User:Minionman/Redone Priest Talent Trees

These are some new priest talent tree ideas, created by a person (me) with only a level 32 priest at the moment, but who enjoys doing things like this. It is based on problems that lots of people seem to have seen in the priest talent trees and spells.

This was based on a set of posts on the WoW forums, that I unfortunately can't find, that suggested a large set of small priest changes, to better work out the talent trees, add a couple of spells to fill in missing priest abilities, etc. When I read it, the link to the posters talent tree changes was cancelled.

Some suggestions not related to talent trees that seemed to make sense were to have spirit tap as a passive ability available to all priests, (I do have experience with this, and it does seem to be quite a good idea), to add divine spirit as an available spell to all priests, to add sleep in again as a shadow school crowd control spell (shadow school so that holy priests would still have it as an option if their holy spells were shut down), to make discipline spells as arcane school rather than holy school (again, to avoid spell shutdowns on a larger amount of spells), and to change mind control in PvP to make mind controlled characters allowed to use a small collection of spells.

(if anyone knows where the thread is, I would be interested in reading it again. It was titled something like "A priest unrebuilding" or "Priest unrestructuring".)

As with any game ideas, numbers are meant to be approximate, and are more meant to describe in general the effects rather than give exact numbers.

Shadow
Shadow talents seem to work fine overall, the only changes come from replacing spirit tap, and replacing a critical hit talent (that is not supported by other critical related talents in the tree) with a couple of others. The big issue with the shadow tree that was described was the way that +spell damage does not work as well on the tree, so some talents were changed around to help it work better.

0 point talents
 * Blackout: No changes.


 * Shadow Focus: This is the same as the one already in the game, but moved down to allow a higher level added talent

5 point talents
 * Shadow Affinity: No changes.


 * Improved Shadow word: Pain: No changes.


 * Improved Mind Blast: No changes.  (Another moved down talent)

10 point talents
 * Improved Psychic Scream: No changes.


 * Mind Flay: No changes.


 * Dark Channeling: 5 point talent. Shadow spells have a 10/20/30/40/50% chance not to be interrupted.  (Since priests have a shield already, this is lower than the other non-interrupt talents.  30% or so may be a better number.)

15 point talents
 * Improved Fade: this might either be kept the same, or changed to add a permanent threat reduction component to fade (similar to the Feint effect.


 * Shadow Reach: No change.


 * Shadow Weaving: No change.

20 point talents
 * Silence: No change.


 * Vampiric Embrace: No change.


 * Improved Vampiric Embrace: No change.


 * Focused Mind: No change.

25 point talents
 * Shadow Resilience: No change.


 * Darkness: No change.

30 point talents
 * Shadowform: The suggestion in the thread was to reduce the damage bonus to 5% to allow increased +spell damage to be more effective, which would make up the difference in a way more balanced with other spell DPS classes.  5-10% seems like it would work for that, as it would be in line with moonkin form, the most similar talent, though other people will know better about this.


 * Dark Power: Increases the effect of +spell damage on shadow damage spells by 2/4/6%.  (The talent to help with the +spell damage)


 * Mental Shutdown: Gives Mind blast a 4/7/10% chance to silence the target for 5 seconds, and mind flay a 1/2/3% chance per tick to silence the target for 2 seconds.  (Or perhaps this talent could steal mana, drain mana, gain mana for the priest, or some related ability.  It is mainly to be a late tree filler talent.)

35 point talents
 * Misery: No change.

40 point talents
 * Vampiric touch: No change.

Discipline
This is the tree that is described by a lot of people as having no focus, or overall function. The suggestion in the thread in the forums was to make the tree about overall spellpower, for these talents I went more for critical hits as well as overall spellpower. The tree would support both damage and healing, more through fast casting spells and criticals rather than through big spells. Since most of the "meat" spells (damage and healing) are in the other two trees, these discipline talents are pcked in a way to support all possible priest abilities. I based a lot of these talents on the mage arcane tree, which seems to fill a similar "utility + damage" role that the discipline tree seemed it could fill.

Overall, the tree seems like it would be useful for priests who wanted flexibility, and would help fast casting and quick response heals more than slower ones, and damage wise would be burstier.

The Improved Power Word: Shield and Improved Power Word: Fortitude seemed like pretty pointless talents, that didn't add much to priests, (both in the thread and with me looking at the talents on my own), so in this version they would be removed. divine spirit also makes sense as a spell for all priests, so it would be removed as well.

0 point talents
 * Wand Specialization: No changes.


 * Unbreakable Will: No changes.

5 point talents
 * Silent Resolve: This would be changed to reduce threat from all spells, possibly by 2/4/6/8/10% to keep threat reducing talents from stacking (or the talents would just be unstackable), instead of just discipline and holy.


 * Fluctuation: Increase critical chance with all spells by 1/2/3% (2/4/6%?)


 * Aftereffects: For 7 seconds after damage spell criticals, all damage in the target is increased by 1/2/3%, stackable 3 times.  For healing spell criticals, the same effect occurs, but with increased healing instead of damage.  (This is one where the numbers are iffy, the effect should be enough to make a difference, and last long enough to be useful, but not so long that it's more advantageous to use longer cast spells.)(the original idea for this talent was something like ignite.)

10 point talents
 * Inner Focus: No changes.


 * Meditation: No changes.


 * Power buildup: Requires 3 points in aftereffects.  Critical hits increase priest spell effects of the same type (Damage crits improve damage spells, Healing crits improve healing spells)by 1/2/3% for 8 seconds, stackable up to 2 (3?) times.

15 point talents
 * Improved Inner fire: Inner fire increases bonus spell damage and bonus healing by 1/2/3 (2/4/6?) % when active. (Or just improves overall spell effects by 1/2/3% when active.  Since inner fire is a pretty common and long lasting buff, the number would be low, and equivalent to a plain old talent.


 * Mental Agility: No changes.


 * Spell Accuracy: Increases chance to hit with all spells by 2/4/6%, and chance to critically hit by 1/2/3%

20 point talents
 * Mental Strength: No changes.


 * Clarity: Increases casting speed of the next 3 spells with a casting time by 50%, and makes them cost 75% of their normal mana cost.


 * Spell Spiking: Requires 3 points in Power buildup. Increases the critical effect of spell cabable of critical hits by 20/40/60%  (Maybe a bit more or less.).

25 point talents
 * Focused Power: reduces the chance for all spells to be interrupted by 20/40% (Again, with power word: shield, and covering all spells, this chance will be lower than other equivalent talents.)


 * Force of Will: The effect would also apply to healing spells in addition to damage ones.

30 point talents
 * Utilities (or some better name that I haven't thought of): gives mana burn a 3/6/9/12/15% chance ot give the priest back the mana it burns, gives dispell abilities a 2/4/6/8/10% chance ot dispell more than one effect, and gives power word:shield a 33/66/100% chance to block interruption skills.


 * Power Infusion: No changes.


 * Reflective shield: No changes.

35 point talents
 * Enlightenment: no change.

40 pint talents
 * Pain suppression: Target friendly character cannot be interrupted, cannot be critically hit, and takes 20% damage for the duration.  This ability cannot be dispelled except by mass dispell like abilities.

Holy
This tree got some changes to make it more overall healing focused. Talents that only improved damage were changed to effect healing in some way as well. It also got a few extra abilities in threat reduction and mana regeneration, to remove the problem of a healing priest needing to be holy/discipline rather than going more all out holy.

The 21, 31, and 41 point talent spells were rearranged in a way along the lines of how the priest suggestion thread suggested it. Since discipline has a lot of critical hit talents, and since criticals on big heals seem less useful, most critical hit talents were changed around to something else.

0 point talents
 * Improved Renew: No changes.


 * Healing Focus: No changes.


 * Holy Power: Reduces the mana cost of holy spells by 1/2/3/4/5%

5 point talents
 * Spell Warding: No change.


 * Divine Fury: No change.

10 point talents
 * Surge of Light:Instead of providing a free, instant cast smite, it would provide a free cast of whichever spell triggered this talent. it would also occur with 2/4/6/8/10% of all casts, rather than with criticals.


 * Holy Nova: No changes.


 * Inspiration: Gives a 2/4/6/8/10% chance for healing spells to cause 40% of their healing as an additional HoT.

15 point talents
 * Improved Healing: No changes.


 * Holy Reach; No changes.


 * Searing Light: Holy damage spells gain a 5/10% critical chance, healing spells have a 10% chance to add a reactive damage buff to the target that deals damage equal to 5/10% of the healing done to attackers for 10 seconds.

20 point talents
 * Lightwell: Gains the +5% effect of spirit of redemption as suggested by the WoW forums thread.


 * Recovery: The holy version of Nature's swiftness. If this would not be a useful spells, this would instead be a 2 point talent that allowed mana regeneration equivalent to 6% spirit.


 * Spiritual Guidance: No changes.

25 point talents
 * Spiritual healing: No change.


 * Healing Prayers: Moved up a slot, otherwise no change.

30 point talents
 * circle of Healing: Moved down to 31 points as suggested on the WoW forums thread.


 * Protector of Life: All healing spells have a 10/20/30% chance to increase armor by 8% for 10 seconds (stacking up to 2 times), and cause 7/14/20% less threat.


 * Blessed resilience: Reduces the chance to be critically hit by 2/4/6%, and allows 5/10/15% of mana regeneration to continue when casting holy spells, as well as allowing full regeneration to start .5/1/1.5 seconds earlier after casting a holy spell.

35 point talents
 * Empowered Healing: No changes.

40 point talents
 * Angelic Avatar: This would be a "holyform" type of ability.  It would only be able to cast Holy spells, Power word: shield, Power word: fortitude, Divine spirit, and any similar buffs I may have forgotten.  It would reduce the cost of holy spells by 25%, allow 15% extra mana regeneration during spellcasting, would cause 20% less threat, and take 15% less spell damage.  (the spells damage reduction would be most likely to be not indluded if this were overpowered, or the threat reduction perhaps.)