Holy priests talent tree could use some changes and here’s why:
Holy has a disproportionate opportunity cost for taking damage talents in the spec tree.
This is because to do damage as a holy priest , which is essential in M+ environments, you have to take Burning Vehemence (2 points, right side, third section) this severely limits your ability to have different M+ builds and reduces the ability for Holy to invest in the key elements of the spec, buffing holy words and reducing holy words cooldowns. Burning vehemence as it exists should not be in the final section at all and there is no comparative cost for other healers who do healing directly as opposed to damage conversions. Resto druids have 3 talent nodes that contribute towards their damage in the final section however importantly, all of these talents also increase HPS (Adaptive swarm + Adapative duplication and the 25% dot speed 15% hot speed). Burning Vehemence does not contribute towards Holy’s ability to heal at all and it shouldnt be reworked to do so.
There are also just more damage talents for Holy to pick up than there are for any of the other throughput healers. Holy has 5 talent point cost for its damage talents (Chatise, Empy Blaze, Searing light and 2 points for Burning Vehmence). RestoDruid has 3 at the bottom that all contribute towards HPS. Shaman has 3 (Stormkeeper,acid rain, lava surge).
This should absolutely be changed. The easiest starting point is removing Searing light (25% smite and holy nova damage to targets with holy fire dot) and replacing it with a flat 25% smite and holy nova buff, smite is very very weak already.
Harder changes come next. Because burning vehemence is the only pure dps end zone talent for direct healers it should be removed, its absurd that a spec should be forced into it. I personally would like to see Holy dps move as far away from Holy nova as humanly possible, holy nova is a really cool spell but asking priests to go into melee for any reason is really really silly. Without Holy nova and burning vehemence there is no holy aoe however and so i suggest having a smite-holyfire mechanical link where smite has a chance to reset the CD of holy fire and Holy fire now has the splash element of Burning Vehemence baked in without the additional 30% damage. This would allow for multiple tuning points(smite,HolyfireST,HolyfireDoT,HolyfireSplash) in holy’s damage kit that make it accessible to balancing its ST and AoE profiles.
That’s a lot of removing, what do you suggest replacing it with?
The talent change I feel most strongly about is the removal of Burning Vehemence and given it’s position on the tree (connected to renew choice node, and prayer of mending+renew interactions) I would suggest a 2 point Renew extension node where single target spells extend renew considerably (heal/flash heal 3secs per point). This Renew extension is synergstic with other talents in the tree, specifically Rapid Recovery (+35% base renew healing -3 duration) and Holy Mending (Prayer of mending jumping to a target with renew heals them for SmallAmount)
I dont think that more damage talents should be added to the Holy priest tree, however if Burning Vehemence is removed that brings Holy down to 3 and it would be a great opportunity to convert he most boring talent in the tree (Searing Light) into a mechanically interesting talent involving Holy fire resets.
More general holy thoughts
having an end point talent be two charges of holy words is not in line with the way the game has treated abilities that have proc resets or lots of cdr currently. 2 holy words should be a mid section talent not an end section talent so its closer to 2 riptides or the 2 charges of mind blast that shadow has baseline.
Please do something about holy nova it is horrific like, i’ve played arcane mage before I know what it’s like to go into melee as a caster but priest is just waaaaaay too fragile for you to encourage us to be there and we just dont have the O nO! buttons that a mage does.
Please revert the duration change on divine image, it moved from 15 seconds to 9 seconds and that was understandable before Blizz nerfed Divine image’s AOE spell by 50%!! as it stands prayer of healing is just garbage even when you line up 15% buff from Sanctified prayers, 20% cast speed from Prayer circle and a divine images dazzling lights, you cant use it to keep people alive during aoe damage you have to use lightweaver+Trial of light. It’s only used in raids because of the distributed responsibility of 4-5 healers.
If you read any of this thank you! if you have any thoughts you want to add I’d love to see them.