Suggested Priest Rework Oracle/Aegis of Wrath

Classes Priest
1

Spitting in the wind probably but have been thinking about this for a while, figured I’d take it online.

The intention is to improve a separate playstyle for Disc that focuses more on preventing damage than purely healing through Atonement while keeping the playstyle distinctly Disc. Disc is also slightly undertuned so there would also be a general buff.

Oracle - Disc

  1. Assured Safety (Rework) - Power word Shield Applies Renew to the target.

  2. Preventative Measures - Increase Shield by 40%.

Disc

  1. Aegis of Wrath (Rework) - Whenever your power word shield is fully absorbed your next smite becomes instant. Aegis swaps positions with Sanctuary

  2. Radiance (Rework) - Applies Power Word Shield at 30% Effectiveness and Atonement at 60%

  3. Contrition (Addition) - Healing an ally with Penance also refreshes Renew on the target and all allies with Atonement

  4. Renewing Wrath (New Capstone) - Smite consumes 3 seconds of your active renews on allies with Atonement, healing for the amount. Renew Heals for 20% more.

— Edited Version Based on Feedback
Oracle - Disc

  1. Assured Safety (Rework) - Power word Shield Applies Renew to the target. Renew Heals for 20% more

Disc

  1. Aegis of Wrath (Rework) - Whenever your power word shield is fully absorbed your next smite becomes instant.
    Aegis swaps positions with Sanctuary
  2. Radiance Rework Removed
  3. Contrition (Addition) - Healing an ally with Penance applies PtW to up to 3 nearby enemies
  4. Renewing Wrath (New Capstone) - Smite triggers healing from active renews on allies with Atonement.
2 Likes
2

I appreciate that Oracle Disc is getting at least some discussion. It’s really sad to see disc being dominated right now by Void Summoner. As somebody who really misses old school Disc priest, I feel like we are so close to being able to have that option again with Oracle but things are just a little undertuned.

I actually raided in normal mode Palace the other day as a pure healing Oracle Disc build that’s 100% talented in the left side of the tree, and I have to say I actually did much better than I thought I would. I parsed pretty well in terms of healing, but obviously I did next to no damage.

Here are my thoughts:

  1. Edit: Smite is already a pretty short cast so I’m not sure how much this would help. I can see it being useful in PvP but not sure about elsewhere. And the boost to PW:S really helps shield builds.
  2. Radiance is already very strong. Applying a mini PW:S seems a little over the top.
  3. This would be okay if Assured Safety applied Renew, but I find that I rarely cast Renew otherwise since Flash just heals for more in essentially the same cast window. Honestly I think Contrition could heal for just slightly more and it will be fine.
  4. I would love to see talents that interact with Renew for Disc, and this could be a cool option.

Here are some of my wishlist items:

  1. Borrowed Time (Buff or Rework): Right now I just can’t feel the 4 seconds of 8% haste. For two talent points this talent is real lame. This could possibly be changed to interact with Renew to speed up Renew ticks for a few seconds after casting PW:S, but I would also be fine if this talent just got buffed too i.e. to the original 15% haste it was back in the old days.
  2. Purge the Wicked (talent Reworks): I am so sick of Purge the Wicked eating so many talent points and barely doing anything in return. It’s okay in dungeons since I can multi-dot, but in raids this ability just blows. It would be nice if Purge was redesigned to be more focused for healer-style Disc and shadow-weaving disc priests could stick to using a more powerful SW:P.
  3. Harsh Discipline (Moved up Higher): This talent is absolutely mandatory for Disc Priests, much like Castigation. It does not feel good being located in the bottom bracket eating up two talent points. The bottom chunk of Disc in general could use some revamping in my opinion.

Overall I think Disc in general could use a revamp to better orient towards either going Oracle heals or Voidweaver Atonement.

2 Likes
3

For what it’s worth, the play style you listed is doing very well in PvP atm. Though I recognize that isn’t content everyone enjoys.

4

Thanks a lot for the feedback. :grinning:

  1. I think you might be getting divine aegis mixed up, Wrath is the capstone and gives an additional 30% but ticks down 3% a second. Honestly I feel like it just doesn’t fit as a capstone, though criting big shields is fun.
  2. This would replace the healing. Often I feel like the heal is wasted as it is being used in preparation for damage to apply atonement. This would be a slight buff that rewards smart play while also being thematic.
    3./4 I replaced prayer of mending because it is already a mainstay of Holy, it also doesn’t heal behind a shield, which creates a bit of weirdness. Renew on the other hand will help top people off and when combined with Renewing Smite would give good output to smite healing without just making smite hit harder. Contrition refreshing smite would make a bit of a rotation where you apply shields/renew > smite to consume > penance on an ally to refresh the renews + heal. By having it refresh renew you also don’t have to use an empowered pen.

Wishlist Responses

  1. I considered having it speed up renew but because shield applies renew I felt like it was too passive and moved towards smite consuming much like how you can spec mind blast to consume PtW. Really they just need to buff the haste or reduce it and make the shield give the haste to the player it is on.
  2. I think if they just squished some of the 2 point talents it would fix my complaints.
  3. Yea, they should just make pen fire an additional bolt baseline and remove one of the points in Harsh Disc. Having to cast radiance or mind blast to cast penance doesn’t feel great
5

Oh oops, yeah I got the two Aegis talents mixed up. That’s me posting late at night for ya.

6

I would not want AoW reworked as-is. It’s a pretty good talent when PW:S is good (it currently is) and is a PvP staple too.

As far as this proposed rework, there’s a couple things I see wrong with it.

First is that the entire thing is kinda hinging on the new ‘renewing wrath’ talent you’re proposing. Many of these other changes would be flat out nerfs if it weren’t for that talent. Oracle would basically become unplayable without this line, and Voidweaver would never look at it - but would get a nerfed radiance because of the change.

Second, this rework is pretty much universally a bad change for PvP. It’s heavily slanted towards solving PvE issues.

Renewing wrath itself is an interesting idea! But I know people do already kinda dislike expiation, and this is essentially expiation again but on Smite - so much better and more hectic in maintaining those renews (which again, only oracle would have an easy time doing because of that Assured Safety rework + Radiance rework).

Preventative Measures is already 40%, too. The tooltip is incorrect. :stuck_out_tongue:

Personally I also don’t think it really does what it sets out to do, either. It doesn’t create a new preventive-heavy playstyle, because you’d actually be lowering your preventative damage toolkit in order to make way for renew maintenance/consumption.

As far as my own thoughts on the spec (which can totally go ignored here - just wanted to throw my 2c in):

I think Oracle/Shield disc is already VERY close to being a competitive spec in dungeons - and to be honest is pretty good in PvP at the moment. I think one change that would immediately make it viable in dungeons would be

"Damage from Crystalline Reflection now heals all targets affected by Atonement for 35% of the damage done.

Crystalline Reflection also reflects damage absorbed by Divine Aegis and Premonition of Solace."

Already the spec is in a way better spot, but maintains the “classic disc” feel that Oracle seems to be shooting for. It allows the giant shields that Disc throws out to not be fully wasted when it comes to party-healing and gives about as much as a Smite or two would depending on the rest of your talents on each PW:S cast. Also Rapture becomes a way better AoE healing tool, because an AoE hitting your rapture shields would be a large burst of reflection healing.

7

So honestly I like what you are trying to do but I think you need some adjustments to focus what Oracle could be which is the sustained healing+mitigation healer.

Actually would be better to keep it as PoM imo but with a few adjustments this isn’t bad.

Actually instead of instant I would say it casts smite, IE the S3-4 set bonus and it would need to stay deep in the tree so Mindbender builds can’t really access it.

Instead of PW:R let is heal like it does now and apply renew. AoE/spammable shields has pretty much always been toxic and this wouldn’t be any different really.

Instead let each bolt of Penance spread Purge the Wicked to a new target, and refresh the DoT and extend the duration like it does now.

There is no real reason to give an an expiation like effect for renew. Smite should simply proc renew to heal on top of what it currently does. So for example ATM my renew heals for 25k, which simply put isn’t a lot. Smite with it, however, and you get the smite atonement healing as well as the 25k, or with the double smite proc, 50k additional healing.

With all those changes what you get is a fair amount of additional healing outside of your Penance “burst” window via the spread of Purge the Wicked and the additional renew ticks from smite. This gives Oracle higher constant healing compared to Voidweave while letting Voidweaver be the burst raid CD healing thing it seems to want to be.

Lastly I would change Sanctuary so that instead of smite preventing damage it instead increases the absorb amount of your next PW:S. So the spec now has big single target PW:S, with the ability to use Rapture/Insight to get shields on up to 9ish targets which allows it to have strong mitigation but not completely negate entire mechanics and make other healers wonder WTF they are there in the first place.

8

Disc has been fairly dead to me ever since they redesigned it for a very specific niche, but this makes me excited to try to throw together a weird disc build and see what it does.

My first hand at healing in this game was MoP disc and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart.

2 Likes
9

Maybe my thought process is wrong but the aegis of wrath change would replace sanctuary and would be a buff ( shield break → instant smite ) for voidweaver which always runs void summoner.

I was also considering the Radiance change a decent buff because PWS heals, Reflects Damage and can have longer atonement if specd for it. In terms of the build the radiance change could be removed as it was more of a thematic thing.

In regards to PVP, you may be right. I don’t know enough about pvp to argue but I was hoping the instant smites from Aegis would be better than sanctuary and renewing smite would be similar in power when 2 people have renew and more powerful over 2. My reading was that the Aegis of Wrath shield decay was 3% of the total shield while the bonus is 30% so the gain is lost by 3-4 seconds.

For Renewing Wrath, I mainly had the expiation effect to be thematic and to create a play style which all the other capstones do a good job of. Another response had a good idea which was to trigger renew healing from smites but not reduce the remaining time.

The instant smite was going to replace Sanctuary and was also intended to buff Voidweaver also. But rather than smite spamming in burst windows it would be a more consistent extra smite every 5 or so seconds. I think if it automatically cast it on the shield break it would be too strong.

For Renewing Wrath I had the expiation effect because I was worried it would be too strong. But based on other feedback your idea may be the way to go and I wanted contrition to be a healing effect to keep the differentiation between Penancing an Ally vs an enemy, though I don’t hate it spreading PtW.

I am going to do an updated version in the original post

10

I surprised how well I did! I had about 800k HPS on Broodtwister. My Rapture windows were monstrous, and Contrition proved quite strong in conjunction with raw Penance healing.

1 Like
11

I like oracle and really do not want it reworked at all. Its super fun in both pve and pvp. Just needs a bit more damage added to it in pve I think, but the gameplay is actually fun. Using premonitions correctly does a lot of healing/damage too, esp insight/piety.

12

Sure, voidweaver would take it, but only because it is at the top of the tree. It would not be a better talent for PW:S and would certainly be worse in PvP.

It’s a decent chunk of healing loss. Radiance is a Smart heal, so you’re rarely in danger of overheal on it unless you’re casting at full health - that’s where the absorb portion would be better. But a 40% nerf on the atonement effectiveness is VERY high, because we usually fit our highest burst there. :stuck_out_tongue:

As far as AoW I BELIEVE it does go off max - but it takes 9 seconds before that boost is gone. And if the target gets hit at all in that 9s, the 3% loss is lower, so it takes longer to hit the neutral point (also PW:S is only a 15s duration). Any target under pressure, you’re getting near full value.

13

Maybe I am under valuing sanctuary (40k dmg prevention per smite) vs instant smites from broken shields. The way I saw it 2 second cast for smite + 40k dmg prevented vs .5s PWS .5s Smite. Less spamable but better mobility and more smites per minute.

Otherwise the debate is 30% with 3% decay vs Smite causing renew ticks. In that case I think it leans towards the later after 3-4 targets. This is PVE focused though so other tuning may be needed to replace the lost power.

For the radiance change the 60% is the atonement duration, it is the same as it currently is. Ultimately the total shield/heal would be about the same amount as the current heal baseline but you could talent to make it stronger through the PWS talents

14

Ah, sorry, to be clear on what I meant - I’m saying it wouldn’t be a better talent than AoW for any build that might take it. Sanctuary is generally just not a super good talent at all.

With the context of radiance rework I think realistically it would just be a flat buff, which Disc doesn’t really need right now, considering it’s doing incredibly well in 30man (where it’s usually at its weakest). But I don’t think this would really make the difference for Oracle (though it would make reflective shield a mandatory talent). :stuck_out_tongue: