Why I’ve re-rolled from Holy priest to Shaman

Classes Priest
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Firstly Id like to state I tried really hard to enjoy holy. I did. My main - Llyphe I pushed to 10/10 HC CN and gave up on +10M+ due to the issues I’ll list.

To start. Spells power (or lack of)
Flash heal - it’s only old form was a cheap spamable heal. Now it’s hella expensive and heals for about 4K at 210 ilvl. It is essential to proc the following legendary.

Flash concentration legendary (essential for M+) requires 5 Flash heals to boost “heal“ by 15% and make it cast just as fast as flash (almost)

Heal is actually really efficient and decently powerful when fully buffed by FC Lego. That is the issue tho. FC lasts 15 seconds and costs 5x flash heals to get to. if you don’t get a surge of light proc to keep it up during high movement fights. (Sire during massacre / pools) eg. Then it’s another 5 flash heals to get back up.

Now let’s keep in mind you have to use a legendary to make Heal remotely useful. Assuming haste of around 10% (as holy tends to stack crit/master) its still a very slow cast.

Compare to shamans two main casted heals; healing wave and surge and riptide ofc.

Firstly. Riptide heals more than Flash heal and I do mean the initial hit, not the HoT it also provides - It also provides a massive critical strike buff to Surge (which can further be buffed with the instant heal Unleash Life - again hitting for respectable amounts - to give a massive boosted heal. (Talking 30k+ geared, and more)

Riptide ALSO adds a quasi priest legendary effect to Healing Wave making it cast faster than 5x FC stacks. This is all through a PASSIVE baseline usable every 3 seconds spell. It’s actually incredible how poorly designed Holy priest Is when you compare them.

Priest comparable instant - Prayer of mending bounces 5 times each time target takes dmg. No buffs. No bonuses. Simple as that and circle of healing. 5 players. Instant. No bonuses no buffs.
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Raid CDs. Priest Devine hymn - long channeled (bad) raidwide heal.
Shaman - healing tide totem - same effect, dropped and forgot about.

Priest - symbol of hope, restores mana based on mana remaining (long channel)
Shaman - mana tide totem. Drop. Forget. Same effect but doesn’t require lower mana for full effect.

Priest - Salvation- actually very powerful burst raid wide heal - 12 min base CD (reduced by words) usually around 5-6mins
Shaman - spirit link - arguably the best raid CD in game to save a full stacked raid from massive damage on tanks etc. Can totally negate mechanics (3min CD!?)

I know I’ve went on - I’m not saying shaman is over powered. I’m saying Holy priest is so badly under tuned. There are many more comparisons but they are just a small insight into why I’ve re-rolled from Holy.

I’d like to see some passives baked into Holy much like shammy has with riptide. And Flash Concentration should be a talent or passive. Not a legendary.

Long read but felt I had to vent. Maybe highlight Holys flaws a bit to devs. (Hah).

The problem is on standard patchwork style fights with no movement holy is actually really decent they style fights Dont exist now though.

5 Likes
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Its wrong to cherry-pick single spells and compare them, and even more so to compare different things like a legendary effect to a baseline passive. Thats like a Demon Hunter comparing their leech-during-meta talent to a shadowpriest’s Vampiric Embrace, and arguing that VE heals 3 times as much, also heals other targets and not only yourself, and is half the cd of meta.

Respectively, a holy paladin could argue that, while symbol of hope is indeed a weaker version of mana tide totem, holy paladins dont even have that! They have absolutely no way to regen their mana, so are they the worst healers in that regard? Lol no wtf, holy paladins cant drop below 90% mana even if they try to. I have literally removed the mana bar from my holy paladin’s UI to clear up screen space.
My point is, you should compare toolkits as a whole. Even if spells seem identical at first, like Healing Surge - Shadow mend - Flash of Light [all of which fall in the <fast, expensive heal> category], each fills a different role in its respective toolkit. Healing Surge is the bulk of a shaman’s healing and most of their gameplay revolves around buffing them. Shadow Mend on the other hand is a panic button only used by disc priests in emergencies. And lastly Flash of Light is literally NEVER used. Its a rotational mistake for a holy paladin to ever cast Flash of Light, and the spec still functions just fine.

All that being said, your point stands solid. Almost every part of resto shaman is a better version of the corresponding part of Holy Priest, and when you look at the toolkits as a whole, the gap is apparent. The only realistic scenario where one would prefer a holy priest over a resto shaman is the Sun King encounter, to cheese Guardian Spirit. But this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking revelation. Its common knowledge that resto shaman is S tier, the most meta healer in both raids and m+ atm, and holy priest would be almost meme tier if it wasnt for MW monks.

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I remained shadow on this one and rolled a shammy healer too. Disc just is not my style.

Holy priest largerly has the same toolkit it had in Pandaria minus chakras, which was pretty much the toolkit from TBC plus holy words plus hymns.

It is a spec that did not evolve with time and is now largely outdated. The hard-cast-low-mobility-heavy-heal style works somewhat for normal raids but starts bleeding in heroic raids and mythic+.

I would like to see an overhaul that preserves the general idea of holy. Transforming overheal from echo into absorb could fix half the issues already and make it very strong.

Returning Lightwell as a mid-length CD with the old auto-heal function would give a useful CD.

Returning the chakras would give the ability to focus on tank/spot or raid heal.

Allowing casting while faded would give some mobility.

Making PoH a smart heal would increase its efficiency and discourage binding heal spam.

Sharing Barrier with holy would give another powerful raid CD.

Only some ideas. There’s a lot more, but an update is necessary to align holy with modern mythic+ expectation.

2 Likes
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I don’t think I cherry picked abilities. It’s fair to say shaman and holy are the most two comparable specs ability wise. The ones i compared are almost like for like. But with a clear Advantage on 1 side.

But yep totally agree. Holy has been left behind in grand scheme of healer development.

Once I get this geared I’ll just totally bench holy and most like start working on playing disc. A totally new play style to me but seems to decent pushing past HC.

1 Like
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I switched from shaman to holy priest and now disc priest and I must say I had way more fun as hoy in normal dungeons than as shaman in M+. It’s just preference but I’m actually now finally enjoying the expansion as a healer. I switched to disc and must stay I thought holy was fun but disc is ove 9000 for me. It’s so rewarding and I like the proactive healing style where you have to be prepared. I enjoy watching streamers who play disc and followed MoadMoad’s stream as a disc priest and wanted to try it myself.

I spoke to a few holy priests who did heroic CN because I wanted to play holy as well as I thought disc would be too difficult and that I wouldn’t be good enough. Although I’m not at your level and I really enjoyed holy altough it wasn’t in content that’s hard and challenging. But they said they prefer holy to disc so it’s up to preference. I enjoy disc now trying to do M+ soon and eventually LFR because I’m not in a guild yet. You should try disc in PVP it’s actually a lot of fun. I heal heroics now which isn’t hard but it’s nice to learn the spec and boss fights. I didn’t enjoy gearing my resto shaman and made the switch. To me it wasn’t a challenge. I haven’t touched my shaman. I’m happy as priest!

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I hope you are joking. CHakra was absolutely the worst thing Blizzard did to Holy. I will remind you that they nerfed the whole Holy’s toolkit throughput just to balance the heals in chakra to make sure Holy does not outheal other healers while using Chakra.

To OP: it seems to me that yeah, most Holy spells just don’t have any synergy in them built in.

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You won’t have any “difficult” fights in CN it’s just they have designed nearly every boss where all dps can stack. This makes Druid and shammy very very effective.

IN particular Sire fight is also so mobile in p2 and so many mechanics to dodge that FC stacks often fall off. It’s the only fight I notice a massive difference in HPS between healers more suited to mobility.

Each has their strengths which I do appreciate. Makes for variety.

1 Like
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Making certain talents baseline (PoH reduction after holy word, holy word spam, salvation as a spell) would create a nice synergy. I enjoy the difference my holy words can make.

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Totally agree. They seem to have taken all the potential class “fixes” and talents for holy. And made them legendary.

1 Like
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i would roll if night elves could be shamans. :slight_smile: I have tauren, but uh…i dislike horde so much now.

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Yeah I also wish humans could be shammy. If Kulteran can be. Why not. But stoneform has its uses. And im sure will be very powerful in removing bleeds and other debuffs pushing forward in CN.

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