I main Holy Priest since the start of Shadowlands and I played it as an alt in Legion and Battle for Azeroth. I am one the few players who considers Holy Priest as their favorite healer and I want to give my feedback about the new general- and Holy Priest skill tree. My point of view is mainly from a mythic raider perspective and a bit from mythic+ but I rarely do any keys above 20.
Class Talent Tree:
Focus Mending:
Increasing the initial heal of Prayer of Mending is a very minor gain and boring. Increasing the jump count by one or two would be more interesting and would interact with Say your Prayers and Blessing of Renewal.
Dispell Magic:
As Holy Priest you always have to go through this talent because you want to have Twist of Fate and Improved Shadowfiend and this is the shortest route. I think this talent should be replaced with a less niche talent from which any of the three specs can benefit in most situations.
Purify Disease:
This talent should be swapped with Improved Smite again.
Say your Prayers:
I really like this talent, it could open up a more Prayer of Mending focused playstyle, but in my opinion, it should be buffed to at least 12-15%. This would mean a 60-75% chance per Prayer of Mending cast to have 1 more jump. I would also suggest putting this talent on the main path to Holy Word Life and not on the side.
Cleric’s Armaments & Tools of Cloth:
This part of the class tree is focused on the Holy Priest and because of that it doesn’t make sense to me putting so many damage talents that also depend on Power Word Shield here. Maybe remove Tools of Cloth and move Cleric’s Armaments to the Discipline part of the tree and replace both with healing focused talents like Say your Prayers.
Blessing of Renewal:
The problem with Renew is that Holy Priests will never cast this spell because it doesn’t interact with the holy mastery and only marginally reduces the cooldown of our Holy Words. In my opinion this talent should be changed to a 2-3 Seconds increase on the duration for Renewed Faith and Benediction.
Holy Word Life:
I like the idea of this talent, but what happens when the target uses a Healthstone or is healed by another player at the same time you heal him with Holy Word Life? The Spell is also called Holy Word but doesn’t have any interactions like the other Holy Word spells.
Leap of Faith:
Swap this talent with Angel’s Mercy and give us an option to talent into the Shadowlands legendary, that allows us to grab us to someone.
Translucent Image:
Increase the Duration from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Tithe Evasion:
Mindgames and Holy Word Life are at the moment the only two final talents you can take as a Holy Priest, and it doesn’t make sense to put Tithe Evasion in front of it because in most builds you will never talent into Shadow Word Death on the way to Twist of fate.
Mindgames:
It’s a very boring talent, that is only interesting if you play Discipline Priest or do PVP. This should be a PVP only talent and be replaced with something else.
Overall, the Priest class tree starts very strong for Holy Priests but as soon as you hit the eights point bracket it only gets worse. You have a good option in improved Shadowfiend for mana regeneration but that’s it. Even Twin’s of the Sun Priestess is not that interesting for us because Power Infusion gives us 20% haste which is not great for Holy Priests. And the only good talents in the 20 point bracket are Holy Word Life, Unwavering Will and Translucent Image. In general, I think the final talents in each row should be more universal for more choice in all three specs.
Example:
- Holy Word Life: Switch it with Unwavering Will, buff it by 5% and add Penance, Vampiric Touch and Mindblast.
- Crystalline Reflection: Replace it with Halo/Divine Star with a shadow version for Shadow Priest.
- Mindgames: Replace it with something else.
- Shadowflame Prison: Add Holy Fire and Penance to the spell list.
Holy Priest Talent Tree
Divine Star & Halo:
Right now in Shadowlands both spells hit effective 6 targets with Divine Star healing more than Halo with a 25 seconds shorter cooldown. Hitting 6 targets should be possible in 80% of all raid encounters. This doesn’t make sense to me; Halo needs a buff.
Binding Heal:
It should just heal three targets and not always the player and it should be included in Unwavering Will. Binding Heal always felt bad to use because most of the time you just overheal yourself.
Surge of Light:
In my opinion Flash Heal should be replaced with a reset of Prayer of Mending. Prayer of Mending is one of the coolest heal spells in the game and it has interactions with other talents unlike Flash Heal.
Lightwell:
I like that Lightwell makes a comeback. But it should have a more interactive playstyle like it should do less healing but gain a stack every time you use a Holy Word, or it shouldn’t be a cooldown but more like Statue of the Jade Serpent from the Mistweaver Monk. Maybe some combination out of Lightwell and the Divine Image legendary.
Rune of- Healing, Mending, Fire:
These three talents have very low overall impact for being in the last row in comparison to other spec bottom row talents. You would never waste one point in any of these three. All of them should be in one talent for one point.
Apotheosis:
This talent is only played in M+ and PVP and the only reason for that is the Holy World cooldown reset and because there is no other option. Holy needs some more consistent healing options and because of that I think this talent should be changed to a passive ability. Like an equivalent to shadow form that enhances your abilities in different ways. And you could create a new talent with only the Holy Word Cooldown reset as an ability and put it somewhere else.
Damage Talents:
I do like the new damage talents Holy Priest got in the last row, but because of that Holy Priest lacks healing choices in the last row.
Gales of Song:
this talent is too strong; it should be placed more in the middle or should be easier to access from the other side.
Divine Words:
I expect Holy Word Sanctify will place the old Holy Word Sanctuary on the ground. I would rather see it returning as a talent to pick as an additional ability and let Holy Word Sanctify buff Prayer of Healing.
Right now, there is only one available playstyle option in the Holy Priest Tree and that is spamming Heal/Flash Heal again. There should also be an option for a more Prayer of Healing focused build and one with the focus on Prayer of Mending and Renew. In the past there where many abilities to enable the other playstyles and I would love to see some of them to make a comeback.
- Holy Word: Sanctuary – Cataclysm
- Words of Mending: Warlods of Dreanor Talent
- Clarity of Purpose: Warlods of Dreanor Talent
- Divine Insight: Warlords of Dreanor Talent
- Enduring Renewal: – Legion Talent
- Divinity: – Legion Talent
- Holy Mending: – Legion Artifact
- Renew the Faith: – Legion Artifact
The other problem with the Holy Priest tree is that in the 20 point bracket, you don’t really have many talents to choose from and no real choice because of that. You will always go for Divine Words, Salvation and Gales of Song for raids and Divine Words, Apotheose and Empyreal Blaze for M+. Restoration Druid has 15 different one-point talents in his last bracket and all of them are very strong old talents, legendarys or covenant abilities. Holy Priest has 13 different talents 3 of them are these useless rune talents, other require two points for very little gain and 3 of them are damage talents. I think it would be nice to be able to talent into Divine Words, Salvation and one additional healing path of your choosing like Lightwell.