Return Spirit Shell

Classes Priest
1

Hello there, I play with the 3 specs of priest, mainly disc, and I love Spirit Shell, one of the main reasons I decided to master discipline.

I know I will receive some backlash but I stand by my view.

In the last update we received the new that Spirit Shell was removed but did not get any feedback on why.

I do agree that when SS returned to CN it was extremely powerful and left almost no room for other healers, but, let me remind you of why:

  • SS was 1 minute CD, most of CN fights required extreme burst healing every 1 minute, making the combo Mindbender, Mindgames and Spirit Shell overpowered.
  • SS transfered 100% of the atonement.
  • SS was buffed from a conduit, making it transfer about 10% more atonement, making 110% transfer.
  • SS was capped at 60% of the priest’s max health, making the threshold almost unreachable.
  • SS could surpasses some mechanics as Hungering Destroyer healing mechanic.
  • SS was competing with Evangelism, But evang had 90s CD and, SS paired with Clarity of mind, gave about 50% what evangelism proposed.

With that in mind, Blizzard went hard on the nerfs to SS, every point I brought except the last ones received a nerf.
Now SS was on a 90s cd, transfered 80% (88% with conduit) atonement, was capped at 11 * the priest’s intellect, lowering the threshold tremendously, and didn’t line up with mindbender anymore.

Within sanctum of domination, SS was used in some cases:

  • When the fight really needed that extra health inscrease, like Eye of the jailer last phase.
  • When we acquired our domination shards, giving about 1000 intellect (1/2 of the intellect at that time), making the threshold less of a burden.
  • Or for people like me, who loves the spell.

Ever since these major nerfs, Spirit shell was not that powerhouse anymore and was peacefully coexisting with evangelism. Both spells have its drawbacks:

  • Evangelism overheal more than SS can, but mainly because thats normal for healing.
  • SS was really difficult to use and time, even more tight than evangelism windows.
  • Both spells could fail at some mechanics, as healing was denied in Hungering Destroyer, shields were useless against Anduin or the Pantheon in Sepulcher.

So I am here, advocating for the spell’s return. It was pretty balanced after all those nerfs and I was really looking forward to see its uses in Dragonflight, specially when it got detached from evangelism node, and it made a lot of sense to be in a node with Rapture since both spells are sort of a shield, one for raiding and one for smaller content.

Some complains come paired with the fact that SS prevents damage leaving no room for other healers. While true SS prevents some big events, it is basically the same with evangelism, because we are a burst healing spec. CD management is something for the group, SS wouldn’t be paired with another CD as Tranquility if not needed, as much as evangelis wouldn’t too.

If it is about sniping heals, Revival do pretty much more of this than SS. Revival doesn’t show off before it is spammed, and it is instant. Rewind, the new evoker CD, is going to be a great tool for burst healing too, it can basically restore up to 49% of HP, and it is instant cast too (the heal is a HoT that happens in a 6 sec window but it is just click and forget it).

In the end, thanks for your time reading this topic.

1 Like
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Yes Please return spirit shell.

2 Likes
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When this scenario exists, it is bad for the game.

There shouldn’t ever be a fight that needs so much temp HP that the class becomes necessary for WF pushing. That just becomes really toxic really fast.

The problem with Spirit Shell is threefold IMO:

  1. When it is good, it’s good enough you almost need to take it. Every time it has been good (even before the Nathria iteration - talking back in WoD) it completely dominates fights, and leaves very little for any other healer to do. Especially because the shield scales with skill level, essentially. It isn’t the same as, let’s say a revival - it’s not giving you a flat amount of shielding. It’s a shield that stacks on itself and it has a refreshing duration.

  2. When it is bad, it isn’t even worth considering. It’s been like this for two raid tiers now. Playing Spirit shell has been pretty much a meme at this point. At that point it is wasting a talent slot that could be replaced with something to either bolster our small-group play or it could be something to help with our 25 man heroics because we currently suck past 20 players.

  3. Beyond flavor, it’s genuinely less fun. It’s basically playing Evangelism, but your ramp timing is significantly easier. Instead of ramping and reversing the damage as it happens, you’re just pumping into an invisible shield and then the boss does something and everyone else complains that the boss doesn’t do damage.

Honestly what I want for them to do is make a choice node between Rapture and Luminous Barrier (or even Barrier and Luminous Barrier). This both keeps a raid-CD level shield for those who want that, it gives us an option to scale past 20 players, and it could work as a meaningful bonus to the current Evang playstyle in fights that Barrier/Rapture aren’t great for.

4 Likes
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For me it adds flavour, because it is not tuned with that in mind, because it is one minor playstyle of 1 of the 6 (soon to be 7) healing classes. It can make it easier, but then a lot of abilities do that to mechanics. DKs grip on Dormazain, or Ring of peace in the same fight, guardian spirit for Kael’thas, etc.

CD management is something even with SS we need to do. Nor SS or Evang should be paired if something is not needed.
Besides, as disc, we have not much to do during those 90s cd. Mini ramps, of course, but they are quite lite in comparison.

Exactly, it was not that bad, but it wasn’t overpowered. I don’t think thats a good point to remove something that isn’t broken.

Yes it is similar, but it is different enough for me to advocate for it, and I love this. Being able to shield the raid is something I personally enjoy so much…

I wouldn’t mind have luminous barrier return in a node with PW barrier, it seems nice to have that option.

5

Kinda bad that you’d need disc for that specific encounter… Blizz is pushing for design where any spec/class can do a specific encounter. ofc specs have the strenghts/weaknesses to help us chose who we should bring for specific encounters, but 1 spec being mandatory is problematic in that regard.

Depends on a few things imo. The current Spirit Shell replaces Rapture while it competes with Evang and Lenience. This causes a problem that you have to balance this extremely strong spell for usage with rapture or evang in DF trees, because there is no such thing as 3-choices node right now. Spirit Shell was either asking for a big nerf, a redesign (which is what I was hoping for) or be removed from the game. The devs chose the later, probably because it’s easier AND because so many people want it out of the game.

You’re not going to get much traction on this I feel. There’s a lot of hate toward SS, be it priests themselves or other healers or raid leaders who struggled to get a disc priest when it was mandatory… the list goes on.

I like the flavor as well myself, but at the same time, it really was just an easier Evang… Nothing interesting outside of a raid environment since it was competing with rapture too… I’d rather we focus on a different style, which is what they are doing with Divine Aegis. Let’s just hope this one stays and is somewhat balanced at launch. We’d better focus on helping on that front I feel :man_shrugging:

Edit: I’d rather we don’t need to just push long cds all at the same time as well. Kinda boring to have to press evang + spirit shell at the same time in my book…

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SS is bad for Disc Priests in general because the entire spec needs to be balanced around its power. Absorbs and mitigation abilities > throughput.

2 Likes
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Indeed… The big nerf bat pre-SL was mainly caused by spirit shell… If we can avoid the whole toolkit being nerfed because of ONE ability going into DF it would be great.

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I would also like the op say he/she understands SS was bad for other healers and robs them of some enjoyment. Sometimes you have to take a more global view. While caps said SS is a meme, you go on the top 10 lists of my server and there are plenty of logs stil with SS. So its still ruining some healers fun.

Plus you say flavor my friend i say its boring and easy and cuts down what you can do inbetween unless your geting external mana

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For me that’s a bit exaggerated stilll. While I understand why some hate it, most casuals don’t really care that they can’t pad the meter for a few seconds. So a good portion of the player base don’t give a damn and are actually fine with being able to kill the boss.

Just because a few people in these forums cry out for SS doesn’t mean everybody hates it either…

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Did this ever happened? An encounter you could not survive without a disc priest with shell?

But SS was not that strong anymore.

Yeah I know, but better to express myself at some point than never doing it.

I don’t think with will be different at all. It will be the same ramp with a chance of proccing shields. I do believe DA will receive some nerfs cause its current iteration seems rather powerful. Last time it was in the game it replaced the crits. But explain to me what is the difference in gameplay you’re talking about.

Its last iteration was kinda balanced already.

What happened? I was not playing at that time.

Why? SS is a CD like any other, we have to manage where it will be used as we do with salvation, etc. SS heals less than evangelism after the nerfs, if it is op than evangelism should be considered too, but is not. Revival takes more of my enjoyment as a co healer than SS, cause I can atonement coming, but not that insta heal.

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S1 what kinda that all over the place. Although, it was mostly people being elitist and trying to cheese the content with the OP spec more than anything. But Castle Nathria had quite a few bosses early on where disc was basically required yeah.

I agree, but then again, it’s not balanced in the current toolkit of DF with Evang being selectable beside it. My point is that they are mutually exclusive on live, and that isn’t the case anymore.

I’m more focusing on other contents. Raid is all about ramp and SS wasn’t any different except it made it easier…
SS is a spell that doesn’t see use outside of raid, because it’s counterpart choice is rapture, which is way more flexible and useful everywhere else. I’d rather we don’t have 2 cds that basically do the same thing…

Our aura nerf was basically to lower the shield of spirit shell. The spec was performing incredibly well in beta raids and blizz basically lowered all our damages mostly because SS was creating such strong shields. That made our atonement healing quite low for everything else…

That’s true, and I’d add that if you’re doing high end content, you know when each of these cds are coming, including disc Ramp (no matter if it’s shield or healing) So the whole argument of shield being “toxic” and “boring for other healers” is a big exaggeration in my book.

I agree though that shields are better than “normal” heals in that they can happen a while before the damage occurs, and that SS makes the whole thing way easier than actually healing the damage because of this. When it’s easy to do these big healing spikes, it tend to make the content itself easier, because anyone can basically cheese said mechanic with a disc priest in their group. Disc becomes mandatory because it’s so easy to execute.

Now add to that your DA shields that pops from your crit healing during SS window. They need to rebalance the whole thing, it’s not enough to say “Hey, it’s ok on live, don’t touch it”. SS was going to be a big hassle again…

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:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:. I say it’s boring cause it’s easier then an evang ramp. You have more wriggle toon to muck up etc and therefore less skill involved. To me that’s boring. It’s why I don’t play holy. That’s opinion based obviously

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You are going to have less fun in dragon flight then. Lights wrath is in the air. Everyone low health. 20 atonement’s out. LW about to hit …. Monk hits revival cue gong

Happened to me on Ursoc. Monk or I topped the meters based upon who landed their blow fastest. We didn’t down the boss till I said to the monk we need to decouple the cds lol

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Exactly, but did not happen after the nerfs. That’s why I was optmistic.

They being both selectable doesn’t seem a major issue. SS with Evang is basically SS with Com + 2second. Considering we are gaining 1 more ability (light’s wrath), it seems fine. The tuning comes from the loss of the conduit and the ability transfering only 80% of the atonement.

They’re alike but not the same, thus why I love it.

In fact, with SS cap, we could not pre-shield anymore as CN. In CN the last ability durind the ramp was before the boss damage event, after CN and the nerfs, we timed SS much closer to evangelism, but, it was harder cause the window was smaller (6 sec less, the duration CoM extended rapture shields). So i actually believes SS is harder than evangelism.

I didn’t think DA would work off of SS, was it working?

Lol, that happened to me some times when I had to use evang.

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It wasn’t harder mate. I played season 1 As well and detested SS even as I topped meters with it. The issue was. A mechanic or event happening with your evang could ruin your entire ramp. With SS you would get at least SOMETHING with it. And if done right negated whole mechanics. Revival can’t do that or any other cd

I respect you like it bro. I’m just happy it’s gone and in my view they were never going to allow evang and SS In the same world. With enough outside mana you could seperate them and roll both all fight

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I was talking about SoD, CN SS was easy, after the nerfs going to SoD that became harder.

I’ll say though I didn’t think about this outcome, perhaps could return as an option against evang again.

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Having taken it out, I think the chances of them bringing it back are slim. But they need to give us something interesting. The rapture extending talent lacks. Unless of course they overtune pws

1 Like
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Well, not everyone likes it when it’s harder. I’m totally on your side on this one. But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You can’t blame people who likes it when its easier :man_shrugging:

I agree on this. And that’s part of the reason why I feel it’s not needed anymore. It basically plays the same since you want you shields to be consumed right away so that they don’t cap.

Don’t know. I assume shields are heal as well so shield crits should proc DA. I guess SS might be a bit of a special case. If it didn’t work, all the more reason to remove it I feel because evang will be a good chunk better with DA

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I remember Jak joking about Spirit Shell in his review video on disc and thinking, I bet they finally just end up removing it entirely in 10.0… didn’t even get that far.