The Priest in World of Warcraft will change significantly. He will soon be able to strengthen his group members in various ways.
With the next expansion “The War Within”, there will be a lot of major changes in World of Warcraft. One of the big new features are the “Hero Talents”. These are meant to refine the playstyle of a class and offer a bit more variety and customization options.
For Priests, Blizzard has come up with something special here – because similar to how the Enhancement Shaman gets new options, the Priest will also get new options to become a true “Supporter”.
What are Hero Talents? Hero Talents are one of the core features of “The War Within”. They are intended to provide additional talents without further bloating the current talent trees – which was previously a major issue. Each specialization has access to 2 different sets of Hero Talents, which can be freely switched between. While you will have learned all talents of the respective tree by level 80, there are some “Choice Slots”, meaning talents where you have to choose between two options.
One of these new Hero talent trees is “Oracle” for the Priest, which brings numerous adjustments to the already controversial spell “Soul of Power”.
Of course, the Priest will not become a pure supporter with these abilities – but certainly more than has been the case so far.
What changes for the Priest? For Discipline and Holy Priests, there is the talent tree “Oracle” to choose from. This mainly revolves around the spell “Soul of Power”, which is changed.
Your “Soul of Power” will be replaced by the spell “Premonition”. When you activate the spell, a cooldown of one minute is triggered. During this time, Premonition is replaced by another spell – which changes every few seconds. The following spells rotate every few seconds until you use one of them:
- Solace: Increases the healing done to the target by 25% for 10 seconds.
- Insight: Increases the spell damage done by the target by 10% for 10 seconds.
- Glory: Increases the physical damage done by the target by 10% for 10 seconds.
By investing further talent points, you can unlock even more options:
- Brilliance: Restores 5% of the target’s maximum mana points.
- Urgency: Increases your target’s speed by 12% for 10 seconds.
Other talents in the tree ensure that the effects are stronger or sometimes multiple group members are affected by the buffs. A first preview can be seen here:
The way to strengthen group members in various ways is otherwise known only from the Caller and his “Enhancement” specialization. This was a completely new thing at launch – and Blizzard apparently wants to expand this to other classes on a lesser scale.
Why the Priest specifically? Some may wonder why the Priest is getting these options and not other healers. Blizzard sees the reason mainly in the fact that the Priest is the only class in the game that has two healing specializations. Since Hero Talents are always available for 2 specializations, it made sense to grant this option to the Priest.
Additionally, “Soul of Power” is already a very strong buff that can enhance other group members. Broadening this option seems to be a solid way to provide the Priest with more support capabilities.
Why is Soul of Power controversial? The spell “Soul of Power” is a strong buff that grants a target (and the casting Priest) a strong speed buff for several seconds. However, this spell has made balancing the Shadow Priest difficult to impossible. Because of the ability to significantly boost other group members temporarily, Blizzard has repeatedly made nerfs that ultimately hinder the Shadow Priest in his playstyle.
We have also extensively discussed the problems of the Shadow Priest.
What do you think about more classes getting more diverse support abilities? Is it a good thing? Or should this be reserved for the Caller?
