Holy in current content

Hi guys,

So finally managed to level up holy priest yesterday and just been wondering how is it doing in a current content? At the moment I healed 10/10 LFR NC, multiple HC dungeons with no problems at all and one plaguefall M+4 (Oh that one was really bad… Really bad).

I was hoping for some advice from more experienced priests out there? I am currently working towards FC but Torghast is really having it out for me mainly giving me mind control powers so Ash collecting is not really that quick! :smiley:

I tried out Discipline but it just doesnt suit my playstyle so switched back to holy within like 1 dungeon.

So far I learned that:
Renew is garbage and is not worth casting unless I’ve got some extra mana
Shield is not worth casting at all unless for some minor damage prevention
PoH is extremely ineffective and shouldnt be used (much) after I get my FC
Mobility of HP is not great
HP doesnt have any defensive cooldowns except for Fade with conduit
Mastery shouldnt be pushed for M+ but its useful for raids

Since I am looking for a useful advice only I’ll be ignoring pretty much everything that certain someone cough Aellas cough has to say based on the posts I’ve seen in the last hour.

Thanks guys!

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Renew can be used. The talent gives 10% to healing. This can be used on all the party. Thus its 10% to the tanks healing or the DPS when you know there is going to be AoE damage. Like in ToP before the lich. Salvation drops renew on all targets in a raid or party. You can abuse this fact to get +10% healing on everyone. Then hit Divine hymn afterward for 10% extra on every target.

Flash heal is for emergency healing. Mainly you what to reset the holy word spell as faster as posible. Apotheosis can help you here.

Shield is an instent CD that can be used if someone has a healing debuff or if there is a dot with constant low damage. It allows you to focus on the tank. Its about managing party healing, so you can focus on the tank abd not spit healing. Shield va telant can give a speed boost. This is better than feather, as the target gets protection and a speed boost to escape. Feather is hard to position and dps most times moves away from it. Shield lets the dps pick its own direction and adds some protection.

For PoH it good for MT healing when needed. It is better than spamming flash heal. AoE healing is about the holy word spells. The same with ST healing.

If you have the flash heal talent Trail of light. Then you can heal two targets, with the second getting 35% of the flash heal. This works with heal. This helps if you must spit between a tank and another target. DPS or healer.

Heal is good for low threat healing, were the target wont die soon or recieve damage. The 2.5s cast time can be reduced by FC. With Trail of light you can spit heal with it.

Flash Concentration
Each time you cast Flash Heal, Heal has its casting time reduced by 0.2 sec and healing increased by 3%, stacking up to 5 times.

Basically an increase in healing for heal and a reduced cast time. Trail of light is the best way to use this heal. You need to keep it at 5 stacks if you can. Heal still takes 1.5 seconds which is the same as flash heal. You can abuse this but this is not a well balanced way of healing. Logs do show AoE heal is more often required. So you will become lock into the mindset one hammer fits all problems. Basically you can replace heal with Serenity and get more healing for the period needed. Then move on to other spells that are more suited.

Other choices offer a more open play style.

Mastery is the most important stat. The HoT is mana efficent but takes 6 seconds to deliver the healing. The more you heal, the more it appears to stack. Its also the most useful stat in sims. Ask Mr Robot states under gear check mastery is the most powerful stat for mythic+. Really you want 100% mastery but that wont happen. You need to balance your stats. Whats called an optimal stat distribution. The best build in the gear check on ask mr robot for mythic+, the graph shows 1206 mastery, 402 crit, 134 haste and 0 vers. This could mean that your build wont have a soft cap of 35% mastery. Ask yourself, what evidence do they have for a soft cap. You wont hit such high mastery levels anyway because gear drops are too low. Just make sure the balance of stats is good. A sim can help you with this.

I would not follow people who cant or dont prove their gear methods. Go with your own build. Experiment and have fun. I have DI as it was the first memory I got. You can go with FC if that is what you want. Many go with these four,

First two are equal.
Flash Concentration = 6,763.92 hps
Harmonious Apparatus = 6,703.03 hps
Most likely equal as well.
X’anshi, Return of Archbishop Benedictus = 6,337.00hps
Twins of the Sun Priestess = 6,163.39 hps

Note: The hps data for three of these items are so close they are likely equal. First two are equal.

Also holy is not seen as the high key spec. Disc is more often talked about as the mythic+ spec. Even so there are holy priests that dont use FC that have reach +20. I found +13 not that hard to heal. Good groups help massively.

Seems you are part of that group. Is this a slander post? That would be against the forum rules. Its very immature.

I also don’t like the Discipline (or Shadow) spec. I like the idea of a Holy Priest healer. I’m not an expert at this class by any stretch of the imagination. I bought this game like 3 months ago, in December. Recently I got the Keystone Master, no premade groups or anything, only pugging from Group Finder.

Mobility of HP is not great

That’s why I have Angelic Feather talent and have it macro’d so one button press casts it at my character’s location (instead of having to choose a location to place it), so it’s a quick 40% speed boost.
/cast [@player] Angelic Feather
That’s the macro for it, if I remember correctly.

HP doesnt have any defensive cooldowns except for Fade with conduit

Yes we do! Desperate Prayer! I also have my Kyrian phial (and warlock’s healthstone) macro’d with it, cause why not.

Mastery shouldnt be pushed for M+ but its useful for raids

That’s what the guide said, but the best gear the game gave me had a lot of Mastery, so now I have it at 33% which almost at the soft cap (soft cap is 35% for Mastery for Holy Priest (10% baseline from the spec and 25% from gear)).
Although this doesn’t seem to be a problem.

I use Flash Concentration legendary for M+. I can’t imagine healing dungeons without it.
When you cast Flash Heal to refresh the Flash Concentration stacks, make sure to cast it on yourself. Your group isn’t aware if they’re outside of your range or your line of sight, so the cast might fail and you’ll lose your stacks for it. Then you’re gonna have to cast Flash Heal 5 times, which will destroy your mana, and considering your group is also very unaware of your mana pool, they won’t wait for you to regenerate it either. (You can tell I’ve been pugging all the time and never played with a premade, right? xD)

For other talents, I use:
Trail of Light
Angelic Feather (macro’d, as explained above)
Guardian Angel
Shining Force (I don’t use this much, if at all, maybe I should)
Surge of Light (this helps with maintaining Flash Concentration stacks)
Benediction (cast this all the time, even if everyone’s at 100% hp, preferably on targets that don’t already have it (although it can stack up to 10)).
Light of the Naaru

Yes, yes, I know Apotheosis is good, but I didn’t like it (personal preference), you can take it instead if you like it and you’re good at using it.

If wowhead is correct then the soft cap before real diminishing returns kick in should be 47.5% for mastery. You get 10% baseline and the dr starts at 30 mastery points, every point gives 1.25%. 10+30*1.25=47.5

Ofcourse due to the nature of modifiers whenever you gain 1 point of mastery the relative value of other stats increases.

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Does angelic feather give you enough speed like ghost wolf does? Or monk’s rolls+ tiger lust? OR chi torpedoes ? How about druuds cat form and wild change + dash? Or paladins steed?

You realize that priest is the only healing class that cannot clear roots/snares immobilizations?

The class suffers on mobility and angelic feather is useless while we talk about the slowest class ingame. its even slower from DK’s back in WoD. Even dk’s are moving faster nowadays.

If you consider desperate prayer a defensive, monks have brew+diffuse magic that makes them a tank… Shamans have ghost worf + ancestral shift, Druuds have bark + Bear form, Palas have Divine shield and Divine protection .

Now if you think that desperate prayer is a defensive the only thing i can do is politely argue. Its a selfheal, defensive is something that bolsters your defense not a self heal that increases your max HP that you dont need if you are already dead.

Note that i did not take in account the other classes external abilities like cocoon/BoP/Bark. I used only the personals as my example, so that you wont come up with an answer we have Guardian spirit and disc has Pain Supp that everyone feels entitled to demand for his own use inside raids/M+ which leaves us with nothing.

You probably have never played another healer and see what they can offer or how they can escape i guess?

It seems you misunderstood me. I am not saying that Holy Priest is better than other classes, nor am I saying that other healers don’t have better mobility/defensives.

I was simply sharing my experience of playing a Holy Priest, as OP requested.

I can dispel it if it’s a Magic or Disease type effect. Like at the last boss in Necrotic Wake, for example.
I’m sure other healers can handle all snare/roots much better.

You guessed correctly. As I mentioned in my post, I bought this game only 3 months ago. And to specify further, in all this time I’ve only been playing as a Holy Priest, because I liked the idea of it and decided that would be the class I play.

I have absolutely no intention of arguing against you that Holy Priest is as good as other healers. No, in fact, I’d rather argue with you that Holy Priest is the worst healer in the game, because such course of action is more likely to lead to Blizzard buffing this spec (comparatively speaking). And why wouldn’t I want Blizzard to buff the thing I enjoy playing? :smiley:

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Nope i did not missanderstood you but i failed to explain you why i wrote a book to counter what you said.

Your words make priest sound perfectly fine which it isnt :slight_smile:

Ive seen you have very low XP, probably new player?
Ill give you an example, mythic carapace: When the cysts explode they where killing you, the red goo was slowing us down by a 90% margin? Well guess what? That you cant dispel and you rely on priest to grip you or a monk to give you a tigers lust.

That here is priest problems and feather is useless.
And no, you cant dispel all the slows/roots. You cant dispel the root trash give you on sanguine depths as well.

Thats a good call, holy is a very nice spec and very VERY easy to play spec but… Its not easy to survive in hard content :slight_smile: I guess that is the tradeoff.

That is my point of answering you in the first place, regardless that devs dont read EU forums the idea you gave “everything is fine” is not that… OK
We did talk demanded alot before SL launch but blizzard ignored us as always.
All they care about is their holy pala + disc priest sadly :slight_smile:

For the 3rd time now in this thread, yes.

I don’t know what that is.

I never said that I could dispel all of them.

True.

By the way, what exactly counts as hard content?
Mythic raids? Haven’t even dared to go in one of those yet :smiley:
M+? I’ve already done +15s timed. No intention of going above that for now, as I don’t see any benefit.

I guess I should go to US forums and talk about how bad Holy Priest is over there.

In conclusion: everyone, don’t play Holy Priest, ever. Since they don’t read these forums, maybe they’ll look at their data/stats/analytics instead and decide to do something about the underused spec. One can only hope.

Carapace of Nzoth, it was probably the worst encounter we could face since we cant negate slows

Yes mythic raids but not the farm-able bosses. The few last for example that are never a subject for farm in between “normal people” :rofl:

You did Heroic raids, that means you are capable of doing a few mythic bosses before the next tier.

Atm they are farm-able content, i think hard content would be like 17’s for holy priest or a bit more? But wise call, no reason to go further for now.

Its really…REALLY bad atm :frowning:
Back in BFA where Hpalas where literally gods among mortals i could do wonders with holy priest, ranked it really hard worldwide without asking my co-healers to stop heal so i can parse. Nowadays it seems that holy is so weak that everything others do it simply deletes your spells :confused:

In M+ its a very chill and nice spec to play though.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/26#metric=hps&dataset=100&class=Healers its being like this is day 1 of mythic release.
In big raids over 25 people Holy is god tier, when it comes to 20 man content holy is lacking.

During SL beta (back in BFA) they gave us The Alabaster Lady and they removed it 2 weeks after (still in beta)

If we had this legendary right now the spec would be SICK, it has exactly the same functionality like Ineffable Truth corruptions had back in BFA which made holy godmode

I came to the conclusion they dont want us to shine above all, they want us to simply exist in the bottom-line of the mix.

[The Alabaster Lady] :cry:

Here’s a simple answer, based on having read all the guides, personal testing and playing mid-tier content. ^-^

Holy is fine in current content, but not in super high end content. In Mythic raids and high M+ keys (think like +18-+20 and higher), holy priest isn’t very meta right now. Luckily, that’s not what the majority of the playerbase even plays.
Holy priest is viable for heroic raids, has a funny niche on a mythic raid boss like Sun King, and can complete keystone master this season. In other words, holy priest is perfectly viable for the content majority of the playerbase is capable of. c:
However, please look at icy-veins or wowhead for guides on how to do these things. Legendaries matter a lot, and not all of them were created equal. I’ve seen far too many poor sweet priests use the legendary that lets you self-ress after your Spirit of Redemption expires, only for it to activate as we wipe and then be on cooldown.
If you main M+, stack crit. If you main raids and do a bit of M+ on the side, stack mastery and then crit. Harmonious Apparatus for raids, Flash Concentration for M+. Both work for both, but; FC makes harder keys way easier, and HA gives you more value in raids where you have co-healers that are able to spotheal and tankheal better than you just with their base kit (holy paladins and such). FC HAS value in raids, it’s just that sometimes we’re better off being the raid healer rather than a spothealer. ^-^

The official priest discord is great, I’m just not on it because I’m shy and hate having my server list full of too many things. Oh, and if anyone tells you to make Divine Image, I’m sorry but please don’t, it’s just not viable compared to the others. :< I made that mistake too, I felt so misled. Don’t be me, just listen to the guides, websites trust the high end players to make the guides for a reason! ^-^/

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Oh yeah you are right! I completely forgot about Desperate Prayer. I think that I dont even have on my bars. Damn.

This is super useful. Thank you!

Apotheosis is not bad BUT I dont like that its on GCD. If it would be off GCD it would be so much more useful imo. Light of the Naaru is easy and useful.

Angelic Feather does give you almos the same speed buff BUT it doesnt give you the “movement speed cannot be reduced below xxx” so ghost wolf is definitely so much better. And overall the class is definitely suffering when it comes to mobility.

Considering that Yurippe mention that she’s a new player from the get go I find this to be a bit rude my dude. But overall you are not wrong. There is a LOT things wrong with holy priest and in no way its “fine” spec at the moment. However it seems that as long as I am not gonna be doing super high end content (anything above M+15 and mythic raiding) I should be fine. I played resto drood, resto shaman, holy paladin, mistweaver monk (god I hated that one due to mana management problems) and disco priest (didnt like it, just not my style of healing. I like raw heals). I enjoyed drood and shaman A LOT. Paladin was okay but I dont really like melee healers. And to be honest, priests got amazing transmogs… :smiley:

That should be fine then, I am not planning to go above 15 as I barely ever did anything above 10 on my other characters and Mythic raids are just not for me. I’ll stick to Heroic raids.

Ah okay I was thinking mainly going haste / crit and mastery on the side.

Oh no worries, I am definitely aiming to get FC and HA later on for raids as you suggested in your post.

Thanks everyone for their input. It definitely helped me to get some information that I completely missed or forgot about.

Have a wonderful day y’all <3

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If you care about getting Keystone Master or just enjoy M+ in general, focusing on crit is also absolutely fine and won’t hurt you much for raids. Crit isn’t useless for raids at all, mastery is just slightly better for those that mainly do raids and only really do one low M+ for the weekly vault. c:

I’m glad you’re giving holy priest a go, really hope you like it! Have a wonderful day too~

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Ive seen that after i wrote my comment and even when i said it its obvious i was not intending to be rude.

Whats your point here?

Is there a blue that can get in touch with me about this post. Or do I have to action this post via offical means?

What? I’m not even talking to you nor saying anything offensive. I was responding to the OP about what I generally know about Holy priests, based on my own experience and reading guides of players that are better than I am. c:

You’re kind of coming after me without any provocation, that kind of falls under harassment. I can see you’re also linking this in another thread which is just very bizarre. I’m sorry but you’re creeping me out a little… ^-^’’

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