I’ve had a chance to try out the new stuff and it doesn’t feel as smooth as it used to. I am personally leaning heavily into PoH and trying to make that build work. I’m feeling forced to use Lightweaver and I do indeed have to keep track of several empowered spell buffs at any given time, which wasn’t something that I enjoyed doing. Part of what I enjoyed most about Holy Priest was that aside from Holy Words, you just played what was needed. You could “turn on a dime” and respond to mistakes and the like. I don’t feel like I can do that as well at the moment.
I don’t feel the impact of my spells as much as I used to. I’m relying only on the meters to judge my performance.
I also do use the Empowered Renew as a filler spell and pretty much just for cooldown reduction. It’s nice to have. I’d be nice if there was another filler spell I could use besides Flash Heal that wouldn’t consume my Lightweaver stacks. Sometimes I do want to be able to spam Renew during fights while moving but I think the Empowered Renew performs better.
There’s still a lot of tough decisions for me at the bottom of the talent tree. I haven’t found a build yet. I’m curious to see how important Answered Prayers is going to be this season.
I think once we have 4 set tier, answered prayers and the PoM version of divine Hymn are going to be fairly big for us.
Currently apotheosis feels very, very good. You can spam like crazy in it and it lasts forever. With 4 set it’s going to put the tier set effect on everyone, too. I only did normal in a 20 man group, but felt like my HPS was pretty good the whole time for our group size, and a lot of that was learning to be in Apoth for any moment that looked like it’d be high damage.
Yeah I was excited for the buffs to PoH and in practice they’re not worth the use nor the talent point spend. They should bake some of the talents into the spell baseline.
I have a post I made a few days ago, mechanically holy priests their suffer in action economy by nature of being the long cast healers. That hurts them in all encounters as all are designed with movement as a core pillar of design.
I wish they’d make them the buff healers. Like the Augmentation of healing. That way we keep our core design and the action economy deficit is worked around by buffs baked into our spells.
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I don’t love the idea that our power is locked behind tier set. I’d prefer it be in our kit and the tier sets impact the way we play to highlight a part of it.
I’m the complete opposite. I like the additional power behind a tier set and hate that it forces you to play a new way each season. Finding new ways of playing is what the talent tree is for. Locking power behind talent choice, dictated by the tier sets, is what I dislike. I think it’s fun to use different talents for different forms of content and I like having my Dungeon build and my Raid build.
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FWIW, I don’t think a ton of power is locked behind the tier set as much as once we have tier set apoth is going to be a little crazy, so we’ll be looking to be in it as often as we can.
They do this because they want the class spec to be played in a very specific way. So we really don’t have a choice and the talent trees are by design only to create the illusion of choice.
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Completely agree. I don’t mind if a tier set makes a part of our kit more relevant but I dislike when it is to the exclusion of other parts of our kit.
I want holy priests to be able to function well in mythic plus and in raid. I keep running into we’re so not optimized for M+ each xpac because M+ is designed for the healers that can dish out the most damage in tandem with healing which Holy Priests will never be if they want to keep them differentiated at all from other healers. This is not even touching the action economy v. class design situation (mentioned it in a prior post in this thread.)
I feel like if you have to lock that much power behind a tier set that means the spec is designed to fail without. Tier sets should be empowering but not the majority source of your power.
I wish they could figure out how to make the class fantasy function well in both in M+ and raid. I like holy words. I like our core kit. But we need to make it work in M+ and it shouldn’t rely on tier sets to do it.
Doesn’t help that they refresh class specs to be more focused on AOE instead of single target which Holy was called a Pocket Heal for a reason with it being so Heal centric. Now it’s lackluster and bloated.
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I’m gonna try another round of M+ today.
So far I still think the update is lackluster…
PoH is not worth in M+ at all, you are still a flash heal/heal bot but now your Serenity and Apotheosis are stronger.
idk… other healers through dragonflight up to now got very heavy updates and revamps like Mistweaver and they completely changed the gameplay to something more interactive and strong.
Hpriest update feels more like a buff instead of ACTUAL changes.
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Completely agree. It feels like they buffed certain things while removing others. But most some of the things are not optimal for M+ or Raid so the only constant is “you like hitting mending on CD and apotheosis? how about holy words?”
I wish there was a reason to use PoH in raid and in M+. I have always preferred it to CoH and I feel like Holy Nova is more ultimate version of CoH anyway. I also wish when I healed with cast times I wasn’t punished in M+ by choosing to spend time casting a healing spell vs. doing damage. I always feel when I choose a cast time I’m letting the team down by not creating damage.
I love holy words but optimal output means you should be casting their cd reducing spells so you can use them again if needed. Which conflicts with the mobility required of raid and the trying to weave in damage in M+. Maybe instead of cooldowns for holy words they need to go to a resource? That can be generated by damage and healing?
My real wish is to have our healing spells confer buffs to the party members like flash heal giving people haste for a duration or heal giving versatility. A high amount for a short duration. Or some other buffs that would allow holy priests to focus on their fantasy of casting healing spells and let the buffs offset them not doing as much damage. Have the decision making be “what spell heals the damage done?” and then layer in the question “which buff do I want to confer to my group?”