Pruned spells
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Renew: I don’t mind losing this, it cleans up the rotation and reduces bloat
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Shadow word: Pain: This hurts a bit as we used it to poke totems. Would be glad if it stayed, not devestated for losing it.
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Shadowfiend: Glad to see it go, boring button and they can rebalance the mana elsewhere
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Power word: Shield: It’s like SW:P, would be happy to see it stay and I’m fine with seeing it go too. It is very rarely used as a hpriest.
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Void tendrils: I prefer this as an active ability, it provides utility.
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Lightwell: Having healing while cc’ed is pretty useful but I won’t riot over this loss
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Heal: Rarely ever used, glad to see it go, mana conservation can now be balanced elsewhere
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Premonition: Only one I’m sad about losing is the shield, other than that I’m glad to see it go
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Void shift: This one stings. It was our only defensive that works while locked on holy. And it is our only defensive cooldown which is unaffected by dampening. The class tree capstones are also quite bland so this one should stay around as a class capstone imo.
Class tree
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Much needed rework. Overall I’m very happy about it since the class tree on live is so boring and full of trash. Now most of it feels useful. As I said in the earlier section, I dislike losing void tendrils as an active ability.
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I also think there are too many desperate prayer talents, especially since this defensive cannot be used while stunned and it dies in dampening. Any changes to improve desperate prayers baseline, making it usable while stunned or making it unaffected by dampening, would increase the value of the talents and make priest more in line with other classes.
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The capstones are quite bland overall. Phantom reach is fine. The other 3 are boring and like I said previously I feel like both shadow and hpriest in particular would be happy to retain void shift here. Disc too of course but their defensives are unaffected by dampening so it isn’t as devestating for them to lose it.
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My biggest gripe with the rework is that Blizzard did not adress us being the only healer without an interrupt and we have the worst mobility in the game. I heard rdruid are losing their interrupt which makes it clear that Blizzard doesn’t think all healers should have it. So my number one complaint for this class tree rework is therefore the lack of increased mobility for the priest class.
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All content in 2025 is very intense in terms of mobility. In raids, Evokers are literally instructed to move priests around. In m+ and pvp we wheelchair along. I realize Blizzard doesn’t want every class to be the same, but this is a very poor area to deliberately keep us behind. One of the capstones should be some ability increasing our mobility, door of shadows on 1 min cd or something.
Oracle/Archon
- Will keep this short. I like the changes overall. The one thing I dislike is that oracle is given a hefty 40 % increase to holy fire and smite while archon has the much less impactful damage from halo. I would like to see the oracle damage reduced so the difference between oracle and archon holy fires/smites isn’t as big.
PvP talents
Hpriest was blessed (lol) with many pvp talents so it makes sense to remove some of them because some classes have like five.
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Removing catharsis and mindgames makes sense, no problem.
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Removing divine ascension I guess makes sense since we are immortal in angel form.
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Removing holy ward is lost utility which I dislike. Noticed there’s a new talent which gives you this effect after a successful fear which seems a bit clunky but I’m ok with it.
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Removing thoughtsteal isn’t a big deal but it is flavor utility lost. Would like to keep it but I won’t riot over losing it
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Removing ray of hope hurts because hpriest needs externals, in particular we need an external which does not die in dampening. I’ve been advocating to have ray changed into a dr external since the current iteration is basically a copy of GS. Now it’s removed, this is kind of sad and it will make hpriest weaker compared to other healers since literally all our healing boosts and externals die in dampening. Consider changing ray to a damage reducing external.
The result of these changes will be: spirit of the redeemer and phase shift are perma locked in. Third slot will be swapped between psychic shroud, purification and maybe greater heal (!) if the meta allows it.
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Absolute faith is a meme in arena but perhaps it sees use elsewhere
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Improved mass dispel will never be taken, ever since the md nerfs there should have been hidden auras reducing the cd and cast time in pvp. Instead we were given this talent which simply isn’t good enough for a pvp slot, and the overall utility of all priests went down with that change - which was not needed in pvp, md was never a concern here.
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Sanctified ground is extremely situational in arena, could see use in rbg’s, it’s fine.
Suggestion: reduce cast time on greater heal to 2 seconds and increase the cd to compensate. 3 seconds is an eternity in pvp and this extra button could offset the fact that all our externals die in dampening.
Spec tree
I’m a fan of the changes overall. But here’s some feedback:
- Now that renew is a proc the renewed faith talent probably needs changes
- Enlightenment is a terrible talent, no class should have to pay one talent point to get their base mana which they are balanced around
- There’s a tad too many mandatory talents near the bottom of the tree. Eternal sanctity is a new mandatory talent, then there’s Miracle worker, holy celerity, 2/2 light in the darkness, 2/2 desperate times locks you in hard and makes it rough picking up capstone talents. I think some of the 2/2 should be made 1 pointers, or preferably, remove desperate times which is badly designed and move prismatic echoes in its place.
- I love the fact that via archon you can go non-mending build and with oracle you can go mending but I still think there are too many mending talents overall, would love to see one or two go
- Yeah main complaint is too many mandatory talents near the bottom, I think when a tree has 5 capstone talents it should be commonplace to pick up 2 or 3 of them. I’m forseeing oracle pretty much picking up all mending talents, which, after picking all mandatory talents, leaves you with 1 (!) capstone picked.
- Same thing happens when you spec into archon, ignore as many mending talents as possible and pick up trail of light + crisis management. You only manage one capstone thanks to all the mandatory talents near the bottom of the tree
- Another suggestion is to cut light in the darkness altogether along with desperate times, that would likely make us go 2/2 prismatic and free up 2 points for capstones