Discipline & Holy Priest Review of Oracle Hero Talents – Doubling Down on Power Infusion

This past week, Blizzard revealed another round of Hero Talent Trees in a Sneak Peek at the upcoming War Within system. Our Discipline & Holy guide writer, AutomaticJak, offers an early review of the Oracle Priest Hero Talents which have received significant criticism due to expanding on Power Infusion and encouraging a support-oriented playstyle.

Oracle Hero Talents Review

The first of the Priest Hero Talents is Oracle, available to Holy and Discipline Priests which immediately sparked a negative reaction due to its focus on replacing Power Infusion with a variety of powerful buffs to be given to allies. Power Infusion has frequently been a source of frustration for the playerbase with social concerns over which ally gets the buff and balance concerns with some specs getting outsized benefits than others due to Haste scaling. In this article we’ll discuss how these Hero Talents work, some of the design goals Blizzard had in mind when creating Oracle’s talents and the issues that much of the playerbase has identified with this early development.

and Supporting Talents

is the first talent on the Oracle tree and it replaces Power Infusion with 3 possible buffs that can be given to allies (or 5 with other talents we’ll discuss later) and synergizes with Twins of the Sun, granting you that same effect (excluding Glory which they mentioned would be adjusted). Solace grants a healing taken buff, Insight a magic damage buff, and Glory a physical damage buff. When you first activate , it will begin cycling through the available buffs you can cast on your allies, activating the spell again will lock in your choice or cast the current buff on your target. Each part of the spell is off the GCD (activating the cycle, locking in your choice, and casting it on the ally), starts its cooldown once you begin the cycle process and cycles in the same order, though the first buff that the cycle starts on is random.

Skipping down the tree we’ll first focus on the talents that are synergizing with . These include a few choice node talents, the first we’ll cover adds additional buffs to choose between in and is paired with cooldown reduction for in Perfect Vision. adds Brilliance which can restore 5% mana to a target or Urgency increasing the target’s Haste by 12%, potentially offering even more Power Infusion like uptime to an ally (and adds incredible power to ). Perfect Vision’s cooldown reduction can offer more casts of but also will mean more time juggling buffs to get the ones that you want and make your gameplay more busy. On the other hand gives you more buffs to choose between, potentially making you wait longer to receive the buffs that you want as you are clogged with more choices. Both of these options greatly increase the mental GCDs required to properly leverage the ability which already gives FFXIV Astrologian vibes with their own card-based buff system. I have played Astrologian in multiple Savage raid tiers and we’ll discuss how that gameplay relates to Oracle Priest later on.

The other choice node relating to is between extended duration for ‘s buffs in Divine Providence and the more powerful which buffs the effects of by 30% if the buff utilized is different than the previous one. is actually a bright spot for the competitive minded player in the tree encouraging the buff to be spread around, likely between a ranged and a melee target, rather than tunneling a buff into one ally. That being said, it also requires greater cognition to operate optimally so while you are not adding a keybind to the equation with these Hero Talents you are using this bind more frequently and thinking about it much more frequently than the fire-n-forget nature of Power Infusion currently.

Rounding out our synergistic talents is which is a “low chance” for to grant 2 nearby allies all the effects of at 100% effectiveness. Which yes, sounds like it means with talented that you would potentially be granting 3 allies increased Physical and Magical Damage done, Healing Taken, Haste, and +5% mana. This node offers a huge amount of concerns ranging from a healer mistakenly “yoinking” a buff considerably lowering the raid’s dps, to fishing for procs pre-pull on tight damage checks, to smaller issues like DPS tears over not receiving buffs to help their parse. Keep in mind that each Hero Talent is offering power of some kind to every spec and everyone has two options. When the potential highs of a Hero Talent option are this high, it can totally eclipse the other option for Holy and Discipline players, forcing them into a mini-game playstyle that they do not directly feel the benefits of, but more on that later.

Non-Premonition Hero Talents

While the majority of the power is focused on in this talent tree, there are a number of interesting supporting talents that I want to highlight. Preventative Measures increases Power Word: Shield absorption and Prayer of Mending healing by 10%, caused Power Word: Shield to apply one stack of Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Mending casts to apply a Power Word: Shield at 20% effectiveness. This further synergizes with the bottom of the left talent branch in where your Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Mending grant stacks that give an extra charge when they reach 150.

Outside of reaching that specific stack count with Holy or Discipline (which can change easily), this does raise the concern of whether both specs are to add each ability into their priority to help farm up stacks to further buff allies, potentially dedicating even more activity time towards efforts that increase your allies output at the expense of your own. Discipline recently had its core abilities pruned down to specifically reduce button bloat and this could potentially add another ability into the equation in addition to the buff-juggling that requires. Holy Priests still features a large quantity of abilities and also have talents in its spec tree that benefit heavily from additional Prayer of Mendings like Answered Prayers where they could receive an output buff by weaving shields during downtime, further adding to their button count.

With the left branch potentially adding more bloat, the right and middle non-Prem talents are largely flat power increases with Renew/Atonement duration increases, Angelic Feather support which feels largely useless since players just use @player macros to self-cast it, situational Purify cooldown reduction, and then some buffs to our externals in where Pain Suppression receives a 10% damage reduction buff and Guardian Spirit lasts 2 additional seconds. This external buff seems more heavily weighted towards Discipline as an additional 10% damage reduction while also having 2 charges with the spec tree seems much more powerful than 2 bonus seconds on Guardian Spirit.

To end this overview on a high note, the final choice node that I want to highlight is between and . I understand the dev goal of having an “altruistic” Hero Talent aka support-focused where the majority of the power is focused into assisting allies, however having some quality of life improvements as a reward for buffing your allies is very good. If this was implemented more broadly throughout the tree (granting anything from movement increases to defensive values) I think the negative sentiment would be considerably lessened for Holy/Discipline mains. giving an instant cast Power Word: Radiance sounds great for Discipline but an instant cast Heal/Prayer of Healing for Holy seems mediocre with how weak both of those spells are in today’s tuning. Holy might prefer instead offering some excellent quality of life to Power Word: Life

Usability Concerns

With this overview in mind let’s consider how this Hero Build would work in practice for both specs.

Holy Priest naturally can have some pauses in their Raid gameplay in between Holy Word cooldowns Holy Word: Sanctify/Holy Word: Serenity where the buff generation can be managed, though they also have their own procs of Apotheosis to manage from Answered Prayers where they are heavily incentivized to be casting as many cooldown reducing abilities (usually Prayer of Healing) as possible to generate the largest amount of Holy Words. Holy also has a ton of power built into Prayer of Mending with talents like Say Your Prayers providing extra bounces to the spell making Power Word: Shield casts pre-pull and during heavy downtime not unheard of for those who wish to min-max both Answered Prayers and .

For Discipline, the question of whether the Power Word: Shield from Prayer of Mending would apply Atonement was answered as a no from the developers so with that aside we can assume that Prayer of Mending would be weaved into downtime periods in an ideal word. Managing seems like a different story in a raiding environment. As much as Discipline would love to have the additional Haste of Power Infusion while applying Atonement or dealing damage, players at the high end are very used to activating it when called by the DPS players. With , this changes from a fire and forget to a buff that must be very actively managed and likely will need to be managed while the Disc is mid-ramp. This could easily lead to social downsides from damage dealers being frustrated at the Disc for messing up the buff sequencing, buffing them outside of their damage windows, it could lead to the Disc messing up their ramp leading to player deaths because they’re trying to do too much OR it could actually lead to the Disc doing tremendous HPS because Insight’s magic damage buff would work with increasing the casting Disc’s Atonement healing.

This can lead to wide variance in performance for Disc mains, frustration for Holy mains that the benefit received by each spec is much more unequal and generally just adds more stress/effort into both specs priority systems which can be a turn off to new players. Both specs will certainly be using weakauras to track both ‘s cycling buffs and ‘s stack counter adding an important performance gap between users who are and are not able to min-max.

This mainly leads to the question of Why. Why add new mechanics to specs that they could be forced into playing (more on that in the next section), why add more management (“mental GCDs”) of buff gameplay, more variance in outcomes for both the caster and the receiver?

The Illusion of Choice and Flexible Power Systems

Each spec has access to another Hero Talent system that has yet to be revealed so undoubtedly an argument will arise that if Oracle does not speak to my personal enjoyment as a player that I should then swap to the other talent option. Even before we see those additional hero talents I believe that the optimal choice for healers would nearly always be the option that buffs damage dealers. At its very core, WoW is all about slaying enemies. Killing the boss or trash pack faster reduces the damage taken of the team, makes it easier to chest the dungeon, or safer to kill the boss.

WoW as a game is experienced in 3 ways. The content you do, the class/spec you play, and the social experiences with other players. In the developer interview they confirmed that you would be able to notice which sub-spec a player in your group would be which undoubtedly will lead to the social pressures of players being expected to play the Hero Talent that best benefits the party. With flexibility in choosing your sub-spec and a clear benefit to other players I believe that even if those Priests do not have the altruistic mentality that Oracle was designed for, they will inevitably be pressured into playing it in a variety of content.

Concluding Thoughts

With plenty of time before The War Within’s release I believe that now is the best opportunity to question the direction and purpose of these Hero Talents. From looking at all that are available for healers we now have had two different buff systems with Priest and Paladin while Druid has a direct power gain to their pet gameplay. As a healer main these bonuses really have me questioning the entire benefit of having these sub-specs being added to the game to begin with when Dragonflight talents brought large amounts of button and defensive bloat to a variety of classes. While wanting shiny new gameplay updates for everyone is clearly a selling point for a new expansion, I worry that it comes at the cost of additional button bloat or complexity to each spec that could put off new players.

Oracle Priest is receiving perhaps the most negative reviews of all the Hero Talents currently as external buff gameplay from Fae Guardians, Aug Evoker, Power Infusion and other external buffs have greatly messed with class balance and produced significant social friction. It also increases the burden on the player to manipulate the buff system properly, adding an additional level of difficulty to the game where the reward for a good job is given to another player and not necessarily to the caster.

With plenty of Hero Talents still to be released and the developers asking for feedback I propose that neither Paladin or Priest Hero talents should be focused on external buff gameplay and should be more focused on making the user feel more powerful by bringing the best of each spec together. How can Oracle Priest take the Light aspects of Disc and Holy together to make each spec more pure, devout, faithful than the other sub-spec that is shared with Shadow? I would rather see more themes drawn from the class fantasy of the Light and Naaru than around buff management/support roles.

About the Author

Premonition
Premonition: Divine the future, and gain access to a spell that gives you an advantage against your fate. Replaces Power Infusion. 1 minute cooldown. Instant Cast.
Solace: Increases your target’s healing received by 25% for 10 seconds.
Insight: Increases your target’s magic damage dealt by 10% for 10 seconds.
Glory: Increases your target’s physical damage dealt by 10% for 10 seconds.Assured Safety
Power Word: Shied applies 1 stack of Prayer of Mending to your target. Prayer of Mending casts apply a Power Word: Shield to your target at 20% effectiveness.Grand Reveal
When your Power Word: Shield is fully absorbed or your Prayer of Mending heals, gain a stack of Grand Reveal. At 150 stacks, gain an additional charge of Premonition.Waste No Time
Premonition causes your next Power Word: Radiance, Heal, or Prayer of Healing to be instant cast and cost 15% less mana.Miraculous Recovery
Reduces the cooldown of Power Word: Life by 3 seconds and allows it to be usable on targets below 50% health.Foreseen Circumstances
Pain Suppression reduces damage taken by an additional 10%. Guardian Spirit lasts an additional 2 seconds.
Fatebender
Premonition’s effect is increased by 30% if the divined spell is different than the previous Premonition.
Clairvoyance
Grants your target and two nearby allies all the effects of Premonition at 100% effectiveness.
Versatile Divinations
Premonition can now trigger the Brilliance and Urgency effects.
Brilliance: Restores 5% of your target’s maximum mana.
Urgency: Increases your target’s Haste by 12% for 10 seconds.