We as Priests are wheelchairs, and since Power Word: Shield is getting a cooldown in Dragonflight, it makes Body and Soul kind of useless. We need a replacement talent since it seems they’re sticking with the cooldown.
In my opinion, a perfect replacement for Body and Soul could be Door of Shadows. Make it a choice node to pick from Angelic Feather / Door of Shadows. It fits the Light vs Shadow theme that we have going on for our talents and both abilities require you to cast at a location.
Door of Shadows also just fits thematically as an ability for us. When they gave us Mindgames in our talent tree, they changed the spell effect and made it purple instead of red to match with the shadow/void theme. They could do the same with Door of Shadows and give the spell a shadow/void effect.
What are your thoughts on this? Is there a better mobility option you’d want Blizzard to add?
I’m pretty close to onboard with you Alphon. From a PvE shadow perspective, I want to keep Body and Soul and have my choice node be Feather/Door of Shadows. Body and Soul doesn’t take up a button so I see the node being between the two actives Feather/Door. I think that’s mostly what you were saying but you said “replace” Body and Soul which I don’t want to lose.
All the other classes I’ve tested on PTR got decent, and in some cases substantial, increases in their mobility. Priest? If you think getting Feather and Body’n’Soul together is a meaningful increase in mobility…I don’t see it!
Body and Soul and Feather don’t really add anything to each other, as I see it. Instead of going 40% faster a lot of the time, I can go 40% faster a little bit more often. I don’t need it. I need Body and Soul and then a longer cd burst movement.
I like everything else you said including the graphic changing to voidey stuff.
Playing priest without Feathers should be considered cruel and unusual punishment…
I’m guessing you want DoS as a shadow school ability for PvP? Honestly to me Feathers vs. DoS sounds like an even worse choice than the LoF vs. VoH choice they rejected as too one-sided (which is bonkers in itself, like every talent choice is completely one-sided).
I mean, at this point they should just make both feathers and B&S as a choice node or remove B&S…
You can just push “alt” and your feathers button for an application on yourself without having to place feathers…
They basically play the same with pros and cons for each… sounds very much like a choice node to me.
Angelic Feather + Body & Soul seems to be the wombo-combo speed option. On the beta I have both and I can basically go feather → pws → repeat to keep the speed boost up a lot. Overall with both you’re a lot more mobile than retail.
I’d rather see B&S replaced with reverse LoF, or perhaps made a choice node with it. As it stands, I think priest is fine for steady speed boosts, but they lack an instant escape that so many other specs have (and the specs that don’t have them usually have strong defensives to make up for this, unlike priests). Door isn’t that bad, but the cast time + reticle makes it tricky to use in a pinch.
At this point I may go HMT in DF. Bull Rush is a really nice movement ability both offensively and defensively, and their passive dr, while miniscule, is better than nothing.
The only escape we really had the entire expansion was Soulshape.
If they gave us Vault of Heavens than that would be an almost default pick because I can think of so many boss encounters where that would have been clutch. Phase 3 Mythic Sire when you had to dodge the 100 blade lines on the ground.
I agree you are probably right about Blizzard not allowing us to have both, just my preference is all =)
I would respectfully disagree. Under what circumstances do I need to keep up that 40% speed boost? There’s plenty of runbacks or other times where it’s NICE, but rarely important to my functioning in a given combat scenario. Instead, what would be needed, in my opinion, is one or the other for the frequent mini-40% speed boost, PLUS some kind of escape mobility (on a longer cooldown) - which is why I keep advocating for either Door of Shadows, Vault of the Heavens, something other than just Feather + Body.
@Orcus I think this perfectly encapsulates my opinion. Well said.
Again, totally agree Door is awkward to use, but one of the reasons I thought Blizzard just might go for it, since they seem to want Priest mobility to be slow/awkward.
I just feel strongly that Feather + Body doesn’t really do that much for us - we need one or the other plus a better escape/burst mobility on a longer cd. I know several people have said, justifiably, they like the combo of Feather/Body and it works well for them, but I just hard disagree and don’t really find it useful.
I’m going to be honest, this is why I hope they re-combine Feather and Body and Soul.
It feels like ghost wolf but way more intrusive and tedious to keep up mobility. And it runs the risk of getting screwed up by other people running past. I actually hate playing with Feather.
I welcome Door of Shadows replacing Feather and then Feather and B&S being a choice node.
As for B&S being weaker, just make B&S also suppress snares for the duration. Bam, now it has it’s own use.
Well, yes for PvP, but not because it’s a Shadow school ability. It’s more so that we don’t have anything to become immune to slows/snares.
The Fade talent removes them, but it doesn’t make you immune to them while active, so even if you remove a slow/snare, it’ll just be reapplied, and Angelic Feather / Body and Soul would just be useless if you have a slow/snare on you.
Door of Shadows, while it is on a cast time, provides a quick escape up to 40 yards away. They could give it two charges too, sort of how the Soulbind does or make it instant cast with one charge.
Oh I’d love this. I’m surprised it already doesn’t do this.
I think the more pressing issue I pointed out is you can’t take shackle undead without taking B&S so you’re basically forced to take B&S and there’s no reason not to take feather.
Also, there’s a new talent that lets you remove snares with fade.
My problem with shackle undead is that it’s very situational, and that I don’t have all that much points de spare. We’re on a tight budget, at least on the healer’s side…
Feathers & Body and soul being 2 separated nodes contribute to that tight budget for sure…
Honestly I have too many points in the Priest general tree. Once you reach the bottom there’s nothing worth investing into other than Mind Games and down the left-side. Angelic Bulwark is just meh.
It’s opposite on the main class trees because all of a sudden everything becomes 2 point sinks on the bottom.
Well, for me I have a few pathing problems on both specs where I somewhat forced to pick something to go the the node(s) behind it.
thinking holy nova or PoM as disc, or crystalline reflection as holy.
I find it very hard on both specs to select extras, but I guess the bottom of the tree is a lot less interresting for me as holy than when I play disc…
On disc, there is some good value in the bottom. Although there are nodes that feels underwhelming, disc can easily spend 10 points there.
For holy, it’s harder to spend all 10 points there for sure… Bulwark or void shift are locked behind bad nodes. While I like void shift, I don’t like the investment needed as holy. PW:Life doesn’t sound like something holy really needs… (I haven’t tested it so I may be wrong…) and mindgames, while an interesting node, could be skipped if you don’t care for it. That basically leave for 4/10 points at least and then you can probably go back top…
I mean I’m okay with them moving the placement a bit, but the new fade talent is not a substitute. In fact, I kind of hate that they keep tacking on small utilities to Fade because it adds to the button bloat adding these additional small buffs like 10% DR. That might be enough to mean something in raids where mana is important on cutting edge content, but it just creates bloat elsewhere.
I’d rather body and soul provide snare free movement rather than being able to remove a snare and it come right back on every 30 seconds.
The root break is nice but there are other ways it could be handled.
Also I really don’t like them being separate because while some like feathers, the other side of the fence hates them because they are wonky to use. The only reason so many people used it was because it was just better than B&S in most content. They work just fine as a choice. If we still need more mobility there are definitely other ways to handle it than two different talents that give you a small boost of speed for 4 seconds, having to alternate between two buttons to maintain the same effect. It’s just not a good design no matter how you slice it.
I honestly wish they’d just give us better mobility in general somehow. People are likely to just macro Feather/B&S to self cast all the time because it’s the only option we have for keeping up with the group/moving through any kind of content.
We have no displacement mobility built into our kit, and I’d say both Feather and B&S are weak enough to not count as “burst” mobility, even when stacked.
I don’t love their reasoning that “priests shouldn’t be jumping all over the place” to explain why we won’t get Vault back. Imo, they’re basically just saying “We think priest class fantasy should be that it’s hard to avoid damage and keep up with the group”.
While I love that someone is dedicated to the idea of what is and is not within a class/spec fantasy, I’d like that to not come at the cost of an otherwise necessary baseline component of the game like movement.
Well said, and we need more mobility - some kind of escape/displacement mobility. We need to keep/choose between one of the other of Feather/Body and then we need the addition of a displacement/escape tool.
emphasizing and agreeing with what you said, Cita, but also clarifying the Feather and Body and Soul don’t stack, use of one cancels the other.
I’m foreseeing a lot of returning priests not taking the news well that they lost their Soulshape and/or DoS and have nothing to really replace it. “You can take Body & Soul now” probably won’t cut it, because the covenant abilities are cool and far more useful and B&S is just really bland, especially with a CD on shield.
