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Summary  Details  Reset

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Spirit Tap
Requires Level 14
0 Mana 0 yds (Self Only)
Instant Cooldown: 0 sec
School: Physical Line: Shadow
Dispel Type: None
You gain a 100% bonus to your Spirit after killing a target that yields experience. For the duration, your Mana will regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 sec.

Sleep
Requires Level 22
15% of base mana 30 yds
1.5 sec cast Cooldown: 0 sec
School: Holy Line: Holy
Dispel Type: Magic
Puts the target to sleep for up to 10 seconds. Damage caused may awaken them. Only 1 target can be asleep at a time. Only works on Beasts, Humanoids, and Critters.

Divine Spirit
Requires Level 30
970 Mana 30 yds
Instant Cast Cooldown: 0 sec
School: Holy Line: Discipline
Dispel Type: Magic
Holy power infuses the target, increasing their Spirit by 40 for 30 min.

Inner Darkness
Requires Level 62
637 Mana 0 yds (Self Only)
Instant Cast Cooldown: 0 sec
School: Shadow Line: Shadow
Dispel Type: Magic
Shadow energy flows through you, allowing 15% of your mana to regenerate while casting. Gives you a 4% chance when hit by a physical attack to trigger the Disembodiment effect, removing all movement impairing effects and increasing your movement speed by 40% for 10 seconds. Cannot be active on the priest at the same time as Inner Fire. Lasts 30 minutes.

Introduction: Having Things Both Ways Expand/Collapse

Can Priests be given more caster-like abilities? Easily.

Can Priests retain the “tough cookie” abilities we already have? Certainly.

Can’t these two things exist together, without overpowering each other? Could some Priests specialize in "tanking" while others opt for escapability, yet both remain essentially the same inside of a group context? I believe that they can and then some. That a far greater number of widely-accepted builds could be possible than are now seen.

The mechanism, of course, is mutually exclusive abilities and our talent trees. Some reworking would be necessary, but it could open up a whole variety of playstyles beyond the few typical builds seen currently. This sort of balancing act is the reason talent trees operate the way they do.

Some of it’s in abilities, but it’s mostly about the trees.

What's With Our Trees? Expand/Collapse
Priests As Healing Hybrids Expand/Collapse

Guidelines For Redesign Expand/Collapse

About Senorhappy's Example Trees Expand/Collapse

So I’ve made a talent calculator to demonstrate the sort of changes I’ve been talking about. I’m not saying it’s perfect but it adds a little concreteness to some of the ideas discussed in the Priest forums. But hopefully it helps elicit more discussion.

Like any changes to the trees, some people won’t be happy because it won’t allow their current build. Change is a rough thing sometimes, but it can be necessary for the greater good. Is this one of those times? Not necessarily. But for what it’s worth, my own current build can’t be recreated on my calculator.

I tried to refrain from writing too many brand new talents. The couple places where I made things up completely are meant primarily to be examples. Don’t get too caught up in the specifics.

New and altered talents have different icons to help make them more noticeable.


New Untalented Abilities Expand/Collapse

Shadow Changes Expand/Collapse

Holy Changes Expand/Collapse

Discipline Changes Expand/Collapse

Viva La Variety Expand/Collapse

As I mentioned before, new talent trees will change the builds that are available, rendering some builds impossible. But ideally the proposed talent trees would create a greater variety of valid builds. Based on the deep/shallow combinations, here are the resulting builds:

Discipline/Holy: Three Minute Priest, very similar in design to the current ones. High survivability, high amounts of burst Holy damage, very good healing. While probably not a DPS class for raids, this build has exceptional ability as a healer.

Discipline/Shadow: Master of Survivability. All the durability of the Discipline tree along with the crowd control of the shallow Shadow tree. While less effective as a main healer than Discipline/Holy, the utility of Discipline adds plenty of raid viability.

Holy/Discipline: Tough Cookie Healer. Survivability of deep Holy and shallow Discipline. Very likely still the preferred “pure healer” build due to Holy talents and synergy from Discipline: Improved Fortitude, Shield, Dispelling, and efficiency of instant cast spells.

Holy/Shadow: Bizarro Mage. Slippery to hold caster of anti-damage instead of anti-heals. Still equipped with all the essential Holy talents to be a main tank healer in raids.

Shadow/Discipline: Classic Facemelter. Tough as nails, wearing you down with Shadow’s sustained damage. Viability as a PvE damage role, where damage and mana/5 gear will allow constant casting for Vampiric Embrace/Touch.

Shadow/Holy: Role-Changer. Viability as a PvE damage role is comparable with the Classic Facemelter and perhaps even longer-lasting due to Meditation, given enough Spirit and damage gear. But this build also has enough points in Holy to main heal effortlessly in healing gear. Can function as a PvP Facemelter or a variation on the PvP Bizarro Mage outside of Shadowform.


I invite anyone still reading to play around with the calculator a bit, get over the initial shock of change, and post some feedback on the Official Priest Forums (that I am not allowed to link to directly as per Geocities TOS) or maybe just send me some hate mail. At that point, feel free to tell me I'm full of it. I won't mind.




Updated Dec 29