I really miss the Shadowlands Light Weaver + Trail of Light build with strong and fast Heal spells from keeping up a buff. It was rewarding gameplay that felt strong to play.
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It was fun being the best spot healer in the game for a time.
The tediousness of maintaining the Flash Concentration buff and casting like 80 Heals a fight probably wasn’t peak game design though. Unfortunately Lightweaver has never been remotely as strong.
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The irony with Holy in SL is people called it bad in S1 + S2, but then it went meta in S3/S4 simply because it got a +10% hps/dps buff, and world first guilds stacked them for the first time. I remember debating with people on these forums for months that Holy was a sleeper and strong. lol
Holy never went fotm in DF because of meta comps that stacked Shadow Priests and some healers were fotm status. S1 was Prevokers/Rdruids, S2 was Hpals, S3 was Disc/Mweaver, and S4 was RDruid.
Holy’s gameplay in DF S4 is far more evolved than what it was in SL though. In SL you just had Boon of the Ascended for AOE damage, but now it’s Divine Word + Burning Vehemence. More of your healing is placed into your Holy Words, you get them far more often than in SL, and Divine Image made Lightweaver basically obsolete.
Holy’s just never going to go meta for a season unless we get a major talent revamp right at the start of a season because people always flood to the most recently updated specs.
Hmm, you think Lightweaver is obsolete? You were mentioning the higher proc rates of SoL on archon, and since Divine Image and Miracle Worker are already guaranteed picks after 10.2.6 I was thinking there was room to mix in Lightweaver maybe at that rate (in place of Divine Word), especially if you start trimming around the edges to pick up more of the single target buffs…
Maybe we can be the best spot healers again - they’ve certainly upped the single target heals throughout DF?
Or maybe I’m just trying to find something interesting in the zero changes. Ha.
Outside of Serenity, our heals are wet noodles for single target. Losing the current tier bonus will be a massive loss.
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Well that’s exactly why I’m looking at Lightweaver. When the tier set goes, all those extra holy words go and so do the free renews, which hurts Renewed Faith and Healing Chorus, i.e. CoH takes a big nerf too.
So how can you make up for the missing 1000% spell power Serenities and 1200%+ CoHs? Heal is a base of 500% of spell power (not sure if that’s with the extra 20% from beta dev yet, but let’s go with that)… you can get a 15% buff from Lightweaver on that, plus a 25% buff from Trailing Light, a 15% crit buff so that’s another 15% net, and you can get a 40% buff from Resonant Words. You could probably add 3-5% buff from Everlasting Light, too in most conditions.
So just with that suddenly you’re looking at a semi-spammable spell with 1120%+ of SP per cast. And that’s not counting in that it adds up to 30% to our heavy hitting holy words through Pontifex or feeds into more holy words through Serendipity, which is more effective SP I’m sure someone can do the math on.
It needs a little more spell weaving and finesse than Shadowlands FC, but that’s not hitting like a wet noodle at all! Sure, it could be prone to overhealing on the cleaves but since it’s targeted healing and involves weaving in other filler it shouldn’t be too much more wasteful in that regard, especially since there should be less overhealing in TWWI.
Archon even supports the playstyle a bit by granting a free SoL proc with halo and making all SoL procs +30% buffed so even the filler portion of casting Flash Heal for Lightweaver is mitigated a bit. If it’s sustainable mana-wise (and it should be) it seems like a throughput powerhouse.
There’s no meta build for holy it’s really down to personal preference. Im not even sure in playing next expansion tbh I’ll be deciding in about a week.
I’m preparing my hpal and my totemic shaman for next expansion.
Both specs looks great and are fun on top of feeling good while also getting constant updates.
But not playing priest will be a let down so I’ll probably stick in Cata or SoD
And miss out on the very beginning of the expac? That’s always the most fun!
But in terms of class design and priest especially lately, yeah the .0 patch isn’t a safe bet.
I haven’t been playing S4 so I’m not sunk cost attached to the game like I used to be and the beta experience put me off a lot. I’ve had nothing productive to do other than complain about a lack of communication and changes instead of writing useful information for people to prep for the next expansion.
There’s nothing to look forward too other than the hero talents becoming prisons for our specs.
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IMO s4 is the most fun of all seasons. You get gear faster, and easier ways to acquire BIS trinkets and weapons. The game is so much more enjoyable that way.
I mean… They also changed hymn of hope into one of the strongest raid defensives in the game.
That was changed in S2. The only change Holy got in S3+ and beyond was the +10% dps/hps buff and access to dual legos (Kyrian + Flash Concentration) for 1 minute Boons.
Holy was slept on for 2 seasons then it blew up FOTM overnight which was sad because it was pretty easy to get purple/orange logs before that. =P
I was also harassed fairly regularly to play Disc until S3 as well.
I would say the 1 min boons were the real thing. Along with people finally being able to escape their covenant jail on their alts lead to the rise of Priest.
Shadowlands healer meta was ruled by DPS from Ashen Hollow to Earthquake/vesper Shaman.
Getting Kyrian along with FC, and Kyrian being incredible damage in M+ with very little danger of someone dying while you were using it made them the S4 pick.
Granted, I thought they were pretty strong in S3.
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