Priest Season 1 Dragonflight Tier Set Bonuses - Guide Writer First Impressions

Dragonflight Posted 2022/10/14 at 8:00 AM by Jaydaa

Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set bonuses

We've datamined Tier Set bonuses for all 38 specializations in the Dragonflight Season 1 Beta. Check out all the bonuses and armor models below.

Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses & Models for All Classes & Specializations

Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set bonuses. Check out all of our released opinion articles below.
First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set Bonuses

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First Impressions of the Dragonflight Season 1 Tier Set BonusesDiscipline Priest Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Priest Discipline Class Set 2pc - Power Word: Shield increases the effectiveness of your next direct damage or healing spell by 10%.

4-Set - Priest Discipline Class Set 4pc - Penance increases the strength of your next Power Word: Shield by 60% of its damage or 18% of its healing.

The tier set bonuses for Discipline Priest heavily revolve around Power Word: Shield, especially now that it is stronger than the baseline version of Shadowlands and has a short cooldown. The 2-set has a simple effect of increasing the strength of your next damage or healing spell but with Power Word: Shield's super low cooldown this can become quite disruptive to a ramp sequence in a raiding environment. The potential, as other Discipline Priests like Reglitch have already pointed out on forums, for the 2pc to cause you to drop other setup abilities to instead weave more Shields in, feels like a frustrating and disrupting gameplay element. A longer cooldown on Shield might make this less frustrating to deal with in raids, but could subsequently hurt 5 mans where the spec leans heavily on Shield and where this 2pc bonus is very helpful.

In dungeons, you likely will be playing a very shield-oriented playstyle anyway and this bonus will be extremely easy to fit into the current playstyle of dungeons, but doesn't do much to encourage other styles like Inescapable Torment/Shadow Covenant which is already struggling to perform in 5mans.

The 4pc, for both Raiding and Mythic+, continues to encourage what Discipline Priests have already been utilizing on Beta which is heavy investment in Penance points. The harder your Penance hits, the larger your Shields. Simple, powerful, and great for both levels of PvE content.

At present I believe the 2pc is in solid need of attention to avoid overly disruptive gameplay in your Raid ramp sequences which directly ties to the already fairly disruptive gameplay that such a low cooldown on Power Word: Shield presents. I believe having an iconic abilty like Power Word: Shield have a cooldown, but feel powerful is an excellent ideal. In practice, this cooldown I would argue is far too low and it dominates your gameplay outside of your raid ramp sequences and now with the 2pc will continue to provide more disruption to standard flow that Discs have gotten used to over the past 5ish years.Holy Priest Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Priest Holy Class Set 2pc - Casting Prayer of Mending reduces the cast time of your next Heal or Prayer of Healing by 1 sec and increases their Holy Word cooldown reduction effect by 2 sec.

4-Set - Priest Holy Class Set 4pc - When Holy Word: Serenity or Holy Word: Sanctify finish their cooldown, you gain 10% critical strike chance for 6 sec.

The Holy Priest 2 and 4 set bonuses are simple and straightforward increases to your output with good flexibility between AoE and Single Target playstyles and some solid gameplay depth. Holy at present has distinct and powerful builds built around using large amounts of either Prayer of Healing
or Heal which the 2pc bonus will always synergize with and the 4pc bonus is universally good. The Single Target build receives a slight advantage due to the synergy with the new Dragonflight Talent Pontifex which is activated by Critical heals from Flash Heal or Heal that increase the healing of your next Holy Word spell and can stack.

These bonuses are certainly not the crazy power level we had in Sepulchur but they are simple and effective in all types of content and playstyles which is a great way to start the expansion. The increases to Holy Word cooldown reduction from the 2pc bonus should provide a slight increase in Holy Word generation which will immediately synergize with higher critical strike uptime, which is great for both M+ and Raiding.

When raiding, this will allow the casting Priest to closely watch both Holy Words to plan around when to cast Divine Hymn or Holy Word: Salvation to benefit from the increased crit bonus. Finally, with how Holy naturally functions in pushing Holy Word spells back off cooldown rapidly, you'll almost guarantee the crit bonus for all high-damage moments in the raid making for a simple, yet satisfying tier set.Shadow Priest Tier Set First Impression

2-Set - Priest Shadow Class Set 2pc - Mind Blast increases the damage of your next Devouring Plague or by 12%, stacking up to 3 times.

4-Set - Priest Shadow Class Set 4pc - Devouring Plague or increase your haste by 4% for 8 sec.

What is the Shadow Priest Tier Set Bonus for Dragonflight Season 1

The tier set bonus Shadow Priest currently has on the Dragonflight Beta is as above. It is available for testing on Beta and is likely to be very similar on live servers once the expansion releases.

These set bonuses are incredibly simple, and have little to no impact or interaction with any of Shadow's talent choices or gameplay in Dragonflight. This is likely intentional as the first tier of any expansion is typically an introductory one, as well as to give Blizzard the chance to see how their talent revamps are playing out on live servers without and temporary power influencing that. It's cool to see set bonuses even in a first tier, as it shows some commitment to them after their reintroduction in Sepulcher of the First Ones.

How Strong is the Set Bonus?

It's ok, sims show it at around 7.5-8% after the recent nerfs, which is just a little under the 10% mark most dps set bonuses typically seem to have settled around. However, the strength of the 2 piece specifically depends almost entirely on the damage of Shadow's Insanity spenders Devouring Plague and . Tuning for all specs is still ongoing, with Shadow especially receiving changes to both affected spells. With that rough 10% goal in mind, it's surprising that the set saw any nerfs at all as it was around the 10% mark beforehand.

What Can I Do With the Set Bonus?
The short answer is not much, in a world of bland and unobtrusive set Bonuses Shadow's just about takes the cake (Plain sponge, no filling). Both effects focus on gameplay Shadow is already built around, and as such don't really have any major ways you can interact with them for value. There are a few small things though.

When spending in AoE, it's better to spend 3 stacks of Priest Shadow Class Set 2pc on a ~100 Insanity than 1-2 stacks on a ~50 insanity one. This is because the buff will affect Mind Sear for as long as it remains channelled, so the more insanity the better.
In Single Target it might be beneficial, depending how frequently you can cast Devouring Plague, to hold onto casts until the 4 piece buff has almost or fully expired to increase its uptime. This is similar to something Shadow has done in the past with Mastery: Shadow Weaving.

Any Issues?

Not really, no. It's simple, it's basic, and it seems decently strong pending spec tuning. You could argue that the 4 piece is a little too simplistic, but given the state of complexity in the spec itself that seems like much less of a concern. The focus on damage buffs to Shadow's spenders, most notably does raise the issue that this set bonus is being used to make our spenders feel potent when the spec should be capable of doing that on its own. Mind Sear has suffered throughout beta being incredibly undertuned, and even after a 110% spell power buff still misses the mark for an AoE spender. This set bonus lives or dies on the tuning of Shadow's core spells moving into Dragonflight. We just have to hope they get that right.

Comment by ixnorpThey buffed PWS and this guy is complaining it's too good now. Disc priests always screeching, "but my ramp!"Comment by IstrilYeah, I've been a fan of Jak for years, but I'm really not agreeing with his feelings about Disc in DF. The short CD shields make such a huge difference in Disc's M+. And I don't agree that weaving in shields during ramps in raids is necessarily a "disruptive" change, it's just a change. Either the boost from the shield is worthwhile enough to do it, or it's not and you still just do your standard atonement rotation and the 2-pc. isn't factoring into it. Either way I think Disc is feeling great in both raids and M+ right now and I don't think they should go messing with how the spec functions. Sure, numbers tuning can happen. I hope they lean into tuning Light's Wrath which will tone down raid healing while not affecting M+ whatsoever.Comment by Keasbey11Disc's tier set definitely looks like it was made to shore up the spec's power in a 5-man environment. I see what Jak is saying about Power Word: Shield in the ramp sequence... which will yield the best results?

1. Slow things down by using the 2pc buff after every shield?
2. Ignore it completely, effectively wasting the 10% damage/healing boost and continue ramping?

I'm sure it will take some testing. Either way, it's a solid set that will help a lot in M+ while still having a bit of power in a raid group. Excited to try it out.Comment by EkkaTo me, 2p is just an element we won't really take into account regarding our rotation or ramps. It's a random increase in healing or damage on the next spell we cast, it's not that big of a difference to put much thought into what spells we should be casting next. Had it been a bigger increase, sure, but not in this case. Small throughotput.Comment by SeniaaTo me, 2p is just an element we won't really take into account regarding our rotation or ramps. It's a random increase in healing or damage on the next spell we cast, it's not that big of a difference to put much thought into what spells we should be casting next. Had it been a bigger increase, sure, but not in this case. Small throughotput.Comment by lovelywazI used to love my Disc Priest back when it actually was a spec that did decent healing while doing damage, as it was the purpose. Along with Power Word: Shield spamming on everyone and dots on boss/trash with Penance doing the damage and Atonement doing the healing part. Disc used to be good at moderate healing and decent at damage, to the point some good players could do close to a DPS spec/class damage on their Disc Priests.

For last two expacs, they have really messed up Disc and even if you take out the oddball Venthyr Holy Pallies, most of the other healers actually do same or even more damage than Disc while clearly doing much better healing. And I don't really like where they are taking this spec in DF. Having a CD on Power Word: Shield rather than how currently it works where the player gets a debuff and Shield itself doesn't have a CD is a big no for me.

Maybe it will turn out to be decent again and I will once again get to enjoy "Doing healing while doing damage, where the focus is on damage" type of gameplay style again. Fingers crossed! 🤞🤞Comment by justkbmtI mean there's a talent where you weave smites to reduce PWS cd, but if you don't take that for raid its fine. Idk don't press PWS before you ramp or press it when its notable of you needing or wanting to press it, I think it's being made a big deal out of something it's not aha.