I’m really digging the separation of talents for Class and Spec. Discipline is looking crazy swank right now. Here’s a few combos I’m dying to check out:
Improved Smite → Cleric’s Armaments → Charitable Soul → Crystalline Reflection from the Priest Tree, combined with Inner Light & Shadow → Lesson in Humility from the Discipline Tree looks INSANE! I’ve always wanted to see some high holy damage Disc., and with the new Penance options, and the epic return of Light’s Wrath, I may finally have my chance.
Holy Nova → Improved Holy Nova → Tools of the Cloth from the Priest Tree, along with Inner Light & Shadow from the Disc. Tree, looks pretty fun as well. I don’t see the reason for the complaints. I will say, I hope base Holy Nova is boosted a bit.
As for pure Discipline talents, I’ve also always loved Pain Suppression, so Protector of the Frail and Pain Transformation is going in my mix as well.
I’ve still got to dive into Holy and Shadow, but I’m liking what I see so far. The new auto-heal Lightwell and the Priest talent Holy Word: Life look like they’d make a good pairing. Anyway, I can’t wait to see the Paladin, Monk and Shaman trees!
That’s a fair point, but nonetheless it won’t stop the drama regardless. People are people, afterall.
Both yes and no, it’s both about parsing but it’s also about people wanting to do as much damage as possible, too. That includes prog during raids where people aren’t obsessing as much over parses and just wanna do the most damage they can.
Again, just making it a self only CD literally kills this before it even begins, and I see no point as to why they can’t just make it a self buff only, even for Holy or Disco Priests, as a mini lust on a 2 minute CD is a cool CD even for healers.
That and what Feral used to bring, Leader of the Pack, got removed a long time ago and was moved into the PvP only section. Feral used to be 1 of the only 2 specs for Stampeding Roar, but they made that a class wide utility spell, so Feral doesn’t bring anything at all, then whereas Balance and Resto got Feral’s utility but still kept theirs to themselves alone.
Yes and no, like it is but healers don’t make as much of a big deal about it or not that I’ve ever seen. When I join a pug on my Druid, when raids came out and even now, nobody ever whispered my Resto or Balance going “give me innervate” or asking me for it. Nobody spammed chat for it. Not a single mention of it was ever ushered in Discords about it.
When I join pugs or when I did raiding with guilds, with my guild as an alt night, etc. Every single time on my Priest I always was whispered by at least a few people about my PI, never once on my Resto or Balance for Innervate.
That’s why I said it’s not as big of a deal for that compared to PI. I still vote to make PI a self only CD, though, for all 3 specs.
I just dont care about drama, as I’ve said previously. That’s an issue with the players and they can travel that road of self realization by themselves.
Blizzard already said they like PI so i doubt its leaving, they specifically don’t want to limit their design space because of parse chasers. If it helps the group kill the boss they’re happy with it. Infact i expect to see more of it when they get to paladin’s neutral trees.
Also Shadow is so lacking in meaningful utility compared to other ranged dps removing it just seems like a nerf compared to just giving them PI with twin suns and letting the rest of the dps fight amongst themselves.
I feel the same, which is why just making it a personal CD literally removes the drama before it even starts lol. That’s why I said just make it a personal CD to those players instead of one that can be casted on others.
Yeah, I can see that. Thus, just making it a personal CD solves every aspect of this; it keeps the spell in the game, it keeps drama to a minimum over who gets PI and who doesn’t, it keeps people feeling good because a lot of players feel awkward or bad having to give their own CD to someone else instead of themselves. That’s just awkward to a newer player, and yeah… It also fits in, as aside from Innervate, no other spell is given out like that that I’m aware of; it’s just Innervate and PI, so yeah.
I mean, you don’t need to have meaningful utility like that. Them being able to DPS heal with Vampiric Embrace, like how Druids heal through Convoke, is pretty awesome.
And it’s not like Shadow has to throw in heals, it’s just them DPS healing which is much better for them.
They specifically said they like the External nature of it and how it can influence group dynamic so making it personal only defeats their design desire.
A weakened soul style mechanic for PI when cast on someone else seems more inline with what they want. Prevent the 10 PIs back to back while still letting it be a group buff to manage.
I dont think the nonreallypassive healing they do is enough utility, they can already do that and they’re still represented poorly when there damage isnt top tier. If they were giving back mana or had a mini shroud or even mindbomb back to stun then sure they wouldn’t need PI, but druid has mass roots, stealth, brez, mark, vortex, trees (balance) stampede, incap, etc. on top of the passive healing that no dps druid should be using convoke for outside of major heal checks or downtime.
Looks like fun overall, a few things I noticed while looking at the trees:
Priest tree ability Unwavering Will should probably include Shadow Mend & Power Word: Radiance in it’s buffed abilities. I know its the holy side of the tree but it’s possible for Disc to go there and it seems to be much more useful for Holy than Disc.
Holy tree’s right side seems mostly focused on damage. Which to me says as holy you don’t have a ton of choice on playstyle. Either you’re damaging while healing or you’re healing and… don’t we already have a spec for that?
Shadow tree: will Void Touched be useful without having Void Eruption selected? If not this seems like a misstep. Should be a possible option.
Shadow Tree’s Rot and Wither doesn’t seem quite powerful enough. Maybe this will even out during play though. Just doesn’t seem great on paper.
Lastly Shadow’s Idol talents sound actually kinda awesome… visually. But they all appear to be passive increases and I worry that you would end up picking one over the others just due to a sim result. In a system designed around choice I would like to see these a little more interactive. But excited to playtest!
*Edit: Inner Light and Shadow looks really cool but adding in another global every 6 seconds to a pretty tight every second matters rotation that is Disc seems like it might be a maintenance nightmare.
I agree with most others in that PI isn’t good for the game in the state it is in. The self-cast is a cool idea in that I could then use as either a healing CD or a damage CD for myself. I strongly disagree with everyone talking about FC though, the gameplay that has come from this expansion with FC is not engaging at all even though it is strong. I would much rather go to a place with Holy where instead of just using flash heal to get to 5 stacks then healing the rest of the time to having all my different abilities impactful to use. I am in the minority when I think lightwell is actually kind of fun class fantasy wise, but it just needs to be made SIGNIFICANTLY stronger than it was in the past
Their design philosophy can be wrong, just like what happened to Covenants. This time let’s root for them listening to feedback from players because there’s probably an overwhelming majority that dislikes how externals have worked for the entirety of Shadowlands.
It’s not like people are advocating for them to remove it, ridding the Priest class of one of their most powerful tools. We just want it to be self-cast only.
Other classes have been nerfed because of PI. The headache is just not worth it.
They also specifically stated that people would love covenants, too, and conduit energy, yet an overwhelming majority of players did not enjoy their system designs and philosophies, to the point that they “pulled the ripcord” so to speak.
What blizzard wants and what the players playing the game actually feel are 2 different things, and while what blizz wants/says / goes sometimes ends up being good, a lot of the times it actually ends up bad from a player’s perspective.
I assume you meant about my Shadow Embrace thingy. And yeah, people float to the FotM specs for the top damage.
I actually wouldn’t mind them being able to do this. Like, every time a DoT ticks or something, a healer gets back 0.5% mana, so all 3 DoTs ticking gives them back 1.5% mana wouldn’t be absurd, would it or were you referring to the Hymn of Hope thing to give people mana back for a channel?
I’d rather just every DoT they cast that ticks gives back a certain amount, up to a certain point and it cannot go beyond that. Putting a cap on it, like for example they can’t give healers more than 1.5 or 2% mana back per 10 second period or something, to where over a full 10 minute boss fight it’s a lot of mana but it’s not a lot during a 1-2 minute boss fight.
There are a lot of these, which are all extremely extremely niche.
Mass roots is hardly ever taken, as people prefer HotW for more damage. It’s taken on Necrotic weeks or the ghost spawnies weeks, bout it unless they’re just doing it cause they like it. Sometimes I use it cause I’m being lazy and don’t care to actually swap talents, but it’s never used, it just stays there as a talent so it’s basically a dead talent.
Stealth doesn’t work during combat unless you’re Night Elf and use racial to get out or you’re feral with their incarn. Brez is nice utility, yeah. Mark doesn’t exist in PvE currently, but yeah in Dragon it will be coming back. Trees is as you said, a Balance only thing and is only taken for mythic+ and usually only for Necrotic week to help the tank, otherwise it doesn’t get taken in favor of the other 2 talents, so again they’re all extremely extremely niche utility.
This is only if you have bear affinity, and by DF talents only if you want it. A lot of players will not be taking this talent, though, which yet again means it’s gonna be a mostly dead talent.
Yeah lol I fully agree, if it’s a self only buff it’s fine to stay. If not, it should be removed from the game.
I think this will be fine in raids where bosses live for a long while, and won’t be so useful in dungeons.
A balance druid can have all of it at outside of Incap/usols at the SAME time and theyre not that niche, stealthing past skipped mobs for wipe recovery or just death skip in general 3/4 of bfa, trees every necrotic week pre-nerf for tanks and still now, Aoe silence for literally any dungeon with casters soothe for raging weeks.
It’s not just druids, ele shamans get an on demand tank, tremor totem, healing stream, the best interrupt in game, an aoe stun, a passive stun from their main aoe damage source, slows, immunity to slows as a dog, group sprint a hard single target cc.
Meanwhile Spriest still have to choose between a disorient that should be a their old stun and replaced their aoe fear or a single target stun on a long cooldown, they desperately need more. The old mana battery archetype is fine and was even my favorite version of Spriest back in the day, the ability to replace rogues or invis with their own shadowy themed shroud, keeping PI to toss on themselves and someone else, their off heals being actually passive outside again instead of tied to a cooldown.
I began my World of Warcraft journey in The Burning Crusade. The re-introduction of Talent Trees, albeit modernized, is a really great move imo. Dont allow this system to languish in any way, keep it up to date and add to it. It will help bring the game out of the mire many players find it in. Thank you devs!
Again, very niche because it’s only on necrotic week is what I am saying. Necrotic is the reason for it and Necrotic isn’t every week, nor every other week. There’s many affixes that come outside of Necrotic, thus making it a niche utility.
See, like honestly, I just hate the idea of skipping around things. Like, as a personal thing I detest this kind of gameplay. I’ve seen it so many times in pugs where you skip using WO or using invis pots/rogue, get to a point, then wipe and well now you have to go through it the normal way whereas you could have gone through it the normal way and then if you wiped, you got everything in your way dead already.
I get where you’re going, I agree, Shadow needs more utility, Priests need more utility, I think, too.
Blizzard please… this is bad. This is so so so bad.
For a shadow priest there are 29 (of 31) dmg throughput increasing talents in the class tree. Which leaves you with TWO points to spend on any of the leftover utility or healing stuff.
On the shadow side of the tree, it is COMPLETELY bloated with dmg throughput choices. You literally get to take ONE utility/defensive option in silence, the rest of your points will be going to dmg.
In summation your plan for shadow priests in dragonflight is:
-Lose dispersion
-Lose vampiric embrace
-Lose both of Stun/30s silence option
-Lose both of Mind Bomb/30s fear option
-Must take mind control/dominant mind to maintain a passive stat buff
-Must cast PI on other players instead of as a self cooldown