That’s true, but being that throughput healer you’d bring just for the safe throughput was holy’s niche… now it isn’t. And nothing has replaced that. Being the throughput leader is by no means nothing, either - a disc priest and a holy pally often need a throughput healer to fill in the gaps in appropriately challenging content.
Anyhow, this whole discussion will be more fun to revisit if Blizz chooses to nerf or remove Spirit Shell to the point of uselessness in the future, and let’s imagine disc doesn’t get something else cheesy to compensate.
I wonder if the same people here will be “fine” staying on, or switching over to the “fine” hpriest spec and feel super-awesome about where they’re at then.
You can’t logic someone out of a problem that they’ve gotten themselves into emotionally.
Some people derive entirely too much self worth out of their identity of “being good at this game”. So when they aren’t as good as they think they should be they need to find some external thing to blame it on. Its a psychological coping mechanism in response to emotions of inadequacy or an identity crisis.
I have a friend like this and I had to learn to realize that it didn’t matter which game, which role, which character he played. Whenever he hit a wall or lost a match he would go off about the balance team for that game. You could talk in circles with him for hours and he will find the smallest things possible to pin it on instead of just saying “I got outplayed”. The reason was because we were addressing him with logic when he was speaking emotionally.
So if this resonates with anyone at all I just want to tell you that your self worth and identity doesn’t revolve around being a skilled gamer. You’re likely a good person with friends who like to hang out with you. Or you’re very analytical and good at helping people figure out fights and classes. Or any number of positive traits you likely don’t realize you have. The only difference between you and the top players is their emotional fortitude and ability to push through these things and figure out the best ways to play.
Yes it is. You can use a holy priest over a Resto sham right now and it would be perfectly viable. The only thing you’d lose is AV. Shaman is really only meta because it has good HPS and minor utility that the other throughput healers don’t have. But Holy Priest is being used as a flex healer in several mythic fights.
The reason we’re seeing all these holy priests not using holy leggos is because there are fights that are 5-healer fights if you’re undergeared. Holy priest flex is really common because it’s such a safe and easy healer to play.
I’m already planning on playing holy in 3/10 fights. And honestly I’d play holy the whole raid if SS wasn’t so good. It’s way more fun right now and is a surprisingly effective healer.
Without SS holy wouldn’t be meta either. It already happened previous expansions.
For fights were only throughput is necessary people will tend to bring Druid or Rsham.
There’s literally no need to bring a holy priest besides GS for Sun king.
I mean it’s the general thought about the spec, if nothing changes the wow community won’t change it’s perspective about holy priest, then we’ll still be the less desirable healer for a comp.
Ah yes, losing spirit link to gain HW: Salv, hugeeee tradeoff honestly how could I forget?
There’s not a fight in Nathria where Spirit Link is so necessary that it is used differently from any other healing cooldown. The only one where that might have been the case is Devourer, but even that doesn’t really utilize Spirit link for any of the miasma. Slink just gets used on consume/desolate.
Except for most of BfA, sure. Holy Priest was seeing a ton of use in every tier outside the first?? World first groups were even using them in several fights because Holy just wasn’t affected by raid positioning, where most the healers were. Even in Uldir they were swapping from Disc to Holy on Vectis, and that was probably the most powerful Discipline has been in a raid tier flat out since their rework.
There’s no need to bring any given class except for Paladin and Disc Priest, yes. That is a kinda toxic healing meta, yes, I’m glad we agree.
But no, you’re not going to make me agree with you that Disc is better in every fight except Sun King. Holy is meta in sun king for GS, yes. But Holy is also better than Disc at Inerva and SLG. It’s also better in Huntsman for groups that struggle with the volley souls.
I don’t care what the general WoW community thinks about the spec. They can be wrong, and it won’t affect me, because we’ll just bring what we succeed with to our raids. That’s what most raid teams should be doing.
Holy is absoulte trash compare to other healers. Holy does have decent healing output with Flash Concentration, but so does other healers. The problem with Holy priest is that they don’t bring anything else to the table other than heal. They do not have battle rez, lust, damage mitigation, mass stun, interrupt etc. Holy also have terrible survival compare to other healers and really lack moving heals. Overall, they are at the very bottom with Monk. Everything that holy priest can do and bring it to your party, Resto Shaman and Holy pally can do so much better. Can you clear all contents with Holy? sure you can, but other healers can do so much easier with less risk and that is why holy isn’t preferred in mythic+, raid, and arena.
Mass Dispel, Mind Soothe, Stun, Fear, Knockback, Cheat death/healing boost. They do have some damage reduction for themselves in the form of PW:S and fade conduit as well as Venthyr/Night Fae abilities.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Shaman is very strong, yeah, but most players don’t use its utilities properly. And without those utilities, their throughput is less than FC Hpriest when it comes to spamming surge/wave vs spamming full stack heals. You can seriously misuse your utilities on Hpriest and still clear till a fairly high key level. A shaman who has no idea how to use half their utilities is just going to do flat less throughput, and it’s still considered a safe healer. Like seriously people are SEVERELY underestimating how easy and strong Holy is for keys that don’t require DR.
Most paladins struggle right now. The spec is not as straightforward as people like to represent it. Like remember at the start of the xpac where literally every paladin was complaining about how underpowered holy pally is? That’s most Paladins’ experience right now. And the best playstyle is not very easy for people. In small group content it requires you to be spamming CS and HS in melee, and rotating CDs to cover your wings downtime, because when wings aren’t up your group is in serious danger.
People need to spend less time literally just checking what’s on top of raiderio, putting 0 thought into why those specs are at the top and then claiming they are somehow easier specs for mid level players to play.
I don’t get the second part of your post, you are basically just explaining how holy priest is better than healers that don’t know how to play there class
Yeah, when I see the people recommending hpriest to new healers, I feel like they must be in a Classic-era time warp or something from the days when hpriest spammed Greater Healing of various ranks and called it a day… because hpriest isn’t all that forgiving.
Maintaining the FC buff is pretty tough, hitting PoM and CoH and holy words on CD in the midst of mechanics while doing so is even tougher. And you’re relying on a lot of targeted healing which requires more attention than just blanketing out AoEs or HoTs.
If alternatively you go Harmonious Apparatus, you need to carefully manage your mana and choose your filler rotation wisely if you care at all about HPS and maintaining consistent throughput.
It’s not like insane or anything but I wouldn’t at all agree that hpriest is the easiest healer. I would personally nominate resto sham as the easiest, most forgiving spec for new healers requiring the lowest CPM.
We can argue all day in here how great Holy Priests are. Bottom line is that people do not want us in their party unless only other applicants are monks or significantly under spec healers
Orbs + hand of destruction for Denathrius? That combination in phase 3 is pretty devastating and you kinda need some DR which fortunately Barrier from Disc priests and Spirit Link does.
Sludgefist hitting pillars de DR spirit link + SS can negate pretty much whole damage.
Just to put some examples.
I do, for me that I don’t have much friends to play with, I need to pug most of high content, specially M+ so I kinda need my spec to be desirable to get more invites.
I’m totally viable of doing 16’s I pushed one this tyrannic week. But being a not desirable spec makes it harder.
She said holy not priest, Most of those utilities you mentioned Disc has it too. Only ones holy bring are Stun and Cheat death. And stuns in raid environment are pretty useless.
Cheat death shamans kinda have one too if talented and well we can say we have Symbol of hope which can be useful but shamans have a better version of it and gets used more during a fight.
That’s not a problem of the spec, that is a player issue. We’re talking about players that know how to play their respective classes.
I’m saying the skill floor is so low for a new Hpriest, that the vast majority of healers would do better on Hpriest than on another character. A HUGE number of the healers I encounter on Shaman right now around the +1-10 level when I’m on my tank just don’t use their cooldowns. I’m having to mostly kite +6 keys which is just way too early to have to do that, and it’s because a huge number of these players are just hitting surge repeatedly with a riptide once in a while. If that’s going to be the case, I’d far rather have an hpriest than a shaman.
That’s what I’m getting at.
You Spirit Shell most of this. Even if you weren’t to SS it, you’d Aura mastery and pop a healer CD on any bad overlaps. Spirit Link isn’t something you’d ever need in this phase or going to majorly change the phase for anyone beyond making heals more efficient. EDIT: I should also clarify here, that I mean it’s not something you’d need in this phase as opposed to any other healer CD. A Salvation just before pull would accomplish the same thing.
This is covered entirely by a single Pally + Disc priest. Why would you need SL for it? Pillar 1: SS+Barrier. Pillar 2: SS+Devo Aura Mastery. Pillar 3: SS+Barrier. Pillar 4: SS+Hallow.
Play a meta class.
Or, if you really like a specific class that isn’t top 2, then play it and realize you will not get as many invites. There will never be a balance point in WoW where every single healer is valued the exact same. The M+ community from its start in Legion has been extremely exclusive at the higher key levels. If you aren’t playing a top 2/3 healer, you aren’t going beyond 15s in Pugs without a lot of trouble. Not every class can be a top 2/3 healer. In fact, in BfA, Shamans were considered trash and got no invites for pretty much every single patch.
A perception problem is not something that can be easily solved - nor is the solution just to always just buff or nerf a class because the wider community thinks its good or bad. People thought Paladins were bad starting off this Xpac. People thought that the raid comp wouldn’t use warrior tanks. People still think Shaman is some god-tier untouchable healer, when in reality any significant nerf to them would kick them out of the raid meta. If we balanced off of wide class perception only, we’d see classes that are already good getting buffed, and classes that really don’t need much tuning at all getting shifted too far in one direction or the other.
Not getting groups is a problem with you. It always will be. I don’t know how better to explain that. If you want to fix your problem, start making groups. Start adding people that perform well in your groups and invite them to higher M+ keys. Don’t have friends to play with? Make them! It’s an online game. I have barely had time to play in a while and am hardly even pushing keys right now but I have plenty of people who whisper me when I get on every day, because I make a lot of my own M+ key groups, compliment people that do well and add them. You’ll run into people that are dicks, sure. But the majority of people will appreciate it and want to play.
I mean seriously, are you just sitting in Oribos constantly queueing for +15 keys, taking forever to find one, but when you finally do, just doing the key and immediately leaving with a “gg”?
Okay. But I don’t think anyone would run 2 Discs or Holy + Disc, or 2 Holy in a dungeon group. If there’s not gonna be two priests with access to all the priest utility there, then this utility is unique to you.
Most people on these forums, and in game don’t, and that’s very clear. Look at how many posts show up here every day concerned about how Disc priest just has no throughput to heal dungeons. Or how it’s too hard to heal X mechanic for them.
Before you make this assumption, I’m not trying to slight anyone in that position. I love helping people get better at the game. But seriously the most common problem I see in any given healer or even DPS that is struggling is just not hitting cooldowns or saving them WAY too long. And there’s no exception at the +15 level. Lol, go look at any content creator that reviews keystone footage submitted from their community. I guarantee one of the criticisms will be that said players aren’t hitting their cooldown buttons and creating dangerous situations that don’t need to exist because they’re sitting on it.
That said, a little more utility (of any kind) would really go a long way to helping Holy out. An interrupt, a reliable/real stun, a brez, a DR external…Honestly, I think giving Holy Pain Suppression would be amazing to use alongside GS. You could slap em both on the tank if they’re getting trucked or spread them out if needed.
I don’t think resto shaman is the easy “I win” healer a lot of people here makes it out to be. I do think it will be nerfed (likely in 9.1). I don’t know where the nerfs will come from, but off the top of my head I could maybe see Riptide and Cloudburst receiving nerfs to throughput. And I do think mana costs of Riptide and Healing Surge could be looked at, too.
If anything, I think Holy Paladin is going to rise to the top as we get better geared, more secondary stats, and an even better handle on mechanics. Their DPS output for keys is literally unmatched.
If Blizz can tone down the amount of damage the trash dishes out in dungeons than it would allow tanks to tank without kiting and healers to have less anxiety without needing to mash heals into the tank all the time. This would lead to healers being able to contribute more overall dps and get it closer to BFA.
Playing Disc or Resto Shaman isn’t just facerolling heal buttons either. If you’re already a mediocre player on a Holy Priest, rerolling another class isn’t going to make you parse purples and oranges. It’s putting a bandaid over your problems as a healer that you aren’t putting effort into addressing.
