Priest is a rubbish class for the hero, as of itself. It’s just the best one to dump your hero into because of the clearly broken make-24-gems-for-7-mana weapon and the Divine meta. Priest’s traits and talents are pretty irrelevant for that.
Ymmv I guess - but I think you’re mistaken to disregard the Bard class - if you ever feel like using the hero for its own abilities.
Of course you do. We all do. That was actually exactly my point.
We are straying off-topic somewhat bickering about class preferences. I actually largely agree with your opening post about the design of the talent trees. I said much the same here: