Even in dungeons where I can shackle things nobody ever utilizes it. Actually CCing stuff is pretty rare in general.
Yeah, CC (in PvE) has, for better or worse, more or less gone by the wayside. So much so, that I donât even bring up how limited Shackle Undead is, because even if they did make it work on more than 1 dungeon per expansion, it still wouldnât be used. If the tank is getting trucked and I throw a CC out there before the pull, 99 times out of 100 the CC is broken.
Not a pressing issue to be addressed for holy. Nobodyâs excluding us because of our CC.
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Can holy priest still not access our class ability Mind Sear?
No, they took away Mind Sear a few weeks ago, and gave Holy Nova a 50% dmg buff. Itâs not going to push Holy Nova to Mind Sear levels, but in dungeons I do use Holy Nova spam in Iâll be seeing a good uptick in damage output at least. Itâs better than nothing.
Mind Sear and Mind Blast donât seem very âholyâ, so losing them makes sense to me. But would be great to see some more updates to Holy Fire, something like a flat cd reduction on each smite, itâd give hpriest some multidot capability with SWP while keeping it holy and not dipping too much into the void side of things like Disc and Shadow. It also keeps it nice and simple with easy numbers to balance. Also stop trying to make me go into melee range as a flipping priest (IE Boon, Unholy Nova, Holy Nova buffs) or give me some mobility 
Agree â 100%.
Iâd also add that our mastery on paper seems very powerful but it adds to this invisible power issue.
Resto Druid HoTs are reliable - you know how much they can heal for on specific content and donât need to compensate, but the variable nature of Our mastery means itâs unreliable - we canât flash heal someone from 80% and pop a renew and expect them to end up topped off and so instead you cast 2 of them. And this feels better anyway because you can serenity sooner.
Blizz should consider changing it to something with more direct power- something that maybe helps better like a 4 second absorb shield based on the amount healed or perhaps a chance to give your target a haste buff similar to the time loop essence.
If they change Holy Words around then all theyâd really be doing is putting them on a flat cooldown which isnât interesting. They only need to add more spells that lower your Holy Word CDs: particularly offense ones. Smite/Holy Fire could both reduce the CD of Holy Words because the only real benefit you get from going full offense as Holy is getting more Surge of Light procs.
I been pushing harder keys (18-20) and these boss dots start ticking for half peoples HP every few seconds on tyrannical which makes me hate Kings Rest and Waycrest Manor a lot. I can still flash heal through them which surprised me a bit mainly due to getting almost like a 75% crit rate on Flash Heal. It just makes me I wish I had 50% versatility though that some priesties I been looking at have.
Thatâs kind of just corruptions and essences being out of control in general because if I went void tentacles and infinite stars I could do almost double the amount of damage I normally do in m+ dungeons.
Ray of Hope! Ray of Hope!
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Thanks guys. I havenât played holy much in a whileâŠa long while. I havenât properly mained it since Warlords. I didnât realize the mass dispel thing. I swore it used to be a glyph long time ago.
I really want to play it as a main again in Shadowlands instead of my other healers.
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It was a major glyph at some point but removed in Legion and the effect probably baked into the spell then. Iirc the glyph was changed in like 2013-removed in 2016
Heck I didnât even notice it changed either tbh 
but then again I think we always used other major glyphs and Ive kinda been avoiding my priest since legion.
Holy DPS feels a lot less janky on the PTR vs Live which is a big improvement.
On live youâre basically fishing for 20% Holy Fire procs by spamming smite because you want to keep your 2 stacks of Holy Fire up all the time. This leads to a bad RNG playstyle that punishes you because your 2 stacks can fall off easily or things just arenât proccing. It also basically forced you to use Holy Fire before anything else including Smite even though Chastise might come up on cd next cast.
Now on PTR thereâs a smooth rotation of Chastise -> Holy Fire -> SWP -> Smite and everything kind of lines up perfectly in your rotation while you DPS. SWD is good damage when targets get into its target threshold, but has a long cooldown.
Overall youâre not punished anymore by having to fish for procs so it leads to more a consistent damage output. Holy Nova 50% damage increase will have a bigger impact than I realized because I can do like 6-10mil damage in some dungeons for me and now its going to do 50% more. Have a hunch Mind Sear is going to get nerfed for Disc like Shadow so Holy Nova will end up being more damage over same time period.
Also, w/e you do⊠do not use SW:D on the adds in Motherload on the rock boss otherwise youâll kill yourself in one hit.
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Having played no high end content like Mythic raiding in Legion or BFA, I had no idea this was the reality with healer specs. If what youâre saying is true, then there is a dead giveaway right there that something is really wrong with the system. Maybe Iâm from the older times, but back in my day if I queued as a healer and during the boss encounter someone in the group has told me to stop healing the group and start DPSing instead, Iâd laugh my fade off before calling them a looney, and everyone would completely understand and agree. What the hell happened to this game?
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Just to clarify, zuldumar is referring to mythic+ dungeons, not mythic raids. The mythic+ meta has not yet made its way into raiding.
It is and and has been for awhile for raids too tbh and I think that person means all pve content not just m+. I dis agree with their point that pve content prioritizes healers doing dps over healing because youd just swap a healer to dps at that point if a raid, in m+ youre most deff gonna run the meta class with the best dmg abilities to shorten the timer ( assuming you are prob trying to rank or world first something, If not anything works for the max ilvl/chest reward m+ but the healer should still make use of all gcds if possible to do any dmg ) but you always still prioritized healing, throwing dps in where you can. Druid makes that easy with hot/dots, so its no brainer why theyre meta usually with guildies that avoid all the avoidable dmg.
If you are progressing on a raid boss ( H or M ) and the boss wipes everyone at 1-5% while the healers had downtime or lots of wasted gcdâs they could have been using to put even a dot up, people can get upset because that dmg adds up and can make or break early progression. I know there are heroic/mythic guilds less serious and theyre usually some of best ones to be in, but most heroic guilds still emulate mythic progg guilds early on, taking it too seriously.
I know this sounds like high/early mythic progression behaviour but heroic community also emulates it hard and then those people making normal pugs expect it, so it is deff the meta now. ( healers contributing any dps when they can ) You wont see it much or at all in normal or lfr or if youâve been in a laid back guild because no one cares and it is expected people have fun>stressing. In a laid back guild someone just usually volunteers to swap specs from heals to dps if you hit a dps wall and can afford to drop a healer, or they wait till gear takes care of the issue. Once you hit heroic progg on harder bosses itâs less of a âswap to x specâ issue and more of a people wasting time or being lazy issue/how can we do better as a group and individually, even if itâs a laid back guild.
Itâs most deff set as the meta in any progression type raiding now a days too since m+/legion. It wasnt so much of a thing in panda/wod but again if a wipe happens and a healer was sitting around with 0 dmg casts and a lot of wasted gcds and downtimeâŠyeah.
I dont care what the meta is myself though, I do what I can when I can without adding extra stress. Just explaining that it has indeed become a thing in raiding at least from a heroic aotc standpoint/raiderâs experience. It wasnt expected in vanilla but good priests still pewpew with wands while they Regen mana.
Point is good healers just did that stuff, itâs just m+ and legion really made it meta all over for pve, and I kinda dont want it to get to where itâs âall healers need to Pull x dps for whatever raid Boss to be invited nowâ, but at the same time id rather just maximize those GCDs I used to spend jumping around goofing off instead of being asked to swap to a dps spec. ( meaning I get to always be a healer role in whatever group Im in cause ai hate dpsing. ) Especially because Ive seen how useful it can be to have healers helping dps wise if possible, even if it is tossing a mana free dot every now and then.
Also one of the main things wow progress tracks for healers is downtime And wasted gcds. Itâs usually a good place to start if you are a new healer: reduce downtime sitting around doing nothing. Sometimes the raid leader is tasked with asking Healers to do any/some dps, or swap a healer to dps. Id rather just throw in some dps and remain a healer, doing my best kinda thing, nothing to do with meta, but the mata pressure is still always there and growing due to m+
Tldr: Healers expected to do some/any dmg instead of sitting around has been meta for all pve ( m+ and raids ) since legion at least, even before that for max difficulty and most heroic people still tried to maximize their potential by asking healers to do any dps if they are sitting around. ( legit the old meta was having a healer with a dps spec that would swap when needed, in cata lots of heroic raids valued and looked for that Flexibility specifically )
Sometimes I do keys with pugs and I get asked if I can go Disc âfor the next key because Xâ.
I hate being the guy that has to say âno, I prefer Holy but if you want to replace me thatâs fineâ.
There just is no argument I can make for why groups would want me instead of literally any other healer. Disc has all the tools Holy has but also brings better damage, a DR instead of pure throughput, better burst throughput (which is all that matters in keys), better mobility and a proper ST/Tank CD.
Even if I heal a key without any mistakes, no deaths, good damage (for my spec), insta dispels etc and play âperfectlyâ itâs still better for my group to drop me and get a mediocre meta spec. Bring the player not the class my a$$.
Sucks to see Holy spend yet another expansion as the single worst healer in M+.
Blizz massacred my boy (6.X MW) and then proceeded to make sure the only other healer I really liked stayed in the trash for the content I enjoy the most (M+) since then.
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Holy does feel better right now on M+
Iâm doing quite good damage and good healing.
Still feels lacking compared to other healers for M+.
Like some other people mentioned I feel we still donât bring anything to the group, like literally nothing.
We donât bring damage, no damage reduction, no brezz, no mobility to the group, no roots, no lust/heroism âŠ
Maybe on Shadowlands we could bring skips with Mind soothe but stillâŠ
They really need to give holy priests something to bring to the table. Iâm all for a Brezz because it just makes soooo much sense, even in Burning Crusade trailer the priest just rez someone in combat!!
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I think Disc and Holy getting Mind Soothe is really good for Disc if itâs even half as good at shroud for enabling skips. I say good for Disc because Mind Soothe along with MD, Purge, DAMAGE, a proper tank DR and group DR and decent mobile healing really gives them a spot in the meta.
Holy lacks the damage and DR and mobility to compete with Disc though.
I think itâs high time for the kings of M+ utility, Resto Druids, to share some of their wealth and for Holy to get a brez. It fits the fantasy of the spec and gives Holy something that Disc doesnât have which gives a reason for a group to bring a Holy Priest.
Importantly, the M+ meta is going to be even less forgiving in SL than it was in BfA. Holy will be stronger per se but every group is going to want a brez and proper lust which means Rsham and Rdruid are going to be mandatory if groups canât get a DPS to cover them.
IF Mind Soothe is a replacement for Shroud I could see Holy being popular along with Disc but thatâs pretty unlikely. If BDK/Guardian arenât meta tanks then the meta healer becomes Rdruid unless Lock/DK DPS covers it and Rsham becomes healer due to purge being important in SL but Rshams bring more damage, more throughput, AoE stun, better defensives and better mobility than Priests.
Mind soothe is nowhere close to shroudâs power in SL dungeon design. It also only works against humanoid and dragonkin. SL is full of undead and dragonkin are nowhere. Itâs BFA season 1-3 all over again with mandatory rogues, even if you use invis pots on cooldown. BDK and guardian as they stand now will definitely not be a top tank pick. That means resto druid is your brez spot, which is fine because the disparity between M+ healers will be worse than BFA season 1-3 as well.
Virtually anyone who takes M+ seriously has ranked holy priest so bad in SL M+ that they get their own garbage tier for how terrible they are. The same logical reasons are listed day after day and the devs give us nothing but small healing throughput buffs which solve literally nothing in M+.
PS: I noticed that holy fire is not instant anymore. Did our damage not suck enough that this had to change to a cast time as well ?
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Now Holy fire hits like a truck thatâs why they gave it a cast time.
tbh pre patch holy priest is doing good dmg. Better than before thatâs for sure.
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To be fair, if you examine many of those rankings, itâs literally just âitâs not Discâ so they donât even bother going into any specifics.
Think of the original Holy Fire as now being Shadow Word: Pain, with no CD (fantastic for Explosive)! Holy Fire now is Mind Blast, and does a ton of damage, along with a DoT. The only thing that can compete with it is execute-range Shadow Word: Death.