Well yes of course, you wouldn’t run CoH or PoH there. 
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PoH is just not fun to cast. You can barely tell it’s doing anything as it tanks your mana and it often over heals with it’s poor targeting. They might as well give us a way to power it up more so that it feels impactful like how rhapsody ramps up holy nova. Clearly, they don’t want us spamming PoH. Those Prayerful Litany, Prayer Circle, and Sanctified Prayer talents don’t cut it imo.
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Part 3 - M+ Issues
Disclaimer:
To start, during Seasons 1 and 2, I pushed high keys on Holy but never attained the seasonal title, mainly due to burnout from running keys halfway through the season. I primarily pug and eventually you hit a wall and finding a consistent group that doesn’t disband after 1-2 weeks is pretty hard.
In Season 3, I transitioned to playing Disc for M+ (while still raiding as Holy). I chose to switch primarily because of my dissatisfaction with how Holy was treated at the start of 10.2 and the significant overhauls to Disc, which resolved many of the issues I had with that spec.
Since I have knowledge of both specs I’ll be able to make some comparisons.
M+ Issue #1 Part 1 - Lack of AOE heals and over reliance on single target heals
Holy is currently entirely reliant on casting single target heals to get through every healing situation, especially after receiving a +40% buff to them this season.
Holy Word Serenity, Flash Heal (including Trail of Light), Divine Image (Healing Light), and Echo of Light healing comprise around 70%+ of your total healing in M+. The remaining percentage consists of Prayer of Mending, Holy Word Sanctify, and other heals.
Compared to Disc or many other healers, Holy lacks significantly in the set-and-forget AOE healing department. Holy Priests have only Holy Word Sanctify, which requires everyone to stand in the same spot, Prayer of Mending, which has limited charges, and Circle of Healing which doesn’t do a lot of healing.
Due to the scarcity of group heals, Holy Priests need to cast on average of 50-100% more spells to achieve the same amount of healing in the group as Monks, Disc Priests, and Holy Paladins. A comparison of logs reveals that an H Priest can cast 400+ spells in some dungeons, while a Disc Priest will cast almost half that amount.
The primary reason for this discrepancy is that when multiple people are <90% HP, Holy Priests need to manually top them off one at a time, whereas Disc Priests can keep Atonement up and heal them passively for free.
How to address this issue? See below.
M+ Issue #1 Part 2 - Addressing the lack of group healing
Holy requires enhancements in its group healing capabilities.
- Divine Hymn needs a significant buff for M+. Currently, it pales in comparison to Ultimate Penitence, which provides 2.5 times the healing and a 50% absorb shield. Allowing movement while channeling and substantially increasing Divine Hymn’s healing potency would be beneficial.
- Allow us to do light group heals while casting DPS spells. This doesn’t entail a full-blown Disc approach but rather allowing Smite or Holy Fire to heal a random person for a percentage of its damage. This helps in healing situations where a few Smite casts can top off individuals at 80% HP without wasting GCDs on Flash Heal.
- Introduce passive group healing akin to Tyr’s Deliverance. Implementing an ability like Lightwell, which emits constant AOE heals to the group over a prolonged duration, would address light healing situations and counter RoT auras.
- Alternatively, double the charges of Prayer of Mending in M+. Currently, the issue with Prayer of Mending is that it disappears instantly if there’s a rot aura.
- Provide easier access to Divine Word. Combining Divine Word with Sanctify through Divine Image and Miracle Worker would create a potent combo.
- Buff Prayer of Healing in M+. Its current potency is inadequate, providing only 30-50k healing per target when everyone has HP pools of 800k+.
Overall, the aim should be to reduce the necessity of casting Flash Heal 200+ times in a dungeon.
M+ Issue #2 - Mana Problems
The mana contrast between Disc and Holy is stark. With the current 4-piece bonus on Disc, you can achieve a 40-50% uptime on Mindbender and easily attain over 400k mana per dungeon.
In contrast, Holy relies mainly on Throes of Pain, Symbol of Hope, and a 3-minute Shadowfiend. Compared to Disc, it’s very easy to run out of mana if you’re not careful.
Holy needs a better method of mana regeneration that doesn’t involve manually tab-targeting every single mob and casting SWP. On Disc, you can spread Purge the Wicked (your SWP equivalent) around with Penance for free.
Holy could benefit from something similar and/or a more efficient passive mana regeneration method comparable to Disc’s.
M+ Issue #3 - Clunky Empyreal Blaze Gameplay
Having to cast the same ability three times in a row with Empyreal Blaze feels clunky. It would be preferable to unleash one big burst of AOE or have a set-and-forget ground AOE. Additionally, Empyreal Blaze lacks unique animations or sound effects.
M+ Issue #4 - Lack of Group Utility
Holy significantly lacks M+ utility compared to Disc.
Disc possesses Lenience (-3% group-wide damage reduction), Power Word Barrier (group-wide defensive), Rapture (allows you to absorb shield the group), and Pain Suppression (with 2 charges).
In contrast, Holy only has Guardian Spirit and Symbol of Hope (which was significantly nerfed). How can this issue be addressed?
- Add an interrupt for Holy/Disc.
- Reinstate Shining Force for Holy/Disc.
- Revert the nerfs to Symbol of Hope for M+.
- Consider a significant buff to the healing bonus provided by Divine Hymn for M+ (perhaps +50% healing taken).
- Reintroduce Fae Guardians.
- Provide Holy with a battle-res or some form of unique utility that Disc/Shadow doesn’t possess.
- I’m sure everyone has more ideas.
–
To do… Part 4 - Raid Issues.
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Easy enough to avoid issues in raid by giving it the Atonement treatment: Healing increased by (?) while not in a raid.
We have 2 that would tie very much into our spec theme. The problem is 1 is gated by PvP (Ray of Hope), and the other is gated by a mandatory talent (Miracle Worker).
If Restitution were more accessible, and, doesn’t conflict with Afterlife, then we can really lean into Spirit of Redemption, and really lean into that “and even heal from beyond the grave.” Afterlife would address range issues with us being rooted in place for the additional ~8 seconds, and, as long as the rez component doesn’t break Restitution, gives us an unconventional, “inconsequential” BR.
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Hymn is so weak now in M+ that in certain situations you have to pre-cast it to start ramping its healing increase bonus before the damage event even starts, or it can’t keep up (looking at you, Shade of Xavius). That’s pretty abysmal, even before we get into how easy it is to be forced to lose the entire cooldown by randomly targeted floor effects in a lot of situations.
My favorite is when I cast a fresh PoM just as an existing one jumps to the same target. Some kind of protection effect where different PoMs colliding on the same target cause one to automatically jump to a different target instead of combining their stacks would be nice.
Frankly though, I just dislike PoM in general. It’s little more than a maintenance buff that I have so little to do with beyond casting it on CD that I hardly even think of it in terms of being a heal, and more about the proc effects that ride off of its bounces, which just adds to my frustration with so many of our talents in both the General and Holy trees being based on it.
I’d happily trade it in for a short CD version of HW: Salvation’s effect of mass-casting low stacks since raid-wide damage events are the only times I actually feel the impact of its healing anyway. Maybe a 30 second CD to cast 2 stacks on PoM on up to 5 players.
I’m wary of increasing PoH to be viable in M+, because I don’t love any of the options I’d have to give up to spec into it and whatever follow up talents would surely be required to get it to that viable space. If this happens, it definitely needs to be accompanied by some tree renovations.
If we do want to go the PoH route, though, I think at this point that Lightweaver should become either baseline, or be moved much higher in the tree, made a 1 point node, and affect both Heal and Prayer of Healing.
This is minor, but it’s always felt backwards as heck that the spec literally called Holy is still casting Shadow Word: Pain as a major piece of its damage profile, while Disc, the holy/shadow crossing spec replaces it with the holy damage Purge the Wicked. Shouldn’t these be swapped?
There is something to be said for the current version allowing you to roll Holy Fire DoTs on multiple mobs simultaneously, but that could be just as easily fixed by causing that big initial blast to apply said DoT to all affected targets. Really though, I mainly wish my AoE damage weren’t so limited to a 1/minute CD and manually multi-dotting SW:P.
I don’t even spec into Symbol for M+, because even at its previous value it’s entirely dependent on other players actually using their defensives themselves. It requires either voice communication or addons to track the rest of your party’s CDs to know when you’re actually going to get any value out of it, and then depends on them actually using said CDs when you need them to.
I’d much rather Symbol just turn into a direct external DR from the casting priest in M+ (maybe a choice node talent?), or if we want to stay a little truer to the current effect, it could activate the effects of all affected players’ relevant defensive CDs for the duration of the channel, without putting them on CD.
By the Light, yes, please. The number of times I’ve had to compensate for tunnel-visioning party members with Psychic Scream or HW: Chastise +Censure as pseudo interrupts is staggering, and screw me if any major interrupts are on CC-immune mobs.
Battle rez keeps coming up as something Holy is uniquely lacking among healers, but really only 2 healers have access to it currently: Holy paladins and Resto druids. I’m not at all counting Ancestral Protection Totem, because that stupid thing’s use requirements are so tight it’s only remotely feasible in situations where the group is planning for someone to die.
I’d be more inclined to change Guardian Angel’s effect slightly so that Guardian Spirit’s CD is always 1 minute, but if its Cheat Death effect triggers, that target gets a Forbearance debuff that they can’t receive GS again for a while. GS is an iconic CD for the spec and its function as an external Cheat Death is pretty strong and unique, but having its CD effectively tripled if you use it when you most need it feels pretty awful and can lead to hesitancy to use it exactly when it’s the smartest thing to do.
This interaction was one of the most fun I had with Holy priest in many expansions.
Being able to kill myself to go spirit of redemption, throw big heals and then rez the dead and myself was top tier fantasy healer and holy priest ever
A little input from the pvp side of things.
Hpriest M+ mana issues extend into pvp. IMO Holy OOMs faster in BGs than most other healers. Shadowfiend and Symbol of Hope does very little. Enlightenment feels like it does nothing as it’s passive and baked into the spec already - everyone takes it. The massively nerfed mana regen rates in pvp also reduces how much Enlightenment contributes. Your best mana return is simply Surge of Light procs and casting while in Spirit of Redeemer form.
The severe lack of useful mobility for priest is perhaps not impacting pve much, but pvp is another story. I get they want to give classes weakness, niches and avoid over-homogenizing everything. However, priest has become too much of a snail and as a healer it’s difficult to get around the map to objectives with even minimal enemy interference - let alone when a DK is holding you in water for the entirety of the BG. This has sometimes made priest healers a liability in BGs compared to classes like monk and evoker that can zip around the map and are unlikely to be kidnapped.
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Part 4 - Raid Issues
I will start off by saying that I currently enjoy how Holy Priest plays in raids. It’s far more engaging than it was back in Shadowlands. Also, I’m not sure why Holy gets the reputation as being the “ez-mode” healer when, in reality, it’s fairly complex.
You need to constantly manage what abilities you’re going to use for each round of raid damage, monitor multiple procs, and adjust around your tier set bonuses.
Issue #1 - Throttled by Cooldowns/Weak Filler Spells
Holy, in its current form, is throttled by abilities that have cooldowns, and filler spells like Prayer of Healing, Renew, and Flash Heal/Heal do a fraction as much healing as your cooldown abilities.
Cooldown Abilities (all excluding Echo of Light + 2 piece Renew):
- Holy Word Sanctify - 667.7k avg heal
- Holy Word Serenity - 378.8k avg heal
- Circle of Healing - 391.2k avg heal
- Prayer of Mending - 305.1k avg heal (looks low, but factor in Benediction)
- Holy Nova (20 stacks of Rhapsody) - 557.1k avg heal
- Halo - 565.k avg heal
Filler Spells (all excluding Echo of Light bonus):
- Flash Heal - 139.1k avg heal
- Renew - 74.2k avg heal (w/ Rapid Recovery)
- Prayer of Healing - 134.2k avg heal
As you can see, our filler spells barely move health bars, and realistically they contribute to <3% of your overall healing. Also, spam casting Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing ooms you without contributing much to HPS.
So the TL;DR is that Holy is basically throttled by its cooldowns, and what you cast in between them largely doesn’t do much at all. It’s not like Shadowlands where Heal would be your #1 heal with Flash Concentration.
I would like to see more power put into filler spells.
Issue #2 - No real options to play differently
Outside of picking Halo or Divine Star and what filler spell you want to use, Holy plays exactly the same way in raids. I would personally like to see more playstyle options for Holy where you can change how you play on different boss fights.
Issue #3 - Holy only performs well on stacked fights
With how Rhapsody and Sanctify work, Holy only performs well on fights where the raid is stacked. If you’re on spread fights like Nymue where you can’t hit 5 consistent targets with Sanctify, your HPS suffers a lot.
Issue #4 - Symbol of Hope nerfs
Symbol of Hope was Holy’s only real raid utility outside of Divine Hymn, and it was massively nerfed to near uselessness. I would like to see this restored back to the old 60s, to be honest.
Issue #5 - Echo of Light still massively overheals
Even with the change of Echo of Light down to 4s instead of 6s, Echo of Light still overheals 40-50%+. With the overhaul to Mastery, I lost -5% mastery between 10.1.5 and 10.2. So overall, I net lost that mastery and gained no additional benefit.
Issue #6 - Holy Word Salvation takes forever to reset
With the S3 tier set bonus, it takes 2x more Holy Words to reset Holy Word Salvation, and it just feels like it takes an eternity. It’s well over 30+ casts instead of 15 to reset Salvation now.
Issue #7 - Divine Hymn hassles
Divine Hymn is a hassle to use on fights where there’s random AOE or stuff to avoid flung all over the place. It would be nice to be able to move like Resto Druids can with their talent into Tranquility while channeling Hymn.
Issue #8 - Mana Issues
Every healer is going to complain about mana, but Disc compared to Holy has far better mana regen in raids. They can get 150-200k+ mana back from Mindbender on boss fights where Holy just has to chug along getting 1/5th that back from Shadowfiend.
If you’re playing a PoH build, you need to be especially cautious of your mana usage because of how much mana PoH costs.
Issue #9 - Has to be handheld on boss mechanics
Both Disc/Holy Priests share this problem where they can’t do boss mechanics without being handheld by other players.
Mythic Raz pushed Priests off the platform without rescues, and on Mythic Tindral, you need a Freedom or Hunter root removal just to immune the roots.
It would be nice to be able to do boss fights without needing to depend on somebody else to save me because if your raid is short on root dispels or evokers, you’re more or less SOL.
Issue #10 - Limited heals while moving
Holy has very limited heals to cast while moving around. You basically just have Holy Words, Renew, PWS, PoM, and CoH. All of these abilities except for Renew have cooldowns.
It’s noticeable when you’re doing the Dreamrend fight on Mythic Fyrakk because you’re being sucked in and have to avoid balls that one shot you.
Issue #11 - Low HPS in 10.2
I’m not going to rehash the issues about 10.2 as that was done in part #1.
I will just like to point out that Holy is 7th place in HPS across the board in Mythic. We still need some HPS buffs, probably around 5-6%, to get us out of the bottom.
–
To do… Part 5: Wishlist.
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Just want to chip in quick. First, thanks for the updates! I did want to say I don’t see healing while moving as a problem. Unless the fight keeps us moving for an extended period of time, we have enough instant casts for short intermittent movement phases to the point I wouldn’t even say that’s our weakness anymore.
No one takes Divine Word, everyone takes Divine Image for PvP.
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No offence intended by this but you don’t actively participate in PvP outside of doing RBG’s and a few Shuffles on this Priest meanwhile the entirety of the top 50 HPriests in every bracket except for 5 of them in 2v2 take Divine Image (and only 2 of them in 2v2 take Divine Word).
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The “mob mentality” argument isn’t actually an argument against the points Ive made.
Arena is only one part of PvP. Just because my participation is low, doesnt invalidate what I’ve outlined.
I played around with Lightwell +Divine Word > Miracle Worker + Divine Image last season for battlegrounds. It was kind of fun getting to use Divine Word and certain BGs Lightwell is pretty useful. I rationalized it as Miracle Worker not doing much after the initial serenity charge was used.
Now that we have a tier focused around getting more holy words off it’s really difficult to justify dropping Divine Image. I still swap from Mircle Worker to Lightwell for some battleground maps but I never drop Divine Image anymore. Playing without our current tier will probably feel awful by comparison.
I’d like to see a talent added, similar to acid rain, that makes your holy word sanctify also do aoe damage when you cast it. That way in m+, when we aren’t all grouped up, it doesn’t feel like a waste to cast it. Maybe it can just spread around shadow word pain.
You can call it Holy Grenade.
Except it does because participation is a requirement to develop skill in anything and that includes Arena.
Then shall thou count to three. No more, no less.
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The holy hand grenade of antioch!
Holy’s current M+ design is just clunky is the best way to describe it.
The lack of consistent passive AOE heals and needing to rely on using Flash Heal to top every single person from <100% to 100% is the main issue. I compared logs of Disc vs Holy and on average the Holy Priest needs to cast 57% more healing spells in the same key to do the same amount of hps.
Only Resto Druids are as gcd demanding as Holy Priests in keys due to the nature of how hots work.
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Give us the knockback !!! Also love ur write up and im using ur rapid recovery renew build! Appreciate it! 
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The worst update for any low healer class like they are nerfing holy priest to the ground.