I like casting renew when possible but after losing empowered renew it is too underwhelmingly. All our other abilities that proc/apply renew are great but casted renews are in a rough spot. It’s like a bad rejuvenation that doesn’t scale - mastery is always one of Hpriests best secondary stats but it does not interact with renew. Even with empowered renew, mastery was only affecting 28.5% of each casted renew.
I used to take empowered renew to make it feel more impactful, so I miss that quite a bit. After the 7% baseline nerf, the empowered renew prune was likely the second biggest hit to my output in BGs.
The renew healing is simply weak and the synergy isn’t good either.
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Renewed Faith - Targets with renew receive 6% more healing from you
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Healing Chorus - Builds up stacks to increase healing of next CoH
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Helps get Sanctify off CD when PoH casting isn’t viable
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Tier 3 set bonus 4 piece - Increases chance to proc free Holy Word
That’s all the synergy casted renews get. Surely, they can find a way to make renew feel better to cast without Hpriest spamming it as a Rdruid would rejuvenation. It’s been an awkward part of Hpriest kit for some time now, but this patch has brought it to a new low.
3 Likes
Renew just needs a baseline bump of +30-40% to match the changes to Flash Heal/Heal and/or make it scale off of Mastery. Long term having it scale off of Mastery would work better.
Presumably they are afraid to break salvation and over boost the renew procing abilities, but something needs to be done. I personally liked the flavor of empowered renew to prop it up as that only affected casted renews and made every casted renew feel like a baby riptide. Ofc all the renew procing motivated people to use rapid renewal instead, which was imo not a great design.
The mastery is pretty good on Hpriest so it’s hard to gripe too much about how renew is consistently left behind. It would seem the easiest change if they could ever follow through with it.
More syergy would be appreciated but that likely won’t change much this expansion. The Healing Chorus buff is a step in that direction.
I too want renew to be worth casting on its own again. Otherwise casting it just to get the “takes 6% more healing” feels more like an annoying maintenance chore.
Also, renew is the only spammable instant cast ranged heal we have. Given how many movement phases there are in modern raids and dungeons - and how bad priests are at moving places quickly - it’d be nice to have renew not be in the category of ‘if I could cast literally anything else that’d be better.’
With TWW around the corner I’m bumping this thread one last time. Casting renew should not feel naughty or like a necessary evil. I suggest they reintroduce choice node talents to boost renew and make it feel good to hard cast, without making it into the Rdruid rejuvenation spam they seemingly wish to avoid.
Holy suggestions:
Empowered Renew: 40% of renew healing done instantly. Just like before, for people that like to manually renrew.
placeholder: 4-set bonus from tier 3/4. Serenity and Sanctify grant the target renew for X seconds. For people that want renews up without hard casting many.
placeholder: Every time you cast renew the cooldown of circle of healing and prayer of mending is reduced by 1 second. An idea to boost CoH and PoM healing by implementing renew.
placeholder: Casting renew on an ally grants them a (placeholder) buff that increases echo of light healing received by 15% for 20 seconds. Stacks 2 times. A way to incorporate mastery into renew without boosting renews output.
Disc suggestions:
Protective renew: Casting renew grants that ally a shield for 40% of the renew value. A shield variant of empowered renew for disc that like to heal more than dps.
placeholder: The duration of atonement granted by renew is increased by 2 second. For disc that atonement heal more.
placeholder: Abilities besides renew that grant atonement will also grant those allies renew for 6 seconds. Some pad healing built into PW:S and PW:R.
placeholder: Allies with renew receive 10% more healing from atonement. Another atonement option.
placeholder: Casting renew now resets the cooldown on powerword: shield. To make the rotation feel much more smooth and cut down on renew casts. This would probably be a fan favorite.
These are some simple ideas but I’m sure blizzard can find a way to make renew feel worthwhile to cast instead of an ability to avoid.
2 Likes
I feel like there’s an underlying tension between Echo of Light and the existence of a strong renew, and to a lesser extent on the disc side where they want renew to be an atonement applicator and not a druid-level HoT.
They may have designed themselves into a bit of a corner with how the rest of the specs operate. When they did seriously buff Empowered Renew in 10.1 the throughput potential was off the charts. But it likely could use a substantial ~60% buff or so without affecting overall balance, especially with the tier set going.