Resto Shaman is a caster class, doesn’t cast very often. Resto Druid is a caster class, also doesn’t cast very often. Hell, the caster hero trees of Holy Pally and Mistweaver don’t cast very often either.
Prevokers do have many casts, but they are one of the speediest healers when they do have to move, and they have options to help them cast on the move, like Spatial Paradox.
Homogenization is a meaningless term, when only 1 class in Priest is mysteriously unique in a bad way compared to everyone else. While also being the slowest. While also having no meaningful way to break ccs or ignore displacements.
If I had to choose between playing a class that felt “the same as everyone else”, and a class that is uniquely bad for the sake of uniqueness, pretty sure I am always going to pick the former.
And it’s not like the other healers play very similarly to each other even with their instant casts and mobility either, so why is Priest this exception to the rule you make it out to be?
The only reason you’re saying this right now is because you haven’t tried the 11.1 Holy Priest rework. We’re in Lightweaver PTSD mode right now. 2 charges of Serenity are two giant instant cast heals Holy has always had access to. Plus, Lightweaver being buffed to extend to modifying PoH. I think we need to get our hands on the rework before we automatically compare ourselves to other classes. Especially since these classes in question have had multiple mini reworks over the course of the beta to now.
This is all there is to it, really. “Unique and different” loses all value when it gets in the way of objectively practical and correct design. Its amazing how many people will support this incredibly foolish line of thinking, and how long it can linger and drag down the quality of a game.
You would never do this in any content besides extremely easy content.
You simply cannot be blanketing renews while damage is happening, you’ll die. You’re better off flinging a flash heal.
Holy Nova will heal more than renew will. It is actually that bad of a spell.
Holy priests can cast halo and run around for 5 seconds doing 100x the healing that a Disc priest will get from using renew. But even disregarding that - PoM, CoH, Holy Word: Sanc, Holy Word: Serenity, Guardian Angel, Holy Nova and they ALSO have access to renew, and it’s just as effective for them.
The fact we’re claiming disc mobility is much higher than holy is honestly just flat wrong. The only real leg up is penance.
If you think Holy Priest has to plant because their mobility tools are kinda meh/limited and they need to think of where to stand ahead of time - Disc is doing the exact same thing. They’re just significantly better healers right now.
Archon is even more powerful in heroic then Mythic because Halo can pad on 25+ players. Oracle just isn’t going to be relevant unless they really give it some oof or nerf down Archon’s Halo.
I’m one of them too. I had an orange 95% / ilvl 97% parse on heroic Princess and 95 on Ovi’nax the other night (2/4/14 comp). I know parsing doesn’t mean much for healers, but it was fun to see it done anyway without lightweaver.
I’ll miss the renew/CoH interaction, just wish renew would have been a little more potent.
The solution to that may not be removing those spells but assessing why people aren’t using them.
And if that is any sort of justification for removing spells and abilities, when does that end? You can remove the two least used spells every season until we’re left with just a single, most-used ability, simply because there’s no other options.
Again, CoH was an AoE heal that was castable while moving. I’m pretty sure that lack of mobility and lack of AoE healing was a complaint of many priests. Maybe if people weren’t using it, the solution was to make it more powerful, not to get rid of it.
Removing buttons isn’t necessarily a bad thing when there’s as many buttons as there are in the priest toolkit and they’re all doing relatively the same thing.
Salv was a second hymn, for all intent and purpose, and I mean an extra healing CD isn’t bad, but if I can do more outside that window in exchange I’m not exactly crying about it. CoH and PoH were fighting each other in the current design of the game (and to some extend had before too). They tried to make CoH distinct with giving it a cooldown, adding targets, increasing it through renew and/or salv windows and none of them really worked.
I still even think their ‘fast mana inefficient heal, slow mana efficient heal’ that every healer is working with is a failing system in modern wow. Works in a slower game, but the only way it feels good here is to make the slow heal fast or instant at some point. See: Tidal Waves/Primal Wave, Removal of healing touch, Chiji’s cast speed increases, holy light pretty much never touched, etc.
Rhapsody Holy Nova does this as does Sanc. Technically PW:L can be talented to do similar now.
I’m not really a giant fan of removing mobility tools but holy also has a myriad of ‘stutter step’ tools for small movement windows. They really didn’t NEED CoH for this. It’s not nearly the concern for them that losing instant cast mind spikes was for shadow.
My biggest concern is still a lack of mobility with no CoH and the turret cast nature of PoH. Throughput we can hotfix but mobility is so important that we have to get it right in the design phase.
I usually cast Renew’s if I have to move around and all my instant casts are on cd. Ideally the best time to use Apotheosis and Halo is on segments on the fights where you’re forced to run around like Mythic Council and Mythic Ky’veza intermissions. The SoL procs will keep feeding you Holy Words while you move.
Forced movement is way-way worse on Disc then Holy though. The last boss in Necrotic Wake is absolutely troll as Disc.
If Empowered Renew didn’t put a 12s cd on Renew then it would make casting Renews more viable because it’d do the same amount of healing as Flash Heal at 1/3rd the mana.