Hi, I’ve been looking around to meddle with a healer that doesn’t necessarily stand in melee range and get b!tch slapped into oblivion.
I’ve boiled down to either holy priest or a resto shaman. I’m learning but mainly looking to do M+ (till 15s or if I’m comfortable above) and PvP!
Is the HPS/Utility comparable or would you put one above another? (I most likely won’t dabble in dps specs, pure healing)
Thanks!
R shammy is better than holy priest.
But I’d sooner go with disc priest myself. Then too, it depends on your healing experience and experience playing ranged dps.
As for holy priest? It has two strong merits. First, it is a great healer to learn healing on. Second, you have access to disc once you have tired of holy and want a bigger challenge.
I’ve probably healed 1500 dungeons as disc. I am still learning and improving!
GLHF.
Agreed disc is another healing spec and another option as well! Is the overall difference between holy and resto too huge?
Holy just brings less utility then resto when it comes to M+. Both can easily accomplish +15 this season. Both are good specs with holy bringing more single target healing which in today’s kite meta isn’t needed all that often. Resto also brings easier to accomplish damage with Deeptremor legendary. If just picking between the two I would say go resto.
I would strongly recommend Disc priest this season. The new Kyrian legendary has made keys much easier. The cool-down will also decrease further in time as well.
If you’re 100% committed to one toon and 100% committed to healing I would go priest, just because in no time in WoW’s 15 year history has a really good priest been unable to find a raid spot.
If you’re more on the flavor of the month side, I personally can’t stand doing dungeons as disc (I got some 25-33% parses in raids and that’s with 90% of my attention being on raid leading) and maintaining flash concentration I just find really boring.
I haven’t played resto sham in a long time so I can’t compare their merits.
So I guess my two cents is if you’re choosing a toon for a year or more go priest, if under a year go flavor of the month.
Shaman definitely has more favorable utility in M+. Just being able to interrupt and AoE stun is amazing. You also get AoE slow, Lust/Hero, and emergency backup tank among other things.
So I got KSM on both in S1, and just got KSM on my priest this week.
Resto has more utility and is generally better in the M+ environment because of it. This is largely because they come with bloodlust and interrupts. The rest of their utility is good, but not really a necessity in M+ groups. If you know the dungeon, they’re also better for carrying groups simply because a lot of the dangerous stuff in SL dungeons are made a joke with interrupting properly, and if your group screws up interrupt you can easily fix that where another healer would have to burn a CD to deal with whatever was missed.
Holy Priests have more on-demand HPS, and PI is very good for boosting DPS on big pulls. But including a priest means you have to have a group with fast interrupts and a lust since they straight up just can’t do either. They can at least drop a single target stun, but that doesn’t actually stop the cast, just delays it. And if you were a shaman you could AOE stun anyway.
Also worth noting that Kyrian Discipline priest is very good, and likely to become one of the best healers in M+ as soon as the whole mikanikos soulbind is available through renown so long as nothing gets nerfed. A Discipline priest in boon does quite a bit of damage and makes the group close to invincible while doing it, and having boon’s CD reduced that much means you can be very aggressive. Add in some of the best DR in the game and they’ve got potential to be monsters.
Very well put and probably the answer I was looking for. Shamans do edge out quite a lot when it comes to utility, but the insta cast procs from Holy are too fun as well (since shamans have none and everything is hard-casted?).
Does the utility translate into PvP as well? Shamans do have kiting abilities and a wall available.
I’m very unconfident on playing Disc into keys and PvP for now since the shielding and pre-planning along with healing via dps sounds a little too much to handle
Disc priest > Shamans in pvp by a large margin.
I believe disc priest will be better for M+ once mikanikos last trait is unlocked.
For raiding both specs are great (Holy is way less desirable than Rsham and Disc is as much desirable as the sham)
Holy is very good for M+, in mi opinion better than Disc right now, but we’ll see how it is after we unlock mikanikos whole tree
Priests overall are just better in shamans in PvP.
I haven’t played a lot of holy in PvP since 9.1 (and I played only a bit of it in 9.0). But my opinions on priest:
Cardinal Mending change is interesting - I think it’s actually better in 3v3 and BGs. And in return for its 2v2 nerf, Greater Heal now goes through healing reduction (besides dampening). That’s not bad if you can get a g.heal off. This might be good in 2v2, but it’s gonna be pretty hard in content with more players.
Greater Fade+Holy Ward is kind of nuts, it makes you pretty much impossible to CC, because you can SW:D anything that damage will break, and you can fade/holy ward anything else.
Thoughtsteal is really, really good against mages, removing their access to Poly (and getting it yourself) is crazy valuable.
Symbol of Hope actually has a lot of potential in PvP, reducing defensives that much is pretty valuable. But again I haven’t really been trying it.
Half the spells I didn’t even know existed in PvP, that’s insane!
I guess a priest will give me more flexibility as disc and holy with both being solid. Though I’ll agree disc learning curve does intimidate me a lot since I find myself panicking if the whole party gets low 
Rest. Shamans seem to shine in Raids from what I’ve seen. They do have instant casts, especially in Riptide (instant/HOT), probably their biggest healing throughput. A portion of their healing is dependent on groups stacking and standing still in their rains, whether it be M+, Raids, or PvP. The throughput of neither Holy or Disc. are significantly affected by group positioning, but moreso by their own movement, something all healers deal with anyway.
Priests bring plenty of utility in PI, Fortitude, Psychic Scream, Censure if talented, Shining Radiance if talented, and Mass Dispel.
Disc. is definitely different in ramping up your healing ahead of time.
I grinded my butt off this week and ran 39 timed 15+ keys (and that’s out of 41 keys) so a 95% success rate.
NF Holy Priest brings an immense amount of utility to M+ and PI in general lets you do really stupidly large pulls if you have MM Hunter or Frost Mage in your group. You have two solid tank defensives… Guardian Spirit w/ Conduit and talent is 1 minute cd for +80% healing buff for 12s… and -20% damage reduction for 20s with Fae Guardians. You can also use your CDR with FG on dps in your group to get their offensive cds up more often.
Symbol of Hope is just absolutely amazing with bear tanks because their bark skin is 1 minute cd and when they pop it you can symbol right after and they can double bark skin back-to-back. You get a knock back and psychic scream w/ conduit slows everything down.
Your raw single target healing as Holy is the highest ingame and you can pump people through things that would make other healers fall over. Single target damage isn’t great nor bad. Most you’re going to be doing is 1.5-2k dps overall in a dungeon.
Just the double tank defensive + PI + big single target pumps is the biggest selling point though. It lets your tank pull aggressive big pulls so you can time keys faster.
Shaman are the best. If its a choice in any content between bringing a priest or a shaman, its always the shaman.
That being said, I really enjoy watching my Heal spell crit for 42k. Thats just a heal. My serenity is getting over 54k on crits. Its very fun to see these big numbers, even if healing for that much on most players is resulting in big overheal amounts.
Shaman may be able to do everything better, but they can’t do that.
Rshaman for sure. They are FOTM healer along with Holy pally. If you go open the group finder, you will see few parties specifically looking for Rshaman. You only bring Holy priest, if you can’t find any other decent FOTM healer. Another example is RWF, you only see disc priest, holy paladin, and resto shaman in their composition.
Yeah, someone complimented me for PI them when tank pulled a few too many. Felt good watching the dps meter skyrocket.
Is NF an absolute necessity to play with? Since I’m NF on my warlock and venthyr on my priest (I know it’s PvP only covenant for the most part)
i have to say, i absolutely love resto shaman but this thread is inspiring me to try holy instead of disc on this character.
Weren’t holy paladins toned down a little? I thought the nerfs to mana consumption and spells were a little too much. Or is the new gear quickly covering the bases they were left open at?
One of my guildmates is healing high keys in super sub-par gear. Might be his party but he’s having much much easier time healing as holy than his sham is what he told me.
No. Realistically your covenant doesn’t matter that much outside maybe PvP (where Mindgames shines). And even in PvP this is really only if you’re REALLY seriously trying to push.
Holy’s covenants are all really close in power in PvE. Even when you look at covenant abilities that are a bit awkward (like Boon of the Ascended) the soulbinds more than make up for any shortcomings. Realistically, the difference between all the covenants in PvE HPS feels like it’s <1% for holy for most PvE content. This is really why Night Fae comes out on top - because it has very strong utility, and really isn’t behind any of the other covenants by much HPS-wise because of the mana contribution to fights. Even though Holy Nova’s obviously going to do more HPS when it’s pressed than Fae Guardians will, Fae Guardians will reduce a CD (maybe even yours and give you an extra Divine Hymn), and give you enough mana to spam some more Heals than UN will, etc.
In dungeons, NF has a pretty big edge in that Fae Guardians acts as a damage reduction external for your tank. Something that becomes a more obvious weakness to the spec the higher you climb. But if you’re only shooting for KSM or something, it’s not really going to matter.