Happy dance y’all.
Though I do wonder, how many holy priests play with shadow word:death? 
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This on top of the prior 10% damage increase (I hope) 
Now the people who were mean to me will feel stupid. Hooray for Holy dps!
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The spec really needs more options to DPS without having to stop healing, like they added with that Shadowfiend talent, e.g. (which is too niche to make a difference, but it’s the right idea).
Hpriest DPS has been kind of messed up ever since they put in the last minute mega-nerfs to Empyreal Blaze and Mindgames in beta (along with other giant nerfs). More band-aids but not really addressing the main issue, which is kind of on-par for priest this expac. Nice to see Holy Word: Chastise getting some love, though - that’s been embarrassingly undertuned for a loooong time now for a holy word.
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One thing to note is that the 10% Holy Fire bonus would also apply to Burning Vehemence. The buffs above are only about a 1.5-2k dps upgrade in M+ if you take all the dps talents and 500-800 in raid.
I don’t know how many dps buffs we’ve gotten over the last few months. This is like the 5th or 6th time? At the end of the day it’s not addressing the core issue: if Holy Priests aren’t pushing their dps buttons, they aren’t doing damage. A talent like Natures Vigil where you can just get free damage while healing would go a long way. Even something like Shadow Crash where you can just quick spread SWP around so you can continue deal damage even when things are hectic.
The 10% buff when 10.1.5 comes is due to them nerfing the Annulet ring so it’s more one hand washes the other. What matters more in 10.1.5 is Burning Vehemence being moved up higher in the tree making it far more accessible.
I am more exited about these buffs paired with this ^. 
They have data showing Hpriests aren’t doing damage, but it seems like they can’t figure out why Hpriests aren’t doing damage, so they keep aura buffing the class.
At this point, they should just redesign the spec.
Holy DPS is broken and does not feel worth it to me. This is very different from back in Shadowlands where contributing DPS felt more valuable. When I analyze the Details breakdown at the end of a 5-man the numbers are just pathetic. Often overall healing is barely 50-55% and DPS is <5%. It’s no wonder groups are running without a healer. Just get a buffed up tank and some hybrid classes and the group is good to go.
It seems like this is all by design right now and it is not fun to me.
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Unfortunately while they buffed a few damage spells they nerfed our biggest damage spell Catharsis. The Catharsis nerf will simply offset these small damage buffs. I know most holy priests aren’t using Catharsis in pvp which is even more reason to not nerf it for holy.
I played only a bit the first month of DF and came back and been leveling my DPS toons a bit with the XP buff…
And wow, I didn’t realize how bad it was, you expect low DPS on a healer but this is like Vanilla levels of disparity between real DPS and what healers can do.
What in the world have I missed the past 6 months or so that healers have such poor DPS, even relative to tanks? Is priest just in its own category or what the heck?
Well, how it is now: healers only really contribute 10-15% of the groups overall dps. The timers this season are super lenient to the point that a healer doesn’t even really need to do dps to time keys.
They’re removing Searing Light, sounds like a nerf to me…
I didn’t even take Searing Light because it’s only a 200-400 dps loss. Moving up Burning Vehemence in its spot as a 1 point talent is a much more massive dps increase. It’s a 5-10k dps increase if you mash Holy Fire on cd.
The main benefit though is going to have 2 freed up talent points on the bottom of the tree.
Was anyone really that thrilled with Searing Light? 25% buff to Smite and Holy Nova but only if affected by Holy Fire? What is Holy Fire like Unstable Affliction now?
Anyhow at the same time as they started on these changes they buffed Holy Fire twice (15% and 25% was it?) and Smite like 30% at least once, so really you can just look at it as baking in the power directly without the gimmick or talent points.
The new interesting choice they’ve opened up removing Searing Light is now you have to choose either the random Apotheosis buff or the random PoM reset to get to Miracle Worker… both make the spec even more a game of whack a mole. Both are APM hogs to manage effectively.
When Empyreal Blaze had a 30s cd it was actually a decent talent because you had a 100% uptime on Holy Fire. However, the lack of being able to spread the Holy Fire dot didn’t really help.
Most of the buffs are aimed at raid damage because H Priests don’t take any dps talents so you’re just relying on your raw single target casts. I can only really use dps spells for the first quarter of a raid fight because the group damage picks up and I spend most of my time casting healing spells.
Answered Prayers is actually really strong this season due to our 2-piece bonus. I get 15-20 procs of it during a dungeon and its guaranteed 1-2 times on a boss fight so it really helps inject you with a ton of Holy Words. Between that and Apotheosis I’m usually fully charged constantly with Holy Words during trash as well.
Desperate Times is pretty solid as well because on high key tyrannicals there’s a lot of boss mechanics that hit the group for 80% of their hp bar and having that extra +30% healing (Twist of Fate + Desperate Times) lets you full hp people pretty fast.
There’s other choice options of well. Light of the Naaru, Pontfiex, Empowered Renew, etc. so it’s more adjust to the dungeon kind of deal.
I need to test the new Epiphany talent in a dungeon and raid because all it did on the PTR was reset your PoM cd… so at most you’re saving 2-3s off your PoM resets which can lead to more Answered Prayers + healing. If it’s too much bad RNG I probably won’t use it.
Haha yep, we were both there. Hpriest damage really fell apart when they mega-nerfed Empyreal Blaze didn’t it, on top of across the board nerfs and then nuking Mindgames for added insult.
Well at the rate they’re going in patch 10.1.7.3 hotfix 974453 they’ll give PoM an AoE damage effect and maybe they’ll resort to giving Divine Image an auto-attack. 
I’d assume Epiphany is supposed to be the better dungeon talent vs. Answered Prayers? I just can’t wrap my head around the talent as a concept (in light of the other 7 talents or buffs to PoM) - it’s already asking a lot to keep PoM rolling on CD and the stacks are crazy now. How much is too much PoM? At least Answered Prayers opens up the opportunity for more holy words.
Look at my log from +23 Uldaman.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/cby4C39AJFfajRkY/#fight=last&type=healing&source=6
You mash PoM on cd in dungeons and with all the PoM talents it becomes your #1-2 highest healing ability.
I track my Answered Prayers buff during the dungeon with a WeakAura and it only shows when I have 35+ stacks. Once it triggers I spam Heals to reset my Holy Words. Inbetween Answered Prayers procs I usually trigger Apotheosis.
You can see under buffs I had Apotheosis 36 times during that dungeon. It was about one Answered Prayers proc every 1.5 minutes. On bosses it was usually 2-3 procs. If you stagger Apotheosis on a long 3-4 minute fight you can get 5-6 total Apotheosis.
Having a lot of Holy Words = high uptime on Divine Image of about 60-75% = constantly increased healing/damage.
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That’s actually a really good idea. I’m sure that WeakAura would be really helpful for people, similar to your Flash Concentration WA to help set-up the Apotheosis phase.
Ahhh right, I keep forgetting since I just came back that Divine Image is such a powerful 100% proc now. Having more holy words doesn’t just mean more healing throughput from the spells themselves but also the pet Naaru and the possibility for more damage too. Even more of an argument for Answered Prayers then.
I’m trying to tinker with some build ideas come tomorrow though.
The Enlightnment talent isn’t really necessary if you have the Rashok trinket, but I can also dump a point out of Divine Hymn because I only press it 1-2 times a dungeon if at all.
So it’d be dump Divine Hymn for Censure or Afterlife or keep it.