So I’ve been running a lot of +20 mythics as Holy spec but I rarely time them, and on several occasions I’ve been told it’s because I’m not putting out enough DPS to help the group. I get around 8K DPS on overall average, sometimes up to 12K DPS on boss fights. My activity is always second highest only to the tank being first, meaning I’m always healing or DPSing (or doing something). I spam damage spells at every opportunity without a second of downtime.
OK, so my questions are:
1.) How does that DPS compare to other holy priests in Mythics?
2.) Is my DPS bad? Average? Decent? (Bec. apparently resto druids top 22K DPS easy)
3.) Is it a Holy spec issue with priests or maybe MY talent spec? I could move some points into damage talents, but that of course takes away from my healing throughput so…
4.) What do I do?
Take what I say with a grain of salt.
The first thing to address is the idea that your DPS is why the keys aren’t being timed. While you could be doing more damage, not timing 20s due to a lack of damage that isn’t caused by DPS bleeding to death is on the DPS, full stop. So let’s get that out of the way.
With your build, that sounds close to right if you’re using like half of your Divine Words on damage.
I use two damage trinkets and Phial of Glacial Fury. You can also use Potion of Shocking Disclosure for massive AoE damage. I can usually still do at least 15k DPS even in rough healing dungeons running Burning Vehemence, but 22-25k is doable depending. Speaking of, BV is where a lot of our damage is.
I average around 18-24k dps in keys with my highest overall being 28.4k in AA.
Here’s a number of ways to increase your dps.
- Get a Ragefeather Trinket = can easily be your #1-2 highest damaging ability.
- Use Phials of Frozen Fury = adds millions of extra free damage.
- Use shocking disclosure pots on cd (can pre-pot before key timer as well).
- Make sure you’re hitting Holy Fire + Divine Star on cd. Tab SWP everything and squeeze in some smites.
- Stat priority is versatility / haste > crit > mastery.
- Talent into Empyreal Blaze > Searing Light > Burning Vehemence for maximum damage.
Next week they’re buffing Burning Vehemence and Divine Image. With Divine Image each damage spell you cast will cast out a 60% damage smite so the damage will add up. Holy should easily be able to do 30k+ dps then on the high end.
That is not the reason you aren’t timing 20s. Hpriest dps is trash but you could do zero dps and time 20s.
Healer dps is really a skill thing though because I’ve done +20s with healers that only do 4-6k dps with plenty of time left. It’s really once you start pushing +23s… 24s… that every little inch of dps from tank and healer matters more.
Some specs do higher dps than others like Resto Shamans completely cremate everyone else and will definitely be FOTM next season after the Evoker nerfs hit next week.
Personally I’d rather they’d just given Holy a flat % damage buff instead of doubling down on Burning Vehemence. The difference with and without Burning Vehemence is going to be quite big.
Acid rain is getting nerfed too isn’t it? I don’t think evokers and shamans do unreasonable dps. I think every other healer is pretty low. Burning Vehemence is 2 points in a crappy spot whereas druids get sunfire in the class tree. It seems pretty unfair.
From what I’ve seen with the pug healers I’ve had I think Holy Priests are usually on the lower end for damage, I’ve seen anywhere from virtually no damage (like 2-3k DPS) to around 15k DPS. I think for Resto Druids I usually see them at around 15-17k but again I’ve also had some doing virtually no damage.
That said I don’t think it’s thaat necessary for a +20 key to have the healer pump a lot of DPS, it helps sure and it’s appreciated but I’ve also had plenty of timed ones with virtually no damage from the healer and I wouldn’t blame it on low healer damage for any of the untimed ones, it was always something else that caused a wipe or wasted us a lot time.
Now for the other pug healers I’ve had I think for Evoker they are usually between 15 to 30k but I think I’ve seen 40k (for overall)… Resto Shamans and MW Monks I normally see them around 23-25k, Disc Priest usually goes from like 15 to 28k. Not sure about Holy Paladins but I think it’s on the lower end too.
Honestly just take Burning Vehemence. That with empyreal Blaze on cooldown even if you’re doing nothing else to do damage will net you like 12-13k DPS.
It sounds like you could contribute 3-4k more (without compromising your healing by using dps trinkets/phials) from just improving your rotation.
Realistically, holy needs something like a 75% damage buff to be competitive. The talent buffs in 10.0.7, along with nerfs to other healers, should do a lot to close the gap, but they’ll still be behind. There’s nothing they can do to match insane passive one-pointer talents like Acid rain and Vigil or the efficiency of Disintegrate.
Is it unreasonable for dps to criticize the healer for a lack of damage? I don’t think so, provided they’re keeping up with CC to give you some breathing room. I’d definitely notice if a shadow priest did zero off-healing, even if it wasn’t totally necessary to keep the group alive.
It’s easily possible for good players to time a +20 with the healer doing zero damage, but that doesn’t mean you should expect to get carried. The difference between a healer pulling 30k vs 5k DPS is massive when you’re not wiping and only missing timers by a couple minutes.
Because the Priest DEV plays a druid, didn’t you know?
They really need to make smite castable while moving for holy priests only.
Another helpful idea is to add a 2 point talent that gives smite a chance to be instant cast when using any holy spell. The first talent point gives it a 16% chance to be instant and the second talent point gives it a 33% chance using ANY holy spell (healing or damage).
Holy really needs a fire-and-forget kind of AOE because damage buffs are kind of pointless if it’s dependent on you casting them. If things are healing intensive I don’t really do much offensive casts at all. Also, all of our frontloaded damage is tied around Empyreal Blaze which isn’t really a fun ability to use.
I miss Boon of the Ascended because you activated it, did immediate AOE, and just casted Ascended Blasts which also healed the group. You bursted out all your damage in the first 10s of the pull.
Shadow crash for Holy would work out because you can just immediately splash out some AOE and SWP everything in the trash pull.
Either way next week with 10.0.7 it should be possible for Holy to do 30k+ overall dps on the high end, but I have really no clue what Blizzards dps goals are for healers this season. I thought 20k was a good benchmark for everyone, but now is it 30k… 40k?
It is beyond awful. It takes me about 10 minutes to kill one mob.
Don’t worry guy! We will one day get Holy Word: Cremation!
It do AOE and give all targets the Holy Fire dot! So much damage!
Haven’t run a key with with DI, but just against target dummy I’m doing 40k AOE + additional 20k from Divine Image. You can use Apotheosis as a dps cooldown… start with Chastise → Apo → PI/Chastise → Empyreal Blaze and you can get 2-3 images out at same time. It’s about a 4 smite reset while in Apothesis for another DI.
I’m curious if heals from DI will remove Grievous stacks.
This is sexy.
Also, do you recommend Ragefeather or Eye of Skovald? My vault had the audacity to drop a Mote of Sanctification with Leech after not getting it from the actual dungeon (although at 408 ilvl due to laziness). So now I’m gonna replace one or the other.
My Eye of Skovald seems to always do a lot more damage, but I wonder if the Ragefeather gets better at higher key levels.
Details isn’t tracking DI naaru damage anymore and none of my friends are seeing its damage either. 
How are you seeing it?
You have to turn on everything to see it. Even on warcraftlogs it shows separate.
It used to show it as a separate instance, but now I just don’t see it at all. I’ll explore the settings I suppose. Skada worked fine and a test run of DI in a dungeon with 0 shocking disclosures I came out of it with 29k DPS. DI made up about 8% of that.
I also tested out rhapsody and it’s actually pretty nice now. Basically I’m letting it stack to 20, running in and hitting it. A couple times I spammed it when damage was low and HF/Star were on CD. Did another 3 mil in the dungeon.
I played around with Rhapsody and the damage seemed decent. The proper way to use it was to just fire off Holy Fire + Divine Star and then weave in a Holy Nova cast while everything was on cd.
DI + Holy Nova seems to increase the damage by quite a bit. Lights Eruption does about 60% of Holy Novas damage.
Holy Nova = 4658 damage x5 = 23290
Lights Eruption = 2927 damage (seems target capped at 5) = 14635 per image
37925 damage a cast on 1 image
52560 damage a cast on 2 image.
This is still less than Divine Star + Holy Fire, but still almost double a Smite cast with DI. However, Holy Nova does not reset your Chastise so it’s a catch-22.