Holy Priest - A Dragonflight Review

Classes Priest
1

The Beta
The beta was a bit of a bumpy road from the start, as the initial beta talent tree for all priests was universally panned, and it wasn’t until a month or two before the launch of the expansion that we got our pre-release talent tree.

You can see the original expansion talent tree here: https://beta.wowdb.com/dragonflight-talent-calculator

Coming from the heels of being meta in S3 and S4 in Dragonflight Holy, it saw massive nerfs in terms of its HPS and damage. The Shadowlands Flash Concentration (and later Lightweaver) was nerfed down substantively, and more power was put into Prayer of Mending and our Holy Words.

Empyreal Blaze was initially a 30s CD, but that was increased to 60s, which dropped Holy’s damage output substantially because this was before Burning Vehemence did AOE damage. Holy also received other DPS/HPS nerfs of around -10%.

More controversially, Blizzard removed Shining Force, gave every other healer in the game an interrupt except Disc/Holy, and said they would not be giving Priests Vault of the Heavens.

The Launch of the Expansion - Early Woes & Buffs

The expansion launch saw Holy in a rather confused position. Everyone expected Lightweaver to have the power of flash concentration in raid, but that was quickly proven to be wrong. Prayer of Healing was also assumed to become a powerhouse healer like it was during BFA, but its high mana cost and low healing were a detriment.

So naturally, a Miracle Worker + Divine Word build utilizing answered prayers for faster Holy Word resets became the optimal build for raid. The majority of Holy’s healing was now coming from abilities with cooldowns instead of “filler” spells like Flash Heal, Heal, PoH, and Renew.

However, Holy’s overall raid performance was underwhelming, and that primarily had to do with all the nerfs applied before the launch of the expansion.

In M+, Holy was suffering from low DPS, a clunky Lightweaver playstyle, and had to make hard sacrifices by needing to pick DPS talents over healing ones on the bottom of the tree.

So unsurprisingly, there were a large number of changes over the initial few months of the expansion that brought Holy up.

  • Jan. 10, 2023 (hotfix): All healing done increased by 3%
  • Patch 10.0.5 (Jan 24th, 2023) - Burning Vehemence is now a 2-point talent and has been redesigned – Increases the damage of Holy Fire by 15%/30%. Holy Fire deals 15%/30% of its initial damage to all nearby enemies within 12 yards of your target. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
  • Patch 10.0.5 - Prayers of the Virtuous now increases the maximum stack count of Prayer of Mending by 2 per point.
  • Patch 10.0.5 - Burning Vehemence and Searing Light have swapped positions in the talent tree.
  • Patch 10.0.5 - Searing Light is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
  • Feb. 2nd 2023 (hotfix): All healing increased by 3%.
  • Patch 10.0.7 (Mar 21, 2023) - Lightwell healing increased by 40%.
  • Patch 10.0.7 - Divine Image now triggers off all Holy Word casts instead of having a chance to trigger.
  • Patch 10.0.7 - Burning Vehemence now causes Holy Fire to deal 30%/60% of its initial damage to all nearby enemies (was 15%/30%).
  • Patch 10.0.7 - Rhapsody now grants a stack every 2 seconds (was 5 seconds).

Patch 10.0.7 - Holy Rises
Patch 10.0.7 was when Holy started to find its footing, with the Miracle Worker + Divine Image build becoming the mainstay build (although it took a while for the guides to be updated).

The issues with low M+ DPS were vastly improved, but Holy still needed to put 2 points into Burning Vehemence at the bottom of the tree.

Season 2 - 10.1 and beyond
Season 2 saw heaps of additional improvements to Holy, as well as a new tier set bonus that vastly improved the healing of Prayer of Mending.

The new tier set bonus pushed Prayer of Mending into being our #1 heal by quite a margin over our other heals while also feeding into more frequent Answered Prayers procs. Season 2 was when Holy was at its highest peak during the expansion, being in a firm 3rd or 4th place and also being well represented in high-end raiding.

In M+ Holy’s damage was also now competitive with other healers and the new Divine Image/Miracle Worker build surpassed Lightweaver in terms of healing potential. Just before 10.1.5 came out, I was pushing +24/25s around this time on Holy.

However, when 10.1.5 came out, it basically destroyed the key scene. Here’s a brief summary of Holy from 10.1 to pre-10.1.5.

  • Patch 10.1 (May 2nd 2023) - The bounce radius of Prayer of Mending has been increased by 10 yards.
  • Patch 10.1 - Dazzling Lights healing from Divine Image reduced by 50%.
  • Patch 10.1 - Empowered Renew now causes Renew to instantly heal your target for 40% of its total periodic effect (was 10%).
  • Patch 10.1 - Healing Chorus now causes Renew to increase the healing done by your next Circle of Healing by 2%, stacking up to 50 times (was 1%).
  • Hotfix (June 27th 2023)
    -Holy Fire damage increased by 10%.
    -Smite damage increased by 15%.
    -Holy Word: Chastise damage increased by 35%.
    -Shadow Word: Death damage increased by 25%.

10.1.5 & 10.1.7 - Rise of the God Comp
Patch 10.1.5 saw massive overhauls for Mages, Holy Paladins, and the addition of Augmentation Evokers. Almost immediately, a meta comp was formed of five specs (Bear Druid, H Pal, Aug Evoker, Mage, and Shadow Priest), and Holy Paladins vastly outperformed every other healer in the game. For M+, this saw basically every non-H Pal being denied keys, and it was the hardest time of the entire expansion to get into keys.

Despite the challenges, there were positive developments. Patch 10.1.5 saw Holy finally have its DPS talents streamlined and pushed higher up the tree. The patch also included the addition of the Benevolence talent (+3% healing), Epiphany, and a flat +10% damage/healing boot.

Holy’s raid performance largely stayed the same (a solid 3rd or 4th place holder), but in M+, Holy was greatly overshadowed by Holy Paladins. However, despite this, Holy could still push fairly high keys.

Here’s a list of 10.1.5

  • 10.1.5 (July 11th, 2023) - New Talent: Benevolence – Increases the healing of your spells by 3%. Shares a choice node with Power Word: Life on the talent tree.
  • 10.1.5 - New Talent: Essence Devourer – Attacks from your Shadowfiend and Mindbender siphon life from enemies, healing a nearby injured ally. Shares a choice node with Void Shift on the talent tree.
  • 10.1.5 - New Talent: Epiphany – Your Holy Words have a 13%/25% chance to reset the cooldown of Prayer of Mending. Epiphany has moved to Burning Vehemence’s previous position in the talent tree.
  • 10.1.5 - All spell and ability damage increased by 10%.
  • 10.1.5 - Holy Word: Sanctify and Prayer of Healing have swapped positions in the talent tree.
  • 101.5 - Burning Vehemence has moved to Searing Light’s position in the talent tree and is now a 1-point talent.
  • Aug 07, 2023 (hotfix): Rhapsody now stacks every 1 second (was 2 seconds) and causes Holy Nova to deal 20% increased damage per stack (was 10%).

Season 2 in Summary - Highs and Lows
Season 2 was fairly good overall for Holy, as it saw a lot of buffs and improvements. However, by the end of Season 2, it was becoming rather apparent that Holy was due for a major revamp. Holy Paladins were so overpowered after the launch of 10.1.5 that it really showed how underperforming the Holy Priest was in M+.

However, despite this, Season 2 also had a “mandatory” priest problem. Almost every dungeon had a skip you could use Mind Soothe with and/or Mass Dispel to counter a very nasty debuff. This ended up meaning that 99% of the groups pushing anything +25 or higher had a priest in the group, be it a healing or DPS one.

Overall, though, Season 2 for Holy was pretty solid in both M+ and raid.

Season 3 - Massive Nerfs at the launch of 10.2
Season 3 saw the addition of a new tier set bonus that Blizzard greatly overestimated in its raid performance, so they pre-planned a bunch of nerfs for the patch to try and “equalize” our raid performance.

In response to the god comp mandatory priest problem (mass dispel + mind soothe), Blizzard also implemented nerfs for mass dispel and power infusion. Holy also saw Symbol of Hope (its main raid utility) nerfed massively.

Holy Word Salvation was also nerfed around the new tier set bonus, and it took nearly twice as many Holy Word casts to reset it compared to before.

Disc Priest also saw a major overhaul in 10.2, which greatly improved its raid and dungeon healing. Disc, for the first time during the expansion, became more popular than Holy.

Despite these nerfs, Holy saw a +40% increase to their single target heals, an overhaul of Echo of Light, and a fairly strong 2 and 4-piece bonus. This put Holy’s single target healing in M+ at the strongest it’s been in the entire expansion, but its raid performance suffered terribly.

Holy at the start of 10.2 and for weeks after was in 7th place in HPS.

Here’s a list of the 10.2 changes…

  • Patch 10.2 - Mass Dispel cooldown is now 2 minutes (was 45 seconds).

  • Patch 10.2 - Power Infusion Haste reduced to 20% (was 25%) and duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).

  • Patch 10.2 - Power Word: Life received a number of changes:

  • Patch 10.2 - Holy Word: Serenity healing increased by 30%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Flash Heal healing increased by 40%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Heal healing increased by 40%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Holy Word: Salvation’s cooldown is now reduced by 15 seconds (was 30 seconds) by Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify.

  • Patch 10.2 - Symbol of Hope now restores 10% of missing mana (was 15%) and recovers 40 seconds of cooldown for a major defensive ability (was 60 seconds).

  • Patch 10.2 - Holy Word: Sanctify now heals up to 5 allies (was 6).

  • Patch 10.2 - Divine Star healing decreased by 25%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Halo healing decreased by 15%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Mastery: Echo of Light received a number of related changes:
    -Prismatic Echoes now increases the healing of Mastery: Echo of Light by 4/8% (was 6/12%).
    -Mastery: Echo of Light healing decreased by 15%.
    -Mastery: Echo of Light heals every 2 seconds and lasts 4 seconds (was heals every 3 seconds and lasts 6 seconds).

  • Patch 10.2 - Divine Image received a number of changes:
    -Divine Image’s Dazzling Lights healing decreased by 35%.
    -Divine Image’s Blessed Light healing decreased by 20%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Prayer of Mending healing decreased by 5%.

  • Patch 10.2 - Trail of Light replicates Heal or Flash Heal for 13/25% value (was 18/35%).

  • Patch 10.2 - Pontifex increases healing done by Holy Words by 20%, stacking 2 times (was 10%).

Post 10.2 & 10.2.5 - Backtracking the Nerfs
After seeing the appalling state of Holy Post 10.2, Blizzard immediately implemented a rapid string of hotfixes. These hotfixes and changes were to correct the issue of Holy being unnecessarily nerfed when 10.2 launched.

  • Dec 05, 2023: Amirdrassil Priest Holy 10.2 Class Set 2pc: Renews caused by Serenity now last 18 seconds (was 14 seconds) and Renews caused by Sanctify now last 6 seconds (was 5 seconds).
  • Dec 05, 2023: Burning Vehemence now causes Holy Fire to deal 75% of its initial damage to nearby enemies (was 60%).
  • Dec 05, 2023: All healing increased by 4%.
  • Dec 19, 2023: All healing increased by 3%.
  • Dec 19, 2023: Prayer of Mending healing increased by 15%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 (January 16th, 2024) - Holy Word: Sanctify’s healing increased by 25%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 - Heal’s healing increased by 25%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 - Flash Heal healing increased by 15%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 - Holy Word: Chastise’s damage increased by 30%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 - Smite’s damage increased by 30%.
  • Patch 10.2.5 - Shadow Word: Pain’s damage increased by 15%.

Pre-10.2.6 and current state
The state Holy launched in 10.2 should never have happened because it erased all the expansion progress before that. After the hotfixes, 10.2.5 Holy has greatly improved in M+ and Raid, but it still takes last place in overall hps in Raid.

Holy needs a +5-6% additional hps buff to match the raid performance of Disc. 10.2.6, which is launching next month, and with no PTR, it’s largely a mystery if there’ll be any changes to Holy or not.

Holy, on the flip side of being at its worst in raid, is at its best in M+. With massively buffed single target heals (+40–50% stronger than in S2) and a strong 4-piece, Holy is at its peak. However, Disc has outpaced Holy in overall popularity.

What will 10.2.6 and 10.2.7 bring? Maybe some massive buffs and a S4 Holy Priest meta again?

Part #2 - Talent Tree Issues Talent Tree Issues

Part #3 - M+ Issues

Part #4 - Raid Issues

10 Likes
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I’d prefer to see this post on wowhead over Jak’s.
Not that I have a problem with him, but he seems pretty out of touch with holy and what it needs.

It’s wild seeing how many buffs the spec has required throughout the expansion and to still have its struggles.

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Thanks for this post. As usual, your thoughts on Holy are spot on. You should be the one writing the guides on holy priests.

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I enjoyed playing Holy to heal over Discipline the rare times that I actually did.
Having said that… I have only a rough level of understanding of all that is holy. So most of this post goes over my head (I skimmed through it since I really don’t have the proper level of background knowledge to digest it all).

But one thing did jump out to me…

You’re such a tease lol.

5

Wishlist!

Remove PI (or make it a personal only again)

Give us an actual defensive button, an interrupt and a Brez.

Drop Prayer of Healing, it’s unnecessary bloat and is absolutely not fun to press. just adjust Circle of Healing and tie Sanctuary reset to it.

Make holy fire dot do something

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Holy healing just works better for my brain vs maximizing DPS to heal. Always feels weird to me even though disc/MW are fun to play.

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Wild to see it all typed up. The Holy saga lol.

My brain might need to wake up more, but I though symbol now only gives 30 seconds defensive reduction and not 40. My memory wants to say it was nerfed to 40 and then 30 but maybe I need more coffee. Been a while since I read that sad spell.

Really hoping s4 has some good stuffs for both healing specs though as it has been fun to play both this season. I haven’t decided if I will go back to holy for keys next season. I think I am Holy forever in raid.

Looking forward to reading your wishlist!

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I’ll do the wish list/current state next week because it took me a few hours just to compile al the data digging through hotfixes and changelogs to compile up the entire expansion.

More or less, many of the issues Holy faced during the expansion had to do with the rushed state of the expansion beta. Druids and Priests were the only two classes that didn’t get their launch talents until the last minute, which is why Shadow and Disc received revamps later on. Holy just never got theirs.

Also, I don’t think there’s a Holy Priest dev at all if you want me to be honest. Shadow and Disc clearly have people in charge, but with Holy every change this expansion has been reactionary changes evaluating low performance and/or underutilized talents.

Shadow and Disc play completely different since their overhauls, but Holy has been playing the exact same way since 10.0.7 came out.

The expansion can be summarized as a rollercoaster with the expansion start being at the bottom, S2 being up at the top of the hill, the start of S3 being at the bottom again, and now were back at the top. We still have 10.2.6, 10.2.7, and S4 though.

I just hope the devs take this as a cautionary tale though because twice Holy was nerfed this expansion (beta and 10.2) and then most of those nerfs were reverted 1-2 months later. They seem to be relying on some kind of flawed data or simply assumptions.

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Appreciate the write-up. I play a different class every expansion, so I’m glad to have experienced this expansion as HPriest. It made me appreciate all the changes that happened and the way the class has changed.

Exactly why I wished people had voted for the S2 set over the S3 one. We got gutted for the S3 tier set, and HPriest was at its strongest in S2.

To me it feels like a band-aid. Yes, you have frequent Holy Words which can quickly pop someone up out of danger, but the gameplay loop now is basically casting to reset these cooldowns as frequently as possible. The healing might be stronger than it was in S2, but fights feel worse to heal to me due to being so cooldown-reliant. At least in S2, I could blanket heal with Renew pre-emptively and counter rot damage with Renew, PoM, and appropriate talents. Now, it feels like I do virtually little healing unless I am using a Holy Word.

But that’s just my opinion as someone not pushing cutting edge or even at the maximum I could probably go.

Giving us Power Infusion was overall a good change, as we didn’t need yet another reason to be passed over. But I would love if Divine Hymn had that one talent removed and it just was at that strength all the time, because it feels like one of the worst CDs in M+ to me. Alternatively, give us the PvP power baseline, although that’s probably too strong.

Lightwell should not be a capstone. Make it baseline. The talent where we resurrect after angel form should also be baseline. Why these two talents are capstone spec talents is beyond me.

There should be a way to convert healing into damage, like the Torghast power. Make Holy Fire spread Shadow Word: Pain the way Purge the Wicked gets spread by Penance. Or, give us Shadow Crash. Or, make active Empyreal Blaze apply Holy Fire as an AoE DoT. Do anything.

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I would like to add to the beta and I think it also made it to launch that Restitution was an accesible talent (didn’t require to sacrifice healing or dmg to get ti) which in my opinion was a really cool and nice utility in the form of having an auto self battle rez.
Having the option to kill yourself to go angel form to drop safe massive heals in difficult situations and brought back to life not only looked cool and awesome from a Light caster perspective and fantasy, but also gameplay wise it added something unique to the holy priest as it also added another cool and interesting mechanic with Afterlife talent that let you die to go angel form and battle rez someone getting u and another person brought back to the game.

I believe they removed it for PvP reasons, but it would be nice to nerf the rez angel in Arenas and PvP and make it come back for PvE.

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Everything removed or denied was because of PvP this expansion.

  • Shining force = removed because they said they were too many knockbacks in PvP.
  • Silence = not added to Disc/Holy because they thought we’d have an op cc chain.
  • Vault of Heavens = not added because Priests would be leaping around corners to safety.
  • Restitution = moved to bottom right because it was a second life.
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I believe they can make certain effects work differently depending if you are on an instanced pvp or not. Even if it’s a dungeon or raid.

I do not get why they don’t do that to some of the most interesting stuff priests have.
So much potential to the class fantasy being dropped for this

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Part 2 - Talent Tree Issues

Talent Tree Issues

Issue #1 - Too Many Prayer of Mending Talents

Holy currently has 8 talents dedicated to 1 ability - Prayer of Mending. Now let me start off with: I don’t dislike Prayer of Mending at all. It fits the Holy playstyle quite well. What I dislike is that I have to spend a total of 8-10 points in the Holy Tree for one ability.

Many of those points are entirely just filler. Divine Service, Focused Mending, Say Your Prayers, Epiphany, etc. could be entirely removed, and all that would need to be done is to apply a healing increase to PoM and/or more charges.

Holy Tree PoM Talents: Benediction, Divine Service, Prayers of the Virtuous, Say Your Prayers, Epiphany, Answered Prayers

General Tree Pom Talents: Prayer of Mending, Focused Mending

Issue #2 - Only Two Viable Endtree Talents

Holy currently only has two viable end-tree talents: Miracle Worker and Divine Image for all forms of content. These talents together outperform everything else because more Holy Words = more heals on demand = higher Divine Image uptime = stronger heals.

I’ll address the issues with the other end-tree talents.

Lightweaver - The main issue with this talent is its only impacts Heal, and you can only have 1 charge up at a time. If it were 1 Flash Heal = 2-3 charges of Lightweaver and also made Heal a lot stronger than 40%, it would be much better. Overall, Divine Image outperforms this talent because it functionally does the same thing: your Naaru’s make your Flash Heals stronger… and all your heals and damage abilities.

Lightwell - This talent has a number of issues. First is its healing is limited to people <50% hp, you can’t move it after it’s placed, and it’s more or less competing against better talents. If this talent were higher up in the tree, it would be a good talent to take.

Divine Word - This talent overall just isn’t up to snuff compared to Divine Image. Every 1 minute you get a 15s boost to only one type of ability, but with Divine Image, it buffs all your abilities, and you can keep a 60-80% uptime on it during boss fights. If this talent were higher up in the tree, it would be a good talent to take.

Restitution - This isn’t a bad talent, but just gimmicky because it relies on the premise that you have to die to make any use of it, and if you’re doing prog on bosses you’re wasting it every pull. Put this higher up in the tree

Issue #3 - Bottom Tree Bloat and only 3 End Tree Talent options

Holy Priests only have 3 End Tree talent nodes while a lot of specs in-game have 4-6 options to pick from. This really limits your build options because there’s simply a lack of choice and more cookie-cutter building.

The entire bottom of the Holy Priest tree is full of 2 point sinks that simply exist to eat up all your available points.

It would be nice to have 4-5 options and more 1 point nodes at the bottom of the tree like most classes in-game.

Issue #4 - Forced/Wasted Talents

When you’re pathing down the Holy Tree you’re forced to take talents that just exist as filler.

  • Prayer of Healing - You’re forced to take this to get Circle of Healing even though you may never cast it.
  • Cosmic Ripple - You’re forced to take this to get Trail of Light.
  • Everlasting Light - You’re forced to take this even though you don’t use Heal so you can get Crisis Management.
  • Enlightenment - Why do we need to waste 1 point to get our baseline mana regen? Holy is balanced around this talent.

If I want to do a single-target build I’m wasting 2 points in Cosmic Ripple and Everlasting Light that I could otherwise put elsewhere.

Issue #5 - Too Many Single Target Healing Talents

I play both Disc and Holy, and on Disc, I don’t need to invest a single point into any talents to make my Penance/Flash Heal stronger. On Holy, I need to invest steeply into these talents.

  • Cosmic Ripple - Need to get this to get Trail of Light.
  • Trail of Light - 2 points to make Flash Heal replicate 25% of its healing.
  • Everlasting Light - 1 point that is completely wasted if I’m not using Heal.
  • Crisis Management - 2 points to give Flash Heal a +15% increased crit chance.
  • Light of the Naaru/Harmonious - Both are 2 point talents that make Holy Word Serenity reset faster.
  • Pontifex - 1 point to make your next Holy Word up to 40% stronger.
  • Resonant Words/Desperate Times - Both are 2 points if you want to go into Lightweaver.
  • Lightweaver or Divine Image - 1 point to make your single-target heals stronger.
  • Binding Heals - 20% replicated Flash Heal to yourself in the Priest General Tree.

At minimum, Holy needs to invest 8-10 talents to make Flash Heal/Heal viable. And 2-3 of those points are wasted on talents you have to pick in order to progress down the tree. I’m not counting Apotheosis or Prismatic Echoes here though since they have their usefulness.

Many Priests end up opting out of taking Circle of Healing for M+ because they’re simply tied up on points.

Issue #6 - Inconsistencies with Filler Spell Talents

As noted in #5… Holy has to invest 8-10 talents at minimum to make Flash Heal Stronger, but you can put 1 point into Empowered Renew or Rapid Recovery, and get an instant +30-40% boost to Renew.

If you want to buff up Prayer of Healing you just need to invest a total of 2 points into Revitalizing Prayers and Prayer Circle.

So I don’t get why for 1-2 points I can buff up 2 abilities (Renew/Prayer of Healing) just as strong as investing 8-10 talents into Flash Heal.

Issue #7 - Dead Talent Nodes

These talent nodes are effectively deadzo.

  • Gale Winds - 2 points for a stronger Divine Hymn that’ll overheal more. Putting 2 points into Prismatic Echoes accomplishes the same thing.
  • Powerful Litany - This provides a very minor boost to Prayer of Healing.
  • Resonant Words - This talent is better off being a 1 point talent option with Pontfiex. Desperate Times is so much better.

How I would Fix These Issues?

Now that I’ve compiled a list of issues. How would I fix this?

Firstly, I would completely crunch down on the Prayer of Mending talents. Remove Divine Service, Say your Prayers, Epiphany, and Focused Mending. In return, you can just buff up the baseline healing of Prayer of Mending and/or add extra charges to it so that no healing is lost.

Secondly, I would trim down the talent nodes for the single-target heals, add more options to avoid filler spells you don’t want.

Third, I would address the mandatory Divine Image/Miracle Worker problem by making Miracle Worker baseline or up higher in the tree so you can’t always get it.

Fourth, I would expand the bottom of the tree with 5 options to pick from. Apotheosis/Holy Word Salvation can be moved to the bottom as well as one of those choice nodes. I would crunch down a lot of the 2 point sinks into 1 point. It should be designed in a way that if I want to get Divine Word, Lightweaver, and/or Lightwell, I should be able too on-top of Miracle Worker + Divine Image. More choices = more fun.

Fifth, I would greatly expand the talent tree with more thematically stuff that involves buffing up different abilities like Holy Words, Renew, etc. Holy Priests should be able to pick completely different playstyles to adapt to different boss fights.

Part #3 will address Playstyle issues in M+ and raid.

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I wouldnt say “all forms of content”, as Divine Word is better in PvP and questing; mostly because it offers the choice to buff healing (and save mana), or significantly improve damage on demand.

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If I were to be honest, Burning Vehemence Holy Fire is going to be the vast majority of your damage regardless because of how much buffed up it is. It’s somewhere around 500k a cast vs Rhapsody Holy Nova being half that.

Divine Word requires you to activate it and lasts only 15s whereas Divine Image replicates a 50% damage Smite each time you cast a direct damage spell. You can very easily maintain a 60%+ uptime on Divine Image in PvP or even Questing. Also, DI increases your overall healing by about 10%.

So just in terms of raw power: DI outperforms DW simply because of the high uptime on it with the 4-piece.

And if you really wanna turn DI into a DPS ability you pop Chastise + Apotheosis + Chastise and you can keep a constant 2-3 images up.

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It’s not on demand and requires a major heal to proc it. That could be a waste of Serenity rather than saving it for a critical moment.

In PvP this simply doesn’t work because the nature of it isn’t the same as M+ and Raid; Holy Priests need to contribute on-demand burst alongside DPS to land a kill.

Holy Priest burst is Divine Word + Empyreal Blaze + Trinket (Int buff) > Chastise > Mindgames > Holy Fire x3

It’s amazing in questing too… no wasted heals for Naaru to appear … just hit the burst button and kill the mobs.

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What if they added a passive bonus to this in buffing your Guardian Spirit in some way?

  • Increase max Health of target with Guardian Spirit perhaps? Or something else?

Is that a problem with the legacy nature of how Prayer of Healing works or that there is not enough talents that would synergize with it to make it worth casting?
What is the issue with it? Cast time? Healing done? Mana cost? Range and targets affected?
Would having talents to improve the shortfalls of the base spell make a difference to the perception and performance of such a spell?

I just recall loving that spell in classic and found many uses for it (heal behind line of sight, specifically going inside Blacksmith in Arathi Basin, go in corner and spam heal with Prayer to heal your party outside near flag freely and uncontested a lot of the time).

Is this because lack of other options for different play styles that doesn’t revolve as much Prayer of Mending? Or pathing issues? Or is it the idea that you dislike having so many talents dedicated to making a specific spell better?

I hear and heard similar contention with Shadow having as many Shadow Word: Death talents dedicated to making Shadow Word: Death better.

But I don’t see the issue with having numerous talents dedicated to improving a single spell. I actually like that you can focus on making a specific spell better which will find its way to becoming a more core aspect of you’re gameplay.

I think the only issue is pathing and point requirement with less interesting options.

Meaning if better talent options were offered to enhance a different spell that leans into a different build type then that would make the numerous talents dedicated towards a spell like Shadow Word: Death or Prayer of Mending a moot point if you didn’t like using the spell at all and instead built a different playstyle using different talent choices that affect a different spell altogether.

Just curious what the core reasoning is for why things are labeled as bad like too many dedicated talents to a single spell or spells like Prayer of Healing just being discounted to the extent it is.

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Essentially all of the above.

11k mana to heal for a fraction of a flash heal just isn’t worth casting at any point.

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Back in BFA Prayer of Healing with stacked up Azerite Armor Traits and a ton of mastery (50%+) was your primary raid heal. The majority of your healing was done by Echo of Light (it’d be like 80% Echo of Light - 20% PoH) because of how the traits + mastery worked.

With Shadowlands they completely neutered PoH by reducing its healing and increasing its mana cost. In DF they slightly lowered the mana cost and added a few talents, but it’s still a very underwhelming heal. We would have been an entirely irrelevant healer in Shadowlands if Flash Concentration didn’t exist because we lost our PoH healing.

PoH exists simply as a filler spell now to use when everything else is on cooldown and even then it has a steep mana cost. With all the buffs/hotfixes to Flash Heal this patch: that ability alone well outperforms PoH. Circle of Healing also does more healing than PoH and its smart AI.

PoH just seems to be like some kind of hold over limbo ability that simply exists just because. It’s like asking why do we still have Heal and Flash Heal?

The issue is that those PoM talents are just there as filler. Say your Prayers is literally just like having an extra stack of Prayers of the Virtuous. Epiphany is really like your PoM CD is reduced by 1.5-2s. Divine Service is just a flat PoM hps increase.

It’s just a lazy design because they probably ran out of ideas on how to fill the tree out. They copied and pasted the original Holy talent tree, took some of the Shadowlands covenant abilities/legendaries, and just added filler talents. Out of all the talents in the tree only about 1/5th of them are actually new additions to this expansion. The rest were in Shadowlands.

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If you intend to use PoH as a filler it definitely does more than Flash Heal, it’s just that a big part of its throughput is “hidden” behind various procs and passives - much like you wouldn’t judge Salvation just based off the raw upfront healing.

PoH is only meant to be cast when you have Prayer Circle up, and taken with Revitalizing Prayers it is still a non-significant way to proc 4pc.

PoH is also the best 0 cd Sanctify reset you can cast: Renew only provides 2 seconds(which becomes 8 seconds when Apotheosis is up) per GCD, while PoH provides 6 seconds(which becomes a whopping 24 seconds when Apotheosis is up), for slightly more than a GCD worth of cast time between Prayer Circle and Unwavering Will if your health is high.

I believe Renew filler and PoH filler based builds each have their respective fights they are better at; Renew is better on fights with a lot of movement demand and PoH is better on fights you can plant your feet down when you need to heal the raid.

So for example, I use PoH on Fyrakk because it heals 5 targets which perfectly lines up with the number of adds in a single group anyway, and feeds into Sanctify faster than trying to Renew all 5 individually.

In the meantime on Smolderon, if you don’t have a lot of haste it can be a huge pain trying to weave in PoH casts between all the tornadoes, flame pools and intermission rings you have to dodge, and sometimes you just proc Apotheosis at the worst possible moment you cannot stop to cast, and the Renew filler build is just so much better.

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