#due to specific qualities of the magic that collects in that area and how fae are evolved to exploit that

[rxttenfish]

god i need to start working again on the fae in the redesign universe and what that even MEANS

at least significantly im thinking fae is referring moreso to a specific type of magical biome than anything else, and thus even if the entities inside are unrelated to each other they have more in common with each other than anything else due to existing within a specific environment and being adapted for it

however magic is also weird where its much easier to exchange "genetic material" and pick up the traits of unrelated species, so it might also still be the case they are literally more closely related to each other than anything else

[unfocusedwill]

(Alpha) Covenant Soulbinds

Between corruption and ultra wonky healing design, I haven’t had much to say about Ny’alotha. Now it’s time to look ahead to Shadowlands!

Wowhead made a post today with the soulbinds for every covenant currently on alpha. Here are my early thoughts on the systems and interactions as a priest healer. At the time of this post it appears that the devs haven’t started iterating on the priest specs yet, so the opinions and conclusions drawn here are still very much subject to change.

Whereas Conduits have class-specific effects, Soulbinds are themed around the covenant as a whole and its signature covenant ability. Each covenant has 3 different soulbind choices, each with its own ‘theme’.

Kyrian

Phial of Serenity (conjured item, 3): Restores 15% health and removes all diseases, poisons, curses, and bleeds affecting you.

Boon of the Ascended: Draw upon the power of the Ascended for 10 sec, granting access to Ascended Nova (spammable aoe), replacing Smite with Ascended Blast (empowered smite with cd) and increasing your movement speed by 50%. Upon expiration, releases an Ascended Eruption (i.e. Azshara staff proc). 

Kyrian is a strong throughput covenant and essentially gives you another raid cd, but loses out on the much-hyped mobility of Venthyr or Night Fae.

Mikanikos (PvP) Phial gains a knockback effect when used, and auto heals+aoe stuns when dropping below 35% HP. Reduced stun/incap duration when standing still. A pet Bron is summoned to attack every 120 spells casted. 2% haste on damaging a new enemy is probably underwhelming in most cases, especially since the buff only lasts 10 seconds and you’d only get it a finite number of times per combat. As a priest with levitate, the fall damage DR doesn’t really do anything either. Armor durability repair is irrelevant. This soulbind seems to have been designed for PvP. Ultimately, it offers very little meaningful value in PvE.

Kleia (Healing) This soulbind is fantastic and buffs healing while also providing quality of life by shoring up some of priest’s utility weaknesses. All your healing causes a minor 5% Echo-like HoT. An AoE HoT on “nearby” allies for every 40 times that you or a nearby ally crits. Up to 5% passive crit depending on number of units nearby. Start combat with a free 10% HP absorb shield. Raidwide +5% HP>90 lets us briefly pretend that PW:Fort wasn’t nerfed, but not terribly important. 15s immunity to most non-magic debuff types is never a bad thing, and could hard counter certain specs in PvP. You could even precast Phial to counter hex, for example.. BfA had several dispellable curse mechanics so this could also come in handy for PvE. 1.5 RPPM 30% slow lasting for 20s may help you chase down fleeing players in warmode, if you’re into that kind of thing. And last but not least, a 10% mounted movement speed buff>90. Neat!

Pelagos (Open World?) Honestly I’m not really sure what they were going for here. This soulbind provides 5% vers with a brief ramp-up time. Phial heals for an additional 20% HP total, but becomes a 10s HoT. ‘Defeating an enemy’ grants movement speed and reduces the cd on Phial and the other Steward abilities. You get free crafting materials. Gain a 5% mastery buff when you cast the class ability (Boon of the Ascended). I suppose you would want to take this soulbind to reduce downtime on an alt that you use for farming. This seems underwhelming compared to the more consistent and diverse benefits of Kleia.

Necrolord

Fleshcraft (4s channel): Form a shield of flesh and bone over 4 sec that absorbs damage equal to 20% (or up to 50% if near a corpse) of your maximum health for 2 min.

Unholy Nova: An explosion of dark energy heals allies within 15 yards for (150% of Spell power) and infects nearby enemies with Unholy Transfusion (deals DoT and heals allies for a fixed amount when attacking the target, with ICD). 

Necrolord is also a throughput covenant, but Unholy Nova has lower potential than Boon of the Ascended and no synergy with either disc or holy toolkits. Fleshcraft is strictly inferior to other covenant signature abilities due to the channel time and conditional shield size.

Heirmir (Open World) This seems similar to Pelagos in that it provides gathering mats and procs movement/healing upon defeating an enemy. ‘Thorns’ DoT is basically useless since the only time a priest will be hit by melee attacks is in open world or PvP, or the rare add fixate. Forgeborne Reveries seems like a way to get kill credit on world quests even if there’s a lot of enemies nearby. There’s pretty much nothing impactful about this soulbind.

Emeni (Tanking) Max HP buff, extra hearthstone, movement speed/haste buffs based on nearby enemies and defeated enemies. Absolutely not worth taking.

Marileth (??) Immunity to CC while channeling Fleshcraft, 10% movement speed that requires standing still for quite some time to gain the buff, shield when dropping below 50% HP. 10% damage increase for 5 seconds, once per target, only one target at a time. Lockpicking and armor durability repair. What??? No. Don’t take this, it’s terrible.

Night Fae

Soulshape: Turn into a Vulpin, increasing movement speed. You may reactivate Soulshape to teleport 10 yds forward. While out in the world, this effect has a 12sec duration before it wears off, but lasts indefinitely while in a rest area.

Fae Blessings: Surround yourself with helpful sprites, causing your next 10 spell casts to aid your target depending on your chosen spell. (Direct ST heal applies 10% DR, PW:S provides target with 2% mana or 20% resource, AoE heal reduces the cd of a major ability by 3s for each target.)

Soulshape is a fun ability with a vanity collection of different shapeshift forms, but much weaker than Venthyr’s Door of Shadows since it only teleports 10yds to DoS’s 35yd and has a longer cooldown. Fae Blessings is very very bad. There is no throughput benefit to the priest and the buffs granted to allies aren’t nearly powerful enough to make up for it. Plus, the resource granted by casting PW:S is actually less than the mana used to cast it.

Dreamweaver (??) Soulshape expiration grants 15% movement speed buff to nearby allies for 15s, 5% vers buff that bounces between you and nearby allies, empowered CC (assuming you have CC spells, that is. *laughs in priest*), overhealing stored as an absorb shield up to 15% of your HP, auto-slowfall, increased gold from WQ, cheat death on a 30 min cd. Weird mix of abilities without a coherent theme.

Korayn (Tank) Soulshape activation grants 10% movement speed buff to allies within 40yd. Able to initiate combat by using Soulshape to charge. 10% physical DR from standing still, 2% DR from facing target, execute dmg on enemies below 35% HP. Gets extra big if an ally dies, just like ret paladins but on a 5 min cd. The DR and positional requirements make it obvious that this soulbind is intended for tanks.

Niya (Warmode) Shadowmeld effect, soulshape CDR, movement speed, slow, up to 10% mastery buff, small offensive and defensive buffs. I could see this being an interesting kit for open world solo PvP, but not really raiding. I wonder if Sylvari Mantle’s “conceal” is equivalent to stealth, because that plus Soothe Mind and Fade could make for some interesting skips.

Venthyr

Door of Shadows: Wend through the shadows, appearing at the targeted location. (35yd range, 1s cast, 1m cd)

Mindgames: Assault an enemy's mind, dealing Shadow damage and briefly reversing their perception of reality. For 5 sec, the next -- damage they deal will heal their target, and the next -- healing they do will damage their target. Generates up to 40 Insanity. Reversed damage and healing restores up to 4% mana (Disc/Holy).

While conceptually cool, mindgames will probably be difficult to use well and is also dependent on the tuning of how much damage/healing is reversed. Currently not a compelling choice for throughput. Door of Shadows, however, is giga mobility for any class. It’s superior to the void elf Spatial Rift (30 yards, must be planned further in advance, 3m cd) and looks to the strongest mobility obtainable by a priest.

Draven (Balanced) 10% crit buff upon interrupting or dispelling, 30s ICD - Sephuz 2.0?? Gain 10% stam and 4% healing from standing still. Gain movement speed increases from allies, up to 30%. 10% vers for 10s upon using Mindgames. The tooltip isn’t clear but it also seems like you gain a stacking mana regen buff above 80% HP. This soulbind is pretty much all stat buffs, plus movement speed. The crit buff requires something to dispel, so the uptime is probably not going to be that great. I doubt the grab bag of buffs will be enough to outweigh the throughput power of the Kyrian covenant, but within Venthyr soulbinds this seems like a solid choice.

Nadjia (ST PvP?) Large movement speed increase tied to Door of Shadows, 15% increased weapon enchant/food/flask effects, reduced movement cc duration, 4% damage increase to one target, and a 20% increase to the speed of ‘everything’ for 10s every 1.3 minutes or so. Interesting and possibly attractive to certain specs, but not particularly geared towards healing.

Theotar (Utility?) Door of Shadows cc break, instant cast with longer CD. Increased combat potion duration. Positional 10% mastery buff proc, minor absorb shield with 20s ICD. Free herbs, cheat death, and... free transmog. These are all weirdly specific effects that have more minor or niche uses. In particular, procs are not as attractive for healing let alone a mastery proc where you have to stand within the proc area. Cool idea but I’d rather go for the more consistent benefits offered by Nadjia or Draven.

My guess is that at the end of the day, it’ll come down to picking between Kyrian and Venthyr depending on whether you want to commit to throughput or mobility. I’m not sure about the encounter design philosophy in Shadowlands yet, and how impactful it’ll be to have improved mobility. I doubt they would design a fight that REQUIRES very strong mobility from the entire raid, however. For now, since I play a void elf, I’m tentatively leaning towards Kyrian.