Right now I’m currently leveling this Resto Shaman and finding it fun to heal. I’m kind of bored healing dungeons because its very easy with little party damage and rarely have to use my CD’s. I beg tanks to pull huge but they never do.
But I keep thinking of Holy priest as the epitome of healing through all the specs. When you think of a healer in general you think of Holy Priest.
Was wondering if it might be worth switching over to the priest side of things. Once I hit max level I’ll mostly just be doing M+. I don’t like being a fat furry panderen but my option’s weren’t great of racials.
From what I read they can do everything group healing, tank healing etc. So my question is it fun to heal, and will I be competitive in M+?
If you care about performance then I would stick to your Shaman their widely considered the best M+ Healer with Druids and have utility for days.
Holy is considered the worst healer with Monk’s and don’t have nearly as much utility but have good throughput with your Holy Word spells and our FC Legendary.
If you don’t care about performance and like the play style of holy priest then go for it. It’s a fun healer that can push high HPS. During high dmg I like to play a mini game of pushing more HPS then the highest DPS on the charts for that pull.
Try it out and see if you like it more.
If Shaman is 10 I will give Holy 6.
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I’m pushing +16/17 keys as Holy in M+ and it’s definitely competitive if you are willing to put in the effort to learn how to maximize the usage of the class (just like any class). For me it’s a lot of fun and with the Flash Concentration lego Holy can really pump out healing.
People care more about IO score at high keys. If you have any questions about Holy in M+ you can message me ingame.
I’ve leveled a holy priest and a resto shaman through Shadowlands so far and Normal and even Heroic dungeons are super easy to heal if you know what you’re doing. Once you hit Mythic+ it will get more challenging. That’s not a Shaman thing.
No one can tell you whether you will find priest fun because that is subjective. It’s like asking does Hawaiian pizza taste good. At the moment I’m enjoying priest slightly more but again, that’s entirely subjective.
As for competitiveness, what level are you looking to play at? Holy is ranked near the bottom for top-level Mythic+ but the difference is relatively minor compared to BfA. Since you don’t already know, my assumption is you’re not going to be playing at the very highest level where you need to be playing the top spec. Perception can be a bigger problem, but that’s again very much down to attitude. Some groups will inevitably be looking for a druid or shaman for brez/lust.
Between Holy Priest and Resto Shaman, at this moment in time, a lot of people are going to come and basically say something like “Why drive a Kia when you have a Ferrari?” (the Kia being the Holy Priest and the Ferrari being Resto Shaman in this situation).
Holy Priest is one of the least represented healers in the high end M+ leaderboard, alongside Mistweaver Monk. Meanwhile Resto Shaman is the most represented. However, the difference is really not as exaggerated as some here on the forums might suggest. Holy absolutely has the capabilities of doing +15 keys for Keystone Master, if that’s your endgame. Healers in m+ are way more balanced than they ever were in Legion or BfA, as well.
It comes down to preferences and personal playstyle. Shaman has a better community perception, which might give it a slight edge in pugs. That said, as Caithrya points out, your IO score is more important than anything else. I’m not pushing quite as high (yet), but I’ve inched my IO score above 700 and I’m starting to get accepted into better groups for +9/10 keys that are getting timed on my Priest. Additionally, I have a Resto Shaman alt hovering around 200 ilvl, and despite being perceived as the “best” dungeon healer I still get declined right and left for +7-8 keys. The grass isn’t necessarily greener is what I’m trying to say.
It also comes down to personal playstyle. I actually find Holy Priest with Flash Concentration to be a lot easier to play than Resto Shaman. With Holy I build up 5 stacks and basically press Heal the whole dungeon, with Holy Words/Apotheosis thrown in for big damage bursts. Meanwhile Resto Shaman has to maintain a lot more heals through Healing Surge, Riptide, Cloudburst Totem, Ascendance, etc to maintain a similar level of throughput.
But maintaining those healing CD’s makes Resto a better M+ healer. You have CD’s for every situation. As long as you stagger them you’ll rarely not have one for a major burst of damage.
Where with Holy you have GA and Apothesis. If their both on CD and you get hit with some huge DMG your about to hit the pain train.
Holy has good throughput. Completely capable of healing 15s rn, have had ones do it well weeks ago too.
This is true for every healer. Every healer has to maintain their throughput CDs. If Barrier, Pain Suppression and Rapture is down Disc will struggle with huge damage spikes. If wings and Divine Toll is down so will Holy Pally. This is not a shortcoming exclusive to Holy.
Holy also has Divine Hymn, unlisted as a major CD in your post. And the strength of Flash Concentration means boosted Heal spam is competitive enough to sustaining your party without major CDs that a Resto Shaman might have to resort to, meaning your Holy Priest can save them for even more “oh shi-” situations.
Although everyone here knows I think holy needs some utility buffs for M+, I’ll offer the pragmatic advice: start pushing yourself into the highest levels of keys you can on your shaman before you decide everything is too easy.
Once you get that baseline, if you want then, try hpriest.
You may or may not find, at that point, that you miss tools like capacitor totem, wind shear, reincarnation, lust, earth ele, your personal DR, or your roots/slows, etc. as hpriest has very little in those areas.
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i agree with kalth - the dirty blood elf - haha
shaman tb is a bit ez mode in a odd sense.
though i fear nerfs may be coming to them.
if u want a TOTALLY differnt healing experince though?
go disc
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It’s funny, for all the talk of unpruning and getting back to class identity, the 3 priest specs (holy, disc, and shadow) really have almost nothing to do with each other, despite sharing a few baseline abilities.
It’s been that way since the Legion redesign and it’d take a big overhaul to at least bring the healers back to the same starting point.
I’m doing 15/16’s 1320 io, and holy priest is meh healer for M+ high content.
The spec isn’t garbage tho, you can totally do high keys but you’re gonna have a harder time than for example a Sham/Hpal/Dpriest (OF COURSE well used, a good hpriest is better than a mediocre sham/pal/dpriest).
We have no unique spec utility and no DR for big incoming dmg. Our mana is very punishing specially on this week Spiteful just don’t let us drink and that is very annoying (Tho this problem Dpriest has it too).
So my recomendation is you stick with the shaman, you’re gonna have more invites than being a priest.
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Thanks for the advice I’ll stick with Shaman for now and see how it goes.
I started healing heroics since I just hit 60 and it’s still easy. I’m reverting to just Earthshield the tank, keeping riptide’s rolling, letting my Cloudburst Totem stabilize the group, and mostly just DPS’n every pack.
I want to try out Holy mostly for a challenge but I should wait till I start M+ and see if that will change my perspective.
Who knows maybe this is just an EZ-Mode spec for healing.
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You have so many cool downs to deal with burst damage.
Cloudburst Totem, Vesper Totem, Healing Tide Totem, Ascendence, Spirit Link Totem, and best M+ Legendary which makes your Mana Tide Totem into a mini heroism for 10 seconds.
6 CD’s that give burst healing besides spirit link totem that can deal with any crazy dmg you throw at it
Also have an interrupt, a cc, heroism, a snare, grounding totem, goes on for days
With Holy Priest you have a three button rotation with the FC Leggo. Srenity/Sanctify and Heal.
You have an underwhelming Divine Hymm where I had people die during the cast because it’s garbage heal unless you PI yourself beforehand.
GA which I can’t complain its a good CD, and Apothesis which is a good CD aswell.
The issue is that FC makes Holy a boring play style. your whole kit is spamming one ability for 80% of the dungeon. I can’t even fault you because without the legendary you’d be even more gimp’d then you already are.
You made a good choice of picking the Shaman, if you decide to roll priest later make sure to roll Disc and not Holy.
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Holy is probably one of the worst healer for mythic+ and pvp. Terrible survival, lack of damage mitigation, meh utilities, meh damage. But mainly, no one will invite you unless you have very high raid IO compare to other healers. If you are planning on doing alot of mythic+, do not play holy priest.
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Power debates aside, I can tell you I have a 210 priest and a 208 shaman healer. The priest gets invited to about 2 of 10 of the +10 groups she applies for, and the shaman gets invited to about 8 of 10. My IO is about 900, which is well above whats required to do a +10. Also for the record, it is much, much easier to deal with every situation on my shaman IMO, and my raw throughput is much higher. All shaman tools aside, even my healing surge crits much higher than my priests heal with FC lego.
If you don’t have have a dedicated group of friends who will invite you to heal every m+ you’d want to stick with shaman so you can actually play the game
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