Since week 2, I have had no issue completing 8 M10+ keys weekly with Disc. ( There were no issues in week 1, but since I used Holy, I won’t count it.)
Holy is also a beast in M raids, and its position is irreplaceable.
Buff or not, it does not matter at all.
Disc needs the most love for raid because it’s the least popular healer in Mythic/Heroic by quite a large margin. Holy is fine performance wise in raid.
Disc is strong in M+ and the 2nd best healer after Resto Shamans, but has very lackluster single target heals. It’s getting some buffs to that next week. Overall I feel Disc is in a good spot in M+.
Holy feels strong in M+, but requires rotating through healing cooldowns to properly heal the fights, and imho a higher skill cap to play on a high level. Damage and utility wise Holy is lagging behind Disc in a couple of areas. Once you reach +12s and higher you are very likely not getting invited into keys because people want Resto Shamans and Disc Priests (which are 95%+ of the healers both combined).
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My point is that a class works well if, for every content, it has at least one spec that performs well.
(Disc- m+, Holy- Raid, Disc- PVP)
Therefore, further buff does not matter at all.
It’s a terrible point.
Blizzard should strive to help every spec in the game excel as much as possible. The new more diverse Dragonflight talent tree rework makes this easier than ever actually because now they can offer differing builds within each spec that work better for the unique content they are doing. Priest isn’t the best example of this right now and really needs the talent trees revamped in my opinion, but the bones are there.
Saying something like “Arcane Mage is fine in this piece of content, so Fire doesn’t need buffs” is extremely reductive and myopic. Certain specs shouldn’t have to suffer because you say so.
Reminds me of back in the day when Frost Mage or Subtlety Rogue was only good for PvP. That was bad game design then, and they fixed it since. They should never go back to that way of thinking.
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While I’d like to echo Ralec’s sentiments, I’d also like to say, very few people are ASKING FOR A PRIEST BUFF.
Our tuning is fine. Better than fine, broadly! But that doesn’t change the fact that, while strong in keys, Holy’s tools feel bad to use in that environment. Why are PoH and CoH useless? Why is our fundamental gameplay essentially that of a 2004 flash heal spamming Paladin when large-scale healing is needed?
Not having a burst mobility tool feels terrible, and considering almost everyone else in the game has one - Warlocks being in a weird spot on that point - it would simply be a matter of parity. That’s the extent of how I feel on the matter at this point.
Edit: Why does Renew suck across the board?
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This is what outright stops me from even wanting to play Holy anymore. Circle of Healing used to be an absolute favorite of mine, and now it’s pitiful. Coupled with the fact that Oracle Holy uses Guardian Spirit as an AoE heal, which completely destroys the intended purpose of the external. Renew being useless is just salt in the wounds.
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This isn’t true at all. People are asking for increases in utility, which would be a buff. People are asking for CoH, PoH, and Renew to do meaningful amounts of healing, which would be a buff, people are asking for improved mobility, which would be a buff.
Everyone is asking for priest buffs just not the ones Blizzard gave us.
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I don’t see this one in particular as a super bad problem largely because the only times you really need it as an AoE heal are times you would have had to pop it on yourself anyway. Archon Holy is using it on themselves or a squishy DPS in every scenario that Oracle would need that AoE cleave burst.
I do find it a bit annoying that CoH is as bad as it is. TWW really amped up every single target heal a LOT which kinda has most people playing this way. Just, other healers have better ways to transition that to AoE (vivify cleave/chiji, beacon of virtue, shaman’s tons of free chain heal procs from totems or ancestors, etc.).
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Bro, just be realistic. Blz has never been able to achieve this.
And it’s unlikely it will happen in the future.
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They just released a mount that costs players 90 dollars.
If they want to keep up with the rapidity of these patches and content release schedules, then they need to hire more people.
Players do deserve quality, actually.
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I’d like to see either more movement (Holy) or an interrupt (not chastise)
They’re still run by Activision execs but under Microsoft now - they’re only going to get more savage with the monetization. But they’re not gonna do any mass hiring to make up for it. Blizzard has several layers of corporate suits who’s job it is to bank on having the least amount of people they can to produce a product that makes them money. They’re balancing how low quality they can keep the game but keeping players in it buying things.
Short of a mass exodus of the game happening again because of the issues (a-la Shadowlands) quality isn’t gonna be a focus.
That’s not to say it shouldn’t be, or that you shouldn’t ask for it. I just don’t think it will happen without a huge visible decrease in profits.
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I hate that of all things we have argued about this is the thing I have to agree with you on. Its why I don’t have high hopes for the priest class as a whole. Sure we will get number tunings to keep the class relevant but aside from that it will be stuck in the same ole decades long clunky playstyles its had while other classes keep getting shinny new toys.
After all as long as its one of the most played classes why dedicate time and resources to it because its “clearly” doing fine.
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I’m not sure if it’s the least popular or the fact the fact they released Flameshaper which is just “Discipline but better and without all the jank and hoops to jump through.”
The reason Holy is played in Raid is because it’s decent at spot healing and if you needed something to handle burst raid damage, you just bring Flameshaper, the better Disc Priest than Disc Priest is. So the people that would probably normally play Disc have rerolled is my guess. I know at least two people in my guild whom that is the case for. I keep asking if I can play Disc for fights but we have 2 Flameshapers so I literally haven’t been allowed to for the entire raid. I just get to play it on meme farm bosses.
I made a post about this previously which stated that Flameshaper enters too far into Disc Priest territory. They need to figure out what each spec is supposed to do and differentiate them in some way because as it stands now they’re just the same thing and the one that gets brought to raid is the one that is tuned to be stronger at that point in time. However, Flameshaper will always have the edge because even if they’re tuned the same Flameshaper has better defensives, cc, interrupts, raid CD’s, mobility, faster and more easily executed ramps. Literally just everything. So Disc would need to be A LOT better to be considered over the alternative.
I’m approaching this from the angle of ‘I am willing to see power re-distributed from point [A] to point [B]’, but I get your point. Blizzard doesn’t work like that, nor do they actually have a defined enough power budget for any class to be tuned like that.
Since you seem to have so much insider info, please let them know this is some BS! 
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Yes.
5 Health bars drop by 90%.
Hang on… let me just…
Flash Heal, Heal, Flash Heal, Heal, (or some combination of the above).
To which some will say, hah, we’ve got options, once every 1 minute, or 2 minutes!
Hang on… let me just…
- Set the talent to increase self-healing from FH/H/HW:S
- Guardian Spirit myself
- Heal up to full health
- Have Premonition of Piety up
- Continue to cast single-target healing on self to redistribute overhealing
“This is peak.”
Oh, wait, everyone’s health bars just dropped by 90% again and we have to move.
:inhale:
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No, but dam does not having flayer up hurt disc, if oracle ends up being competitive, or the spot healing is just that much better, if you have no shadow healing, or the mobs are dead and everyone is 30% hp, those situations won’t feel so bad. It’s kinda qol for disc.
Pro tip tho, race change, gets you a knockback too. I’m faster than mages boi.
Its an illusion - Holy is only uber strong in Raid because Halo has 15+ Targets.
Halo heals for a massive amount then applies a Mastery Stacked Echo of Light on them. Giving Halo another effective 20%+ healing.
So this gives the illusion that we are a strong healer, we’re really not. We have decently strong spot heals, which is the primary secondary function in raid.
But in Dungeons, we have no healing value outside of Lightweaving.
Its basically a Flash Heal > Heal spam, with the occasional HW when someone dips too low. Then throw out a PoM, Renew, or Shield if you have time for an alternative GCD.
Our Healing CDs are borderline useless in Party content as well, not only are they weak. But having to channel it for 8-seconds in a meta of constant movement. Not fun, more dangerous, and for being a CD its not strong enough to power through 90% of DoTs.
To be honest, poison/curse removal or just an overall nerf to DoT damage would make our lives, and every other healers life much more enjoyable.
Seriously, just nerf DoT damage by 25-40% and Shaman’s won’t be required. They’ll still be Meta and top pick, but groups won’t feel forced to take them unless you’re pushing 12+'s.
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I do think there’s room for a “stationary,” hard-casting healer in these dungeons. I think it’s different, “classic,” and can be fun, and can be an interesting trade-off to a number of other healers being able to cast while moving or chain instant-casts. What I think has a certain cat-based streamer drinking, though, is that we get locked in place because we can only move “one” bar up at a time, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be, and it all comes back to our filler AoE heal being tuned to worthlessness right now.
If our group’s health drops, we’re locked in place pushing them up with hard-casts (once we run out of instant-cast emergency options). By description, this shouldn’t be happening: we should be able to push our group(s)’ health bars up with hard-casted Prayer of Healing. It’s a lot easier to move if you can stabilize 5 health bars with a group heal, move a bit, and then proceed to push those 5 bars up, or, use Circle of Healing and Holy Word: Sanctify (maybe even a Renew or a Power Word: Shield [look at all these spells, wouldn’t it be nice if they actually did anything!?]) to help while getting to a new spot to plant your feet and then return to pushing up multiple bars, or to then give targeted triage with Flash Heal or Heal.
2 Likes