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.
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To do… Part 5: Wishlist.