So this is going to be a short topic where I’m just going to break down how Holy is going to play in TWW based on my beta experiences so far. I’ve done enough doom and glooming already.
As of right now there’s been 0 changes to Holy in the TWW beta outside of Divine Hymn healing for +400% more in 5-man dungeons and the addition of Oracle/Archon.
Tier Set Bonus
The 2-piece is equivalent to having an extra point in Light of the Naaru which is about 1 less cast to reset a Holy Word.
The 4-piece bonus gives you a 50% chance to replicate Heal/Flash Heal/Prayer of Healing each time you cast it at 35% effectiveness. The extra replicated heals don’t trigger any talents or cdr your Holy Words.
Archon vs Oracle
Archon far outshines Oracle in M+ and raid atm and unless they buff/overhaul Oracle I don’t recommend playing it. There’s easily a 15-20% hps difference between Archon vs Oracle for raid alone.
More on Archon
When you cast Halo it pulses back and forth 3 times so you’re going to get 3 free Surge of Light procs in total. Those SoL procs heal for +30% more (which is like using Lightweaver) and also reduce the cooldown of Holy Word Sanctify by 4s each time you consume them.
So every minute you should be seeing 5-8 Surge of Light procs on average including the ones from Archon. If you consume them on cd it’s an extra Holy Word Sanctify every 1.5-2 mins depending on talent options.
With the Sustained Potency talent you can extend the duration of Apotheosis by 3s (1s per tick of Halo) which would trigger from Answered Prayers in raid. In M+ you could bank up to a 6s duration increase so if you use regular Apotheosis which will make it a 21s duration.
An extra 3-6s would be enough to squeeze out 1-3 extra Holy Words. Only negative is the buff has a 2 minute duration so if you’re not using Halo it can fall off.
Energy Compression is also a fairly competitive choice since it makes Halo +30% stronger, but given the massive overhealing Halo does currently it’s probably overkill. If you want to reset Holy Word Salvation in a reasonable of time in raid and want stronger heals in M+ then Sustained Potency is the better choice.
Holy in Raid
Archon Halo currently does a busted amount of healing atm. It’s somewhere around 10-12 mil healing with 60% overhealing in the logs I’ve seen which is 3.5x what Divine Hymn does. Halo will be your #1 heal on most fights and is going to be treated like a major raid healing cd.
Ultimately with so much power pumped into Halo: our heals outside of that are going to feel weak because they have not increased our baseline healing. A lot of other specs had the healing nerfs from DF S4 reverted and also their healing was increased by +20% or more.
Without the S3 tier set bonus there’s going to be less Renew ticks that feed into Healing Chorus so CoH is going to do less healing unless you manually start hard casting Renews. It’d take about 3-4 Renews constantly out to make Healing Chorus max out to 20 stacks every 8s.
With the TWW S1 tier set bonus it leans more heavily towards using Prayer of Healing since you have a 50% chance to replicate it at 35% effectiveness. This won’t trigger any of the PoH talents though.
So the TLDR is that Holy in TWW plays exactly like how it does currently on retail without the S3 tier set bonus and your Halo now turns into a major raid healing cd.
HPS wise Holy’s lacking atm in the TWW beta since the specs that had their hps nerfed in DF S4 had the hps nerfs removed, talent revamps, and a baseline healing increase.
Holy in M+
Just like with raid healing: Archon is currently the top contender for M+. The main reason has to do with the fact that Archon Halo does a lot of passive healing/damage that Holy otherwise was lacking throughout DF. You also get a lot of decent passive bonuses compared to Oracle (stronger SoL procs, +10% more healing in Apotheosis, increased healing to targets affected by your Halo, etc).
You can open up with most trash pulls with Divine Word + Chastise, Halo, and then let off your Holy Fire casts and use your Surge of Light procs to cover any healing while Halo pulses back and forth. You can even use Apotheosis as an offensive cd if you want to pad dps.
For healing in TWW Holy is leaning heavily towards needing to juggle cooldowns to actually heal rough fights. Health pools are a lot bigger relative to heals so your Flash Heals might only do 8-10% of somebody’s hp bars.
Divine Hymn feels more powerful with the +400% healing boost and it’s equal to about casting 4-5 Flash Heals on everyone.
With cooldowns you have Halo, Apotheosis, Divine Hymn, and Divine Word. If you have Answered Prayers it also helps fill in the gap as well because it’s an extra free Holy Word every couple of minutes. When everything is on cooldown you’re going to feel really weak which is a similar problem that Disc has.
Our tier set bonus is going to shine more in M+ because of how it works. You have a 50% chance when you cast Flash Heal to replicate another one at 35% power. This doesn’t trigger any talents related to Flash Heal though.
Talents like Desperate Times are going to be more valuable because of having weaker heal overall. You’ll see people spend more time <50% than normal.
Overall Holy should be able to stand on its own in M+, but it’s not going to be anything more than B-tier.
Final Thoughts
Between the complete lack of class updates in TWW, no developer feedback, and so much power being pushed into Archon: Holy’s going to be a mixed bag at the launch of TWW.
Top guilds are likely going to exploit the power of Archon Halo so I’m not going to be shocked if there’s 1-2 Holy Priests in each raid comp and/or Halo gets nerfed.
Holy will very likely see a lot of hps buffs in any tuning passes just like the start of DF S1. Ultimately without a talent tree revamp, Holys not going to go anywhere in TWW.
