I’ve been playing Priest since Vanilla and am a healer at heart. Having limited time and cannot commit to having various alts, Priest has always my go-to choice for a main precisely because it is the only class that offers 2 healing specs that play quite differently. Although I do have a preference for Holy’s playstyle, it has constantly been overshadowed by Disc in PvE AND PvP and basically makes the spec a 2-specialization class. All of the changes so far to Holy seem great and a LOT of fun. However, the fun part is going to be irrelevant if they don’t receive increased throughput to make them competitive. If my basic healing spells heals for the same amount as a Resto Shaman’s or a Paladin’s or a Monk’s, why would I bring an Holy Priest that doesn’t have Auras, or BoPs, or Totems, or Cocoon. Holy’s strength as always been its direct, raw healing throughput; at the expense of not having strong defensives abilities and offensive abilities (dmg). I truly believe the only way to make Holy competitive while keeping its distinctiveness is for it to have a lot more throughput than all other healers while not try to cover up it’s weaknesses. When I say A LOT, I mean it: should TRULLY compensate for its weaknesses - not just some 100hp more than what a Flash of Light, Regrowth, Shadowmend or Healing Surge can do.
I understand, support and am trully happy about the “class identity turn” in Shadowlands, but Priests are an example where the “spec identity” is still very important as it is the only healing class in the game with 2 healing specs. It is therefore imperative for dedicated healers to trully FEEL a difference when we switch from one spec to the other. My fear is that, giving Holy new defensive spells, making them do “more” damage by giving them the “discipline priests toolkit”, etc. will only make them lose their identity as that “pure healer”. This will force them to compete with other healers in spheres/niches where they will inevitably be outshined because it is part of their class identity (damage for discs, defensives/support for Pally, HoTs/mobility for Druid, fistweaving/burst heal for Monks, etc.). If it is the case, we’ll be back to square one: “at this point I’ll just play Disc which have a ton of damage mitigation cooldowns on top of doing good healing AND bringing a ton of damage to the table” or simply “I’ll play another healer that have a similar healing throughput but brings way much more to the table with their defensives”.
Yes, it might seem scary and/or unfair if my Flash Heal heals for 1250, while the Shaman’s Healing Surge heals for 800 and the Paladin’s Flash of Light heals for 850. But, I don’t bring Earthen Wall totem, I don’t bring Spirit Link Totem, I don’t bring Wind Shear, I don’t bring Blessing of Protection, I don’t bring Blessing of Sacrifice, I don’t bring Cocoon, I don’t bring 5% dmg Buff to Melees, I don’t bring Pain Suppression, I don’t bring Dome of Light… You get the idea. Yes it might look ridiculous that my Sanctify heals for 5000, but a Druid’s Soul of the Forest+NS+Regrowth heals for about 4500 while Druid also bringing more potent HoTs, extra mobility, more dmg, Ironbarck, Ursol’s Vortex, etc… So again, why would I choose Holy?
Moreover, at a personal level, my pleasure in WoW is doing Arenas. The current state of Holy makes it only viable in a ultra-pigeonhole comp where you can ONLY play with 2 classes (Fire Mages and Destro Locks… MAYBE elemental Shaman) in 2s or 3s. On top of this, whatever Holy brings to the table in this Lock/Fire/Holy Comp is not anything better than other healers can bring (it’s acually less). Pigeonholding an entire spec to play in 1 particular comp where it doesn’t perform even better than other healers at, completely removes an entire spec from being playable in Arenas. Holy’s trademark used to be it’s capacity to heal for “a lot” while being incredibly mana efficient, making them very good in Defensive-oriented comps which aims at long-lasting Dampening games. Right now, it cannot even fulfill this niche, as the only thing making us viable is Greater Heal which, if we are forced to spam (like right now), makes us oom quicker than any other healers in the game than can simply trade Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection, Life Cocoon, Ironbark, Pain Suppression, Dome of Light, and so forth.
Although in other expansions (like Legion) Holy Priests were still rare and never trully “optimal” for any comp, they nevertheless were still versatile enough to do very well in ANY Wizzard Cleaves, but also decent in non-Wizzard setups like Thundercleave, Outlaw/Ele/hPriest, Rogue/Mage/hPriest, Cupid, Jungle, and much more. Nowdays, this has become unimaginable.
The solution obviously is not to make Holy Priests absolute indestructible Gods. However, I think the solution is also NOT to try to make Holy priest something its not by alter its foundations and become similar to other healers by giving them abilities that tries to makes them compete in a niche where they will turn out to be outshined by other class identities anyway (such as damage, defensives, etc.). Rather, I believe the right was it is to make it shine in a niche where it COMPLETELY overshadow (and not simply by a margin) all of its competitors - raw healing. This is true for PvP AND PvE. So the choice/tradeoff for either content would be something like this:
- I choose to play Holy which means:
- I will not contribute to damage
- My teammates will stay alive for longer because of my massive heals AND do not use a lot of mana
- The run will probably take longer (due to lack of damage), but it will be safer, smoother and with fewer deaths
- I choose to play Disc which means:
- I will contribute to damage massively
- My teammates will rarely be topped off, but I can manage to keep them safe by managing my defensive CDs
- The run will probably be quicker (due to damage), but there is the risk of higher deaths. High Risk/High Benefits.
Right now, the changes in the Alpha seems to put Holy in a very “cool and fun” spot with its newly gained abilities, but when you compare tooltips between various healers, their raw healing output still doesn’t put the other healers to shame. In fact, it is oftentimes very similar and even lesser outputs for similar spells (ex: Flash Heal VS Healing Surge, etc.). In this sense, I have a strong feeling Holy is going to be left in the exact same spot: it can do OKAY, but it will easily be outshined by at least 1 healers in every category, thus leaving it behind in basically ALL of them. All of this to say that although a 2.7 seconds-cast Holy Fire or a Mind Blast is very cool and can hurt a lot, if your healing throughput is so low that you’re forced to use every GCD on a healing spell, these abilities quickly become irrelevant to your toolkit since you’ll never get the opportunity to even cast them.
In case there is too much fear of the “massive healing throughout” spec I am advocating for, a descent second option would be a “jack of all trade” spec where it can do every niche “good” (in healing, defensive CDs, utility, dmg, etc) without outshining anything - similar to an HotW Druid in Vanilla. I actually quite like specs like this. But if so, Blizzard need to give them the tools to be able to achieve such role which in its current state it is simply not possible (and that would also come at the expanse of its identity). Although I believe this “jack of all trade” spec is more easily achievable in PvE, for PvP it most surely means one thing: the complete reversal of it’s current state. More precisely, it would look something like this:
- Greater Heal needs to be removed from the game
- Basic healing throughout from all spells needs to be increased
- It needs to be given at least 1 damage reduction CD (although probably but not as potent at other healers)
- It needs to be allowed to weave in damage spells in between healing casts which is not possible right not with GH build (EXCEPT, maybe, if you play with Destro/Fire/hPriest).
Although I would not prefer for Holy to become that “jack of all trade” spec, I could see myself backing it up if it is well excuted. By far, the “insane throughput” spec is my favorite option, and one that does not require a lot of change to Holy’s current design which I like (serendity, holy wards, etc.). This would trully make Holy have a niche it dominates and thus make it relevant since it cannot possibly be outshined by another class in this aspect of the game. Once this will be realize, there will trully be a choice: “do I want to chose a raw-healing healer playstyle?” or “do I want to choose a CD-based healer?” or “do I want a damage-contributing healer?”. Right now, no one is TRULLY filling the “raw-healing-output” niche, since the only healer that should be doing so (Holy Priest) is acutally barely putting out more healing than other classes.
Here are my thoughts on a spec I desperately want to main, but has been absolutely impossible for me to do so for the last few expansions now (especially for PvP). To reitorate, implementing a “raw throughput” healing spec for Shadowland Holy Priest, I believe, is the best option because:
(1) it requires the least modification to its current gameplay;
(2) it fills up a niche that is currently not part of any other healing classes’ identity;
(3) it allows for a great variation of gameplay between the 2 healing specialization of Priests; and
(4) it gives players a real option to “choose” Holy as their main if they enjoy this “pure healing” playstyle while remaining COMPETITIVE in all aspects of the game (instead of NEEDING to either do significant damage or have a ton of different CDs to be competitive).