Feedback: Priests

In Development Midnight Beta Test
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This thread is dedicated to leaving feedback on Priests in Midnight. Look in this thread and in the Midnight Alpha Development Notes for adjustments and bugfixes made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Apex Talents

Many Apex Talents are available for playtesting and may be selected using specialization tree points in the final specialization tree node. The current User interface (UI) is temporary for playtesting purposes and will be replaced with a final UI later in development. As with any test cycle, we will be adding more Apex Talents to the test over time and not all will be available with the start of the alpha test.

To help us refine Apex Talents, please consider the following questions as you playtest:

  • How gameplay-impacting, exciting, and fantasy forward is your Apex Talent to you?
  • Are your Apex Talents and new Hero Talents meeting the approachability goals laid out in our Combat for Everyone in Midnight article?
  • Are there cases you would consider not selecting your Apex talent?
  • Does the Apex talent disproportionally favor a particular talent build or Hero Talent tree?

For feedback regarding the changes on making the combat system more approachable for players of all skill levels, leave your feedback in the Combat Approachability feedback thread.

Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback and are very excited for you to test out all the changes in Midnight!

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Discipline

The primary aim of Discipline’s changes in Midnight is to consolidate and remove cooldowns and damage/healing modifiers to make base spell casts feel strong. With removing Schism, Shadow Covenant, and several supporting talents, we can focus on Mind Blast, Penance, and Shadow Word: Pain dealing solid consistent damage, so you can access chunky burst healing on a more consistent cadence. Evangelism has also been redesigned as a way to quickly apply Atonements to allies in raids, providing a much snappier way to ramp up your area of effect healing. The result should be a smoother gameplay experience that requires a little less planning and aura tracking, but still retains depth.

Holy

In Midnight, we are removing a few medium cooldown spells and tracking aura from Holy and increasing the power of existing spells to improve consistent healing. We’re aiming for individual spell casts to feel powerful even outside of cooldowns.

We are also removing some longstanding casted spells, Renew and Heal. Renew is now only triggered through talents like Benediction and Lasting Words. It hasn’t been an ability that is a priority cast outside of talents like Empowered Renew, so we felt it was a good time to depart with the casted version. We are adding talents for mana management in cases where mana management is important like in raids and PvP. Outside of a couple talents, it was often more of a rotational decision to use Heal over Flash Heal so we feel this is a good consolidation for the specialization.

We’re redesigning the Oracle tree with the intent to provide a more approachable experience by removing Premonition and replacing it with a second charge of Prayer of Mending and other bonuses to the spell. We want Holy to continue to feel like one of the most approachable healers, so these changes are aimed at accomplishing that.

We’re excited to share a new talent that replaces Holy Word: Sanctify to cause Holy Word: Serenity to also heal nearby allies within 40 yards when cast and causes all Holy Word interactions with Sanctify to apply to Serenity instead. We feel this will be helpful for situations where allies are often spread out or wanting one less ability to manage.

Shadow

The changes to Shadow in Midnight are focused on simplifying some of the cooldown launch sequence as well as the frequent number of high priority procs in the rotation for Shadow. We are also updating the fantasy and visuals of their core spells to create a consistent theme of using the power of the Old Gods to haunt your enemies.

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A couple of initial personal thoughts on the feel of spriest (others may feel very differently):

  • I like most visuals but shadowy apparitions looks incredibly dated next to the newer abilities, it’s almost jarring
  • Would really like to see a bit more self healing/leeching-off-enemies for open world to be a more attractive spec to play vs just going for a class with a tank spec (looking at the DH with the shiny new void spec…)
  • I haven’t found void form particularly fun, I’m not sure I’m a fan of spells being locked out only to this as well.
  • Big tentacle is cool. That said, i hope rather than focussing on ‘old gods’ specifically, i hope we lean into lovecraftian ‘unknowns’ from the void. We know old gods. We’ve kicked their butts a lot by now, so they’ve lost a bit of their edge, in my opinion.
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Feedback: Holy Priest

Mana issues

Seeing the removal of Symbol of Hope and Shadowfiend as well as the Flash Heal - Heal playstyle of Lightweaver in lieu of one that builds on Prayer of Healing, it is much too easy to become mana starved as holy, furthermore pushing players into taking Meditation and Healing Focus in the holy tree. I do believe the mana issue is in need of tuning (Flash heal and Prayer of Healing mainly) though I believe a more fundamental issue is to blame.

Lack of flexibility

Having always been seen as one of the most on demand healing specs in WoW, Holy’s toolkit being pruned down to as little as 4 rotational spells in some builds, is a stark contrast with other specs like Mistweaver or even Discipline.

The complete thought pattern of holy boils down to “Heal 1 or more players? Urgent or not urgent?” To choose Serenity or Flash Heal/ Prayer of Healing with Prayer of Mending on cooldown. This comes after the removal of Circle of Healing and Holy Word: Salvation in TWW and now the removal of Renew and Heal. Moreso Circle of Healing is semi reintroduced in the new “Ultimate Serenity” talent but at the cost of “Sanctify”, and with Halo being Archon only with no option to take Divine Star (not to mention PW: Life, Shield,…) we have reached a point where the spec has been pruned too far, much too far actually.

Mobility is severely lacking, reactivity has slowed down, Apotheosis loses value when there are less spells contributing to it in the various scenarios and Divine Hymn is still lagging behind as a cooldown due to its mobility restraints.

Holy Priest Utility

To put it bluntly… there is none… nothing that holy brings can not be brought by discipline and additionally holy does it with less mobility, less damage reduction and a less flexible toolkit. The spec is completely overshadowed by its sibling who despite its popularity is so drastically different that it is at this point inexcusable to not tune both to the extent that one does not render the other irrelevant, especially not when a key PvE pillar of the game (M+) is seeing a market brought to us by other developers.

Suggestions for improvement

With the newly embraced playstyle that sees Prayer of Mending as the bread and butter of Oracle, I think of the Mists of Pandaria’s talent “Divine Insight” and believe it to be a powerful tool to add into the holy priest toolkit, adressing mobility, lack of buttons to press and interacting well with “Voice of Harmony” to enable more frequent serenity usage in a build where “Ultimate Serenity” is played.

Personally I would also add back Circle of Healing as a cheap (5th or 6th) spell that can be used rotationally, has fundamentally always been a holy priest staple and could fit extremely well within the Benediction/Archon package of having many golden ripples that create AoE effects on multiple party / raid members.

Of course I further encourage mana tuning to make sufficient Prayer of Healing casting possible.

I am starved of a good holy exclusive utility idea or replacement cooldown although i’d argue in a raid environment, Salvation would outperform Hymn and lacking the option to take it is regrettable.

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Honestly, by changing Devouring plague by Shadow Word of madness is a big mess for pvp.

In a time where dispell are really powerfull (as always be in fact) it’s more impactfull for Midnight for the Shadow Priest.

Blizzard, are you planning to do something really incapaciting for healers or any stuffs which can remove Vampiric Touch ?

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Feedback: Shadow Priest

Experience and thoughts until now:

I would like to give my feedback as well as a shadow priest main since 2011, who has been doing dungeon, raid and world content. More specifically I’m a mythic+ and a mythic raid enjoyer, so some of my feedback is walking this line and might not be applicable for people who don’t push higher keys or mythic raid going into midnight.

The problems I see in TWW and would have liked to be adressed in Midnight are the surviveability in higher content, movement and the button bloat in our opener. I’ll talk about these points later again since in terms of movement and surviveability, we have experienced a true downgrade thus far and no improvements.

Talent Trees: Priest

There’s a serious talent node bloat in our class tree, that leaves a lots of talents but only a few interesting or truly considerable choices for us. Especially the right side of our talent tree is dominated by talents that are enhancing our Fade spell. It doesn’t feel good spending a handful of talent points in minor increases until you finally reach the bottom of the tree where it becomes noticeable. Other classes have a more thoughout tree with more impactful changes.

I’d like to see a rework on the class tree and overall pruning to bring us to a similar talent node number to other classes. This would leave more space for interesting talents to take us on similar ground to mages and warlocks.

Talent Tree: Shadow Priest

The theme of talent node bloat continues in our spec tree, where I see three main issues:

  • Issue 1: We have to spent 8 talent points for shadowy apparitions to make them impactful. This should be pruned down to a smaller number and increased in power. Since our apex talents are dedicated to apparitions, a rework on apparition talent nodes is the right way forward. As an example, the talent beneath Tentacle Slam is a 300% dmg increase. Why is it not possible with apparitions?

  • Issue 2: Shadowfiend for now is a fire and forget spell and is only talented to get access to subservient shadows, which seems mandatory for us in relation to our idols. The position is awkward because it doesn’t connect to our summon talents.

  • Issue 3: The misery change is also very bad as you have been told by several other people across platforms and regions. I mention it here as well and wish for this change to be removed. Honestly if the talent wasn’t needed to reach the buttom of the tree, I simply wouldn’t talent it.

In terms of visuals and gameplay, our two idols N’zoth and Y’shaarj don’t feel exciting to proc. Especially idol of Y’shaarj feels more punishing than rewarding since the buff is barely noticeable, while the debuff is ugly to play with. Here needs to be worked again, because our tentacle slam procs this one too with our apex talents.

Overall some choice nodes are not equal and pressing you into one choice. This is especially the case with the talent that buffs our voidform. The extension is better since the buff to our dmg in Voidform isn’t big enough to justify a shorter duration.

Hero Talent Tree: Void weaver

I love playing voidweaver and I’m very happy with how it turned out since it’s satisfying to play and has interesting visuals thanks to rift and voidblasts. But the rift is too slow for fast bosses and especially in dungeons, where the rift trails behind and can’t do any damage. It’s frustrating in dungeons, because there’s no smart way to play around it.

There’s also a bug that makes the game crash in beta: When voidblast clips voidtorrent. Please fix that issue.

Hero Talent Tree: Archon

It has been severly gutted in comparsion to TWW archon and is way less engaging to play due to the removal of void bolt that gave the gameplay loop a nice rhythmic feel. The first seconds, when halo is up, it’s fun to play but as soon as insanity procs are all gone, you are only waiting for mindblast to come off CD, shadow word: madness to be castable or to press tentacle slam. It feels very slow and unengaging to play.

Void volley is fun to press but not frequent enough to be a true replacement for void bolt which I already miss dearly. I suggest removing the shadow word: death talent in the archon tree and replace it with a talent that lowers the CD of void volley further to give archon an more interesting gameplay loop without impacting void weaver.

Without void bolt, the spec feels quite stationary, which might become a problem in dungeons and movement intense raids.

Problem 1: Void form and Cooldowns

I already said it above but void form has been gutted too much and is only a shadow of what it once was. First of all, it doesn’t stack with shadow form and thus entering void form only grants 5% more spell damage (archon) or none at all (void weaver) and this should actually stack and not replace. Right now on beta it doesn’t change the feel and has more the feel of a new visual with no impact and that’s not satisfying to press. It doesn’t feel good entering it, but at the same time it feels terrible not to be in it either. As I said, the removal from void bolt only adds to this feel and even more so in situations in which we have to press AoE and have to maintain our dots. Another thing I would like to see aside from stacking our spell damage and dot extension, I would love to be able to cast void form without cast time.

Shadowfiend lost its usefulness a long time ago and right now remains a wasted talent point that we only invest to get to the talent beneath it. It doesn’t feel good to press and doesn’t do anything for us because it doesn’t interact with the rest of our kit. I liked the tier set that made attacks of our fiend proc our Shadowword: Death, that was at least interesting and fun.

Power word: Infusion is nice on paper but doesn’t feel like a personal CD and more an utility for other people. I would rather have this baked into void form in the theme of mass hysteria from Legion, which made void form fun and engaging to play. As of now, it contributes more to button bloat as well, even though it’s useful in its own way.

I want to talk here about our overall problem with openers and your decision to slim down our launch sequence in our opener. Currently on beta, you have not reached this goal and have effectively removed one button of 7 we have to press before we can actually engage with the encounter.

Our launch sequence in beta (order can be changed due to talents and what not):

tentacle slam > (halo) > shadowfiend > void form > (racials) / trinkets) > power word:infusion > (void torrent)

We have to press 6 button until we can engage in our rotation and in many cases bloodlust is already running. This can be slimmed down further by making shadowfiend optional and baking power word: infusion into our voidform. To note is here, that our dmg curve is mostly flat at this point, so this feels even more punishing.

Problem 2: Movement

Our movement currently is bad even with body and soul and feathers talented and in comparison to other classes in our range (i.e. warlocks and mages), our mobility can’t keep up with the others. It has been a long time joke that priests are the wheelchair class and honestly this should tell you everything you need to know. Movement becomes especially difficult in combination with weak defenses, making every time you have to move out of an especially dangerous puddle or indicator a stressful situation. In cases you have to be resuces by other classes and this feels bad.

We have been cut down in our movement further by the removal of SW:P and void bolt, leaving no real means for us to bridge phases in fights in which we have to move. This is especially frustrating since we are already the slowest class in the game. While mages and warlocks can blink out of it, we have to crawl.

We have been asking for door of shadows for a while and I still stand by this to give us an ability that allows us to teleport as well.You have amazing inspirations from void elves and now devourer demon hunter.

Problem 3: Defensives

We are the squishiest class in the game, having three defensives we can trigger by ourselves (Dispersion, Fade and Flash Heal, if talented).

Dispersion feels more punishing than rewarding since you are unable to cast and your void form keeps ticking down. 70% dmg reduction for this doesn’t feel good. It’s also on a 2 minutes CD. Fade has a cooldown, which would be fine if we gained more than 10% dmg reduction from it. If talented to remove roots, you don’t want to waste this spell on dmg reduction either. Flash Heal just feels incredibly punishing to press for a 10% dmg reduction effect. It has cast time and prevents us from doing what we are told to do: doing dmg.

It leaves us very vulnerable to damage overall and we have the highest death rate in mythic raids. Healers in mythic+ currently are amazed how squishy a shadow priest is while I keep my flash heal dmg reduction buff up all the time.

It has been more difficult to stay alive even in world content in beta because of our severe cutdown on self healing on which we relied. I always felt like the deal was weak defenses but strong self heal. Now both is weak and it makes questing and just hitting mobs tedious.

Going into Midnight, I would love seeing something to help us in that regard and take us on the level of our competitors, mages and warlocks. I would also love for you to take a look at our self healing again.

Problem 4: Shadow Priest Fantasy

As a shadow priest I feel entirely removed from lore and story and this hits especially hard in my class pride because of the franchise villain, who is not only linked to us but is also a priest in Hearthstone. With the direction Xal’atath is going, I have hoped we too would lean more into the cosmic void, but this theme has been given to the new demon hunter spec.

At this point in my feedback I also want to vent my grievances with this because it feels like that this spec has been taking all our development time in alpha and before, leaving us (what feels like) a husk. It’s insulting to tell us we can’t have this gameplay style anymore because it’s hard to balance just to give it to demon hunter and having no ideas for shadow priest.

You want to push us now into the old gods theme, which wouldn’t be bad lorewise but your lore writers established that the old gods are dead. From a lore perspective, how does this work? The decision reads more like “tentacle cool” than “this is very fitting for what we have established so far”.

Personally I don’t want to be a tentacle mage and rather worship the void, like holy and discipline priests worship the light. There’s no reason to dig up the occult now, when it hasn’t been a part of the game since BFA and has no option right now to return. Thus, it feels like we are not part of the story or even the franchise anymore.

Adding to this our visuals still don’t match our overall theme and this has been an ongoing wish from the community: voidify or shadowify our shield, our power word: infusion and our flash heal, please! When discipline priests get void shields, there’s no reason for us to not have some visual change as well. It’s literally already in the game. There’s also still desparity between our spells in terms of visuals with some visuals being blue, purple and even black. I personally would love to go into the blue or black direction to keep it in line with our theme and the void theme you have been establishing since Dragonflight.

Problem 5: Communication

I’m disappointed about the communication with priests in general and especially with shadow priests. The development is entirely disconnected with the needs of the community and their wishes, which makes me wonder for whom the spec even is since it looks like no dev is playing shadow priest for more than an hour or two either. I don’t want to be mean with this, but you have received a mountain of feedback that even writes the spec for you yet we have not received a single line of feedback or thoughts on the matter. This feels especially frustrating because other classes and specs have ongoing conversations with the dev team.

As a shadow priest I feel left out and like the ugly step-child.

Going forward I would love for these things to be adressed:

  • what are your ideas and want the spec to go?
  • an update on our visuals to keep a continous theme
  • Reversal of the misery change
  • Help for Archon
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Great changes except 2 big misses for PvP

Removing stun- how are you going to set up CC ? revert it

Removing Void Shift - why? if you wanted to prune, remove something like leap or feathers rather

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  1. The loss of self healing from Shadow Word: Madness Mental fortitude is now very low. Need to drink between every pull ….

  2. Voidform is not even a CD anymore, need alot more power attached to it and a better visual impact. Now it just replace shadowform more or less, no fun in pressing a 2 min CD, that is just wrong….. Need to be on top of shadowforms dmg increase atleast, ideas can be ramping haste, dot extension, more void apparitions spawning, buffed idol procs…. So many opportunities to make this an awesome spell….

  3. Archon is just plain broken, no fun, so many lost interactions now with MF:I gone.

  4. Button bloat in opener. Get rid of PI, bake it ointo voidform or something, and also shadowfiend. 3 min cd and its doing nothing. Please replace it and make it a fun button to use….

  5. The lack of communication is scary…. We had our new stuff first alpha, then more or less nothing for the rest of alpha and barely anything first week beta? We are missing points and I really hope you are cooking and looking at our feedback. We want shadowpriest to be the best of the best and I know you can do it if you listen to the community <3

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Why does “Plea” in Discipline tree even exist?

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I suppose is a way to apply atonment if you are moving? Power Word: Shield has a CD, Flash Heal and Power Word: Radiance has cast time.. so basically plea can be like a “filler” spell while moving

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It’s not worth the talent point though. Why would you waste a talent point on something you might only do sometimes? During movement you have PWS, Flash Heal instant cast procs and Penance. Penance now applies Atonement on your target, if you are playing Oracle (which tbf is what you should play now, it’s insanely strong with Void Shield) then you can even Penance an enemy and still apply Atonement on an ally since it cleaves.

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No according to the talents it doesnt. And it has 0 modifiers atm

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I am sure there will be lot of tuning and changes until release. Its still too early. Every week you see tons of changes to classes. I agree that Plea feels unnecessary now and definitely not worth a talent point, but it may be buffed. we ll see