I posted some detailed thoughts here: Patch 11.1 Undermine(d) Development Notes - Class Changes, Holy Priest and - #179 by Caithyra-bleeding-hollow
The changes to PoH are pretty good. With Lightweaver and Healing Chorus you can get PoH down to a 1s cast. On raid bosses you can build up 4 stacks of Lightweaver, drop a Sanctify after the damage comes out, and chain cast 4 PoH’s in a row. By doing that it’s like you’re casting CoH 4 times in a row.
PoH will be good in raid, but for M+ I don’t think 4 PoH’s back-to-back is really going to do much. I think PoH should do increased healing in 5 man situations like Divine Hymn does.
Light in the Darkness just flat out feels like a mandatory talent because it’s a very big increase to Sanctify and Serenity’s healing output. Also, the wider radius on Sanctify will really help a lot on spread fights ultimately increases its effective hps.
With 2 points in LoTN and Holy Celerity you can reset your Holy Words insanely fast w/ just 4.5-5 casts outside of Apo and 2 casts in Apo. When you combo this with 2 in Light in the Darkness and extending Apotheosis with Eternal Sanctity it’s a pretty significant hps increase across the board.
With how strong some of these other talents are it makes Prismatic Echoes, Desperate Times, and Epiphany/Answered Prayers just not feel like viable choices because if you don’t take Light in the Darkness you’re nerfing yourself.
Ultimately this creates problems with build designs. Light in the Darkness, Holy Celerity, Miracle Worker, and one of the Apotheosis talents are mandatory in the builds.
edit: Some more feedback.
- Empowered Renew only working with hard-casted Renew is bad. It should increase the healing of Lasting Words and Benediction. Also, Prismatic Echoes isn’t increasing Renew’s healing.
- Renew overall (even with Empowered Renew) is scaled way too low. This makes any kind of Renew build simply not viable.
- Holy Mendings scaling is way too low. This talent does significantly less healing then Cosmic Ripple.
Any potential “Renew” build is currently dead on the water because this build here is the best one you can possibly come up with atm:
You take LOTN to reset your Holy Words faster, Light in the Darkness to make your Holy Words stronger, Lightweaver for PoH / Heal min-maxing, Lightwell which will reset faster with more Holy Words and offer more healing, Eternal Sanctity to extend your Apotheosis, and Divine Image for the passive hps increase.
I literally don’t see any other build combos that can match this.