So, it seems that the developers have finally begun to look into Holy Priests and gave us a bit of tuning. We’ve been active on the Priest forum for a good while now so I would like to use this opportunity to post another round of feedback here instead of the Priest section.
Many people have expressed their ideas about helping the Holy spec so I would like to say that the following text is simply my opinion. With this out of the way,
I would like to present a humble list of suggestions and feedback that would make Holy Priest average in Mythic+.
All numbers are based on my character with 624 ilvl.
Let’s start with looking at our bread and butter spell - Flash Heal - and its power between our two healing specs.
Holy Flash Heal - 487k
Discipline Flash Heal - 552k
The only way to heal more with Flash Heal as Holy is to use Surge of Light procs as Archon - which is quite odd given that Discipline isn’t about healing with Flash Heal.
Now, let’s have a look at our AoE healing abilities after the latest buffs:
Power Word: Radiance heals for: 404k + 5 Attonements, 18 seconds CD
Holy Word: Sanctify heals for: 345k + Resonant Words, 60 sec CD
Mind you, Radiance isn’t even primarily used for its healing but to apply Attonement.
So Radiance still does higher raw healing, heals further more through Attonement, adds 2 bolts to Penance and has an 18 sec. cooldown.
Meanwhile Sanctify does 59k less healing, adds 40% healing to a single spell and has a 60 sec. cooldown.
Now, the cooldown of Sanctify can be reduced by casting Prayer of Healing. We need to cast it seven times in a row to fully reset the cooldown:
With this context, the healing amount begins to make sense, however, it is majorly flawed.
The healing amount is set with the assumption that we will only cast Prayer of Healing between Radiance cooldowns - which is completely ridiculous.
This approach works well enough with Serenity because we do cast Flash Heal, Heal all the time. The same is not true for Prayer of Healing, in fact, we don’t even pick the talent in Mythic+. Let’s have a look why:
Prayer of Healing
Let’s compare it to Flash Heal:
| Healing | Mana Cost | Base Cast Time | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prayer of Healing | 102,505 * 5 =512,525 | 110.000 | 2 seconds | ||
| Flash Heal | 487,169 | 90.000 | 1,5 second |
The total amount of healing done by PoH is a whoopin 5,2% higher than Flash Heal.
I’m no game designer but if there are two spells and one of them has a higher mana cost and a longer cast time, shouldn’t it do more healing?
However, even if PoH got fixed, the current interaction with Sanctify would still have issues because we simply don’t cast PoH all the time.
In my opinion, it would be better to give Sanctify a set 14 sec CD - as its healing is intended for it - and move the interaction with PoH away from cooldown reduction to something else (probably more power?).
Divine Hymn
Even after the 400% healing increase, it still provides only padding levels of healing while requiring us to stand still and channel it.
Imagine if Disc Priests had to channel their Barrier, or if Healing Tide Totem silenced and rooted the Shaman - that is Divine Hymn right now.
I like the idea of having a group padding ability, but we must be able to move and cast while it’s active. I can think of two options here:
-
Make it passive - Call down a projection of a Naaru who will sing Divine Hymn, healing your allies.
-
Tie it to spellcasts - It last 8 seconds by default, so let’s say: The next 8 sucessful healing casts will emit a Divine Chord - One tick of Divine Hymn.
This way we can move, spot heal and have padding healing going on.
Symbol of Hope
Currently, this ability is used to recover 30 seconds of cooldown of a major defensive ability of our allies.
It could be split into a Dungeon/Raid version, like Divine Hymn and Attonement. In raids, it could stay the same. In M+, it could be buffed to a 60 sec reduction like it used to be before it was nerfed.
Holy Priest used to be considered D tier even with the 60 sec reduction so no worries here.
Guardian Spirit
Putting a healing increase and Cheat Death in one ability is pretty contradictory. If we put a 60% healing increase on someone and start pumping, they are not going to die.
So we either use it to heal through predictable damage, leaving the Cheat Death effect unused.
Or we hold on to it to prevent a random two-shot - A DPS takes random damage for 90% HP, we reactively GS them to prevent a second random hit from killing them (which occasionally happens). This leaves most of the healing boost unused, we use two healing spells on them and that’s it, they’re safe.
Then, the higher keys we do, the more likely will the random two-shot turn into a random one-shot and Guardian Spirit can’t prevent that.
So to make this spell more efficient, I think the effects should be split:
1. A 60% healing boost with a 3 Min CD.
2. The Cheat Death effect should be a group-wide aura so it would prevent those one-shots.
Now, other Cheat Death effects are:
The aura would have to have a CD ranging from 4-8 mins to be in line with the other effects.
We don’t have Heroism. We don’t have a Combat Rez. We don’t have Damage Reductions of the Disc spec. Death Denial aura would be powerful utility specific to Holy - Something the spec needs desperately.
We also have to look at the talent choice below Guardian Spirit.
Talent Guardian Angel - Reduces the cooldown of the healing buff to 1 Min - The way it works now.
My focus in on the unused alternative talent Guardians of Light:
Even though this idea is really cool, it has clearly proven impractical.
My suggestion is a new talent Glimmering Guardian:
This would give us a tool for AoE healing - something we currently don’t have.
Greater Holy Nova idea
Another tool for AoE healing that would require a change of a couple talents.
The first talent to change is Renewed Faith:
It is a mandatory talent that provides barely any benefit as we don’t actively cast Renew. So I’ve thought to change it into:
This change itself isn’t very significant, until we get to the next talent - Holy Mending:
This is the other choice talent to Benediction and it is dead because there is no build that revolves around actively casting Renew. So I’ve thought to change it into:
This would greatly improve the healing of Holy Nova while doubling its charging time, making it more of an impactful cooldown.
Let’s get to some healing numbers:
| Current Version | Baseline increased by 50% | Rhapsody charged to 800% bonus | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Rhapsody | 24.292 | 24.292x1,5= 36.438 | — | ||
| Full Rhapsody | 24.292x5= 121.460 | 36.438x5= 182.190 | 36.438x9=327.942 |
To further incorporate it into our kit, Greater Holy Nova could be eligible for the Resonant Words bonus to create a short combo:
This would bring the spell to nice (327.942x0,4= 131.177+327.942=) 459.119 healing with a 40 sec CD.
A reminder that Disc’s Radiance heals for 404k (+5 Attonements) with 2 charges on an 18 sec CD.
Oracle talents feedback
So Oracle is shared with the Discipline spec and I would like to make two comparisons.
First:
Preemptive Care: Increases the duration of Renew by 6 secs.
Discipline version: Increases the duration of Atonement by 4 sec and the duration of Renew by 3 sec.
- In terms of HPS, 3 extra seconds of Renew is absolutely nothing compared to 4 sec of five Attonements or even just one.
- I would argue that Renew is more useful for Discipline because it applies Attonement compared to the Renewed Faith talent of Holy.
- Our spot healing is already good, making it 6% better isn’t needed.
I can’t think of any suggestion for changing it. However, I think the talent should shift away from Renew since it’s not really a preemptive ability. Other spells that can be considered preemptive are Prayer of Mending - which we already have bonuses for in the tree. The other spell is Power Word: Shield which is more of a Discipline spell but it would synergize well with the rest of the talents.
Second:
Foreseen Circumstances - Guardian Spirit lasts additional 2 secs.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a hero talent. What it is this even supposed to do?
Discipline version: Pain Suppression reduces damage taken by and additional 10%.
If Pain Suppression gets a 10% bonus for its entire duration, so should Guardian Spirit:
Nothing game-breaking, just comparable.
Premonition of Piety
The problem with Premonition of Piety is that in high keys, you take so much damage that you can never overheal yourself enough to sufficiently heal others. So at that level, we use the Premonition just for the 28% healing increase and spot heal with it anyway, any overhealing you do is accidental. Which turns this ability from interesting to boring.
If Blizzard’s idea with Piety is to give us AoE healing than Jaypriest’s solution is the way to go, in my opinion.
Spirit of the Redeemer
This would be a nice replacement for the Afterlife talent:
Afterlife is required to make Redeemer last a reasonable amount of time while it’s not useful for anything else outside of some very niche scenarios. I would gladly forgo this talent for the Spirit of the Redeemer.
Having a, let’s say, 10 sec. immunity to damage and CC would be a great tool for us since we have to stand and hard cast everything. And it’s still not as potent as Paladin’s Divine Shield since we cannot move in the Spirit form:
- If people LoS us, we cannot reach them.
- If there is a swirlie below us when it ends, we get blown up.
So it would have to be strategically placed.
Psychic Scream
If priests are to get an interrupt, I think Psychic Scream is the right ability for it - it would be an AoE interrupt 
and both Holy and Disc would have access to it.
But, as I said in Heartie’s post, I think it should be baseline, not a talent. We are already stretched thin in the talent area.
Prayer of Mending
An annyoing issue in M+ is the erasure of its stacks when a person with 11 stacks recieves a 6 stack PoM going up to 14 (maximum), erasing 3 stacks of the spell. Or 10 stacks merging with another 10 stacks etc. This happens quite often because PoMs target is random and there are only 5 people in the dungeon.
It could be made smarter by making it not target people who have more than 7 stacks of another PoM.
Power Word: Shield: should be stronger - It should be at least as powerful as Flash Heal, to make it seem like somewhat of a shield.
General Tree Talents
It should be a baseline ability, its use is too niche to be worth a talent.
It should be changed, a random slow simply isn’t useful.
I will continue cumulating feedback until something major happens.
