And now, for some more concrete feedback on existing problems with our specialization that I know of. If you’ve read previous feedback posts of mine, there won’t be much new here. (Because nothing has changed). I will try to break up the posts into smaller chunks so people can approve or disapprove of specific insights more easily with likes, that Blizzard can see which parts might truly unite holy priest community sentiment versus what is only my own opinion that does not find resonance with my fellow holy priests.
Holy Tree Feedback - new changes
Divine Hymn changes
I appreciate us getting guardian spirit during our channeling as a quality of life upgrade. It will help the specific scenario of not wanting to cancel a channel if a swirly comes out right as you cast it.
That said: why do druids get the same idea (60% hp shield) and knockback protection??? Priests being required to get rescued by evokers during knockbacks is a meme. You couldn’t give us the same benefit?
Resonant energy changes
No real opinion on this other than vague puzzlement at the 2% nerf.
Holy Tree Feedback - current version
Apex Talent
All four of our apex talents have problems.
Our Apex talents 2/4 & 3/4 are literally aura buff placeholders. It’s terrible and shows a lack of consideration. Holy priests (angrily) meme about us getting nothing but aura buffs, (it’s a definite trend) but having our apex talents be aura buffs really goes all in on the concept. It’s the last thing you want to see in something that’s supposed to make excited to be able to get it. We don’t “get” to take it, were numerically coerced into taking it because we’re too strongly penalized if we don’t.
Our first point (1/4) is the most bearable, but also I would argue is conceptually flawed. Healers do not like RNG. Give us something deterministically strong rather than something randomly strong any day, because when people in our hands are dying we don’t want to be praying for a lucky proc.
Our fourth point (4/4) is the worst. It creates a very weird tension when in Apotheosis in that it’s suddenly very confusing whether you should be doing absolutely nothing but spamming Benediction or if you should actually cast Prayer of Healing when healing your group. It’s probably one of the questions I see get asked most often by newbie priests, and that our apex of apex talents is confusing on the “newbie friendly healer” is another sad example of the design failure.
If anything, it should be a talent in the Oracle tree, giving Oracle access to more AoE healing during apotheosis since most oracle builds don’t take PoH. Replace the silly ‘adds two more seconds to guardian spirit’ talent which is just wasting space.
Ultimate Serenity
Can be summarized as: Decent talent in a bad place. Why is this a capstone? As-is, you should have it as a choice node with Sanctify.
- It’s our only capstone that costs two talent points - the point of the capstone itself and the point we spent to gain Sanctify that has now been negated. It feels bizarre (and bad) to be forced to spend a talent point to gain a spell only to later spend another talent point to remove that spell. It’d be one thing if we could avoid taking Sanctify in the first place, but it is literally impossible due to where the minimum talent breakpoints are.
- Placement location and pathing: the decision to put a talent that takes away one of our spells directly under two talent node paths that buff the spell being taken away is… certainly a choice.
- It takes away yet another spell, as well as specifically another instant cast spell for mobility high phases.
- It doesn’t function as written - the 15% splash heal does not actually reflect the amount of healing you do. A critical ultimate serenity on a guardian spirit’d target doesn’t do any more AoE splash healing than a normal one.
- It’s taken currently by almost every priest not because it’s that good but because it’s competitor (sanctify) is tuned to be deliberately completely terrible.
- If it stays as a capstone, it needs something more to it in order to justify it’s two talent-point cost. Maybe have Miracle Worker double-dip in application to it, so priests have three charges of Serenity, not two.
Restitution as a choice node
Restitution’s placement currently feels very punishing. Cheat death versus being able to actually help the tank or have an external defensive for a DPS every minute feels terrible. Yes, cheat death’s are powerful, but we’re far from the only class to have one, and other classes’ conditions are far more lenient.
Right now I take restitution in heroic raid, for example, just for wipe recovery. It’s required utility being sacrificed against having a good external. Utility should make you feel good, not like you’re making a sacrifice for your group.
Guardian Spirit
Priests often comment it feels like we have some of the worse defensives in the game, but that’s not really true when you think of guardian spirit. It’s one of the best defensive in the game, it’s just brutally punishing if you use it as a defensive.
Instead of choice noding Guardian Angel with cheat-death talent, a more interesting choice would be two things that affected GS itself. Something like: 1-min GS if no cheat death vs 2 min GS whether it procs cheat death or not. Or vs two charges of GS at the 3min CD.
Trail of Light
Trail of Light’s previous position made a lot of sense feeding into Lightweaver when Lightweaver was all about single target triage healing. Now that Lightweaver has been changed to be all about AoE healing via PoH, moving Trail of Light more towards the middle of the tree (closer to where Healing Focus now is) allows for a more coherent tree and single target playstyle.
It also feels pretty underwhelming now, where we’re more likely to need on-demand high level cleave healing not constant low level cleave. Turning it (or choice noding it) into a strong cooldown (“for eight seconds after casting serenity, 100% of flash healing is replicated to the previous target”) is one way to potentially improve it. Another way to strengthen it would be to make it apply to replicate serenity as well as flash heal.
Mana Management Talents
Passive mana management talents don’t feel good, because if you’re running out of mana the answer will now be not ‘play better’ but ‘sacrifice talents that boost healing power for mana efficiency talents’. This is particularly painful in that you’re likely ONLY running out of mana when you need high sustained throughput HPS - that is, when you least want to have to make that trade.
When we had heal and renew (when renew was mana efficient for a lot of healing with the drawback of it being a HoT) we could chose to swap to those spells when mana was tight, but blast with PoH and flash heal when necessary. Now we only have PoH and flash heal, and either you have enough mana to get through the demands of healing or you don’t. You can’t play smart mana wise by using more efficient spells (those are now gone). You can’t play smart mana wise by remembering to shadowfiend early or by making sure to use Symbol of Hope strategically and before you mana pot (those are gone). You basically can’t play smart mana wise, you’re just forced to take talents that decrease the amount of healing you can do in trade for increasing your mana efficiency.
This critique is relevant in raids, but even more so in solo play, where you can’t sandbag for a bit while your fellows pick up the slack. Because if you sandbag while you’re the sole healer your party dies.
All of this is worsened by the fact that holy priest mana economy remains worse than most classes, and far worse than some classes who don’t even seem to realize mana is a thing.
Renew
Note: the decision to go all-in on renew in our tierset makes all of the following even more bizarre. Having our tierset be centered around a spell we can’t cast directly is… very weird.
So: Renew was the ONLY ranged, instant cast, no cooldown healing spell we had. We now have absolutely nothing that takes up that niche. It’s a problem that leaves us with no way to heal while on the move in a sustained way (like running between packs in mythic+ or running during a transition in raid). It’s also a problem because it leaves us with no way to help reset the cooldown of a holy word when on the move, even if actual healing isn’t needed.
This would be less of a concern if we were faster than everyone so we could pause to heal without falling behind. Since we’re slower than everyone we can instead pause to heal and fall even further behind instead.
Numerical Tuning
- PoM probably should heal for more for everyone, but it definitely should heal for more for Oracle. Oracle is significantly behind Archon.
- Sanctify needs to do far more healing. Why is our “spender” on a one minute cool down doing less than our spammable AoE filler? This is incredibly backwards.