Vault of Heavens (Fly to Target) as a stand-alone ability (as a choice over Angelic Feather) in the Talent Tree

Classes Priest
1

One of the biggest negatives for priests right now is movement - they are a bit behind compared to other classes.

For those unfamiliar, back in Shadowlands - Vault of Heavens (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=336470/vault-of-heavens) was an ability that let you leap/fly to a target, and had 2 charges. It was a super fun ability.

A comment was made a while ago by Blizz concerning Vault of Heavens: https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-on-current-state-of-priests-healer-priests-will-not-have-access-to-328843

They state here:

"Vault of Heavens

This was discussed early on with this iteration with the intent to add it as a choice against Leap of Faith . Upon further consideration, Vault of Heavens is almost always more useful than Leap of Faith. But Leap of Faith is one of the more fun interactions in WoW. It changes your perspective on the battlefield. You’re always ready to react to save someone. And of course, it has some clever uses to get your friends killed. If we allow for the choice, the choice is clear, or we’d have to nerf Vault of Heavens down to something that won’t feel very powerful. The fantasy of the Priest leaping to their target doesn’t match our expectations for a Priest either, so we instead separated Body and Soul from Angelic Feather for a little extra movement support and kept Leap of Faith as a standalone."

I’d like to counter-point to these two bolded statements and propose: Instead of making it a choice against Leap of Faith (which I agree, is a staple ability for priests - I love having it), make Vault of Heavens a choice against Angelic Feather in the talent tree , and balance Angelic Feather to make the choosing between the two compelling. So you’d have to choose between having Angelic Feather or Vault of Heavens . In terms of numbers/balancing the movement of a priest across an in-game space over time, there should be a way to balance the choice between these two so that they are somewhat balanced between each other (making Vault of Heavens have only 1 charge, slightly buffing Angelic Feather if Vault of Heavens remains at 2 charges, making Vault of Heavens only work on party members, etc. I don’t know the best way to balance the two, just throwing stuff out there for the team).

As far as the leap “not matching expectations for a priest,” priests already thematically have an ability that sprouts wings and makes them fly in the form of a PvP talent called Divine Ascension (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=328530/divine-ascension). So having Vault of Heavens to fly to a target or teammate is right up the alley. Also, while I understand this is WoW and it is its own game, it is still interesting to note that this almost-exact ability has been present in healer roles of other games for a long time - Mercy (from Overwatch, using the ability Guardian Angel) or Sage (from FFXIV, using the ability Icarus).

I’m not here to discuss priest DPS/HPS/Throughput/Performance across PVP/PVE or its balancing needed to account for this change (if any), but specifically making the point to address priest MOVEMENT. I think this would be a good way to bring back a super fun ability and give more options for priest movement.

Thoughts?

edit: typo

2

Vault of heavens would be okay, but because it requires other players I like it less. And not just that, it requires the other players to also be where you want to be, and for them to get there first (meaning if the whole group is moving together, all you can do is wait).

I’d personally much rather have door of shadows.

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Personally I think it’s rather silly that they specifically restrict the use of using Leap of Faith or in this case Vault of the Heavens alongside Void Shift with our Shadowfiend/Mindbender.

I get it that it pretty much makes them mostly useless in team play because you can pretty much opt out of it but still think that it should remain a players choice and not hard coded by the devs to just not work.

If you need to save someone then using it with your pet is not going to happen. But if your doing something solo like delves / Torgast type things then those are useless to even talent into since you can’t benefit from it.

So the more you choose to play the game in solo style content, the more being a Priest in doing these is a liability because so much of our utility revolves around required to be in a group setting.

I think continuing down this route of game design is a vestige of old concepts dated back to classic where it was quite challenging to solo compared to modern wow.

Probably going on deft ears but I would hope that this group only restriction type spells will be revisited with a modern solo gameplay lens.

4

Door of Shadows would be absolutely perfect for Priests. Capstone is general tree. Make the spell effect purple.

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5

Honestly while Door of Shadows is fun I wish we had something to do with void portals for a mobility spell. Like you step into a void portal and become untargetable for like 1-3 seconds, during which you could select a new location to appear. Door of Shadows was such a shadowlands flavored ability just like the turning into a fox thing from the faerie covenant I would prefer something that actually felt more priest like.

2 Likes
6

That would be like having to choose between our defensives and penance/Serenity. Having a defensive is a core part of not just priest, but any class, and you can’t strip it out to force a Hobson’s choice and pretend a free choice is being offered. You simply end up with a busted spec.

A basic movement buff skill is another core part of every single class. You can’t replace it with a fast redeployment skill. That’s not a real choice.

A priest without feathers would be unplayably crippled in the vast majority of game content unless the CD of Vault of Heavens was so low that it functioned as a core movement skill, and if it did then priest mobility would go from bottom of the barrel to near the top, albeit in a very gimmicky way, which I doubt they’d ever do.

If they want to offer a choice for Vault of the Heavens it has to be against something you could actually sometimes do without.

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7

It’s funny blizzard argues the removal of vault of heavens when they literally have the same effect for healers in their other games.

I didn’t like door of shadows personally, but a stronger version of the void elf racial or vault would be ideal imo.