With the announcement of 11.1, I wanted to get your thoughts on the upcoming season.
I mainly play Holy in PvE Mythic+ with a bit of raiding.
I have to say I’m pretty hyped about the announcement of the HPriest rework: emphasizing Renew and Prayer of Mending, buffing the Oracle spec, talents that boost multi-target healing, etc.
However, I still have a few doubts about Prayer of Healing, which, in my opinion, still feels pretty weak.
You can already check out a preview of the future talent tree on WowHead at this link:
Replacing Renewed Faith with Voice of Harmony is a great change.
Changing the channel time of Divine Hymn to 5 seconds is good but still more of a bandaid fix imo.
Symbol of Hope remains meh …
Can’t imagine Empowered Renew to be anything but DoA.
Divinity looks amazing.
I don’t really like that we have to pick between Trail of Light and Dispersing Light but I guess it makes sense.
The possibility of having both Lightweaver and Lightwell at the same time seems really powerful.
Love all the buffs to PW:Life.
Lightweaver might make Prayer of Healing worth it. I can see where they’re going with all the Renew related talents but whether it’s better than the other choices we have must be tested.
Two problems offset a slew of huge improvements - first, the bottom of the tree is poorly designed in a way where we are losing utility and throughput because of talent placement. Not ideal, but potentially workable as long as those become meaningful choices with balanced throughput. However, the second issue is the bigger one - we got no new utility that we desperately need. No movement, no interrupt, no changes to our dispell profile, no bres, and they gutted the one “battle res” we had by removing that functionality entirely and only leaving us with restitution. And don’t get me wrong, it’s so nice it’s actually available now, but it’s also competing with another important talent.
In short, they saw where they could legitimately improve our existing kit, but did very little to make it feel coherent without mandatory talents, and left us without key, vital utility. We aren’t going to magically be in a great place - just a better place, in theory. The heavy focus and reliance on apotheosis is also pretty miserable with the upcoming tier set - too much RNG outaide of 30~ second windows every 2 minutes, where we will be doing insane burst healing anyway.
It’s a frustrating state of affairs, because we could feel so solid with some fairly minor tweaks.
still any new moblity… we have Angelic Feather = Body and Soul just 6s cd both 40% boost just why? atleast raise cd on feathers and make it 100% or rework it but why we should have 2 same things… no big deff cd, still miss hard party heal cd, its nice have hymn 2m/boosted but its still need to be channeled… where u can channel something 5sec in M+? just give holy one good party raid cd maybe?
I play healpriest since 18 years and here are my recommendations for holy:
-There are a lot of weak talent points, especially in the upper part of the talent tree. which you just take, because you have to spend the points:
Holy Mending is extremely weak
Prayer of Healing and everything reliant on it is still is bad (no Trail of light synnergie, Dispersing light, binding heal, high mana cost) wich makes it weak
Everlasting Light is getting worse when you dont have mana issues, so might wanna change that too, based on targets missing health or sth…
Empowered Renew and all renew stuff is weak, since we have no set bonus anymore from previous expansions that supports renew and renew does not support mastery: echo of light. which is one of the most important stats for holy!
Lightwell is bad for it being a bottom talent. it’s good for renew applies but renew is bad, so it is bad by default
no kick = priest struggels in m+ and feels like he has no impact, just along for the ride, not what we want to feel…
lasting words is bad, since we have no set bonus to support renew…
i like divinity but it would be nice if the spell apotheosis has an initial heal on it. its on a global cooldown and you want to make use of the holy word resett whenn you press it, but having a global in between that does nothing can be devestating in m+ or high pressure situations when you want to use apotheosis but you dont have the time for that one singel useless global. so you have to use it early and thats bad too because you cant make good use of the two free holy words it gives. my recomendation pressing apotheosis creats a shield on 5 party members… or heals the initial target by a big amount or gives the target some dmgreduction (would solve some problems in m+, making the lost global cooldown less of an issue)
holy word: light is a bait spell witch can cost you precious time when ppl get topped in the same moment, making the spell stuck on your mousepoint not able to cast anything… even if it would heal more you dont use it because of bad synergie and clunkyness
improve prayer of mendings healing a little please. sometimes it feels bad to press that globalbutton, when flash heal and heal with trail are so strong in comparrison.
i dont like the fact that every healing class has the same set bonus, its very boring and uncreative…
buff holys power word: Shield spell for defensive and preamtive measures. it can be a nice niche spell in m+ to throw out on ppl before abilities hit.
you could consider making prayer of healing a very strong spell right after sanctify to give holy more aoe burst (for m+). and keeping it useless withouth it so it wont get overpowered. change prayer circle so that it doesnt make cast time faster, witch is useless since you also have lightweaver for that. but make it increase its healing by a big amount so it feels rewarding casting a prayer directly after sanctify. and in between not very worth while or just to get a little cdr management.
-hymne of hope for personals is great
All in all priest is still a very fine class and i love playing it: in my opinion holy priest strengths should be: triageheal, strong consistent singeltarget healing along with steady mediocre aoe output with echo. Dont go into the “renew department” it has not enough synergy with what the holy priest wants to do…
Rather focus on holy word echo, prayer of mending, synergie and more bursty aoe output in between, since more bosses and m+ requier such. Give us more low cooldown aoe burst heal for m+ echo ticks to slow for certain hard hitting aoe abilities. making us only able to keep 3 ppl alive instead of 5 in the tight timeframe.
Give priest a kick (can have a longer cooldown, but give us one!) make divine hymne less of a death trap, castable while moving or even less channeling time… spending guardian spirit every time we dont wanna risk dieing to hymne is not cool. And yes a little more mobility whould be a blessing. having to be so reliant on freedom, paradox and fly with me from others is very annoying.
Very well said. That are exactly the changes priest needs. I am a bit worried for the upcoming patch. It’s probably going to be a while before we see further changes - and for now, it doesn’t look like blizzard is getting it right.
If they ask us to use Prayer of Healing for m+ it need to be buff 4 times to be able to deal with the aoe dmg. The mana it cost does also need to be lowered and the cast time also lowered.
Has not used Prayer of Healing for year in m+ or raid. Last time I did use it was in wrath.
Don’t forget we now get to choose between more output per channel or a lower CD!
Hymn is basically a worse Halo in every way atm, which is a little ironic. I feel like so many choice nodes have become no-choice (like Divine star) and at this point they should just make some of them baseline (like Divine star, c’mon, make it our new movement ability.)
I don’t know even where to start.
Majority of changes they’re making are either moderately adequate for raiding only and with total disregard to m+.
Prayer of Healing is still pathetically weak and instead of giving it some chunky buff (100-300%) they increased its mana cost.
And you know what annoys me the most? The discipline priest NEVER runs out of mana, outperforms holy at everything, and those morons at tuning department keep giving huge buffs to disc again, when none of the holy’s issues has been adequately addressed:
Our poor utility now is even worse, as we have node chose between Guardian Spirit and Restitution, absolutely moronic move.
Our group healing in m+ is still non existant, the pathetic buffs did not change its status as unviable garbage in m+, maybe situationally good in raiding at best.
Lots of dead talents, especially on the right side, especially those for Prayer of Mending. Prayer of Mending is impotent.
Whoever is in charge of healing balance, has a legendary amount of incompetence. Holy Priest has been the worst m+ healer of season 1 with 80% dysfunctional spells and talents, Disc Priest has been the only meta healer throughout season 1.
What do we see so far? Holy priest’s core issues not addressed and disc priest gets another round of huge buffs.
As much as I like my holy priest I gave up on playing it, fed up with idiotic tuning and total lack of understanding of healing situation on Blizzard’s part even 6 months into the season.
I really would like to have the Mists of Pandaria Talent “Divine Insight” back, where PoM CD got reseted by 40% with “Heal” or “Prayer of Healing” and that it bounced to 5 targets, just like they got hit and it felt so satisfying and actually healed a lot.
Also, I think they really should buff Prayer of Healing a lot since it also sais “A powerful prayer…”
I also think like that they could remove “Divine Hymn” and redesign “Apotheosis”, that you transform into a powerful Angel, increasing your healing, reducing your Holy Words and that you have a circle around you (like 25 Meters)
For Allies: They are getting a huge amount of Healing per second
For Enemies: While inside the Area, they’re getting blasted by a powerful “Holy Fire”, something like this.
“Just an idea that I got in mind which could be looking really cool and also feeling powerful?”
In my opinion, Apotheosis doesn’t need to be any more powerful, it is literally the only worthwhile cooldown we have.
I don’t want Holy to be a “One CD pony.” Instead, I would like to see our other abilities to be worthwhile. In the very, very least, Symbol of Hope and Divine Hymn should be worth pressing.
I honestly wish they’d remove Apotheosis as a CD and make is the counterpart to shadowform. We have way too much CD reliance and juggling as it is, and we could shift some of that power to Divine Hymn and our capstones.
Shadowform is the most redundant and unnecessary spell shadow priests have from the technical point of view.
Holy Priest probably has the least realiance on cooldowns among all healers. Divine Hymn and Apatheosis are two entirely different types of cooldown.
Divine Hymn is a raid cooldown and still garbage in m+, while apotheosis is the only personal empowerment we have and is strong around both in m+ and raids. What “way too much CD reliance” are you talking about?
All of our holy words (especially if you don’t have a good way to reduce the cooldown,) Halo, PI, Hymn of Hope (for mana or defensives) and shadowfiend. Most of those want or need to be cast on cooldown, depending on the content you are playing. Juggling Apotheosis on top of all of that, and having to spend points into Answered Prayers and all the PoM talents limits build options significantly.
I’d much rather have a passive form that does something now and then as a proc, than have an active you need to press on cooldown and then churn out holy words, or have Answered Prayers pop when you don’t need it - I’d prefer more consistency, rather than burst healing windows. We still have other cooldowns for when we need more healing, which is why I’d like some of that power moved to other cooldowns.
You reduce cooldown of HW: Serenity naturally by using your flash heal and heal, there is nothing to play around.
Halo, PI, Hymn of Hope and shadowfiends are only 4 cooldowns, and none of them are person empowerment like Apatheosis. It is quite low compared to other healers, if this overwhelms you and you want even more basic playstyle, maybe classic will suit you better.
Holy Priest is already probably the most consistent healer, consistency is not our problem, dead, underturned spells are. Hymn of Hope might have some use in raids, but it’s almost worthless in m+.
We do not have a single cooldown to deal with heavy aoe damage in high keys, what are you even talking about?
Okay, sure, Apotheosis is pretty useful in M+, but what if Divine Hymn was useful instead? Would that be a bad thing? And as for raid, Apotheosis is not enjoyable to press, I would always rather Salvation - but that’s been straight up removed in 11.1, and now the entire raid tier revolves around a spell that I’ve never enjoyed pressing in raid.
As I’ve said, and will continue to say - I’d rather that our skills get more bang for their buck, rather than putting so much power into Apotheosis, and forcing everyone to run it. Especially since optimal builds also require PoM, one of the biggest talent sinks in the game, and still isn’t very good (semi-smart healing aside.)
A lot of our stuff should also become baseline - right now Divine Star (a skill shot spell) is utterly inferior to Halo, and is on a choice node with it. We could have that be reworked, turn it into a baseline movement ability that happens to heal and damage anyone in the path (or even base it on spec if needed.)
Holy is becoming more hyper-focused on specific spells since the introduction of hero talents than ever before, and it’s detrimental to the spec not only from a balance perspective, but also from a class fantasy perspective. If we perform below average outside of every Halo and Apotheosis, it’s going to feel really, really bad.
