Here’s my feedback of the Holy Priest Tree:
Top Rows:
- Heal - The first pick… and honestly my question here is how is it going to work this coming expansion? The problem with Heal is that without Flash Concentration reducing its cast time and giving it a massive healing buff… nobody uses it. It’s cast time is too slow as HPS matters more than HPM.
- Prayer of Healing - This ability has been dead all of Shadowlands simply due to its massive HPM cost and lower HPS compared to Flash Concentration Heal. Also, there’s really not enough talents that prop it up like Heal and Flash Heal. Surge of Light offering free PoH casts would probably help a bit.
- Really nothing to point out. It’s mainly filler as you pick your baseline class abilities.
Middle Rows:
- I like that you can take Benediction as well as Divine Star/Halo.
- Halo - I’m hoping this ability gets a buff because it’s cooldown is too long and it doesn’t do a lot of healing. Divine Star is a 15s cooldown and does more overall healing as long as you heal 6-8 targets with it. Divine Star is also pretty much a mandatory pick for M+ because it does a lot of damage and also heals your group for free.
- Binding Heal - Why…? Nobody will take this talent. Change it to Binding Heals like on retail.
- Surge of Light - Have it give free Prayer of Healing casts as well.
- Prayer Circle - This gets to my PoH question on the top row.
- Holy Conductor - This just sounds broken on paper. You can basically get a 20% chance to trigger Surge of Light which will be almost non-stop in a raid environment with Benediction floating around. It’ll also give you a strong reason to keep Renew up on the tanks to fish for free procs.
- Divine Hymn & Symbol of Hope = I don’t like that these are talents you need to pick. If you want to go a damage oriented build for M+ than you can’t take Divine Hymn. Also, Symbol of Hope is pretty much mandatory Priest raid utility… I’m in the mindset that raid and M+ critical class abilities shouldn’t be “optional” talents.
- Cosmic Ripple should be 1 point not 2.
Bottom Rows:
- Piety of Mana seems a tad bit overkill on-top of all the other mana gains you can get from the general priest tree. You can get +10% mana return from enlightment, shadowfiend/mindbender mana return, 10% mana back from targets dying with SWP, mana from Symbol of Hope, and now an extra 9-12% mana a minute from Piety.
I really do not like just stuffing healers with tons of passive + active mana gains because the scenario of healers eventually reaching infinite mana may become in reach. Mana costs would have to be massively increased for healing abilities and/or the raid encounters would have to batter the raid hard.
This basically punishes any Priest player for not stacking 3-4 different mana gain abilities. It’s just a bad design imho.
- Gales of Song - Is this an extra +2/4% bonus on-top of Divine Hymns current 4% bonus or does Divine Hymn simply not provide the bonus unless you take this talent? An extra +40% healing bonus to the group is just… yeah.
- Rune of Healing, Rune of Mending, and Rune of Fire should probably be it’s own combined talent that branches off of Light of the Naaru. Apotheosis can then branch off the Rune talent.
- Lightwell - Nobody except Manbeard was asking for this ability to come back and just from reading the description… it looks incredibly weak. It only heals targets below 50% health and cannot be moved after its placed. I would never take this talent.
- Divine Words - I’m curious what the bonuses will be. I do think 15s is too short though to make it interesting.
- Burning Vehemence - Is this cast time / cooldown reduction on-top of the current ability? If so nothing really to complain about.
- Searing Light - I’d like to see Mastery provide an actual bonus to healers damage like with tanks. Right now Holy Priests are punished for stacking high amounts of mastery… Also, a +30% Holy Nova buff against one target with Holy Fire just doesn’t makes sense… but it would with my suggestion below…
- Empyreal Blaze sounds incredibly overpowered in PvP. You can open up with a Holy Fire + use ability + smash them for 3 more Holy Fires? You and your 2s partner can probably nuke somebody in a single chastise stun. Personally I’d rather see this ability make Holy Fire apply its DoT to all targets around it each time you cast. You can then probably Holy Nova and if its actually buffed it might do decent amount of damage.
Either way…
Final Thoughts:
- I struggle to make a raid heal build that is able to pick up all the same abilities that we are able to get currently. It doesn’t seem like an overall improvement because I’m forced to put points in filler talents just to move down the tree. If you want Resonant Words you can’t take Runes… if you want Runes you can’t take Resonant Words. It’s hard to squeeze in points for Lightwell or even Divine Words without having to give up on something else. Holy for raid will end up having to focus more on getting faster Holy Word Salvation resets. You pretty much can’t take things like Shining Force because you need those points further down the tree. Talents on the bottom like Gales Song are pretty much mandatory picks for Holy if you’re using Divine Hymn in a raid.
Example on what I mean:
If Cosmic Ripple + Piety of Mana were 1 point each and the Rune talents were merged than you could save 3 points that you can slot into things like lolwell (if you wanted it) and Resonant Words.
- I don’t like Divine Hymn & Symbol of Hope being talent picks because if you want to focus on a damage oriented playstyle you really can’t take Divine Hymn.
- Top and middle rows seem fairly well laid out. No real major complaints.
- Bottom row needs the most work. Please don’t give us Lightwell.
- Button bloat is going to get a bit extreme. It’s entirely possible to add 3-4 new buttons to your hotbar than currently between the two trees.
- Overall question is how much of a nerf are H Priests going to get in the healing & damage department with the loss of Boon of the Ascended and Flash Concentration.