Circle of Healing removed in 11.1

Classes Priest
61

It’s just poor talent design. There’s no consistency or directive, just a bunch of people all working on different pieces and communicating once a week on how many boxes they’ve checked. Then after2-4 years of poking and distorting and getting off-track, there’s an overhaul but that’s again prioritizing the checkbox of “overhaul done, boss.”

Specs should have an intended baseline style. Then talents should add improvements in various ways but always serving the overall flow of the spec. Different combinations can be made for aoe, st, or pvp, and some of those can have a different flow, but the starting point has to be shared.

When there’s an obvious AOE-focused ability that nobody really likes using for AOE, then YA SCREWED UP THE DESIGN. Holy’s core is using abilities to build up a stronger version of the same thing, and we’re out here trying to use Lightweaver for AOE because the rest of the AOE support sucks so bad.

62

That just goes to show the talent trees are pretty much just a way to making leveling up (1-70) have the feeling of progression if you can get away with taking basically everything until the bottom half of the tree. I guess that’s okay in theory, but a new player that is leveling might also be overwhelmed by all the talents in their face too.

I think that’s a big reason why I’m such a fan of choice nodes. You actually are making a conscious choice there on the way you want to play. Instead of mindlessly adding points to things you basically need anyway.

63

Well, to be fair they did give us Archon Halo, and in raid it’s incredibly strong - borderline overpowered if anything. I’m really surprised they haven’t nerfed it yet with a longer cd, less healing, etc. to try and make Oracle more of a raid pick.

Translating that AOE healing power to M+ is where it’s an issue. A lot of Priests are running Oracle instead of Archon because it’s listed as the WoWhead recommended build. All the top Priest logs (70%) in M+ are playing Archon which IMHO is the superior build overall.

Our AOE heals stink because Sanctify has a small radius, doesn’t do a lot of healing, and PoH is just what it is at this point. Too much of our power is baked into Flash Heal because when you cast it on somebody you’re replicating 35% to the previous target and 20% to yourself.

Also, were way more cooldown dependent then any other expansion. You have to rotate through Apotheosis, Halo, Divine Word, Coagulated Blood, Divine Hymn, etc. to keep up with the healing checks.

Ultimately if we had another Archon Halo kind of ability for M+ It’d really help fill in the gap on-top of making Sanctify just work like Disc’s Radiance. You cast it and it smart AI heals 5 people around you in 30 yrds.

64

The problem isn’t that cast time spells are bad per se - it’s all the other drawbacks that aggravate the need to plant the casting healer’s feet to heal.

Why is it the slowest healer in the game with the least effective personal defensives, is also arbitrarily the healer that needs to spend the most time standing still to cast their heals? While also having the least ability to negate mechanics like knockbacks and roots?

There should be some sort of tradeoff dynamic between survivability, mobility and utility, where some healers are better than others at certain aspects and worse at other aspects, but it seems to be more of the case where certain healers get to have almost everything while others are fighting for scraps.

1 Like
65

Here’s what I said on that already. I agree with you for the most part. But I think many of these gripes can be solved gracefully and fairly rather than removing the core aspect of what makes caster classes, caster classes. Too much homogenization is already an issue in the game as it is.

66

Pushing back on it by removing a single instant cast spell and replaces it with a mechanic that gives you procs of instant cast casting spells? Pft, get outta here!

67

I mean, “everything is just instant cast now” basically describes every other healer spec except priests.

It’s the hole that Blizzard dug for themselves, and if priests ever wanted more instant casts it’s more for parity rather than anything else.

68

And I don’t agree with giving every other healer instant casts either. But let’s not pretend every single healer besides Priest essentially presses instants only. Come on.

I’ll never agree with making everything basically instant for free. It cheapens instant cast spells if everything is. I’m playing an MMO not a mobile game.

69

It doesn’t seem like you played other healers or looked at logs of what they cast.

Because yes, they do spam instant cast spells and the few cast time spells that they do have to cast is either castable/channeled while moving, or innately comes with very generous cast time modifiers that essentially make the spells instant.

70

Other healers are casting spells depending on the build they are playing. Priest is a caster class. I think the other classes should cast more often, but certain builds like Fistweaver and Melee Wings Paladin obviously aren’t going to be casting often. Homogenization doesn’t need to happen to make every class and spec feel good to play. Design the game’s encounters better and more fairly to keep the uniqueness. Stop trying to make every class the same but recolored versions of each other. This is exactly why I find healing in FFXIV way more boring than in WoW. Essentially every class has the same base healing tools on top of some thematic spells thrown in and it kills the uniqueness for me (just my own anecdote).

71

If I’m not mistaken we only replicate 25% from trail of light.
They are buffing it to 35% next patch

72

I hate to admit it, but this is kind of right. At least to some extent. Damage has become so bursty and frequent that it’s made instant heals much more effective (at least in an M+ environment).

Mistweaver has Vivacious Vivification. I might even considering Soothing Mist into instant Vivify casts in the mix, as even though you’re channeling SM it’s allowing instant cast heals, and with how Renewing Mist works it gives a lot of passive/cleave healing. Not to mention that fistweaving in-of-itself is a lot of melee ability usage, which of course is innately “instant”.

Resto Shaman skyrocketed this season with Totemic, which automates (instant casts) a lot of free Chain Heals that they no longer need to hard cast.

Holy Paladin (AC Lightsmith) more or less ignores all casted abilities, instead prefering only usage of instant/melee abilities. And like MW, a lot of passive AOE cleave heals just based on how the toolkit functions.

Disc Priest, while still needing to plant to cast Radiance, is more often than not still able to do the rest of their heals on the go. Renew, PW:S, Rapture (RIP), Purge the Wicked, Penance, etc are all able to be used on the move. This coupled with an insane burst AoE profile this season every 20 seconds, plus their utility, has seen it ascend to the top of m+ pushes.

It’s little wonder that the two healers that have to sit and cast for a majority of their heals are Holy Priest and Preservation are also the least played in m+. Not only that, but their AoE heals are also limited to an incredibly limited area (Sanctify, Dream Breath), which makes spread encounters with frequent AoE damage a PITA to deal with. Thinking of bosses like AK 3, Mists 3, etc that are just brutal for these two healers to effectively heal through.

Not to mention the annoying frequency of high AOE damage whilst simultaneously requiring a lot of movement that unfairly punishes healers that actually have to cast (think Consumption, and to a lesser extent Gossamer Burst, etc.

1 Like
73

They are removing circle of healing? Such a shame. First they nerfed it to near uselessness and now it’s out entirely? Removing a staple AOE heal that has been in the game for almost forever now and doubling down on the most clunky, expensive, slow aoe heal in the game is not what I envisioned when I started fussing for a rework… the exact opposite. Holy already struggles enough in M+. now we are forced to double down and hard cast even more…

74

Resto druids get their poison/curse dispel in their tree for free in 11.1 if you want to feel worse about our choices.

75

This is the only one in the list that’s actually like, a change. Pally and Monk have always been skewed heavily towards instant casts (though in monk’s case, they chiji and rotate abilities to BECOME instant cast). Which makes sense for them as melee healers.

All of these mobility tools aren’t really strong healing tools though. Disc priest healing is tied to their bender, and you have to smite to lower the bender CD. Penance/pw:s (or rapture) is really the only big opportunity to move, and you have to use these spells rotationally, rather than saving them for movement - so if anything they’re really stutter stepping. And the fact we mention renew/ptw is like saying holy priest can cast renew on the move to heal. No, they can’t, people would die if there was any damage pressure going on and a disc priest was running and hitting PTW.

Disc is really not mobile at all. Their saving grace isn’t mobility, it’s having extremely high healing that hits the whole group off of a very quick cooldown they can take down to 30s which lines up with any damage event you could possibly need it to. That, and having the ability to increase the effective HP of the group with rapture and barrier/pain sup.

76

As Renew puts Atonement on the target, I think it’s a very valid/effective tool for Disc. In a pinch you can run and get several Renews/Atonements out and Penance. It’s still way more effective AoE healing and mobility than Holy is afforded. It’s not MW/Hpal level mobility, but it’s way more effective than Holy Priest.

77

Holy Priests benefit from casting because the tradeoff for them is massive reactive healing. Yes, casting can be detrimental in certain environments, but I believe the fact a Holy Priest must plant their feet and hard cast allows their spells to be extremely potent. You can’t get something for nothing you know.

78

If that’s the logic, they need to be far more potent than they are now. If someone can move and heal, then a Holy Priest planting feet to hardcast should be able to aoe heal ~40% of everyone’s health in one cast. Because the downside is, like City of Threads last boss, movement in addition to damage going out followed by a slam means significant risk and deaths if we can’t make that difference up in a single cast.

Classes that can spam instant healing don’t have that risk and can continuously heal while moving and don’t have to face situations like that.

79

We’ll see how it feels in the 11.1 rework. No point discussing how it feels currently. Priest has been shafted all expansion (well Holy mostly).

80

I subscribe to the logic of plant and cast. The biggest concern is probably whether or not Prayer of Healing will be able to stabilize the group in higher keys. They have been paying some attention to PoH in the past couple notes (adding smart healing). It really still needs to behave like Atonement and be more effective outside of raids.

That, with the other amps, should help with being able to react to AoE damage patterns. May still need to drop some FHs, but if Lightweaver is a critical component and its placement with the other 2-pointers is limiting access to other capstones, its pathing needs to be adjusted or PoH needs to be able to move bars without Lightweaver.

I’m still hopeful, though. They seem to be cooking.