Holy Priest: Midnight Expansion Preview

The Priest class tree has had a major overhaul, with significant changes to talent placements and many talents being removed including Divine Star, Halo (moved to Archon), Power Word: Life, Shadowfiend, and Void Shift. There were also new talents introduced, including some that were previously baseline abilities. With the additional talent points available at level 90, there isn't much room for meaningful decisions when focusing on raiding. A lot of the new talents that were added were simple stat or throughput increases. These talents are woven between talents that give situational utility. This makes it an easy choice if your focus is throughput and survival, as you can simply skip past the situational utility and focus on taking all of the throughput and stronger survival talents.

If your focus is Mythic+ you have some choices to make around which utility you would prefer on the right hand side of the tree with a section of talents focused around Psychic Scream and Mind Control/ Dominate Mind. This includes the newly overhauled Void Tendrils which now provides a short root on enemies as Psychic Scream on them ends.

Down the left side of the tree, there isn't a lot of meaningful choice, and you will simply path down from Holy Nova to Desperate Prayer, picking up some talents focused around Flash Heal. From here you will zig-zag through Protective Light for added defensive utility, Unwavering Will for some increased throughput, and finally Benevolence for a flat healing increase.

The center of the tree is again primarily throughput-focused with a small amount of utility to the left through Leap of Faith, Mass Dispel and Dispel Magic. The centre-right of the tree has a line of talents that increase your throughput with Power Infusion, Twist of Fate and quite a few nodes providing small stat increases.

The majority of the bottom right of the tree is defensive focused. With all of our defensives being moved to the class tree we now have to spend talent points to pick them up. This includes Desperate Prayer, Protective Light and four points to take Improved Fade.

You will have a number of points remaining after working through the tree to pick up the nodes that increase your throughput, and your primary defensive abilities Desperate Prayer, Improved Fade and Protective Light. Where you spend these points will depend on the content you're focusing on, with options to bolster your defensive abilities, or to increase your damage output.

The changes to the spec tree aim to simplify the Holy Priest gameplay, which is a consistent theme throughout all healers heading into Midnight. Numerous abilities and talents have been removed including most notably Heal, Renew, Symbol of Hope, Lightwell, Divine Word and Answered Prayers. Our core spells remain Holy Word: Serenity, Holy Word: Sanctify, Prayer of Mending, Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing alongside our cooldowns Guardian Spirit, Divine Hymn and Apotheosis.

Replacing these removed abilities are new talents which are primarily small passive increases to Holy Word: Serenity, Holy Word: Sanctify, Prayer of Mending, Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing. The exception to this is the new passive talent Ultimate Serenity which empowers Holy Word: Serenity by removing Holy Word: Sanctify and adding an additional AOE heal to Serenity instead. Ultimate Serenity also provides many of the increases to Serenity that would ordinarily increase Sanctify, including Prayer of Healing casts reducing the cooldown of Serenity when talented into Ultimate Serenity.

Moving around the tree is very similar to The War Within, with the left hand side of the tree focused on empowering Prayer of Healing and Flash Heal, and the right hand side of the tree focused on empowering Prayer of Mending. The centre of the tree continues to focus on our more powerful cooldowns such as Restitution, Guardian Spirit, Divine Hymn and Apotheosis.

The first released Apex Talent for Holy Priest is Benediction. This gives Prayer of Mending a small chance to empower the next Flash Heal increasing the healing it does and causing it to trigger a Cosmic Ripple. The two supporting talents Benediction and Benediction further enhance this mechanic, providing increased healing to Cosmic Ripple, causing Divine Hymn to trigger smaller Cosmic Ripples, and for all of your Flash Heal casts during Apotheosis to become Benedictions.

While much of this talent is largely uncontrolled due to the nature of how Cosmic Ripple heals, it does increase the spot-healing ability of Flash Heal with a significant increase to the amount it heals while empowered. The interactions with Divine Hymn are minor but the added empowered Flash Heal casts during Apotheosis are a nice bonus.

As with all things Alpha, expect there to be some change with the newly introduced talents, and for this one in particular, a rename as it shares a name with the existing talent Benediction.

With Halo being removed from the Priest class tree, Archon has seen a bit of a shuffle in its talent placements, with the first talent in the tree now Halo. Much of the Archon tree remains the same, with the continued focus on empowering Halo and providing regular buffs to Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing.

Oracle has seen the most change with the primary focus of the tree in The War Within Premonition being removed. Replacing this are numerous talents that focus on enhancing Prayer of Mending. This includes the new Guiding Light for an additional charge of Prayer of Mending which is a fantastic quality of life improvement to the spec, especially when paired with the other new talent Prompt Prognosis. Prompt Prognosis was the Season 3 TWW tier set bonus, granting a sizeable heal on the target you cast Prayer of Mending on. This talent helps reduce one of the weaknesses of the Oracle tree, which is its reduced spot-healing.

The other talent of note is Piety which carries over the Piety effect from the old Premonition system. Due to how Holy Priest Mastery Mastery: Echo of Light works, this is a solid improvement to our healing which often results in a considerable amount of overhealing.