Not going to lie, seeing 1 million holy fires and 700k smites in pvp is nice. Doesn’t feel like holy is so helpless now and can actually burst people down.
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Does it really though? Or you just helping a little more for the dps doing the bursting
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Obviously, I’m not soloing a dps but it catches them off guard with chastise and holy fire spam. It’s a big buff, try it.
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Woah, is Holy outdamaging Disc now? 
(obviously in low healing scenarios where you can afford the GCDs)
Holy should have always been able to out dps disc in my opinion. Mostly because disc can heal off of it’s damage where Holy can’t. I am glad to see they nerfed monk dps a bit with this recent patch. under no circumstance should a healer be able to outright kill a dps while simultaneously healing everyone around them in the process. that is just a major balance issue in it’s own.
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It does happen with me catweaving. With the right talents, the damage is defintely a bit higher than Disc, but to do that I can only afford to sort hots out in the few seconds my energy replenishes. So, is basically that, the DoC healing and eventual Grove Guardians pops. It’s doable on casual content where people don’t take much damage.
But when it’s challenging, I need to heal more, so my dps plummets.
It has been fun being able to take on dps solo and meaningfully contribute to killing key targets. A full haste/vers build is actually doing damage near that of an actual dps spec, but I’m not keen to toss all my mastery away. My bet is based on Spriest gearing, it could easily transition to a dps orientated Hpriest.
I could see that kind of build become popular in 2’s. The damage output with apotheosis, if you get to free cast for a few seconds, is quite respectable. Perhaps too high.
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In PvP only??? People be asking to nerf themselves already. My goodness. Make sure to clarify exactly how to nerf yourself. I can obviously tell I’m more damage in pve but it doesn’t feel OP. Doing damage comes at a cost of healing, so it makes sense to have it somewhat high so it makes up for non dps healing moments, which are many.
EDIT: though it looks like that priest hasn’t done much of anything, so not asking to nerf self. In here on behalf of their main who’s already trying to bring people down??
Clearly, we are talking from a pvp perspective. If they did nerf it, then would probably be a pvp specific change.
As for not having done much of anything, me and the OP do random BGs mostly. We both have thousands of BGs played.
This concept only works if no DPS can kill a healer who focuses on healing themselves, this includes not being able to run them out of mana.
If a healer can’t kill a DPS under any circumstances, then a DPS should not be able to kill a healer under any circumstances. That would be balance.
Why do I have a feeling you would not agree with that because your idea of balance seems to be “classes should not be able to do what they are suppose to do.” Disc is literally a DPS healer, it SHOULD be doing some of the highest damage of any healer, with only the likes of Fistweaver and perhaps the Lightsmith Paladin, being able to complete with it because like disc they are also DPS healers. The idea that healers that are designed to focus on and pump out massive HPS are able to out DPS healers who are actually designed to focus on and pump out DPS is what doesn’t make any sense and would be imbalanced.
Watch Zenlyn on Twitch play his damage-focused HPriest. He is the top damage dealer in 2v2 consistently, above both of the other DPS. It’s pretty nuts.
Dps healer will beat the other healer if they have to constantly heal. To make up for it, the short spurt downtimes the non dps healer needs to catch up on dps. Otherwise the dps healer will just obliterate the non dps healer in dps while doing just as much healing as them. They made it fair.
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I’ve addressed this in many threads but to restate my point in general. This is faulty logic that assumes the only things a healer ever brings is DPS and HPS. If we are in that situation than there are fundamental design flaws that need to be addressed.
Disc is a healer that can do both healing and DPS at the same time. Holy can either heal or do dps, they cannot do both at the same time, and to compensate for this they should be able to do more raw damage than Disc. Not to mention that Holy lacks power external mitigation and absorb shields that Disc Brings and suffers much more from mana issues.
We’re in situation where one particular healing spec has been OP for such a long time, that some people started to consider it as normality.
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Perhaps it’s your logic that is flawed and should be readdressed from a different perspective?
This is like saying a tank should do more damage than a DPS because the tank has to worry about mitigation tools when they do damage it should be higher than a DPS. Makes zero sense and contains zero logical thought. If you want a DPS to DPS comparison it would be like saying a Frost Mage should out DPS a Fire Mage because the Frost mage has a lot more control options than a fire mage. If someone who is constantly doing damage is out damaged by someone who can only throw DPS spells once in a blue moon then there is a massive problem.
And this right here is exactly what I eluded to earlier when I made my comment about “fundamental design flaws.” Holy absolutely should not have more damage than disc, it shouldn’t even be remotely close. What Holy should have is extremely impactful utility that makes it worth taking. Be it an additional damage buff, hell let’s a third person have Power Infusion if holy brings it, a better dispel profile, etc etc.
I could go on but frankly it’s simple. Disc is THE DPS healing spec for priest, holy should not be remotely close to touching that. It should be justified and wanted because of it’s raw healing through-put combined with powerful utility options. The game should be about far more than DPS/HPS numbers.
If given a compelling justification for why I am wrong I am more than willing to accept that, however, what I addressed above it about the only justification anyone has ever attempted to give as a means of saying that Holy should out damage disc and it simply make zero logical sense.
No, it’s not even close to be the same… Your comparison is wrong
You are comparing a Tank role vs a DPS role, Heartie is comparing 2 specs from the same role.
All healers should be able to meet the healing checks otherwise that healer is unviable. If you make Discipline also make more dmg then it would break the game. Why would you bring another healer when Discipline would do more dmg than the avg while at the same time meeting the healing checks?
Raids would be filled with Disciplines.
This already happened in Shadowlands season 1 when Venthyr Hpala was doing way more dps than every other healer and giga dominated the meta.
Discipline doing healing while dpsing is just a design decision… it’s not intended for disc to outdps every other healer, it’s just the dynamic they chose for disc to be different.
That’s their healer design.
Holy priest does indeed need more love, more utility tied to the spec to have an identity which right now to me it has none.
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It happened with Discipline in Legion, too.
Discipline WAS doing between tank and DPS damage and it dominated raid and immediately got nerfed. It’s kind of the reason Blizzard started to bring the DPS of all specs to be more in-line.
Disc also isn’t the only ‘damage to heal’ healer anymore, either. The game has changed a lot.
TBH I think Holy’s ‘lack of identity’ problem isn’t that it lacks identity at all. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. They just want it to be a class that is very straightforward in how it heals as a big part of its identity. You’re not doing anything fancy like catweaving, you don’t worry about mitigation, you just heal.
Any utility you try and bring into that kind of healer design detracts from the design. And most ways that might make that kind of design better in a dungeon would be extremely strong everywhere else.
Personally I just think it needs to be re-thought. A rework of a good 50% of the tools to make it into something new. But also every time Blizzard does this, people who like the old spec freak out and they get a ton of bad feedback. So they’re working in a lose-lose situation and choosing to let it ride instead.
I’ve been gearing full haste as I think it’s the best compromise stat for all 3 specs. Mastery for shadow just sucks.
Heartie’s analysis is much more logical and accurate than yours. Most tanks are primarily doing DPS while tanking. A lot of tanks have their defensives integrated into offensive abilities - Pally gets DR standing in consecrate, VDH heals and does massive damage with Spirit Bomb, etc. Tanks have very little downtime doing actual DPS.
Holy priest on the other hand can only do damage when no healing is required, a couple exceptions but not really (relies on tww hero talents which may go away next xpac). If everyone is taking massive damage on a pull, the holy priest is only going to be healing. The couple exceptions would be why most run Archon - Halo does solid damage and pulsing healing. If you switch to Oracle you lose that, and will not be doing any damage under heavy healing. All of the buffs to holy dps were talents that would increase Oracle dps significantly so it would average out to ok dps when they are able to weave it in.
While strong healing is going to be the primary reason to prefer one healer over another, dps from healers matters the harder the content gets. Good healer damage can be the difference between timing a key and not, or beating a boss enrage timer. If two different healing classes can do enough healing to keep everyone alive, I’m going to bring the one also doing great damage.
Holy needs to be competitive with dps to remain competitive with other healers.