Did you Know?: Holy Priest has never been in an MDI match

Classes Priest
#1

Watching today’s MDI’s I got bored in-between matches so I combed through all of Raider. io’s MDI Records. I looked through *every match that wasn’t the open time trials, and could not find a single instance where Holy Priest was played.
*It’s possible I missed one, so if I did, I’d love to know.

It’s not breaking news Holy Priest is by far the worst M+ Healer, but it’s interesting that it’s so bad for so long that it has literally never been used in an MDI match in the soon to be 4 years that MDI has been a thing.

I don’t know how to feel about this…I kinda want to crawl into a ball and let the sadness engulf me.

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#2

Interesting, I wonder if you found any Resto Shamans?, I don’t expect a lot but perhaps there have been a couple at least??.

I think Resto Shaman is significantly better than Holy Priest for M+ due to having waay better utility but I still wonder since I can’t remember it been a meta healer for M+ either.

#3

is holy used in raids rn?

#4

Not really. The Meta is Paladin/Disc/Monk. Holy is viable for raids, not competitive, it just lacks anything outside of Healing. No passive damage, no damage reduction of any kind, Disc has all its utility and more.

The only significant improvement we’ve gotten in 4 years is Holy Word: Salvation.

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#5

For the non-hardcore level yes, Holy is a pretty popular spec for Normal/Heroic and performs really well there. Even on the first few Mythic bosses is still pretty ok to play any healer.

For more hardcore play, I mean you see some and it’s obviously possible to clear Mythic as Holy (or any healer) but no, the meta is mostly Disc/Pally/Shaman. Monks had a build that was broken for some time but usually it’s not there either.

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#6

Seems like this is still true. I don’t necessarily think Blizz should balance around the MDI but it would be interesting to hear their perspective on this.

#7

It’s sad that through last 3 expansions, Blizzard couldn’t update holy playstyle to adapt in the new meta of healers having some kind of DR and Damage.
It’s kinda dissapointing looking MDI and most runs the only healer is Disc or Holy pal. I know it’s not the same MDI as pushing keys on live but still…
Through all 3 expansions holy priest has never been picked ever.

#8

Well Holy got reworked, They lost their chakras. I wonder how that would have fared in mythic plus with the dps chakra and also binding heal being able to extend renew.

#9

Yea but the rework was in Legion where pretty much all clases got a massive update and rework on their gameplay.
I’m talking more about how they couldn’t update holy playstyle moving into BFA and now Shadowlands.
Since Legion most healers dominating MDI or High keys were everyone except Holy priests.

#10

It was funny seeing Wowhead post an article celebrating the “historic” diversity in healers at the top end heading into MDI with “everyone” seeing representation… and in their examples there were 10 resto shams, 2 disc priests, 1 MW monk and of course 0 hpriests. :crazy_face:

#11

Your level says 120 lol

#12

Yeah but how do you feel chakras would have worked in mythic plus now? serenity for keeping 5 renews bouncing and downtime dps chakra for increased dps?

#13

Yeah when I read that all 5 healers had representation I was like… ok so holy priest aren’t a healer anymore?

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#14

I think chakras wouldn’t have worked either. Though the playstyle was fun and visually was gorgeous.
At this point it’s impossible to change the mechanics of the spec, but they can actually add some significants buffs to our kit.

As for some changes I would like:

  • Reducing hw cds to 45s.
  • Smite applying some kind of party dmg buff that we can mantain by spamming smite.
  • Make Holy fire do an aoe splash dmg or/and a way for us to be able to do aoe dmg like all healers can do. (Holy nova in high keys is useless)
  • This won’t happen but I can dream, a brez would give us niche utility that most groups look for so making the spec at least desirable to fill that spot.
  • HA lego should be a passive baseline for us.
  • Mindgames should reduce Holy words cooldowns (I’m venthyr but it’s the same for most of our covenant abilities that really don’t interact with nothing of our kit).
  • Divine hymn should tick faster.

These are some that comes to my mind now.

#15

Hpriest will never be used in the MDI until it has a high damage contribution.

In MDI, speed is everything, if you can’t DPS, you can’t be part of the MDI. That’s been Hpriest’s problem from the onset. M+ was only introduced in legion, and Hpriest was heavily reworked into being the lowest DPS healer by far. The only way they would have made it into the MDI this xpac is if PI was a Holy Priest Exclusive spell (which, would have been a bad idea).

#16

Well, good news for those who aren’t trying to become a part of the MDI! It’s actually pretty relaxing to heal keys with Holy + Flash Concentration, and its synergistic potency conduits. The mana efficiency and throughput from spot healing with 0 cooldowns up is nice… although mana efficiency in general isn’t too important in a dungeon setting outside of some specific Tyrannical bosses (which many m+ players ultimately prefer to avoid anyway). Fun to have, though.

Damage is more multi-dotting intensive to fill downtime (many Shadow Word: Pain casts with ideal play) than one might guess how Holy’s flavor would play out, but Holy Fire having worthwhile DPET on its own and no longer demanding value from Smite uptime for resets+stacks feels great.

If you’re not looking to push the bleeding edge top tier of keys, where the demands are more targeted and specific, it’s extremely forgiving regarding group play in a more typical setting. In fact, it might just be the perfect, dreaded for-fun alt.

#17

Holy’s rotation kind of requires us to keep spamming heals to have our holy words avaliable when we need them…
One way that i could imagine them being made, would be the adition of a way to buff allies to have them do extra holy dmg in your stead. Like:

Inner fire: An instant cast that buff an ally or yourself so that each attack of the target does X extra holy dmg with a low cd or charges. Not with %, like Power Inffusion, so that it wouldn’t spire out of control, but enough dmg to make up for all the time we have to spent focusing on casting heals.

Would also be a different spin on healer dmg in contrast to disc, allowing allies to do dmg in our stead with buffs.

#18

The disc priests probably wouldn’t be played at all either if priests didnt get PI back recently. It’s really the only reason you’d even consider them for your comp.

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#19

This really isn’t true. Priest utility is far, far better than it has been previous xpacs. If you don’t need the lust or Bres, there’s plenty of reasons you might want a Disc Priest.

Mass dispel’s as good as ever, several mobs are significantly easier with dispel magic (some you can’t spellsteal, too), mind soothe lets you do skips without rogue, Pain Supp/Barrier allow a few risky pulls, leap of faith is extremely good on several bosses, there’s more than one boss fight where Atonement is fantastic because of its infinite range, and we do about 1.5-2k dps baseline.