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Diagnosing the changes to Holy Priest at the moment in Shadowlands beta, primarily in Mythic+. Where it stands and what it NEEDS to flourish in Shadowlands and beyond!
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What if renew had a damage reduction added to it like the disc talent that gives 3% or so damage reduction for targets with atonement and maybe it did a little more healing? I remember back in WoD spamming renew on targets.
I got 2k io twice as holy priest in BFA. I want to play holy priest but I just don't think I can suffer like I did in BFA. We need Greater Fade baseline. That's it imho.
I've been doing a few M+ now, I totally agree with conduits. Legendaries, I've been testing three of them, Echo of Eonar (in it's new encarnation), Sephuz and Harmonius, I'm tending towards Harmoius too, but Sephuz is very, very strong in M+ with a lot of dispells (or dispeleable affixes), and Echo is kind of boring, but I'm waiting for sims, because it might be a good choice for dungeons (not for raids, though).
In talents, I'm having good results with Divine star, requires more positioning than in BfA heavy melee combos for sure, and even so it's not certainly so efficient, but still a good choice. For awakening, I'm reserving PI for me when that add spawn (if not, it goes for a DPS, as I usually do not need it), and that plus Revendreth covenant ability is usually enough to pass the test.
Regarding covenants, I'm not really interested in topping the healing meters (whic,h beign Holy, I already kind of do) with Kyrian or Necrolords, but more in cover my weak spots, Ardenweald has a DR and good mobility but, as you well point here, it's not enough to justify the choice, so I'm playing Revendreth, and I'm very happy with it, the teleport has already saved my ass several times (still learning to maximice it's potential, thought), and we do about 25%-30% more damage with any covenant ability than disc (including revendreth which, having only 45 sec CD is a lot of damage), and the fact that the ability avoids a nice chunk of damage for the tank/party, plus heals that same amount (making of it kind of a double heal), makes of it an interesting one to play with.
In general, even with it's clear issues, I like this iteration of Holy, it's much more difficult to play well (if you want to both Heal and do an interesting amount of damage) than it was in BfA, to the point I think disc is now the 'easy' spec (Holy is easier to learn, much more difficult to master in it's actual form).
Maybe a small change to the mastery to make it stronger and more viable?
Like more% of the heal into the hot or reducing the duration and increasing the tick amount?
Haven't watched it yet but let me guess…. a REWORK OF THE SPEC
thanks for that video. Now I have a bit more hope that I can play my beloved holy priest in Shadowlands as well. I try hard to learn disc at the moment but Holy was and will be my first love (specc) in WoW. Holy is a lot more my playstyle then Dis :/
Well holy priest has some talents that need to be removed or rework. For example: 1. Afterlife (dead talent) – this one has not being used or recomended since i remember. Whats a point to die and only then become better in heals? NONE, and blizz decide buff a talent that is forgotten in holy talent tree. 🙄
2. Light of the naaru- weaker aposteosis, help you reduce CD of holy words a little bit faster and thats all. Really boring and it feels it have been put into talent tree for "just to be there". Need to buff, or rework.
3. Desperate prayer- for me this one is mine "ou shit" button in most of situations. Idea of max. your HP is kinda good, but spaming then more heals to heal yourself up, well 😑, maybe they could add- that upon activation you get 2 stack of focused Will reducing dmg taken by 10% for 10 sec.
Covenants:
1. Boon of the ascended- good mobile aoe heal +dmg ability. But i can see some weaknesses: good positioning (if you dont wanna be one hit by adds or when your team has to split up during a fights), another "halo" ability in my toolkit is kinda nothing new for holy priest + 3 min cd.
2. Aerdenweald- idea of "support" holy priest is kinda fun. PW:S coming for us as baseline, this cov offering 10% dmg reduction when we pop shield on players can be more usefull then "mobile haló". I agree with you on point where 100% CD reduction of major ability should be reworked in way that instead 1 major ability 100%cd it could be, all abilities that are on CD…. 50% CD recover. Wrathfull fearie could offer more mana return when dmging a target. I see a lot of potentional in this cov+ you can take some "drill" and work Hard with this covenan on spec that is considered as "easy"
In the end thank you that you do not "dumb" this spec Like some youtubers do 😭 its good to see that someone is taking about this great healing spec ✌️😘😁
I kinda wish they'd increase hymn's healing in 5mans up to like 150% or even 200%. I've only been able to do a few dungeons with prideful and hymn just doesn't cut it, I was just using it early to get the buff out… Definitely not worthy of its 3m CD.
What if Holy buffed other's dps instead of being able to dps themselves? Maybe their heals could give a short (4s?) stacking buff of vers, haste or maybe the target's primary stat, up to 5%. This way during heavy aoe healing periods the priest could be stacking the buff quickly but it wouldnt be over powered as it would also fall off quickly. This may always fix the "but why not just play disc?" issue most groups seem to have… Something different that other healers dont have would make Holy stand out.
This kind of game play is coming in shadowlands anyways with soulbinds.
Thank you for all your work! This really gives me hope! (went back to maining holy @start of legion and things have beeen…fairly underwhelming since.)
Holy priest talent tree is a mess…agreed. Having to soulbind to increase flash heal is annoying, just buff the healing already stop with borrowed power blizz! Also buff heal, lord.
Would love to see benediction replaced with a talent that increases the proc rate of renew by 25%. Divine star can be replaced by a talent that increases the healing of circle of healing by a %. And Halo replaced by a spell that increases your heal/flash heal by a %.
Also annoyed that Serenity does less healing than other healing spells in the game, like isn't the whole fantasy about the spell a miracle healing ability that brings someone to full life…cause it doesn't really deliver that punch.
Holy's core with cycling holy words IS fun but I really want the other spells to be strong as well.
Bring back lightwell, please.
Make the legendary's more fun and flavorful. Example: Each time your renew heals it deals 75% of the healing as damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Or another, players healed by your circle of healing gain 2 charges of PoM and 3 sec of renew. Like these would also reward hitting specific spells that aren't typically in your rotation. Change your playstyle. Idk just ranting. Miss Cata/MoP hpriest
I'm thinking holy priests would benefit from having a baseline over-heal redistribution mechanic of some sort. Echo of Light is an insanely strong mastery, but unfortunately, in most situations, a good chunk of echo goes straight to overhealing. Hmm, a baseline over-heal redistribution mechanic might be too strong… a legendary maybe? But holy priest is already pretty efficient, so giving them overhealing redistribution might make them too efficient. And it's definitely not something holy priests "need."
How effective is the shielding from overhealing from Dreamweaver in the Nightfae covenant? I was thinking that might synergize pretty well with the holy priest Echo of Light, but then again, shielding from overhealing is pretty "win-more" and doesn't help in the situations where you actually need all the extra healing you can get to catch up.
The Well of Existence in BFA was a godsend for holy priests in terms of efficiency, and I actually found myself defaulting to the Well of Existence major, Refreshment, for heavy tank healing in BFA, or even just single target spot healing for non-tanks (which is really nice because all of the healing it gives comes from otherwise "wasted" healing, and Refreshment was very often my holy priests' second highest healing, right under Echo of Light of course). Its short cooldown and the constant overhealing from Echo of Light practically gave me a Serenity or Lay on Hands every 15 seconds (and the fact that the healing from the Well of Existence echoed and helped to kickstart refilling the Well of Existence after every Refreshment cast). But what made the Well of Existence good is that overhealing is stored and redistributed to situations where you actually need the extra healing, both with the passive and active powers. (I'd trade both Boon of the Ascended and Summon Steward, or whatever other covenant skills, for a Well of Existence on holy priest, just saying…)
Anyways, overhealing doesn't necessarily have to be redistributed to other forms of healing. Some ideas may include…
having a small percentage of overhealing apply as damage to a nearby enemy target (huge emphasis on "small," and even then, they'd have to be extra careful with this because this can quickly become busted)
having certain thresholds of overhealing trigger resource recovery for allies (once again, holy priests are already highly efficient healers, so they'd have to be careful with this one as well, and not just for the healer mana… someone out there is probably already thinking about which dpses or tanks could potentially abuse this)
whatever else have you: stat buffs, cd reduction, movement speed buffs, crowd control/debuffs auras… whatever anyone can think of… of course these non-healing ones would have to be designed carefully for obvious reasons.
Some ideas for redistribution that interacts with other holy priest abilities…
After a certain threshold (for example, 50% of priest's max hp or whatever) of overhealing on a specific target, that target receives one stack of prayer of mending up to the limit of 10 stacks (this sounds like it might be too powerful, even if it was made to only work in combat)
A percentage of specifically Echo of Light overhealing is stored on the target as a buff similar to Luminous Jellyweed, to be applied as a capped bonus to the next Holy Word healing spell the target receives (including Holy Word: Salvation), and the priests' next Holy Word: Chastise consumes the bonus stacked on the priest and applies the bonus as extra damage to the target instead.
Or… players hit by Cosmic Ripple release a secondary ripple, releasing their stored overhealing (or a portion of their stored overhealing) to 5 nearby allies, and Holy Word: Chastise coming off cooldown causes the players hit by its Cosmic Ripple to release a destructive ripple instead, damaging 5 nearby enemies. (This also sounds like it might be too powerful…)
A percentage of specifically Echo of Light overhealing is added onto the remaining damage of all currently active instances Holy Fire. (Holy Fire dot time is 7 seconds, Echo of Light tics every 3 seconds; this still might be too powerful, but requires high uptime maintenance of Holy Fire)
A percentage of overhealing is stored, and Guardian Spirit applies the stored overhealing as a shield on the affected target… (maybe too similar to Life Cocoon…)
Anyways, whatever the idea, it would need to be designed/tuned carefully because overheal redistribution is very powerful, especially when dealing with something like Echo of Light (or maybe I'm just paranoid with what I've seen of what Echo of Light can do)
<3
Thanks for all the work you do on these videos!
All you had to say was "Circle of Healing interaction with Holy Words"
Take me now
I am definitely curious about your usage of renewed faith despite the priest discord being adamant that its a dead talent because of trail of light.
It'd be nice if you did the other healers as much as you did priests.
Great video, but here's a thing that bugs me. Why does prayer of mending use the first few frames of its old casting animation when it's an instant now? Give it renew's animation and be done with it. Is this a Blood Elf specific problem? I knocked intellectually that its an instant, but because of that animation my brain in the moment makes me stop moving for a gcd half the time.
It feels like all covenant abilities for priest were designed for disc priest as almost of them incorporate both damage and healing in the spells. That way, for holy (and shadow) where we mostly want to do pure healing (or damage), the spells feel so lackluster and awkward.
Even worse, holy got sooooo little reworks on this xpac compared to both disc and shadow.
I hope holy is taken in groups still. I've been experementing with healers in the pre patch, and holy has been my favorite so far. Disc is fun too, and they're really highly rated, but not as fun as holy to me.
I adore the thought of getting our Lightwell back. (Glyphed of course, as no single person has ever clicked on a lightwell purposefully) It would add the push that the spec needs for high spike encounters. A very short salv, or something else (that doesn't have a 12 minute cooldown) that hit a number of players with Pom at the same time would also be greatly appreciated. OOo How about a lightwell that tossed out Poms!
Wait, we might actually use renew again? I havent had that on my hotbar in god knows how long
Produce more such videos
I realllly want holy to be good. I just recently started priest healing and I love the feel of holy. I absolutely loathe disc – it is so clunky and unfun, and I hate the attack to heal style of it.
SO nice to see someone talk about Holy. i feel like so many people just write holy off, forget about it completly. Its pretty hard to find good content creators who talk about holy ( i would love to see more people talk about so that we as players can form our own opinion from different point of views etc)
i really appreciate your time and work on this one! Thanks <3
Been thinking on how to address the points you brought up and I think the answer lies in bringing some of the PvP talents and Legion Artifact passives in to PvE.
Ray of Hope from the PvP talents would be a good way to address the lack of damage reduction Holy brings while also being highly useful for dealing with spike damage. In Legion this talent was a big reason why Holy became a rank 1 viable healer for the first time in PvP instead of being a joke spec in Arena. – I'd replace Divine Star with this.
Combine Renew the Faith and Holy Mending together from the Legion Artifact tree in to one passive talent and replace Cosmic Ripple with it, nothing on that row really makes a big impact other than Guardian Angel which is only ever really useful for tank healing. Those two together in Legion made Divine Hymn more than just a really good raid cooldown and would be very strong for handling the Prideful Affix in high keys.
Replace Afterlife with Spirit of the Redeemer from the PvP talents, having the option to make Spirit of Redemption more of a preventative ability and a short window of free burst healing and an answer for the classic Holy Priest weakness of being susceptible to one shots in M+.
Edit: I forgot to mention that perhaps making it to where critical strikes on Holy Word cooldown reducing abilities add an extra 50% cooldown reduction would help to advance Holy further as a spec.
Holy priest buffs came out !!
I miss lightwell and cascade. I want lightwell to act like mw jade statue or just use its old function. Is serenity getting weaker in SL? It seems blizz really hate holy, huh? And prayer of mending, tbh i love casting it but it really feel useless because of its low hps and benediction makes is also useless (i'm not even surprised). I would like to see salvation has reduced cd (5 min or something) and replace divine hymn all together XD
A miracle.
Jak have you tried Harmonious Legendary + Holy Oration conduit + Light of the Naaru Talent?
Those 3 combined sound like absurd cooldown reduction for our Holy Words. Can't try it since I don't have beta :c
I think one thing that could be done to help holy in 5 mans is to tune HW:sanctify to hit 5 targets instead of 6.
Presently: 245% x 6 targets = 1470% total
Proposed: 295% x 5 targets = 1475% total
likely very minimal impact on raid balance for the spec, but would add some significant omph to it's emergency group heal in dungeon content.
Halo getting the starfall treatment and not pulling packs could also be nice.
Thank you for you work! It really helped to get a courage to not be shamed play holy priest. I main holy priest since TBC, cant play anything else(tried). After these years I still enjoy playing with this spec and class. After I was benched from mythic raiding coz I didnt play meta healer I felt really bad and was trying to convice myself that everything will be okay, didnt help. But then I start to watch your videos and after this one I'm proud to still play my holy priest.
Sending all thanks and love to you <3
"oh your holy.." – the worst comment before a key/boss pull
Make holy fire instant cast again.
make divine star a smart "chain heal" type or scrap it
Holy Priest really needs some love and especially Buffs.
I'm Maining Holy Priest so many years now and I love this spec more than any other classes/Specs.
Having the Lightwell and Cascade would be a blessing from heaven. The Chakra System in MoP was kinda badass too and fun to play.
The Talents are so boring since Legion till Shadowlands and need completely a rework.
Let's be honest, MoP Holy Priest was the best and fun healer of all Specs imo.
Sadly, Blizzard won't do something about this Spec they keep Holy Priest dark…
they should re-design renew to be a holy word with 2 charges and 45sec CD with a shorter duration so it's HPS is higher
Back in Vanilla Holy Dominated and Disc Was terrible. Classic WoW did not truly expose a lot of how the game really was back in the days and they did that to keep old school players a rare breed for our hard work. Classic WoW was easy
Delete this trash divine star and give us my Cascade back please. 🙁
Holy needs a buff
They need a full revamp, remake, rework….anything…
Holy priest needs more POWA!!!!!!!!! It already plays well but it doesn't pack much punch. It goes oom too easy and it lacks damage. If you're going to take away damage, give the heals more potency, that will also fix the mana problem. I mean, our "miracle" heal we sometimes have to work up with flash heal doesn't even do as much as a ret pallys Word of Glory. I feel Holy is criminally underpowered compared to other heals. Theres my 2 cents