Nice
Priest
Holy
Holy Word: Sanctify’s healing increased by 25%.
Heal’s healing increased by 25%.
Flash Heal healing increased by 15%.
Holy Word: Chastise’s damage increased by 30%.
Smite’s damage increased by 30%.
Shadow Word: Pain’s damage increased by 15%.
@Rita
Hold my glasses.
Holy hell what are these numbers?
Once again it’s not buffs, but Blizzard washing out the nerfs we got in 10.2. Sanctify was reduced from hitting 6 targets to 5 so buffing Sanctify by 25% just washes out the nerf.
Next week Holy will be on the same level of healing as if we came into 10.2 with no nerfs at all. 
The buffs to flash heal and heal were needed because disc has stronger single target heals. They should have buffed renew though to match the buffs to flash heal and heal.
Damage buffs were needed, but Holy needs more AOE damage for m+.
I’ll crunch numbers later when I’m not on my phone.
Anyway here’s my number crunching…
Raid:
+3% overall hps increase (factored in the buff to Sanctify + Flash Heal and the Echo of Light bonus)
+10% overall dps increase
That still puts us about -5% behind Disc in hps and still in 7th place. If we get that +5% buff we need we’ll easily slot into 3rd or 4th place.
Holy already does the most single target boss damage and that gaps getting even bigger.
M+:
+3.5% overall hps increase (Sanctify isn’t a big part of Holy’s healing compared to Serenity, but Flash Heal is)
+4-5% overall dps increase (majority of Holy’s damage comes from Holy Fire + Burning Vehemence)
Holy is still about 20% behind Disc in overall aoe dps. If they increase Holy Fire’s damage by +25% and buff Burning Vehemence some more I think it’ll match.
I mean, yay buffs! But the buffs feel pretty random?
The buffs are based on performance data. Blizzard doesn’t usually just go here’s a +10-15% hps/dps buff all at once… they do +3-5% buffs in increments targeting under-performing abilities or just giving a flat % increase. They wait another 1-2 weeks of data and then look at it again…
Damage wise it’s other healers like Resto Druids, Disc Priests, and Mistweavers got big dps buffs when 10.2 came out and Holy didn’t get anything. That’s just the case of Blizzard continuously moving up the bar for what healer dps is supposed to be.
The reason were in the state we’ve been in is because Blizzard badly overestimated how powerful our 4-piece was going to be for raid healing. They thought that we were going to be overperforming probably up in Mistweaver levels, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
The nerfs to Symbol of Hope and making Salvation harder to reset didn’t help either so I’m not going to be surprised if Holy sees some adjustments coming into 10.2.6.
The TLDR is that we basically went 2 steps forward in 10.1.5 and 3 steps backwards in 10.2 now were 2 steps forward again. Our overall hps performance is the worst its been the whole expansion because we’ve never been 7th place in any raid tier.
This is just them correcting their mistake of pre-emptively gutting HPriest going into this patch.
Overall though I still feel like the spec needs work. This expansion is probably the most HPriest has been adjusted. Looking at our talent tree, it’s no surprise: dedicating I think eight talents to Prayer of Mending and similar weird decisions should scream that the spec needs a rework of some kind.
It’s still my healer of choice. Always will be even when it’s dead last. But they are terrified of making it actually strong and consistent for some reason.
To be fair Blizzard has never made as many class adjustments in any expansion before prior to DF. They’ve also never overhauled classes in 0.5 (and 0.7) patches before.
That has to do new talent tree system and how rushed the DF beta was. Classes before were easier to balance/design before DF you didn’t have 40+ talents to pick. They basically took all the stuff from Shadowlands and Legion (legendaries + abilities + etc) and crammed them into our class trees.
The end result is power creep wise healers are significantly more powerful than in previous expansion. We overheal for a lot (40%+) and we have so many raid healing cds that you can mitigate almost every boss mechanic.
Blizzard in turn has decided to spam this raid tiers end bosses with mechanics that just one shot the raid if you don’t do them properly instead of making healing challenging.
I watching titan forged yesterday and im sure Elismere said disc ST is weak and holy was better at it. I was drinking at the time but i seem to remember that.
Holy is still about 20% behind Disc in overall aoe dps. If they increase Holy Fire’s damage by +25% and buff Burning Vehemence some more I think it’ll match.
What do you do for AOE on either spec? I guess I haven’t gotten to a level where I feel like my damage is something to stress about, but with the redesign + set bonus it doesn’t seem like spamming PtW and/or holy nova are particularly worth while. Does it become worth it for aoe damage if you don’t need to smite to get back MB?
Holy’s AOE damage is just Holy Fire + Burning Vehemence (add in Empyreal Blaze and you get 4 Holy Fires in a row), Rhapsody Holy Nova, and Divine Star.
Disc is cleave damage from Mindbender, spreading dots around with Penance, Rhapsody Holy Nova, and Divine Star/Halo. Maintaining a high uptime on Shadow Covenant will increase your damage as well.
Holy has more bursty upfront AOE damage whereas Disc is more of a ramped up AOE.
Yeah ok, that makes sense. I don’t play holy at all so I don’t know what they do really. Reading your original post I thought I was naively dropping the ball by not making more use out of holy nova.
Same gear…
Flash Heal (current retail):
Disc: 98,554
Holy: 78,006
Penance
Baseline: 140,598
Shadow Covenant: 189,412
Shadow Covenant + Power of the Darkside: 284,118
Shadow Covenant + Power of the Darkside + Harsh Discipline (1 stack) = 426,177
(You get a 40-50% uptime on Shadow Covenant)
Holy Word Serenity
Baseline: 218,816
So yeah Disc basically has equal heals to Holy and I can sit on Harsh Discipline to bust out a big single target heal on somebody…
can we pelase get an interupt / kick
What I would have liked to have seen.
But the buffs/reverts thus far are nice.
Nah they are bad buffs. Still hit less targets and the healing is meaningless vs deadly damage we cant mitigate.
Yes, and no.
On certain boss fights (and well very often in M+) you aren’t going to actually hit 5-6 targets with Sanctify because of people being spread out. A flat +25% increase actually ends up being a buff in those circumstances.
Just in terms of raw healing Flash Heal + Serenity is the bulk of your M+ healing regardless.
Got to try out the changes last night, but was on M Tindrall prog.
Sanctify does on average 610k a cast for me now (excluding Echo of Light bonus). That makes it our highest healing ability now as long as you hit 5 targets.
Flash Heal on Holy is up to 89k baseline a cast now (from 78k). If you add in just the 10% baseline Echo of Light bonus Holy’s Flash Heal is the same as Disc now.
With all these buffs to Flash Heal… Divine Image is really scaled down now. Healing Light only replicates 21% of your Flash Heal compared to 33% prior to 10.2.
Lightweaver is still very underwhelming. When you cast Flash Heal your next Heal does about 50% more healing than your Flash Heal, but if you factor in that its 1 for 1 overall just a 25% healing increase to Flash Heal.
DI still beats it out because it’s increased healing/damage to all your spells over 9s and stacks.
Now to compare damage I smacked a single target dummy for 2 minutes on both Disc and Holy with the same gear and did the same exact damage.
When I tried AOE damage I actually do 40% more overall AOE dps on Holy vs Disc. That’s in normal ideal situations where you can free cast dps spells… both specs are about equal now on true overall dps if you factor in the healing vs damage activity time.
Also looked at healing data for last 24 hours and Holy is still stuck at 7th place. +5-8% more healing should put us up with Disc.