In my opinion Angel’s Mercy isn’t worth it though because you need that mobility from either Angelic Feather or Body & Soul to kite people or to maneuver around the battlefields. If you’re in a position where you’re pressured to use Desperate Prayer and they keep attacking you then you’re basically going to die when you run out of defensives. You also -don’t- want to be a target as well. Things like Greater Fade or Divine Ascension will do you much more to keep you alive.
Also, Translucent Image is a better conduit to take. At least with Fae Guardians it stacks as a self-Bark Skin. And you can use it in PvE too.
Doesn’t seem like it and you don’t need to worry about using solace on CD, as long as you’re mostly casting heal instead of flash heal and not spamming shield too much I’d say it’s the same.
It’s the same. I play matches against other Disc priest in arenas and we go oom at the same time. RBGs are the same. Holy has the slight advantage if you take Enlightenment Talent though.
Xanshi is the best for arenas, but to be honest it’s not common that the healer dies first. Usually your partners will die 90% of the time first.
I got 2100 as HPriest this season (in 2s) (stopped to learn/focus on 3s), and our toolkit is fantastic. Very strong single target healing, extremely slippery through smart use of Door, Holy Ward, and Greater Fade, and falling a bit short on externals and the like.
Our strength, though, comes from our CC toolkit. Chastise is an incredible spell, and if you run that + short fear, you have reliable, self-setup goes every 30-45 seconds. Your partner just trains the kill target, you peel off-target/healer, and it just works.
Mana efficiency isn’t incredible, but you play a high pressure, high damage game and you’ll win most. Cardinal Mending does a lot of work into Arms Warriors, as well as general dampening games.
Please don’t use Xanshi. You’ll win games because of the cheat death sometimes, sure, but having either reverse lifegrip for extra mobility, or apparatus for more reliable Chastises will win you far more games.
To add to that, Zenlyn (the hpriest I’ve been watching to further my own game/highest rated hpriest I’ve seen) literally has the message ‘no, rez cloak is bad’ (or something to that effect) pinned up on his stream.
I agree that stun is amazing and it has excellent range, I definitely feel like it is the best part of holy. I can’t give up Xanshi though I’m just loving having an extra life too much.
Edit: Just found out about how good holy ward is. Not having to worry about getting CC’d every thirty seconds is nice. Nothing I hate more than games where I sit in CC over half the time, this should definitely help with that. I’m starting to wonder why people would play disc over holy now.
Holy Ward–when used smartly–can fizzle so many different kinds of set-up, and honestly it’s brilliant. Easy to purge if you just throw it out on CD, but when you know certain spells are coming up you can pre-empt them with it.
Where Holy loses out compared to Discipline is–once again–utility. In this theoretical situation, I’m being trained by a monk with full cooldowns. In order to live this ~20s window of insane damage, I have to use Greater Fade, Holy Ward, GS, and Apotheosis in a smart fashion. Provided I live, I have GF back in 45s, and GS back in about a minute. I will have Apotheosis back for the next Xuen, but not for any other pressure before then.
As a disc priest, you have significantly more ways to handle pressure like that through smart cycling of Pain Suppression, Barrier, and Rapture, and if used correctly you will have something for every go. In addition to this, you bring Dark Archangel, which in this meta can make certain classes almost intolerably bursty inside of their cooldowns.
HPriest requires you to use its full offensive toolkit to win games, whereas disc is a bit of a live-lord and enables most other specs in a more consistent fashion.
Re: X’anshi - at the end of the day, you play what you want to (and it’s great that this is even an option to begin with). My thoughts are having that much potential player power predicated upon you dying is… not great (and is, in my opinion, different to Podtender in the sense that you’re not actively trading off much for it if you need to be Night Fae for whatever reason anyway), especially when you can get some much more control and comfort, and even survivability from a different piece.
Since SW:D has such a long cooldown now it is nice to have that option when SW:D is on cd and you can’t los.
Yeah I feel you, you pretty much have to have some CDs available as holy to live when melee are on you since you can’t switch magic schools for healing like disc.
I agree, I’m also about doing what you like, otherwise I’d just play holy pally. A big reason I’m sticking with X’anshi though is because you can still get 100-0ed so fast. Happened today against a ret pally, frost dk. They popped CDs, everything crit, and I died in like a quarter of a second but X’anshi secured the win. I see what you’re saying though it does seem better to have more overall power while alive so I may switch out later if burst slows down.
Good to read some thoughts from a Hpriest playing in the higher brackets, what comp have you been running in 3s? Also is apotheosis just too good to not take? The 33% holy word reduction + the 200ilvl holy oration conduit + harmonious seems like it kind of rocks, it’s like ~10 seconds off serenity every flash heal and ~7 seconds off chastise every smite/holy fire
The only flaw with Holy right now is you only get 3 PvP talent choices and 2 of them are basically Mandatory (Miracle Worker + Cardinal Mending) so your third choice is a defensive.
I personally prefer Focused Mending over Holy Oration because it’s still 2 casts of FH regardless to reset Miracle Worker Holy Words in Apotheosis either way with or without Holy Oration. It makes PoM into a beefy single target heal that can do 10k+ upfront easily.
I love healing with a disc and hpal, a good disc brings a ton to the group, but so do holy priests, and we are BEYOND slept on.
My main gripes are mana issues and having to basically blow every cd on myself in 10 seconds if I get trained. Other than that if you have a solid group, play well, then you can push rating.
I have been playing disc in 3s, but 3s is also new territory for me for the most part. Holy just… doesn’t feel like it has enough to sustain you through the shenanigans you’ll see. 2s it does well because most of your defensive toolkit is ‘selfish’ (fade/etc), whereas disc has a lot more ways to fizzle pressure that isn’t centred purely on itself.
@caithyra, I wouldn’t call Cardinal Mending mandatory – I find myself running it almost exclusively into Arms, or just games I expect to go long. Thoughtsteal is mandatory vs mage (and fun to run into warlocks as well), and Ray of Hope is a godsend into high burst classes. I usually run Miracle Worker + Ward + Fade into monks.
I wish Focused Mending worked on Cardinal Mending, but unfortunately it does not, otherwise I’d rate it a lot higher. I didn’t have two potencies when I pushed for 2.1, so I just ran Oration. The value from Oration comes from the Chastise resets rather than Serenity anyhow; the passive healing from Renews/PoM and the odd Heal between goes was enough usually.
I would typically use a Serenity -> Apoth -> Serenity -> Serenity inside of goes and you just get so much value from that little reset.
A little late to the patch notes, but I saw that Holy Paladins got a 30% mana regeneration nerf in PvP. I haven’t done any PvP this week so I’m curious if they’ll actually not have infinite mana anymore because they were my biggest bane in arenas.
I don’t really care if Priests have PvP mana issues as long as all healers OOM at the same time.