something to synergise with Prayer of Healing outside of Prayercircle (which i also don’t like due to the crazy manacost of PoH. Maybe change it to reduce the manacost of the next 1-2 PoHs next to the cast speed? That’s normally the extend of PoHs you cast anyway due to factors like Co-Healers, Manacost and your own Mastery)
It currently very much feels like a mandatory branch because of the mana return and i´d much rather pick talents because they´re exciting and interesting and not because i´m scared my class wont work without them.
Gales of Song, Rune of healing and Resonant Words are boring talents.
Holy Oration and Light of the Naaru are the same talent in two different spots with different wording, this imo isn’t a good thing.
Could Resonant Words in Row 9 affect PoH aswell? I really would like more reasons to use PoH.
Rune of Healing on Row 9 is tied to Holy Circle (which you can skip to get to the Rune?) Unless you make it not selectable unless Circle is specced, i promise you someone will fall for this trap. I´d love if it procced off of PoH with an internal CD to match Rune of Mending
Really not a fan of Binding Heal making another return. Historically it’s been either to good and mandatory (while outperforming every other spell in Priests kit), or it wasn’t good enough to be used ever. I don’t see any factors here that would suggest it to be any different this time.
If you´d like it to have a nieche in 5man/small group raid encounters i´d expect the tuning to be very important, otherwise this talent will run rampant or be dead once again. No in between.
I absolutely adore Divine Words, Empyreal Blaze and their respective buildpaths though. Nailed those ones.
Lastly my concerns regarding playstyle:
Holy looses both Flash Concentration as well as Harmonious Aparatus. What is supposed to replace the gap shortener between Holy Word casts if you don’t spec into the Rune talents in Row 9?
Will the Cosmic Ripple mana return offset the increased number of casts needed to regain Serenity and Sanctify? Will the spec really consist of what i imagine to be about 30 second Loops of just casting Heal, PoH or Smite followed by Holy Words? I´m very concerned about the fun factor (and maybe even the power), especially at the start of the expansion with low stat values.
Discipline:
Initially i hated the fact that this tree makes me actually choose certain Powerpoints for my build. I´m very much used to having ALL THE THINGS as a Discpriest. But maybe that’s exactly the change this Spec needs.
My greatest concern with this tree is that it locks to many things that are currently baseline abilities behind buildpaths. At least for raiding. This Problem is less severe for Arenas/M+ where you most likely can skip Radiance, Contrition + following talents.
Apart from that i have 2 issues:
Purge the Wicked feels in a weird spot, would be much better adjacent to the right side of the tree.
Pain Transformation in Row 6 can be selected without speccing into PS itself.
Shadow:
Amazing complexity, great options based on content, encounters or personal playstyle. Nailed it but i´m also no shadow expert so this is only my initial reaction.
A concern might be that the complexity especially in the earlier rows (especially Rows 3-6) might be a bit much for some players to figure out which talents are good or bad.
Back to the Class tree for a second, this time not from the Holy PoV but a more general view.
The only part i´m concerned about is the forceful integration of Holy Nova and it’s supporting talents into the “healing buildpath” of the class tree. it would feel a lot more natural if it would swap place with the talents connected to Mass Dispel instead and have the utility be closer connected to the healing aspect of the tree.
Lastly, having both middle branches only be connected to Twins and not the right/left side of the tree aswell just feels weird. I´d prefer more options to get to these branches.
What about the new design do you like the most?
The flexibility of the different trees. The ability to go for specific builds that work for different types of content just makes me buzz with excitement. For Discpriest alone i can see a handful of builds i´d like to try already.
Do you feel like this will make Priests play differently than they do now?
I think the biggest (positive) difference will be noticeable in Discipline and Shadow builds. Lot’s of ways to adapt to specific encounters with very different playstyles.
Holypriest will feel the loss of Flash Concentration and i have a sneaking suspicion that the spec might feel a little underwhelming outside of cooldowns and using Holy Words.
Overall i love the new Priest Trees. They´re definitely not perfect and can use some more work but it makes me incredibly excited to play my priest again in Dragonflight.
Last but not least, a question:
Afterlife: Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 50% and the range of its spells by 50%. As a Spirit of Redemption, you may sacrifice your spirit to Resurrect an ally, putting yourself to rest.
Does this function like a combat rezz and consume a charge during M+/Raid encounters?
Does this work in Arenas?
I mostly play Shadow when I play priest, so I’m going to focus my feedback on that.
How do you feel the new talent system fits the Priest class overall?
The bottom third of the Shadow tree is very interesting. Lots of new and exciting talents to play with. However, everything above the 20 point line feels very uninspired and doesn’t offer much in the way of choice.
If you have any concerns, what are your biggest concerns?
It feels like the top half of the tree is very boring and doesn’t offer much room for experimentation. It feels like until you hit the 20 point threshold, you are basically just picking talents to rebuild your core kit. Vampiric touch, Devouring Plague, Mind Sear, Void Eruption, Shadowy Apparitions, and to an extent Dispersion all need to be core parts of Shadow’s base kit, and the class just wouldn’t work without them.
I can’t ever see a world where you could even play Shadow without Devouring Plague and Void Eruption. Your resource system wouldn’t even be used without these spells.
It kind of fells like the designers just ran out of talent ideas, so they started putting core Shadow spells on the talent tree to fill up space.
One thing I was hoping for, is to see some exciting new AoE talents for Shadow, as its AoE is very boring to play, and limits Shadow’s effectiveness in M+. Searing Nightmare is our only AoE spender, and the fact you can only cast it while channelling Mind Sear makes it a very unsatisfying spell. Further to that point, you can actually pick Searing Nightmare on the talent tree without choosing Mind Sear, so Im not sure how that would work. This seems like an oversight.
My suggestion would be to remove some of the “Mandatory” talents that will be chosen in 100% of builds (see above), and explore some new options for active AoE. Maybe a talent that makes Shadow Crash cost insanity and have no cooldown. Or a talent that changes Searing Nightmare to not require Mind Sear channelling.
What about the new design do you like the most?
By far the strongest part of the tree are the last 3 rows. The Idols talents seem very cool. Its just a bit of a shame that the rest of the tree is so dull.
Do you feel like this will make Priests play differently than they do now?
Sadly, I don’t think this tree will do much to spice up Shadow’s playstyle.
For example. I’ve also noticed that Shadow has several talents that enhance the power of Mind Flay and Mind Blast, but not a single talent that enhances the power of our DoTs. Until recently DoT play was Shadow’s niche, and I feel like there is a missed opportunity here to add some diversity to the tree and allow Shadow to choose between more of a DoT playstyle or a direct damage playstyle.
There are talents that hint that Shadow could potential do a pet build: Puppet Master, Idol of C’thun, Idol of Yogg, Living Shadow, which could be interesting, but I don’t think there is enough synergy to really make it viable.
I feel like no matter how I build this tree, the playstyle is going to remain mostly the same.
In talking to one of my guildies, who mains shadow priest, he has a big concern with the “Void Apparations” talent.
The talent makes Shadowy Apparations have a 10% chance to become infused with the void, dealing 20% additional damage.
In his eyes, this talent will never be chosen. It will be used for 0.01% of theorycraft builds then dropped.
He has also provided a suggestion for an alternate talent. Make it an active use, “while in Void Form, Shadowy Apparations deal 20% additional damage” on a 1.5 or 2 minute CD (to line up with PI)
This would also help with some target swapping issues currently plaguing shadow priest.