Feedback: Holy Priest

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
21

This is basically a good example of the current problems with the tree.

You have 10 points to spend and 3 of them by default have to go into Miracle Worker, Holy Celerity, and Eternal Sanctity. These are mandatory talents.

Answered Prayers is a raid mandatory talent because of the new feedback loop of using Eternal Sanctity to extend the duration of Apotheosis.

If I want Lightweaver and Answered Prayers I lose out on Divine Image, Prismatic Echoes, and Light in the Darkness which all combined together are around a +10% passive hps increase.

If I want Divine Image + Light in the Darkness then I can’t get Lightweaver because it doesn’t branch into it. I’m stuck taking Lightwell.

If I take Prismatic Echoes I can’t get Light in the Darkness or Lightweaver.

So the TLDR is that we currently lose more then we gain with the new talent tree. Right now on retail I can go Lightweaver, Divine Image, and Answered Prayers. With the new tree it’s not physically possible.

Without Lightweaver you can’t min-max PoH to its full potential because of its longer duration cast.

2 Likes
22

As others have said;

  • Lack of personal or defensives (still the weakest in the game, a 1.5min cd on a person is really bad) - Should be a 30sec and 1min cd’s to use
  • No group utility (ie Stun, inturrupt etc) - this should be base line as well, not a talent point
  • No personal utility (Stun, inturrypt etc) - this should be base line as well, not a talent point
  • No decent oh crap heal for the group - no way to top everyone up at once.
  • Lack of dispel utility - most dungeons have curse, poision etc, very few have magic or disease
  • Priest should get lust and or brez due to lack of other utility
  • Most other heals have their dps built into their rotations, hpriest needs to go out of their way to dps - dps = no healing
  • apart from PoM everything is stop and cast. No mobility healing outside of Apoth - Halo shouldnt have a cast time, divine hymn should be instant and on the move
  • Feather should be base line not a talent point
  • If renew is going to be the main theme for hprist, then benediction should be atleast 50% and renew should be buffed.
  • Disc has almost zero mana issues, yet holy can go oom very quickly in healing intense encounters
  • Symbol of Hope should replenish the caster with 50% of their mana not just the 10%

This is the issue with being the only class that has 2 x healer specs. They are never both powerful. most of the time Disc is better in m+ cause it does dps and healing whilst having DR etc.

Something needs to give. Holy has been in the gutter for m+ for years now
 Lowest HPS and DPS for m+ along with least amount of group/person utility and defensives. Its a liability to bring a holy priest to a key.

4 Likes
23

I don’t have extensive feedback but here goes–

Empowered Renew is a sick joke. We have more than enough “press on cooldown” gameplay on holy priest without adding a cooldown to a non-cooldown spell.

I love the changes to Lightweaver for pvp. So thank you for that!

And we desperately need some mobility. There’s a strategy in RBGs where a blood dk is tasked with “kidnapping” a priest. The dk will just grip the priest away from the fight, into some water (where possible) and hold them there for the entire battleground. What the hell kind of gameplay is that?

2 Likes
24

Warning: This is a PvP focused post, please do not whine at me that this would “kill M+” or something similar as I do not care about PvE healing and it’s the devs’ job to balance changes to work for both sides of the game, not mine. I’m an Arena healer through and through.

This will be the 100% locked in talent loadout in PvP assuming this tree is the one that goes live, you have zero points you can move around now which is rather impressive considering you reduced the amount of 2 point nodes in the final section of the tree.

You need to reduce every single 2 point node down to 1 point and for the love of all that is good can you please delete Desperate Times from this spec or baseline the effect/buff the spec to compensate as all it accomplishes is eating up 2 of your points in PvP as you simply cannot give up 20% bonus healing in a PvP environment thanks to the existence of dampening and mortal wounds that half the game’s melee specialisations have.

Further on Desperate Times:

  • Talents like this that just give you 20% more healing at a lower health threshold will always be forced picks in a PvP environment even though they don’t add anything to your spec’s design.
  • It acts as a nerf, not a buff to your spec as you are prevented from taking more interesting talents that flesh out or enable interesting niches and builds (and Holy Priest currently does not have a niche on live resulting in it having to be overtuned in PvP combat to be viable, this leads to the spec choking out every other healer when it is tuned to be effective at throughput).
  • The change to Lightwell now activating at 75% of a friendly target’s max health is a nerf, not a buff as it now no longer benefits from the 20% extra healing from Desperate Times until dampening racks up high enough, a blow as the reason why Lightwell is taken in PvP is because it continues to heal while we are in CC.
  • Delete Desperate Times already, it is badly designed slop that is holding the spec back.

The middle and top sections of the tree are better pathed for PvP, you aren’t really missing out on anything you’d want to take but that’s also partly because there really isn’t anything impactful we can’t get in these sections. Still, you can get all the mandatory talents plus some damage or mana talents now (which was very much needed).

The best change you have made though is finally moving Seraphic Crescendo out of the PvP talents and in to the Holy tree without putting it in a bad spot.

At long last after something like 1.5 years Holy can finally change up our PvP talents to be able to take some of our very useful talents like Ray of Hope, double dispel or Holy Ward without losing the 100% mandatory Phase Shift, you guys have no idea how bad our talent variety has been in PvP since 10.1.5 (it didn’t exist, at all, like seriously, we had no ability to change talents, all of it was 100% locked in in 98% of cases).

The giant elephant in the room for Holy still exists though, we are a throughput healer that brings no unique utility outside of Ray of Hope and has to be buffed by nearly double of what our base tuning is to not be in last place out of all the healer specs (Resto Druid has been in a similar position this expansion).

On top of this we still have the WORST mana in the game and this hasn’t been addressed at all; Disc has DOUBLE the base mana regen in PvP that Holy does while having cheaper spells than we do and we do not bring the damage to help close out games before we run oom and need our teammates to commit major defensives to let us drink (if we can even get the opportunity to).

We are designed around having cheap damage abilities to use when we don’t have to heal but this also forces us to not heal for periods of time which is a big no no in the era of Solo Shuffle where you are incentivised to always be casting due to how fast matches are designed to end (usually around the 3-4 min mark); stop healing as a Priest of either spec and you will permanently fall behind on healing.

Either give us strong enough damage to help close out games faster or buff our base mana regen in PvP combat by 10%.

2 Likes
25

Please give Priest a kick. And not a garbage 45 sec kick like Shadow. I real kick.

More and more Dungeons require them and all classes should have something as “Basic” as a kick in their toolkit.

6 Likes
26

I’d rather go back to healers not having kicks and the amount of casts be reduced in dungeons.

6 Likes
27

In regards to SWP:

  • SWP does 65,377 initial + 68,150 over 16s in my current gear.
  • Smite does 148,334.
  • Holy Fire is 320,922 initial + 152,324 dot w/ 75% of the initial splashing to 5 targets.

There’s currently 0 reason to push SWP because Smite does more damage and it CDRs Chastise which feedback loops into more Holy Fires.

Optimally the best way to fix this issue would be to make Holy Fire spread SWP around and refresh the duration by 5s. You cast SWP on the initial target, Holy Fire, Chastise, and then 2x Holy Fire, and you got 5+ mobs dotted up.

This would help a lot with Holy’s poor mana management in M+ because you would be gaining 300k+ more mana from Throes of Pain on trash.

1 Like
28

Normally I would agree but the reason for SW: Pain being available to Holy is more for the utility purposes like tagging mobs and keeping enemy players in combat to prevent restealths and healers getting off drinks rather than for raw damage.

29

This is how I would clean up the bottom of the tree

  1. Move Trail of Light/Dispersing Light to where Everlasting Light is currently. Remove Everlasting Light and just give Heal a +10% buff.
  2. Merge Holy Celerity and Miracle Worker into 1 talent.
  3. Put Answered Prayers where Say your Prayers is currently.
  4. Merge Epiphany/Say your Prayers into one talent.
  5. Add a new PoH themed talent where Dispersing Light/Trail of Light is. It’s weird pathing down the left side of the tree through PoH talents and then ending with Flash Heal stuff.
  6. Nerf the healing bonuses from Light in the Darkness and Prismatic Echoes by 50% and make them cost 1 point. Bake that lost 50% bonus baseline into Holy.
  7. Allow Light in the Darkness to branch into Lightweaver. Allow Prismatic Echoes to branch into Lightwell.
  8. Separate out Lasting Words and Divine Word. Make Desperate Times/Epiphany branch into those.

With these changes I’m able to pick all the talents that I can currently in the retail tree that I will be losing out if this tree went live now.

2 Likes
30

Honestly its just time to abandon Holy altogether. The spec is trash in M+ and will never be good at this rate. The changes won’t do anything in terms of utility or defensives while the AOE healing isn’t going to be that much better.

I am trying resto Shammy (only at heroics atm) and just the quality of life abilities like Ghost Wolf or Gust of Wind make such a big difference that you feel it right away after playing Holy for so long. Plus the tons of utilities like Thunderstorm and Capacitor Totem which do so much in dungeons. Its literally a world of difference already and there’s tons more like (lust, brez, spiritwalkers grace, poison totem and more.

So why even handicap yourself and your M+ group (if you can even get invited) when you can have a much more stress free experience with a different healer?

2 Likes
31

I think most groups share this feeling, but in pugs with missed kicks etc, holy’s ability to very quickly top people is better than any other healer.

I fully agree with the lack of utility though. If our AOE healing is going to be a weakness then we also can’t have no utility outside of symbol of hope and no kick. From the looks of it, that’s not changing in 11.1.

32

The issue with Holy is that it’s utility is pretty low for M+. By default all Priests share the same toolkit (Purge, Disease Cleanse, Mass Dispel, and Mind Soothe). What usually happens is there’s a constant flip flop of Shadow or Disc being meta every season.

The only unique things Holy brings in M+ is Guardian Spirit, Chastise (w/ Stun talent), and Symbol of Hope. Symbol w/ only -30s off CDRs is just flat out terrible for M+ and it’s worse then barrier. It used to be strong at 1 minute cdr.

Disc in comparison has higher damage, better AOE healing, Lenience (-3% dr to the group), bigger absorbs, Mass Barrier, and also 2 casts of Pain Suppression.

I just don’t get why Disc can be so stacked, but Holy can’t get anything like a decent group damage reduction, poison cleanse, and/or even a battle res/lust.

The irony while Holy has no utility in M+
 it’s insanely stacked for raid.

2 Likes
33

The game isn’t just about M+, I hate M+.

34

This game isn’t just about PvP or just about raids or just about any ONE thing
 thus the specs need to FIT into various different things which is why it makes it so hard to balance.

2 Likes
35

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.

2 Likes
36

Why are they terrified of renew? Like seriously. They act like renew doing 200k over 20 seconds will break the game.

On a side not
 can they like give lightwell a node under it to gain charges back for pom bounces? Or let pom bounce to it for charges

Also also. Where is the blue post for feedback? Other classes have one.

1 Like
37

Reconsider having restitution as baseline or accesible in the talent tree.
Having to choose between GA and Restitution makes no sense consider Hpriest already has low defensives and low utility.

Shamans while stacked with utility do not have to lose anything to have ankh


3 Likes
38

Holy Priest Thoughts:

  • Substantial improvement. Holy Words feel “punchier” and are more readily available.
  • Empowered Renew doesn’t seem a good fit. Its healing is still too weak to justify the CD, and it doesn’t affect Renews procc’d from other abilities. Hard to imagine a situation where it feels good/effective.
  • Removal of Salvation is a justified change. While it felt good to press, the CD reduction for this talent always felt exceptionally funky and hard to play around. Fewer raid CDs means other abilities can be stronger.
  • Thanks for biting the bullet and cutting Circle of Healing and buffing Prayer of Healing. A step in the right direction design-wise. It still feels like Prayer of Healing needs another 20-30% baseline buff.
  • Prismatic Echoes change is interesting, but may I suggest distributing some of its throughput back into its buffing of Holy’s Mastery? Perhaps a 15% to Echo of Light’s healing + 15% renew buff. The current 10% buff to Echo of Light’s healing just seems incredibly small, too small to really consider a selling point of the talent.
  • Loving Holy Celerity!
  • Divinity is a good talent. It does seem like overkill sometimes, but it still seems like a good talent.
  • Light in the Darkness is too good, feels too mandatory. A 40% buff to BOTH Serenity and Sanctify? Wow. Maybe move half of its power into other talents and make it a 1-pointer?

Lastly, please
please
consider giving all healing priests a combat rez! Priest is the archetypal healer, so not having a rez is (thematically speaking) super feelsbad :(. Also, priest’s utility was nerfed substantially in Dragonflight, so maybe that will make room for justifying giving them a combat rez? Please.

39

Played on the PTR as both disc and holy. So far i’m loving the disc changes, I think putting more power in our baseline spells rather than CD’s is the right direction. Double penance when cast as Oracle feels so good that I can’t wait to switch from holy to disc next patch.

As for holy, the opposite could be said. There’s way too much emphasis on our holy words and heal spamming now. Renew and PoM are fairly useless and are simply fluff healing. There’s no reason to take any of the bottom right talents over the Trail of Light-Lightweaver build under any circumstance.

Honestly if you guys could maybe nerf heal and the holy words by like 40% but buff Prayer of Mending and Renew by like 200% and bring back CoH with a 60% buff or something I think it would entice players to enjoy the class more.

Prayer of Mending is holy’s iconic spell and it should rival disc’s counterpart spell Penance which it is failing to do so.

Also it’s extremely ipathetic that I can dish out 6 second 2million+ power word shields while Holy Word Serenity does like 2.1 million on a 60 second recharge even with the Light in the Darkness talent lmao

40

This is my feedback as a holy priest lover from WAY back before even the spellpower changes. I admit I leveled up as holy loving the spec despite it not being anywhere near appropriate for dps’ing solo.

Renew feels EXTREMELY lackluster right now. Even with every modifier talent taken, renew only ticks for 0.6% of my HP. This goes down even further to 0.3% of HP when not taking Empowered Renew.

That’s not good at all for a twelve second cooldown spell. I have over six million HP and that 38k HoT isn’t going to cut the butter. This spell needs serious buffs or modifiers for PvE and more so for PvP.

Prayer of Healing as others have stated still feels like it lacks “oompf” for what the spell is supposed to deliver. It barely reaches 150k healing per target for my character. Even with the buffing talents it doesn’t spruce this spell up by much. Just some slight number adjustments would work honestly.

I honestly feel like Answered Prayers should be a choice node with Divinity. This I think would give you the strong choice between stronger and maybe longer Apotheosis or random procs of it over a fight. I feel like some fun gameplay could be had here.

As much as I LOVE the spell Divine Image, it doesn’t do enough to justify it being a final talent choice. I would honestly prune that talent or maybe bake it in somewhere else. And you could move Lightwell to it position while making the Answered Prayers suggestion above.

These changes would give you 100% strong gameplay affecting choices without actually breaking the feel of the spec. I don’t though. I could be WAY off base here. But as of right now, the spec feels clunky in what it’s trying to achieve.

One final note I’d like to iterate: the insane lack of group-wide utility. Holy really doesn’t have the group utility like Disc or other healers. I think a holy word of some sort that maybe silences a person. Or maybe bringing back shackle and using the divine magic to hold a person in place?