Searing Nightmare:
I stopped playing shadowpriest in CN. I think the new shadow is cool, but searing nightmare needs to be removed and changed so we have a propper AOE spender. It feels horrible in m+/open world with low haste in the start of the expansion, having to pool up insanity, then stand still for 2 abilities where it is a requisite that u can mind seer. Any mechanic in m+ and u feel bad on any difficulty of content. More than any other caster in my opinion. Open word also just feels bad having to sit and hardcast a weak spell in order for it to burst aoe. Please just remove it completely and change mind seer and searing nightmare to either be used seperatly or complement eachother not be required for eachother. I dont know a single Shadowpriest that likes m+ and most of them is because of lackluster feeling of AOE.
I got 6 words, Void Eruption as a standalone spender
Alright, I got some time to play a bit with new talents and here are some thoughts I got. I play discipline priest mostly, so my feedback will be centered around this spec.
Class Tree
- I’m not sure why discipline start with both PoM and SW:D, giving the spec 1 point advantage. Perhaps Holy starting with PoM + Renew and Shadow with SW:D and Shadow Mend would be fair to offer all priest specs equal number of points spent within trees.
- Holy Nova: depends how hard it hits, but if we work with current SL version, it hits like a wet noodle. I believe Legion version of the spell was the best we had in a long while - it did not heal, but dealt way more damage then now. Let’s return to that… nobody use Holy Nova to heal.
- Tools of the Cloth and Cleric’s Armaments feels very lacking. It should either give bigger bonus, or be triggered by Weakened Soul debuff.
- Leap of Faith: somehow, I think it would be super fun to have this choice node with standard Leap and Vault of Heavens legendary, so you either chose between grip utility and mobility
- Charitable Souls is extremely weak talent. Without Rapture, our shields are pretty weak, so getting 10 % of that would be hardly noticable
- Crystalline Reflection: this is actually welcomed comeback, but on this position within the tree, it feels rather underwhelming. Only discipline priest can make some of this talent, which makes it unattractive for both Holy and Shadow. I’d move this talent to Discipline tree and place Fae Guardians (perhaps redesigned to fit Priest theme better) in this position. Fae Guardains offered outstanding utility and I many players would like to see it stay in our kit.
- Taming Shadows: In most cases, you will rather spec into Masochism then this. I think something else would be better, perhaps Depth of the Shadows azerite trait (SW:P periodic dmg increase healing of SM, stacking up to 30 stacks).
- Translucent Image: also glad to keep this conduit, but I think it would be good to apply it for the whole duration of Fade, not just first 5 secs.
- Tithe Evasion: this is extremely uninteresting choice on a way to highly attractive Mindgames. We just don’t SW:D ourselves to death, so reducing SW:D backlash feels somewhat redundant. This deep within shadow part of the class tree we should get something more… juicy. Perhaps SW:D backlash restoring mana/insanity?
- Twist of Fate: this should trigger also from dealing damage to targets below 35%, not just healing
- Dominant Mind: this talent look really cool on paper, but it was impractical for years. It has no use in most of PvE content (besides open world questing I guess) and it’s disabled in PvP. I wish this would rather disorient the target instead of making it your pet, so you could actually consider picking it in certain arena comps or m+ for more CC.
- Throes of Pain: This seem to be OP for m+, resulting in close to infinite mana
Discipline Tree:
- First of all, return of PoM and Renew to our kit seems really nice at first, but I have my concerns about it. PoM can actually heal for nice amount targets with atonements through our mastery, with the benefit of spreading free renews. On the other hand, I’m afraid it just bring another thing to watch alongside our tedious atonement management.
Since the spell will be baseline for discipline, I think we could have some talents which incorporate it to the spec. Something like this:
Atoning Prayers
Your initial Prayer of Mending cast apply Atonement. When it jumps to other target, it applies atonement for half of it’s normal duration.
This would gave us mana efficient atonement spread mechanism, which is something discipline desperately needs. It wouldn’t make our raid builds OP, since PoM bouncing usually take some time, depending on encounter. - Shining Radiance: this talent is extremely weak. Current conduit increase PW:R by approx 80%, so spending 2 points for 20% feels very underwhelming and I guess many builds will just spend 2 points elsewhere in the tree. It should be at least 30/60% or should increase atonement duration at least.
- Shield Discipline: The talent is inferior to PW: Solace in most ways. To make it more competitive, it should restore some mana/rage/energy/focus/fury/runic power to it’s target.
- Pain Transformation: Again, very weak compared to the current conduit, which offers considerable heal. Healing 10% max health on 3 mins CD feels very weak. Another issue with this talent is that it can be taken even without PS, which feels weird. I think Crystalline Reflection would be better in it’s place, considering it leads to Rapture.
- Indemnity/Solatium: given how deep within the tree they are, 2 more secs atonements for their respective spells feel quite weak. I think these two could be inspired by PvP talent Trinity in way these talents would limit Atonement spread only to PW:S or Shadow Mend, but increase atonement duration considerably (in a case of Trinity, by 15 seconds). That would make these talents extremely impactful for flow of the spec and actually justify them as final talent choices of our tree.
- Light’s Wrath: with right part of the tree being heavily shadow oriented, I think it would be better to change Light’s Wrath from Radiant to Twilight damage (Holy and Shadow), especially when it’s centered in the middle off the tree.
First impression is very good. Im glad they’re doing a solid unpruning. It looks like it’ll be fun to have so many abilities and effects, and Ive been having loads of fun theorycrafting different builds and figuring out all the possibilities.
Things they could have done better:
- do talents like evenfall (radiance procs power of the dark side) work without having power of the dark side talented?
- do mindbender and shadow mend replace flash heal and shadowfiend?
- they should try to avoid talents being dead outside of one specific environment (e.g. extended atonement being primarily a raid talent, same with spirit shell/evang and harsh discipline. The lack of proper “tuning knobs” has been a big issue for disc for years now, where balancing them for raids has screwed them over in pvp and m+ many times. The fact that so many of these talents seem to be designed solely with a raid environment in mind, is very worrying. They need to be better at designing talents that either work twofold or simply dont revolve around amount of targets. Or give more choice talents where one option is raid oriented and the other pvp or m+.
- while its nice that holy and disc share some tools, I think holy getting access to shadow mend is gonna cause some issues in pvp. One of the few advantages disc has had over holy in pvp is access to different healing schools. If holy is gonna keep going down the same road we’ve seen in shadowlands, they definitely dont need yet another helping hand.
- theres quite a lot of active ability talents, which causes a lot of unnecessary stress when swapping builds, needing to reconfigure action bars and make clever macros etc. This could in some cases be toned down by having more abilities baseline and rather have talents to modify them
- there could definitely be some more balancing/number tweaking. Some talents seem very strong, some seem almost useless - even the supposedly “big ones”
Im confused by this. Can you elaborate.
Dragonflight talents - shadow baseline -shadowform.
Rest is pruned to talent tree. Yes you propably can talent it to get everything back…and by back i mean to the state we are now in shadowlands. But on the expense of the new stuff. To me this looks like a solid pruning. For the shadow though.
I hate that main shadow problems are aoe and searing nightmare beign the most unfun ability ever created to do aoe…and its damage is still bad. They didnt adress it and left SN untouched. Second issue was some meanibgful utility that will make our spec desirable. We now have alot of niche utility spells. But except soothe all are pruned to talent tree where you either dont have enough point to get them, or they are on the oposite side of the tree…or you would have to pick these in exchange for losing troughput talent - which shouldnt be the case- their word.
So why is shackle mass dispel silence stun vampiric embrace leap power infusion and mindcontrol in talent tree is beyond me. We got nothing to make us more desirable…quite the oposite …lost even the little we had.
I guess I could have specified that Im talking mainly from a disc pov. I havent looked much at the shadow tree.
As disc Id be able to get the following abilities on top of what I already have:
- renew
- pom
- schism
- shining force
- divine star
- holy word: life
On top of that Id be able to get effects/interactions like mindbender, prism, divine star silence and both masochism and b&s/feather. Even though Id have to sacrifice stuff like shackle in many cases (and depending on activity: mass dispel, leap, mind control) it doesnt feel too bad when its niche abilities with limited use. The abilities I gain will be used a lot more frequently and make the gameplay feel considerably smoother. Either way the net sum is way on the + side.
I’m also really hyped about various mana regen we get:
- Enlightenment provides solid 10% mana regen
- Throes of Pain gives 10% total mana back per enemy killed with SW:P up, which will be insane mana regen for M+ (will probably get nerfed before going live)
- Shadowfiend + Mindbender
- Inner Light gives 15% healing cost reduction
- PW: Solace and Shield Discipline also stays
Discipline was extremely mana hungry spec and this gives me hope we will not struggle so much in Dragonflight. With all that regen, I think I might try Shield Discipline after years, so I get one less spell in rotation (PW: Solace). We can have our shields reduce CD on Pain Suppression and with Crystalline Reflection, we get way more value for spaming them, so it might not be a bad idea.
I also like PoM and Renew back, but it might be a challenge to use them well with all the management going on… spam shields to spread atonement, spread PW:S/PtW on targets… now I can imagine maintaining renews could become quite a chore real soon. PoM with Benediction can complement our dungeon healing I guess, especially for some keys. It would be huge if PoM could apply atonements too, even in reduced duration like Radiance.
HW: Life could be really good for discs too. For PvP, it will be another CC break, so it might be hard to land some CCs on a priest now. I can imagine HW: Life + Twist of Faith can result in beefy heal, which is something disc lacks at the moment. HW: Life and then Radiance will possibly have potential to top your target in arenas, depending on numbers of the HW: Life…
Why are there way less choices in the holy tree than in the discipline tree? Disc seems way more fun tbf, there is not much variation in the holy tree - you end up taking 2/3 of all talents no matter which route you choose.
Gonna add some of my Mayonnaise here. 
Change Powerinfusion to selfcast and Twins of the Sun Priestess talent to 1 point be castable on others and 2 points get 100% of the effect for the priest itself if cast on others.
Swap Twins of the Sun Priestess with Crystalline Reflection maybe that would help with the conflict about Powerinfusion for Shadowpriest if you lose Mindgames for it if you go that route and would make Body and Soul vs Angelic Feathers more interesting.
It could also give the path between Mindgames and then Twins of the Sun Priestess more variety and make it more of a choice then a must.
Translucent Image make it that Fade in its full duration reduce the damage.
Further buff Tithe Evasion, Shadowword Death can really chunk you in situations where you dont want to but need to because of its damage and i think 20% is not helping that much.
If Mental Fortitude and Sanguine Teachings stays, i would add a healing increase on Vampire Touch for Mental Fortitude and for Sanguine Teaching an short lasting effect after the shield goes away like 5-10 sec.
Void Apparitions seems meh maybe let it reset all dots on enemies around the target to their full duration, but then 10% chance could be to high.
Can we change Mind Bomb to a 10 sec debuff that you can press again in this time to trigger its effect or when it runs out.
Dont change it for PvP but in PvE it could be a neat instead then of the Silence path.
San layn some flavor for Vampire Embrace can be nice like let it heal 1 more but for less of an effect.
Hallucinations should also change Vampire Embrace to an offgcd.
Im sorry for mistakes 
and also these are just some of my ideas.
Ellipsis made a really good post about SP impressions on WoWhead:
Very good text with many valid points and a lot of insight. A few comments:
- its very obvious that its written from a pve player pov (taking it for granted that the audience are raiders or m+ players). The comments on class tree make perfect sense from a pve pov. I personally think the idea of being able to go down the left side of class tree for pvp or solo pve purposes could be interesting. Even if you have to pick some “dead talents” to reach your destination, I think having such choices is what can ultimately lead to diversity and surprise builds. However I do absolutely agree that they could do a better job designing the healing side of the class tree and maybe implement more twofold talents giving some benefit to shadow. For instance unwavering will could apply to a shadow ability. Assuming you can still pom and renew in shadowform (pretty sure you could at some point in wows history
) it would be cool to see some interaction between renew healing and shadow dmg throughput, making pom with benediction talent a worthwhile investment in raid scenarios etc. I think the biggest room for improvement in the class tree is the shield path, both by tuning the existing talents and redesigning some of them into something new. - regarding the “more dmg while shielded talents”: I think these talents look really interesting. They might need more tuning to be desirable, but from a design perspective I think they’re really nice. Imo they shouldnt be talents where you mindlessly press shield on cd, but rather an occasional throughput increase that requires awareness and knowledge - and maybe luck
Nothing for dealing dmg? There are loads of talents for exactly that 
Both disc and holy look like they’ll be crazy fun in m+. Boon was imo both boring and poorly designed, so Im very happy they got rid of it.
Very strong points made by him, i hope Blizzard reads it and makes changes , atm shadow priest is a joke with the current talent trees.
A luck? Go fight any boss in shadowlands …dunegon or raid…or even to some pvp match and tell me how long you stay shielded with our 4k pw: shield…especialy when they are forcing us to play shadowflame prism…which is basicaly sending sw:dead on cd.
How do you wanna balance or tune that? You would need to be brokenly op full hp entire fight with shields from VT…or it will be completely useless…which is the case.
There is no boss where you stay 100% hp or even shielded in this entire expansion. No matter how you play or how much you try.
And if my class is balanced around buffs that i get from beign shielded…how do i manage to pull of the highest potential of the spec? Begging discs and monks before every fight to keep me shielded?
Nah. For me these are dead talents…like completely useless if you think about it a little. Shadowflame prism is the go-to playstyle…you wont be full hp or shielded ever.
I also love the points he made about making a disfunctional specs. You can make a build without shadowfiend, vt, dp or sn…so basicaly half the tree is about VT and aparations and mindblast procs from vt - no vt- useless. Every insanity boosting talent and entire toolkit useless because you have literaly nothing to spend it on. and rest of talents like yshar idol about bender/fiend …also literaly useless.
I dont know about raids in shadowlands, but in dungeons there are plenty of times, both on bosses and trash, where you wont take dmg. Swd has 20 sec cd? Sounds like plenty of room if you plan ahead.
For example? Bosses. You said plenty. Only boss i can think of that maybe doesnt do dmg if you arent bad is hakkias i HoA. And even if he doesnt…you will still delete that shield with sw death.
I would also like to point out the new evoker raid buff…that reduce cd of major movement speed. Every class have something.
Priest : leap of faith.
I mean i rofled on that one so hard…so were only class thats evoker raid buff useless for. You use leap so few times…that its always off cd when you need it.
Like why every time they do new expansion patch or introduce something new…for priests its always a headache…every time we get the short end of the stick…its never …omg this is so cool, this will be strong, this is neat and click together very well, this will be fun to play around with…it always a gigantic paragraph of feedback on badly designed changes and good old “wait and see” if they do something about it.
Or you hope you wont get nerfed yet again.
This could be fixed if you could talent into reverse leap of faith which is legendary in shadowlands -leaping yourself to somebody.
DoS is probably the only dungeon where all the bosses deal frequent dmg to everyone, but there’s still plenty of opportunities to use it outside of the boss fights there. In the other dungeons on the vast majority of bosses, there’s plenty of time where you’ll only take dmg if you’re targeted by a st boss mechanic (hence the luck comment). And yes, you might have to use the shield after your swd.
So in the middle of the burst you gonna spend gcd to shield yourself to maintain the buff…even though we are gcd capped curently with ability bloat and overcapped insanity + pray for rng to not get targeted by an ability which is in most cases 1:4. And it isnt true …there is vast majority of boses that pumps aoe to the group…frequent mechanic where praing to not get targeted because it would cost you 15% damage is a bit naive…
what about abilities that leave nasty dot on you, like on venturax in SoA? What about bursting? What about all the random stuff that even trash mobs pump into the group? Remember for your talent, you have to be full hp so the vt shield even starts to build up from insanely weak vt dot tick. What about if you miss some kick on mega pulls, miss the explosive…get hit by quaking, volcanic…griveous will tick on you etc etc…we are not robots ppl make mistakes…idk about any other class that "if not played perfectly gets punished -15% on main abilities.
Look theres nothing wrong in liking the idea…im just pointing out that the current itteration just wont work. Its just trash. And you know it too.
how is this a good design lol
why put SP through a hoop of “if you do this and that and this also happens then you get to do x”
whereas any other class literally just does “press x button for damage brrrt”
lol