Oracle Priest Hero Talent Design - Power Word: Shield + Prayer of Mending

[@ZucoWoW]

It's a fantastic idea for Oracle Priest. This is quite similar to the Frostfire Mage design in that it combos 2 central spells for Disc and Holy and builds an awesome tree around them. I hope Blizzard is watching!

[@petertakacs999]

I hope too, becouse thise one, and a totemic shama idea of yours is much better then any blizz dev can come up... ever i think. If orachle stays this way, or almost this way as it is... i just stop playing priest. Blizz sould do some voting for these hero talent community idea as they did with the S4 tier set chose

[@jarritsaal8397]

Overall Impressions: The idea is interesting for sure. Flavor 10/10. I don't think tying this to pom is the right answer. (no matter how much I want it for disc raid). Way too overtuned for disc raid, maybe in the right ballpark for holy raid maybe, but some of these buttons are grossly overtuned. Feels fully tailored to Mythic+ and is absolutely busted for raid. For Mythic+ this actually seems pretty sweet. I want instant cast MD, but I don't see how that's planning ahead, that turns MD into a reactive cast. And this is 2 dead talents anytime there isn't something to dispel (again seems like M+ was looked at more than raid). Capstone is another coverage button for mythic+, definitely a lot of spots where this heals 10%+ of total health for 5 players, cool. raid any fight this gets even 7% total player heal on most of a raid, it's insanse. Really tough to balance Mythic+ and raid. Shadow word death is cool, but I don't think Disc should have redemption. I don't know how you balance this for disc raid Overall: Tuning issues for Raid, Divination seems lackluster for disc priest in Mythic+ Divination seems lackluster for Holy Priest in raid. I would vote for this 100 times over Blizzards Oracle build. Definitely more to talk about here than the blizzard oracle build PS: feel free to correct me on anything I'm missing. incorrect about, or misunderstood.

[@zaldinfox]

Thanks for the in depth feedback! I want to respond to your remarks about tuning (over/under) by pointing to a few details in the design, but first by saying that there are a number of pieces here that could be tuned without losing the flavour if it turned out to be too strong. Here is a list of the parts I have gone back and forth on to get this "right" but have lots of leeway to adjust: 1. PoD tuning (CD, Mastery interaction, Heal v Shield, relationship to Haste) -All of these items or tuning knobs are in scope to bring the core ability into alignment with other Hero trees. The CD is half way between Prayer of Mending (12 sec) and PW:S (8 sec). Each spell accounts for about 8% to 10% throughput in all PvE content (M+ or Raid), and there is a slight advantage for Holy Priest in their use of PoM (it is a more important button to press rotationally than PW:S and with my suggested tree, Holy is casting it 17% more often). -I'm not sure if you overlooked how strong PoM is as a "shield" for Holy Priest if it also procs Echo of Light. In Raid it makes Rapture slightly stronger, but Disc will get less overall value because the CD is 2 seconds longer and PW:S is not the primary atonement applicator (FH/Renew fill this role). -note that any class/spec buffs to either PW:S or PoM are automatically applied to PoD. Holy has a much broader scope to take advantage of this (esp. talents like Divine Service, Prayers of the Virtuous, and Say Your Prayers). 2. Dispel Theme -You are right that this moves slightly away from the theme of "plan ahead" and could certainly be adjusted or omitted altogether as an idea without losing too much; it does offer a secondary theme of magic-dispel, which I think of as thematically related to ancient Oracles and their roles, but this is a flavour dispute, not a mechanical one. -With respect to "two dead talents" I actually think this is part of what makes this tree favourable or viable as a Hero Tree; in other words, it is important that a niche be created that is not overly relevant for all situations and has clear drawbacks, so that other Trees can shine. 3. The capstone Fate Scribe is actually very easy to tune and I would welcome it, since the design is so cool! I have moved this number around quite a lot, but you could adjust the tag for 100% increased effectiveness outside of Raid and lower the number to 5% of all damage taken, or whatever made sense; in addition you could increase the channel time to make it more difficult to use or make the CD longer if it was cooling down far too quickly, but this one seems very straightforward to adjust after some testing. 4. SW:D I went back and forth on in a number of directions; at present it mirrors the functionality of PW: Life (35% threshold), but you could easily tune it by increasing the cooldown on SW:D to 30 seconds, lowering the trigger point to 20% health, reducing the Fate's Due buff time to 5 seconds to make the gameplay loop sharper (so that the player has to respond at precisely the right time so that mastery of the idea is difficult); you could make the debuff of Fate's Due (3 mins ICD per player) apply to the casting Oracle Priest, meaning that you can only "save" someone through this mechanism once every 3 mins. This final idea is probably the most elegant solution since it gives a meaningful tool with very unique flavour that is not too hard to use but doesn't clog up GCD usage. I hope this helps clarify the goals of the design and the thought behind some of the tuning choices. Thanks again for writing your feedback!

[@jarritsaal8397]

Thanks for the in-depth response! I actually started with a review of each talent and realized I was writing an essay about an imaginary hero talent, and went and touched some grass. Now here's a much more in depth response... so I guess I should have done that to start anyway lol. 1. PoD tuning. Overall agree, I just think tuning this is a bit of a nightmare for disc in raid. The biggest bottleneck is attonement uptime on raid. CD wise I think it's actually really smart balancing PoM and barrier giving Hpriest the bigger benefit overtime. Soft ramp with PoD seems like a great way to add some extra PoM value. Rapture ramp is where it gets tricky. Boss dependant, but rapture applying 10 PoDs, by the end they've bounced covered the entire raid. No radiance require which means ever 2 minute interval you get an extra soft ramp using radiance. Overall I think this coverage just gives disc too many applications of attonement. It would change the playstyle to have more attonement uptime which would be nice, but I think it would also require slight nerfs to attonement to balance, which likely affects the important damage timers in raid. Reducing number of bounces is a clear path, but finding a sweet spot seems extremely challenging. Balance seems much more effective and easy to manage in M+ 2. Dispel Theme. Agree. I also give Unending Praise a pass now. (The naming and themes you came up with... Chefs kiss) 3. Captstone. I definitely agree with tuning here, I just worry that having another CD will bring too much for priest in raid. For Holy I can see the balancing, overall throughput seems more consistent, the CDs are good. Fate Scribe into symbol of hope is an interesting idea. Disc priest having another CD on top of having a new soft ramp everytime 2 minutes due to how effective Rapture + PoD would be. The question would become when isn't disc healing their ass off in raid. Honestly requires PTR and balancing idk. I think without losing disc identity it will give them too much flexibility. Especially with a cool new SW:D button. Maybe this brings a new meaning to "full up" disc. Oracle Disc always has healing uptime, soft ramp, rapture ramp, soft ramp, Full up, soft ramp... This could be fun. Don't spec into Mindbender beause you'll be smiting less. Voidwalker could push further into the currently play still where there's less but more powerfull ramps. Disc priest overhealing chart would really go brrr even more that's for sure lol. 4. SW:D definitely intereting, can definitely work I just hate to eat into holy reactive healing "niche". I like the final idea, I think it's really good in M+ and is a challenge in Raid to keep track of, but that's fine, it's a sweet ass button. Redemption but worse and harder.. maybe that's just right and if not tune it. 5. New Topics: Righteous Hope - Add Flash Heal. Time of Need - The PI nerfs feels like it's in a good spot where it's nice, but not defining in anyway. There was so much complaining about the external, and in the meantime they made aug. Then Blizzard said, you know why stop at a good thing and brought us this garbage oracle hero talent once again picking a scab. I like the idea of this being more supportive, I think healers inherintely like supporting their team, and yet we get so much whining... This seems good, but I worry about picking the scab. Support when it is a damage buff seems to upset players, not everyone gets, it messes with logs etc. Time of Need being CDR like Blessing of Autumn or another avenue of support may be an alternative route. Simply so I don't have to hear people complain about haste buff anymore. Sonorous Voice - first flavor critique. Who knows what Sonorous means. That being said, love this for holy. I think DR is something Disc has been just too strong in espeically M+, I think Hpriest would appreciate this greatly. This is one that seems insanely strong for disc raid. 20 player attonement, obviously not all fights but quite a lot are you getting 10-20 players. Continues to play into disc always has healing throughput so maybe it's fine with tuning, but man does disc raid seem cracked with this (so maybe I should just say I love it and move on). Sounds super normal in M+ Overall: The more I think about it the more I like it. I think disc raid could see a whole new playstyle from this which is cool. Hpriest and disc M+ just getting a lot of flavor and a couple fun new buttons. Button bloat is always a concern here, but maybe that's the price you pay when you're the oracle, keeper of fate. I think this also fits since Holy+Shadow and disc+shadow will likely be simpler than this which gives people options. @@zaldinfox

[@zaldinfox]

​@@jarritsaal8397Thanks again for the thoughts. I do want to ensure there is not a misunderstanding about how PoD functions for Disc because your opening discussion appears to make an assumption: only the upfront cast of PoD applies atonement. The little "mending" shields that bounce around do not. So for Rapture you get the exact same Ramp effectiveness in terms of applying atonement to targets and you would still need to use Radiance to apply Atonement. The PoD bounces are just tuned to always shield the target "as if" atonement were present for Disc or produce the Echo of Light heal for Holy. For Righteous Hope, I thought about adding Flash Heal but it becomes far too strong for both Disc and Holy; the talent is designed to give "free" PoD casts at a marginal rate, and I index into Heal specifically because a Holy Priest using a Heal build devotes significant uptime or mental attention to Lightweaver maintenance. FH is also an atonement applicator for Disc so they would effectively never have to think about how to maximize this bonus. But the larger problem is that it closes down an avenue for introducing the Aug-like support that Blizz wants Oracle to be. In my view the best place to develop this flavour is through the FH buff (Time of Need), in part because it forces the player to think about their FH use more carefully to get the best outcome, but also ties it to a spell both specs use with enough regularity that more average players will still feel like it is getting some use. This is part of my resistance to the Premonition design of PI. You want the design to be very accessible to players of all skill levels while offering the strongest or most skilled players a way to express that skill through mastery. If you contrast the major support ideas in my tree, you will see that capacity in each of them (an average player gets some value and it is intuitive; a great player can make having 1 Oracle in raid/dungeons a major asset). By the way, I think you make a reasonable point about button bloat (and this would apply to all the new Hero talents). Whenever you go up 10 levels in WoW, the danger of button bloat is substantial, in part because players feel like something fresh ought to be added to the spec. Blizz has a difficult task of creating the appearance of freshness without going overboard. My tree leans quite far toward the addition of button bloat, and it is probably the single most problematic part of the design. This could be resolved by removing some of the ideas altogether and replacing them with passives (I would start with Prophetic Word: Wrath and the capstone - which could be changed simply to an additional charge of PoD), which I think would be somewhat sad but entirely reasonable. I would argue that it is preferable to have a cohesive and cool design with button bloat compared to the divisive and untuneable repackaging of PI (Premonition). Thanks again.

[@jarritsaal8397]

Paiinn. Haha apolgies for the confusion. PoD doesn't change playstyle which I think lends to the other parts of the tree adding some buttons, I agree it's expected and I think of all priest talents coming up this is the talent that will most likely have the most bloat regardless. It's always a concern, but I think I would be happy to see these buttons. Adding FH to Righteous was only when thinking of how many more procs disc will get from Righteous Hope this may be alright, PoD reducing CD for Holy and increasing CD for disc, this is a good way to give disc a few more triggers which would be nice. I do appreciate talents that feed into themselves, so I would vote for PoD being included in Righteous even if that means the # of casts is increased, of course all based on tuning at that point. I didn't think of Time of Need when suggesting Flash Heal that's a miss on my part. Time of Need, I love it tied to FH. It makes a lot of sense, players won't have to think about it since FH procs are very frequent and this feels quite intuitive while players can use it more effectively. I just have a slight fear of giving other players damage amp with how contentious is has been, but I personally enjoy that. I do think this falls a bit into feels bad at higher play where you want to cast a FH proc on a target but it's either a tank or another class that's less effective with haste. I think changing it from haste to flat damage % or something more universal would be nice. I just hate to have 2 haste buffs that I will only ever give to a handful of classes. I love support, but understand how frustrating it can be for dps when they are just lower on dps meters due to something that can't have unless they play a class where it's more effective. Damage amp is very interesting and may help balance priest damage coming into an expansion where other healer talents will enevitibly see damage increase when matching with a DPS talent, and not lose out too much dps compared to taking shadow. PW: Wrath seems really good, extra healing for disc and in turn more damage for holy is smart. 9/10 no major complaints, love it. Would love seeing community feedback on this rather than the sh*t blizzard gave us lol