Holy priest needs rework, especially in m+

Classes Priest
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I created a similiar topic in PTR section and I am going to create it here as well, given how bad the situation is .

So the holy priest has been a underdog healer of m+ through most of DF until in the middle of season 3 you finally gave us a deserved attention (far from meta, but at least viable), only to screw us again at the start of TWW:

  1. Prayer of Mending, our bread and butter ability in DF is now pathetically ineffective, especially as Archon, I am fully talented into it with 612 ilvl its average healing is 74k, while my Health is 5.6 million, that 1.3% of my health and less than 1% health of tank’s health.

  2. Divine Hymn changes were insignificant, it is still a weak ability that restores 10-15% of players health at best with 3 minutes cooldown and long 8 sec channel cast.

  • Our utility is even worse than it used to be in DF, with stops nerf our psychic scream is next to useless garbage, it is not even a stun.

  1. While I like visually Archon Halo, numerically it made us weaker, you took from us our raw power and gave us these so call “hero” talents, Empowered Halo does not compensate even for prayer of Mending losses, let alone other spells.

  2. Our only strong ability is Heal, and it is a single target long cast ability, that we have to spam while other classes have aoe healing.

You kept tuning other healing classes every blessed week during this season so far and didn’t bother even to attempt to remedy holy priest’s situation, despite the fact that we have been the weakest m+ healing spec since the very start.

How about you go and finally give us the attention we deserve and do some proper rework of our AoE healing and Utility.

Here are my ideas:

AoE healing:

  1. Create a talent or two that will make circle of healing a powerful short cooldown m+ AoE healing. Give us 200-300% static healing increase of CoH + additional 200-300% caused by spell symbiosis, e.g. each flash heal / heal cast increases the healing of next CoH by 50% stacking to 6 times or something like that.

  2. Make Divine Hymn heal 2-3 times more in m+, cut its casting time from 8 seconds 3 seconds and make it possible to channel it while moving. Additionally, it may be worth introducing a talent that will cut Divine Hymn’s cooldown by 1-3 sec per each heal / flash heal / CoH use.

Utility:

  • Give us a talent that will cause Psychic scream apply silence and / or interrupt effect of 3 sec on non player enemies.
  • Introduce a reverse absorb shield mechanic: a spell that provides the target with a negative absorb shield if their health is to drop below 0, it shall have for example limit of 2-3 million health and lasts for 10 seconds.

And finally, Dear Blizzard, drop your erroneous assumption that your tunings of discipline priest somehow make up for a total neglect of holy priest.

I do not care in the world what you do for discipline priest, I play only holy and I am tired of seeing my spec being treated as start-with-holy-then-go-to-a-more-serious healing-spec attitude which you keep reinforcing with your neglect.

Holy Priests were the primal healers of Vanilla just like warriors were the primal tanks. We deserve some respect.

7 Likes
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There is a PvP talent Seraphic Crescendo - Reduces the cooldown of Divine Hymn by 60 sec and causes it to channel 50% faster. Additionally, the healing bonus from Divine Hymn now lasts an additional 10 sec.

This talent would have to be baked into the spell to make it somewhat useful. However, I think Divine Hymn needs to be reworked because it is just strangely designed.

You have to stand still and channel an insignificant bit of healing over 8 secs so your other healing spells can be more powerful for the next 15 secs.

No AoE dmg phase lasts a total of 23 seconds. So you:

  • Either use it for its healing which makes the following healing bonus irrelevant because by the time the channel is over so is the AoE dmg.
  • Or you purposely overheal with the ability so by the time the AoE comes, your other spells benefit from the healing bonus.

Like, what? What design is this?

My suggestion is to make it interact with healing Holy Words:

  • Each Holy Word used will add one tick of Divine Hymn up to 10 stacks (maybe).
  • When you press Divine Hymn, it starts channeling the ticks, one every 0,5 sec, healing the group.
  • Use as many ticks as you can before you need to move, keep the remaining ticks for later.
  • The spell itself doesn’t have a cooldown because its efficiency is dependant on the cooldown of Holy Words.

This version of Divine Hymn wouldn’t have the bonus healing component so we’d need to replace the “Gales of Song” talent. There used to be an effect:

  • Every tick of Divine Hymn makes Prayer of Mending heal (consume a stack) and jump to another target.

Perhaps this could make a comeback instead of the Gales of Song talent.

An annyoing issue in M+ is the erasure of stacks of Prayer of Mending 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 PoM not target people who have more than 7 stacks of another PoM.

I like this. I would make it baseline tho, not a talent. We are already stretched thin in the talent area.

I mean, isn’t this just Cheat Death that we already have with Guardian Spirit? Perhaps GS could have two charges, that would be nice.

This. It is mind-boggling that Holy Priests, at their current state, don’t recieve any changes in hotfixes.

2 Likes
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For PvP
Holy needs a mana buff
Casted heals needs a buff
Renew needa a hugh buff

Damage needs a buff

All this buffs would make is mediocer

Archon, nobady likes halo and why does it not work with the star

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  1. Yeah exactly, my suggestion about Divine Hymn was inspired by Seraphic Crescendo, it actually made this spell feel impactful. Your idea may work as well, I am fine with anything that will make this spell viable.
  2. Regarding Reverse absorb shield, it is akin to cheat death, but the idea is different from Guardian Spirit. The Reverse Absorb shield will only delay death, you still have to pump heals into the target to save it, the reverse absorb just gives you time to do it.

Back in Season 3 and 4 of DF when priests were viable (although far from meta), the reason why we struggles in high keys were the one shot mechanics, disc priests could cover it with damage mitigation and absorb shield. Giving us absorb shields as well would blur the line between specs, which I don’t like. Holy priests even in worst of our times (like now) were still able to pump good amount of row healing so having a reverse absorb shield would fit nicely into our heal pumping machine design.

And now to Sokkxe:

My ideas, as the title may suggest, are related primarily to M+.

I dropped out of pvp for this season, but I will be most happy to hear your complains and suggestions , however try to be more specific, your suggestions are too generalized, try to target specific spells (e.g. prayer of mending is weak even in PvE now, I assume it must be abysmally pathetic in pvp, where it used to play larger role), the more concrete feedback we provide, the more chances Blizzard will take it to consideration.

Halo has a great animation that many players like, its effectiveness in m+ is okay (not even good) , I can certainly see how useless it can be in PvP, given its mediocre healing & dps values on 1 target.

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I’m sure that someone who doesn’t play holy priest made this, he always makes these adjustments.

While someone who has just started the game understands that PoH is useless, what I said above is certain.

Extra talent rework and set bonus (Must be changed)

1 Like
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Funny that in PvP it will most of the time be your top healing and can save player if it pounce eaven if you are in cc
Flash heal and Heal rly just tickel but dampening rise fast

Mana is just a big issue that you need too choose your globals carefull and if you spam heal you oom

Renew is just the 6% more healing and does nothing on its own

For winning games your damage is too low

  • top point for M+ i cannot imagine how it should work healing 5 targets, for that pom is too random and your builds have no other real 5 man groop healing
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I’ve done dungeons up to +10 and I’ve honestly not had issues with healing unaviodable group dmg.

Some encounters caught me off-guard when I was adjusting to higher difficulties but once I knew it’s coming, Resonant Weaving with Sanctify took care of it.

People rarely get 100-0 by unavoidable AoE (City of Threads might be the only place where this happens). When people die, it’s almost always a mixture of AoE and ST dmg - meaning the only person who really needs to be healed is the person suffering from ST dmg. There is usually enough downtime between AoEs to let you top everyone before the next wave of dmg.

I don’t know, I’ve never been in a situation where I thought “Man, I really wish I had 5 man heal button right now!”

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there are several cases where aoe does more than 100% of hp I think.

e.g. ara kara the second spider mini boss, probably also the poison debuff of last boss if nobody dispells.
The last boss of grim batol is also a very fast ticking aoe that hurts a lot.
The big bug in COT or the 3 of 4 bosses there does a lot aoe as well

i think those aoes would kill the whole group if not counter healed.

Anyways, holy priest has lots of issues:

  1. No aoe healing, it is just god awful, no discussion
    Many ways to improve here. the most prominent suggestions would be to make coh, pom, poh worth using in 5 man conent. Holy word sanctify should just be a 40y aoe blast heal, not a stupid mini ground heal that doesnt even do healing

  2. no good def cd. we can have frequently 20% DR but it is short duration and is not instant either. Give a talent than increases fade cd to 1.5min and increase DR to 50%

  3. no good group emergency heal. Every healer has one… slt, barrier, convoke etc.
    Divine hymn should be a strong cd. Best would be to make it instant heal for a big chunk first, then slowly heal or give some DR or hp increase or whatever

  4. no utility.
    first make chastice also interrupt the target, not only incap. it eorked in df but since they changed thr spell cadting, it is now useless and even sometimes bad to use as you can use it to bait your teammates kick

  5. apotheosis feels terrible as serenity is basically useless, especially without the 5 stack buff which you cannot even get up during apotheosis
    could also make serenity an aoe heal during apo or give a massive healing increase or for archon reduce the cd of holy nova during apo the same way as serenity

lots of solutions possible

2 Likes
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Yes, but there isn’t anything else than AoE going on during these moments, so you simply heal the group and it’s usually enough. Granted, the first boss in Ara-kara, the third and the fourth boss in CoT are massive healing checks.

True

Imo, Sanctify suffers from the same issue as Healing Rain or Effloresence - People just don’t stand in it. I try not to minmax it. If it heals three people, it’s a win in my book. Although, there are many abilities that make players stand close together in the current dungeon pool.

The circle of the first boss in CoT is basically Sanctify wide, same with the last boss of Grim Batol. Night Beam at the Dawnbreaker, etc.

The healing your recieve from Binding Heal procs Protective Light so you basically always have 10% DR on. The other 10% from Fade is instant. Desperate Prayer is more useful than it looks for both expected and surprise dmg.

Usually, PL+ Fade or PL+ Desperate Prayer is enough. If you’re not sure you’ll live, there is always GS. Then you can go Oracle for Premontion of Solace - 21% dmg reduction + shield.

If you need to stack all of this on you in order to survive, than something has gone horribly wrong.

Yep, true.

You can make Chastice a stun which isn’t perfect since many mobs are immune to stuns but it’s something. Honestly, I prefer the idea to give Fear an interrupt.

I really disagree with this. I love Serenity, especially when it crits. It’s so juicy. Same with LW+RW Heal.

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the scarab in COT for example throws poison swirlies everywhere while doing massive aoe. The issue is that I can try to spam flash heal but it is only ST so it doesn’t work well when the whole group takes 120% dmg in 3 seconds…

the difference is that those two spells are really not needed for healing at all.
As a shaman I only use healing rain for dmg, the healing it does is really peanuts. Effo is also just a mastery boost basically.
Sanctify is just not reliable with such a small radius. I basically just throw it out to get empowered images. Kinda a design flaw with 500k healing per target max.

it doesnt matter if it is a stun or incap because it does not interrupt the target, therefore it immediately schedules the same cast again. It was great in DF but in TWW it has become useless. Besides I don’t think we could afford the talent point.

Serenity for me does 800k healing without stacks (basically during apo). LW even does more healing than serenity.
Point was that serenity is so weak that it also makes apo weak.
in DF serenity was basically 80% of dps HP bar, now it is like 20-30%.
Yes crits are great but I guess I have not even 20% crit chance so to rely on that is kinda meh

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Most of my issues have been the above. I see the divide between players who play with a team who knows how to use defensives and tactics therefore mitigating and avoiding damage.

If you PUG solo then holy sucks becasue people don’t use their defensives or fail to follow the mechanics and Holy dosen’t have the ability to keep up with it. However tuning the spec based on perfect groups is silly.

I find that following the stat priority guides online is a death sentence. You need at least 15%+ haste in order to be able to use heal or flash heal while dodging mechanics. I made the msitake of going full Crit/Mast and it was miserable.

Baseline increases to AOE healing are definitly needed becsaue the only reason i’m using PoM is to stack renews for the 6% healing buff. For the mana it uses it should be doing at least 25% more healing (minimum).

There is a reason holy is basically non existant in higher key pugs. I would argue that holy’s mastery should not have no effect on aoe healing. It should apply (at least at half value) to Aoe healing since mechanics / damage happen so fast that waiting 3 seconds for 15% extra healing its meaningless.

I’ve been kicked twice from groups for not being disc and the general concensus is that holy is dog**** right now so I’m going to ignore the one or two holy players out there who somehow think that holy is fine (becasue they roll with guilds or friends who cooperate perfectly) and look at the raw numbers.

This is my M+ review i have no idea what raiding is like.

I LOVE the idea of Hymn having no cooldown so you can bake it into the group during down time, i think it would make for a fun playstyle and reward skill/planning. ofc it would have to be nerfed if that were the case but at least it would be viable in anything other than raids.

2 Likes
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make holy priest great <3

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Crit/Mastery are raid stats. In M+, you need Haste/Versatility. I’ve found 20% haste is comfortable then start building Crit. Stacking as much Vers as possible gives you more throughput and the damage reduction is handy because you take damage all the time in M+.

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I am up to stupid levels crit because its all i ever get! I want more haste…just never get it.

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A Discipline priest telling Holy Priests that they’re doing fine.

Amusing.

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I main Holy Oracle in M+ and, as I said, I have pugged all dungeons to +10 so I speak from that experience.

This weekend is the first time in the season that I’ve tried Discipline Voidweaver, just to see the difference.

I’ve not done any +10s as Disc as I don’t have enough experience for it. But if I were to compare +8s, I’d prefer Holy.

Discipline is very CD (and living enemy) dependant so if pugs greif you out of your abilities you run out of steam and literally cannot heal anything, it definitely isn’t an auto-win spec. Yes, you do a lot more damage than Holy but it’s still less than Tanks and Augvokers.

Holy, on the other hand, has a consistent, sufficient healing output with Lightweaver. I’ve done a +8 Ara-kara where an unfortunate keybind overlap prevented me from using Serenity and I just lightweaved my way through the dungeon.

Get 20% Haste, then focus Crit, stack as much Vers as possible (farm Conquest to buy Haste/Vers Champion level PvP gear). And then, for the most part, just stand and Lightweave.

I’m not saying that Holy doesn’t need buffs and reworks but I simply don’t believe that it’s trash.

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Yes, Holy has a consistent, sufficient single target stationary healing output with Lightweave. This can solve many, perhaps even most situations in m+, but not all.

If you have played holy long enough, you probably know how screwed you feel when it comes to facing unvoidable AoE damage and need to move at the same time, e.g. last boss of Ara Kara, when your party does not have enough poison dispels, you have to heal it through and at the same time need to move out web hits.

In Dragonflight I could partially solve this problem by stacking serendipity + tier set stacks + stacking prayer of mending on the group ,which would reinforce my healing of the group when damage comes. I could also use sanctification when the group is stacked

With TWW serendipity has become much weaker, it is basically Heal, but with instant cast. Prayer of Mending heals 1.3% of my overall health per tick and sanctification has become total garbage (200k heal for a total of 5.6 million health, and this is supposed to be a powerful aoe heal), that you primarily use to trigger Naaru image.

You’re absolutely right, you can still do higher keys successfully thanks to the power of Heal + Lightweaver, but the problem is that all other our spells (and also talents) are either very mediocre or completely useless garbage.

Not to mention that our damage has been greatly nerfed compared to Season 4 DF and our utility is incomparably bad compared to any other healing class.

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Thank you for making this post. I only subscribe to play holy and i agree with your points. Holy priests dont even talent into prayer of healing, circle of healing or divine hymn for M+ atm. The numbers are just too weak.

Thats 3 of our bread and butter talents for AoE healing. This needs to change quickly if they want to keep our subscription active.

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They have a rework it’s called disc