I wanted to express my disappointment in the shadowlands healer changes, or rather the lack there of. Particularly for holy priest. I have been a healer main for years and I have never been so uninspired as a healer going into an expansion. Many feel the same as they have for years, same strength, same abilities, same perception, same power level, same rankings. Why won’t blizz change anything up? Even the strong healers like resto druid feel largely the same and they even got covenant abilities that helped fill out their weaknesses!
I really was tied between holy priest and resto shaman for my favourite healers and ones i wanted to play this expansion. Now i’m face with the prospect yet again of both those classes and healers being looked down upon and dismissed as bad because blizz refuses to change anything about their kits or give them some single target throughput/damage reduction to bring them in line with the other healers. I am of course focusing more on mythic plus here. Raid wise they are better but even then why bring holy when you can have a disc priest instead.
Even perception aside, playing a holy priest i physically feel weaker than any other healer as i have literally nothing to press when things go bad in a dungeon. Sure you can pump out nice big heals but when the tank is being chunked for all their health what can we do? Increase their healing received by 60%, maybe have them saved by guardian angel only to be smacked a moment later down to nothing again.
You’re telling me for a brand new expansion the best you could manage for holy priest was an instant cast prayer of mending and shadow word pain? Of course as per usual disc gets more new abilities, is made even stronger and all the covenant abilities feel made for disc and stupid for holy.
Likewise for resto shaman, earth shield and water shield baseline was the best we could get?
I did not really follow changes to holy spec, but there are some nice changes:
PoM becoming instant
CoH becoming baseline
X’anshi returns as legendary power for holy priests
I agree holy should either have more throughput or shall have more utility to compensate all the utility discipline brings to the tahle. I think Battle ress could be fitting addition to holy priest kit.
What I’d like to see again is more ways to amplify healing on target when needed. We had Light of T’uure in Legion which I really miss. I think being able to boost healing to your targets could help out the spec. Having toys like Ray of Hope PVP talent being baseline Spell could really help holy priests in dungeons.
I’m not sure which covenant is best for holy, I guess Kyrian or Nightfae.
Ironicaly, holy get some really interesting PVP talents which I’d love to have on disc.
As you said, discipline changes look promising, so I guess the spec will dominate yet another expansion.
disc will be good only for 1 month until he will be nerfed to the ground… as for the holy is clear that blizz doesn’t know what to do since they removed all the shadow spells at this point… i made several posts about what holy needs atm to be competitive… ill paste here also
BUFF renew more heal or renew will also give +3% dmg reduction … OR BOTH
give us instant [Dark Void] to be able to compete with druids BROKEN sunfire. and be competitive in mythic + dps
[Holy Word: Sanctify] ALSO does instant damage to all enemies (competitive DPS)
Echo of light must tick faster so it will sustain the group in order to give us some time to DPS
MORE UTILITY ASAP (movement , Holy Word: Chastise stun-interrupt BASE, COMBAT RES )
6)KEEP the damaging spells simple with a reduced cast time
BAAM … holy priest READY AND FUN and competitive …
I too am extremely disappointed in the way Holy Priest has been treated for this expansion cycle. Instant cast PoM and baseline Circle of Healing are nice, sure, but none of the changes address any of the glaring issues Holy Priest face vs. other healers, especially in a M+ environment. Our covenant abilities feel clunky and designed with Disc in mind. It’s like the Holy spec was an afterthought when designing them. And our talent tree and legendaries… the same thing as always really, much too passive, not very exciting, doesn’t alter the gameplay in a fun or interactive way.
I’ve written a more lengthy post about my thoughts on talents etc somewhere on the beta general discussion forums, but tl;dr:
The foundation of our spec is fun, but it’s just been lacking growth and interaction since its birth in Legion. People keep saying “Holy is the basic cookie cutter healer spec for beginners, if you want something more interactive, switch.” but that’s such a big nope in my eyes. All these people that have enjoyed Holy since early WoW shouldn’t constantly feel shunned or discouraged from playing what they love. Other specs have had growth that’s been expanding and improving, why can’t Holy Priests?
Dead/unfun talents. One of the most impactful issues with HPriest is mobility. Why isn’t Angelic Feather baseline yet? To expand on that: why was the -only- damage reduction talent we had A) on the same row as Angelic Feather and B) removed now? Honestly, there’s so many options to make our talent tree more interesting. Why is Renew still so weak and unimpactful? Why not rework the talents that make Renew more important, develop a Renew-centered build that could work great in a dungeon environment? My biggest issues with our talent tree are dead talents and that a lot of them all just buff the same thing that holy priest does not have an issue with: AoE throughput. Help us out in the fields where we’re lacking: utility, damage reduction, survivability!
I just don’t know anymore, to be honest. How long does a spec need to be bottom of the barrel for it to be given a proper looking at? Please, look into a strong identity for Holy Priests, into unique utility that goes beyond tools that other-specs-can-bring-but-better. Give us a way to deal with the massive need of single target throughput, specifically in M+, without it just being ‘spam Flash Heal and pray.’ Don’t make us give up on single target healing when DPSing 'cause we’re effectively not reducing the CD on Holy Word: Serenity when we choose to dps. Maybe it’s time for a second spec to get a battle res? It sure fits the Holy Priest theme! Just… give us some hope here.
I still don’t agree with any of Kerardi’s suggestions, even with more time spent in mythics and raids since I last disagreed. I don’t believe holy should need to add DPS, but they should be the most solid healers for Mythic+ to allow larger packs to be pulled - so first off, larger heals and mana efficiency is a priority. Rework mastery so that it’s actually viable for M+ and raids (rather than one or the other) - and shift that healing power into our primary heals.
I really think the kit from Cata/MoP era was better overall - we had bigger heals (% wise) and our biggest concern was mana management - and we even had the tools to manage it properly. The holy words sucked back then, granted, and the chakras were stupid, but the rest of the kit felt like it actually mattered when you cast a spell. Heal was used to refresh renew, flash heal was for quick top-us, gheal was the meaty heal. What we need is for Heal or Flash heal to actually be worthwhile - and unless we get Enduring Renewal baseline, I suggest that heal becomes much larger, yet stay cheap, to compensate for the casting time, while flash heal should be a bit meatier than it is now, but be the more expensive option. Change the holy words to a consistent cooldown (rather than us needing to spam) and give them decent throughput rather than being our best options that have to be used on CD. And rework practically every talent. A lot are bad, should be baseline, or are the obvious picks anyway.
And I still think lightwell should be brought back (but reworked). Serious talk, it could be as simple as giving us the overhealing essence, but reworked to be ground targeted and an AoE on a decent cooldown. Would be viable for M+ and for raids, and would mesh well with my other suggestions.
Also, wouldn’t say no to some more utility, like damage reduction - we used to have that on crits, which makes more sense to me than trying to buff renew with a tiny amount of reduction.
What I liked on previous iteration of holy Priest:
WotLK era Serendipity: casting Flash Heal reduced cast time on Greater Heal. I could really see this returned. Give us back Greater Heal as huge and slow heal. Spamming flash heal would reduce it’s cast time, so we could weave these big heals into our rotations once in a while.
Artifact ability. I found really cool the idea that we can duplicate our spells. I think we could see some effect like when casting a heal, it would be duplicated on the last target you healed with reduced effect. Perhaps it could be a new mastery.
The fantasy of the spec is all about miraculous heals and “cheating” death. Combat ress feels it would be good addition to this fantasy.