Main problems I’m seeing with holy are interrupts hurt too bad since pretty much all your spells are holy and it doesn’t have any damage reduction spells to deal with the current insane burst like PS and PW:B. Once burst is less and we get the 25% reduced interrupt from venthyr I think it could be as good as disc. So if you’re getting bored of disc I’d definitely recommend playing holy.
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I hope so!
Priests almost always scale up well toward the end of an expansion. At least one or two of their specs do anyway. I will be curious if disc’s mitigation will be better with more gear than holy’s raw output.
For RBGs and BGs holy is pretty amazing. You can turret well and stay relatively safe.
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I don’t see a lot of potential, which I guess is why no one really ladders as holy.
If you blow through cardinal mending and miracle worker, you just don’t have a lot of reliable, sustainable single target. That leaves Greater Healing but pulling off that cast is something of a miracle in itself.
This is mostly offset in PvE content with the FC buff… but since that’s purgeable and tough to sustain in PvP anyway you’re just in a bad spot.
It could be different in a BG where you can treat the issue like a raid healing scenario and have enough players to peel for you, but then the lack of personal survival options again rears its ugly head.
By the end of BfA Holy was the best healer for 2s because of corruption stacking with haste and greater heal (both of which aren’t a thing in SL)
Let’s see what happens this time around.
Yeah I see what you mean with it not being as reliable not being able to switch to shadow healing if you get locked I think is the biggest issue, that 25% interrupt reduction will be really helpful for holy but it will still be less reliable. However I see some pretty good potential in it since it has a 4 second ranged CC as well as some good defensives like greater fade and divine ascension. Also guardian spirit being on a 1 min CD (if it doesn’t break) instead of 3 mins like PS is nice.
I think holy might do better in a less burst meta but still not overtaking disc, shaman or paladin. Problem with holy is that its missing the core of what makes a great pvp healer.
No reliable single target heal that you can spam
No damage reduction for team mates
Very basic utility with nothing that is uniquely useful .
Has all the flaws of disc in terms of mana
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Idk, I’m doing equally good/bad as holy than as disc. It might be that I’m more used to it as a returning wotlk disc priest (since holy priest seems more similar to wotlk disc priest than current disc priest).
Haha, that was back when priests were priests first and foremost, instead of shadow, holy and disc which have almost nothing in common besides some flavor spells.
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I hit 2100 rating in RBGs playing Holy and the funny thing about it is that people almost never attack or try to go after the Holy Priests. I would say 90% of the time people chase around the Resto Shamans and Druids, but leave me alone in the back.
Our defensives like Divine Ascension are just absolutely annoying to melee because I don’t know how many times a melee train comes running at me and I go flying up into orbit and they can’t do anything about it. Do this a few times against the enemy shot callers and they stop going after you.
Holy’s also fairly tanky and if you run a double defensive build (Greater Fade + Divine Ascension) against some teams you’re pretty much going to troll them. They’ll give up trying to kill you and I would say out of the 70+ games I played I died the least out of all the healers and took the least amount of damage simply because people don’t like going after Holy Priests.
Most of your healing is going to be done through Renew, Holy Words, and Cardinal Mending PoM. Resonate Words + Focused Mending is pretty much the must have wombo-combo for Conduits. You don’t really do much single target heal casting and if you do it’s mainly to reset Holy Words. You will go OOM in big fights and in arena matches which is a problem that Disc shares as well since both Holy + Disc go OOM around the same time from my experiences.
In RBGs there’s just more of an opportunity to pull back and drink for a bit unlike arenas. It’s also the easiest way to get rating and your free 226 gear upgrades.
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I feel the same way. I got 1800 playing holy in 3’s.
I think it fits the very bursty meta because of 2x serenity.
I am not quite sure what works best between harmonious apparatus or flash concentration legendary. I think HA is better in arenas and FC is better in BG’s because it is so hard to keep your 5 stacks (quite mana expensive). I don’t use the ressurection cape because I literally never die, unless going against a very good RMP I might wear it.
I recently switched to Necrolords for raiding, it’s far less powerful than Mind Games from Venthyr, but Bonesmith have a nice “heal beyond the grave” effect that stacks on top of gardian spirit which is very very good for BG’s.
A good trick some folks don’t know about. Play with trail of light in 2’s, pop a flash heal on a target, go behind pillar and spam yourself with heal - it will replicate the healing on the target passively and stack with mastery. It’s quite good ;).
I’ve been using Harmonious and it works fairly well since you’re already hitting PoM on cooldown which helps when you’re in Apotheosis to keep the Holy Word train going.
I just started getting back into pvp this week and was doing some 2s with a 2100 mage friend who told me I should go Holy instead of disc with mage. I guess the stun just makes that a better comp in 2s.
… Whaaaaaat! :checks: … Whaaaaat!!
I was doing 2v2s with a Ret on my grind to 1800 and you can run people into Chastise (4s stun) → Psychic Scream (8s fear) → other partner CC trains as Holy. It was how we beat most of the healer/dps teams. Holy also gets access to Greater Fade which counters those dumb Convoke/Combust teams without relying on popping a big cooldown.
You also get that busted Legendary that makes you revive when you die as well during arenas.
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I think that desperate prayer conduit at a high ilvl later in the xpac is gonna synergise very well with that desperate prayer holy talent, you basically will have a desperate prayer every go that heals you for like 35-40% of your health, I also think that prayer of mending conduit is crazy with cardinal mending too, I’m 190 ilvl on my alt priest and hit a 10k PoM today, felt good.
What desperate prayer holy talent? Can you link it?
Wow I never thought about trying this talent out. Will definitively check this out.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=238100/angels-mercy
Desperate prayer is already a pretty short CD, so taking this + the conduit you pretty much have another battle master on deck when getting trained by melee (which will happen a lot in arena as holy)
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Ditching feather for the desperate prayer talent? Sounds like heresy to me for a spec that already waddles around a bit, but to each their own!
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True. I’m curious how much getting hit reduces the CD, could be good but I doubt it.