I’m around 2.9k io so I’m in the process of pushing higher keys. I was just wondering what tips you would recommend to be pushing keys that are 23+. I recently joined a group of people that were all 3k io+ and they critiqued the talent build that I have. I feel like multiple people have told me that what I have fine and its clearly gotten me this far, but was wondering what I should have instead for my talents for the upcoming season.
Additionally, if theres any addons are methods that people use to be pushing higher keys would be much appreciated. I believed I used a more mythic oriented build but then found myself more comfortable playing another build that has gotten me further. Someone said that this was a more raid oriented build. I am also pugging all of my keys.
Not sure how to link my talents…
From what I see you have a mixed bag for talents selected rather than one of the proven M+ builds. Maybe you’re not currently in your M+ loadout right now, but I’ll comment on what I see.
You have prayer of healing and some associated talents chosen. Prayer of healing is essentially useless in M+. It costs a lot of mana and heals for so little that you won’t actually save anyone with it and it’s not worth casting to lower the cooldown of sanctuary.
You also have some heal talents chosen, but aren’t using the lightweaver build, so those talents are basically wasted as you’ll never cast heal without lightweaver.
You also haven’t fully gone down the right side of the Holy tree to pick up all your prayer of mending talents. Our tier set is built around prayer of mending and those talents are essentially mandatory in every build.
You also haven’t selected empyrean blaze and burning vehemence, so your damage will be incredibly low. With an Aug voker and a good group, your overall damage should be in the 55-60k range for some keys. Without those talents you won’t be anywhere near that.
You also have incredibly low haste and vers, which again could mean you’re not currently in your M+ loadout, but low haste in M+ will be a death sentence for you and your group.
That’s just what I’ve seen quickly by looking at your build.
I looked at a log from your run of +21 Uldaman to get an idea of how you played it and talents you were using:
- The major issue is that you took 3 talents that strictly buff Prayer of Healing, but you cast Prayer of Healing a total of 9 times in the dungeon. (versus 182 flash heals, 80 PoMs, etc)
- You should remove the point in Sanctified Prayers, Prayerful Litany and Healing Circle.
- You have a choice of where to place these, but:
- For damage, take Empyreal Blaze and Burning Vehemence.
- For Healing, with your playstyle, I’d suggest picking up Divine Image or Lightweaver. If Lightweaver, you’re going to use heal instead of flash heal every other cast. Divine Image is just a passive gain after holy words (you might want to take chastise with it, as it will proc another image.
- You might consider SWAPPING Prayer Circle with Healing Chorus. You are casting a decent chunk of renew - and you can move one of the PoH points to Benediction to get more passive renews. This will increase your CoH healing quite a bit.
- Secondary problem is you’re really not contributing to damage at all. And while this probably still isn’t a problem at +22s, healers are expected to contribute what they can to damage in fairly high key levels because timers start getting very tight, so you need to eek out what you can - and honestly getting damage out and getting the pack dead can be more mana efficient than healing through the damage sometimes. This doesn’t mean you should FOCUS on damage and start letting people die, but it’s something to consider optimizing more.
Note, I’m a big proponent of play whatever you’re having success with. So my suggestions are more based off what I see you’re doing right now. The meta way to play would be to take points out of heal/PoH, and put them into empyreal as well as the pom talents.
Context: Holy priest; 3.150k. I definitely don’t claim to have all the answers, I will never be top holy priest in the world, and I’m likely to top out at 3.2k this season if I get realllly lucky. But this is what I notice just looking at your spec currently as exported from your character profile.
While I disagree with those who say prayer of healing is never worth casting, I basically only use it to reset sanctify, and only during an Apothesis empowerment. Whenever you have periodic burst-lull tyrannical boss cycles, it’s nice to be able to go into the next burst phase fully loaded for group healing. I’d ditch Prayerful Litany and Sanctified Prayers for PoM talents.
Other things - you’re going to want two capstones. I prefer Divine Image, there’s a ton of healing there, plus it helps along your DPS. That said, you can make lightweaver work instead of DI. Miracle Worker is just too handy for those burst-healing-required windows for me to see giving it up with our current toolkit.
Epihany is a terrible talent. Swap to Answered Prayers, and get a weak aura tracker so you know when you’re about to proc the buff. Being able to apothesis every minute and a half to two minutes is a game changer, even if you’re a little at the mercy of RNG. It will reset your holy words which again feeds into the DI procs.
I tend to grab chastise as a discount-interrupt - with a minor benefit of DI-proc - but the importance of that will depend on how much the rest of the group can interrupt. If you’re in a mostly melee group, it’s less important.
Other than that, knowing the fights, bosses, and adds are all key; and a lot of that is just practice. And if you’re pugging, proactive communication.
Divine Hymn and enlightenment are week/dungeon specific. On tyrannical I’m more likely to go for it, on fortitude I rarely bother.
If there’s any specific fights or situations you have issues with, happy to try to provide more concrete help.