I’m saying play a spec if you want to because it’s capable of content up to 12s. If something is truly happening that does this much damage, another healer wouldn’t have saved it. None of the interrupts are lethal until way higher keys. The only dungeon I can seriously think that your statement applies to is Arakara’s poison if the tank pulls 2 of them and they double stack the volley.
Seriously, we’re not talking about Holy Priest at this point, we’re talking about healing in general being more challenging if this is where you’re going with it.
“thE UtILitY GaP!!” is not an excuse. It exists - we DO have worse utility. It is not a blocker in the vast majority of content. Do you think every priest that has gone past a 5 has NEVER dealt with stuff not getting interrupted? Eating multiple volleys? People standing out of the group when there’s stuff that will 1 shot players at range? Parties that go into Grim Batol with 0 curse dispels? This stuff happens in 9s and 10s too.
There’s people on the forums complaining about Necrotic wake skeletons that a strategy running all the way back to shadowlands was for priests to shackle. We HAVE a tool for that fight and are still mad about it.
All these things happen. Holy priest currently can power through it - it has agency. Lightweaver is strong as hell, trail of light and binding heal mean it’s healing for near 2.5 mil a cast. Not a single boss does an AoE strong enough to one shot - our healing is fast enough to keep up. There are maybe TWO bosses where the AoE damage is fast enough that you have significant risk and generally people use defensives/healthstones, but if people die Shaman wasn’t gonna save them either - that’s the DPS’ responsibility.
I’m not saying Shamans don’t have a one-up in dungeon content. They have always had desirable utility and in TWW they happen to have good HPS as well. But no, the other classes are not unplayable, and this idea that “oh but like pugs don’t interrupt things sometimes so you just CAN’T play them!!!” Is ridiculous. At that point you’re just wanting the spec to be bad so you have something other than yourself to blame.
Caithyra has also been in several threads giving tips that are very solid and will help you get through the tougher healing checks. If you like the spec, it is playable. Asking for buffs, and utility is A-OK! The spec could use some. Saying it’s unplayable or hopeless is WILD.
I didn’t play SL or DF either and at this point I wish that I hadn’t come back now. I’m not sure why the game is moving in a direction to make pugging so unfriendly, but it’s the wrong move. I’d vote with your wallet and just take another break.
They’ve had this utility since DF so it’s nothing new. S1 of DF ironically had the same Prevoker / Resto Shaman meta going on now as well. S2 it was a Holy Paladin meta, S3 was Mistweaver / Disc Priest, and S4 was Resto Druids. So what’s popular now won’t be always popular the next season.
Blizz is taking a hammer to Prevoker with a giga hps nerf next week and Resto Shamans are getting about a 10-15% dps nerf as well. They’ll get hit with a few more nerfs soon enough and by 11.0.5 I’m expecting the healer distribution to spread out more evenly.
Right now it’s an issue of a couple of healers being overtuned and the only real underperformer are Resto Druids.
Was to challenging to read? There is a difference in stating “something can’t be done” and “something is artificially more challenging” which you are completely ignoring, and exposing what I said at the end about elitism and being dismissive. I will go on to say that yes a group can make far more mistakes with a Shammy healer that they can’t afford with a priest healer, meaning there are some things a Shammy can do that a priest simply can’t. That is reality.
Here let me paint a picture for you.
You can take your pick, either DPS fails an interrupt or tanks pulls a bigger pack than the priest can normally take, how does this get handled between Shammy and Priest? Shammy has tools like Spirit Link/Chain Heal/Healing Rain/Cloudburst/Ascendance all of which pumps a ton of AoE healing while keeping everyone in the party relatively at the same level. Compare this to a Holy Priests who’s tools are Halo/Sanctify/PoM and then lightweaver spam+Serinity.
If you can’t see the gap here it’s going to be hard to take you seriously. One is capable of actually healing the group at the same time while the other is playing wak-a-mole with a single target spell, since PoH is useless you won’t be able to reset Sanctify once it’s used, and Halo while strong isn’t enough and can be delayed during it travel out and in. Can it do it? Sure but it is significantly harder for the Priest compared to the Shammy and the priest is punished MORE for the mistakes of the group than the Shammy is. That is literally the entire point that you are attempting to dismiss and say it’s just about “playing well.”
This isn’t even talking about the utility gap, as if we did, we could talk about how the Shammy likely wouldn’t even need all of their healing tools if the issue was a missed interrupt as with Wind Shear/Capacitor/Thunderstorm the shaman has so many tool it could just stop the damage from ever happening, and the effects of this from pull to pull easily means it can reserve CDs from one pull to use on another simply by stopping the damage as oppose to a priest who very well may need to pop CDs to manage one pull meaning they don’t have them for the next.
All of this adds up not just for the difficulty for the priest but also their dependance on the group, how badly they are punished for mistakes and how little they are able to cover for those mistakes.
Good for them. Did I ever mention this? Did I ever take an issue with this one random and highly specific example in which the hyper specialized utility of a priest is useful? No. So why are you bringing up something irrelevant to the conversation? Do you really think the answer to “the priest class lacks’ utility” is to say “well this one random very specific example in one dungeon is our utility?”
Here is the thing, I would agree, and it’s likely many of the priests with these issue very well would agree. You know who doesn’t? The people who look at the kits, see a priest desperately spamming Flash Heal to keep the group alive while a Shammy drops a spirit link in a healing rain with an occasional chain heal and move along like it’s nothing. Perception matters, mechanics matters, when people see priests spamming single target on AoE it tells them either the healer is bad, or their AoE healing tools are trash, which CoH and PoH absolutely are.
Now let’s go one step beyond that. Which player, the Shammy or the Priest, do you think feels more in control of the situation? The one spamming a single target heal hoping to get to everyone quick enough, or the one who actually uses AoE tools to deal with AoE situations? Now let’s go even one step beyond that, say something goes wrong, for both the shammy and the priest, and someone dies. Who do you think is more likely to get blamed by an ignorant DPS? The healer spamming single target abilities to cover AoE, or the one who used actual AoE to cover AoE damage and it just wasn’t enough?
These things matter, the perceptions they create in the player base matters, the gaps they create in the play experience matter. The reality is with your entire friends list full of people you have been doing M+ with likely since it came out you have a significantly different experience of this game and what is required for a class than the average priest. Instead of acknowledging that you are effectively lording it over them and telling them they are the problem.
Do me a favor, go into the highest level of M+ you can. Tell your DPS and your tanks “don’t pop personal survival CDs and don’t use your CC/interrupts, pull however much you want, don’t pay attention to my mana, ignore if I’m trying to get drinks, just focus on doing as much DPS as you can and act like nothing else matters” and then when significantly more damage comes out when it shouldn’t, when people are squishier than they should be, and when you are frantically spamming your single target healing abilities trying to catch up you might actually get the experience that so many other priests without an elite friends lists might get.
Compared to other classes all priest specs are objectively bad, they are dated, lacking basic functions and utility all other classes have access to which results in the class being significantly more challenging and punishing than any other. As said above, go into your high level M+ with your group doing nothing to help you and when you die time and again failing to make the timer you can come back here and tell us about how ridiculous it is, let’s not even say the 12 you say it’s capable of, do a 10 and then come back here, and do it on both a holy priest and a rshammy and actually feel that difference.
I’m going to be limited on this as I’ve not been following all of Caithyra’s posts, however, what I have garnered from her, you, and the few that support your position in this thread is basically “spam Flash Heal and get a good group.” Mean while people are telling you “I can’t get into groups and when I make them people brick my keys” to which you effectively respond “skill issue.” All of which is elitists and dismissive.
Let me guess you got a nice big friends lists full of people gathered over your years of playing…many of which likely came either from being in a guild, or from a time when priest was desirable which allowed you to show your skill and made those people more than willing to play with you. Ask friends on your lists how likely they would be to give a random no body priest a chance to heal one of their 10-12s. Perhaps they might do a lower ones, but how many of them would actually PuG or give them a shot for a higher key?
I know the only reason any of the groups I’ve ran with took a priest was because they are literally the only priest main in the guild who is mainly there for stam buffs/PI in a raid. It’s as pity of a pity slot as you can get, and that is not a healthy place to be.
The days of it just being Flash Heal and a dream are over this expansion. We overheal far less then we did in Dragonflight and our heals are smaller relative to health pool sizes.
What I’ve been pointing out more then anything this expansion is that Holy is very cooldown dependent now. In previous expansions like BFA, SL, and DF you just had Apotheosis and nothing else. You raw healed everything with Flash Heal and Holy Word Serenity.
With TWW Holy has 4-5 healing cooldowns and even a chunky healing trinket (Creeping Coagulated). In order to properly handle the healing in the dungeons you have to rotate and stagger through all your healing cooldowns.
I just did an +11 Mists and the group was getting battered pretty hard on the end trash. It took about 3.5 minutes to kill all the trash. During that I used Divine Word Serenity x2, Power Infusion, Apotheosis, Halo x3, Creeping Coagulated Trinket x2, Shadowfiend w/ Essence Devourer, Symbol of Hope, and Answered Prayers triggered twice.
Had I not used or had those tools I would not have been able to keep up with the AOE damage because it was a sustained 900k hps for 3 minutes straight.
You say the days of it being Flash Heal and a dream are over. Yet as someone walking fresh into this xpac (didn’t touch SL, didn’t touch DF) I am telling you that is EXACTLY what it is. Just because you’re used to crap and someone switched you over to sawdust doesn’t mean you’re eating well. H Priest sucks and needs help.
Flash heal makes up the majority of your casts, but you’re not reliant on it and only it like we have been. That’s what they’re getting at.
If all you’ve been doing is flash healing and you’re not progressing, then that would be the likely culprit.
You have to use your CDs, and you have to use them properly. Blizz has designed every healer to that fashion now. Way back in BfA and Shadowlands, Pally was pretty much the only healer who was super bound to their cooldowns for healing throughput. 2 expansions later, it’s everyone that needs their CDs for real throughput. That is an overall healing change, it is not a priest change. We were one of the last to get it.
Where Hpriest sucks is utility. It has no giant lack of throughput or inability to heal through AoE scenarios anymore than other specs do in dungeon content.
When I came back to the game in BFA I was completely lost because I hadn’t played the game in a decade. I struggled badly with playing Holy in my first M+ key and that’s when I looked around on how to improve my gameplay.
There was one Holy priest streamer back then called Hellokyuri who was the only holy streamer back then who pushed big keys in m+. I learned a lot from her guides and videos. I switched over to mouse over macros and installed add-ons and weak auras whilst practicing for weeks until I got used to it. Weaving dps spells in-between healers was probably the hardest thing I learned.
Since then I’ve run probably over a thousand m+ keys as a priest healer over many seasons. Almost every season except for SL S3+4 Holy was the underdog. It’s fine I like playing priest and I’m not a fotm reroller.
One thing I’ve learned is you have to adapt to every new expansion and season.
Either way I’m just going to tldr it. There’s many Holy Priests who are having success at high keys and many of them stream or offer advice. Nax is the #1 holy priest m+ player and has gotten the season title many times while I haven’t pushed for it once. If you want to get better then watch them.
So you can either complain and whine that it’s the class or make an effort to improve your gameplay. It’s really that simple.
You can sit here and go “skill issue” all day but I’ve looked at logs with the H Priests clearing the highest keys. My spell breakdown looks the same. I’ve watched the videos from Liquid and read the guides and all that. And the fact of the matter is that this is miserable to play.
My arm HURTS after doing a higher dungeon because of how frantic and chicken with head cut off it is. I have an entire spellbook not being utilized because the spells are so inefficient they’re broken. If my DPS are not speed demon,interrupting, dispelling, defensive popping, pumping GODS then I’ve got nothing. I can’t push us, I can’t carry, we have NOTHING.
Like why are you people defending this it’s so BAD lol
A handful of people apologize for bad class design here constantly. I learned to just glaze over it and provide my perspective where I can and hope it gets out there.
Congrats, and I’m glad you hear you are having success, believe it or not I don’t want people playing this class to fail. However, answer me a couple of questions honestly.
1–Did you DPS pop CDs, use their stops/interrupts avoid damage and in general help you through this period?
2–If they did do you think you could of kept up with all the damage had they not?
3–If instead of your priest you was on a Shammy do you feel it would of been just as challenging?
4–If again you where on the Shammy could you have used the various stops that class had to make it easier?
I have a feeling if you answer those questions honestly you will start to understand a lot of the issues people have. There is a massive gap between what a priest needs and has to do in order to pull off the dungeons vs what other classes, especially Shammy, has to do in order to pull them off. That disparity needs to close and the only way it’s going to close is if Holy, and frankly priest as a whole, is changed and it needs far more than just % increases to it’s abilities.
The thing is it isn’t just healing CDs that other healers are using to get through dungeons. It’s interrupts, it’s CC, it’s micro-CC, it’s move speed buffs, repositioning tools, etc etc. All things Priests are sorely lacking and desperately need. If you pop all your CDs to get through a particularly bad pull because the tank thinks priest = Shammy/Evoker and can just free pull whatever the hell they want then you are in trouble. These are legit issues you are ignoring, and likely don’t have to deal with based on how you describe the groups you have been able to build over the YEARS you have played.
How many of them are pugging? How many of them are new and having to build a friends list of people that will let them actually play? You are ignoring this completely and telling them “skill issue” and “go play another class” both of which are toxic to the community. You literally have people here saying “I am having issues finding success on this class and that makes it hard to get people to run with me” and your “advice” is “find better groups” and “go play something else.”
We have words for that but the censors won’t let me say them.
That’s all you’re going to get from those two. Most of the time they provide extremely high-quality advice, but if for any reason they don’t like an idea, they won’t outright tell you. They will passively change the subject and dismiss or minimize your concerns until you stop talking about them at all.
I see both sides of the argument here. I love playing my holy priest, but I mostly focus on raiding where the spec felt strong to me all throughout Dragonflight (I stopped playing during cata, but raided on a priest and shaman during BC/LK). Skill can in most cases overcome the differences in throughput between different healers, except after the holy pally rework when they were kings for a couple weeks in DF.
When it comes to M+ however, I just don’t enjoy the format as much and by the end of a run or two, my wrists are killing me from the frantic nature of zoom zoom and carpal tunnel. Keys are undoubtedly less frantic on a shaman, especially with a no CD Jesus beam to handle most AOE damage, though they are mana hungry currently. Sure, a high skilled priest can succeed just fine in m+, but when it comes to average skilled players, they’ll have a far easier time on a shaman in m+. This situation could be smoothed out by making one of our AOE heals worth casting in m+ and less reliant on single target heals.
Raiding I use most of the tools in our kit, even if prayer of healing is only used to reset sanctify, it leads to far more keys being pressed and less repetition. M+ just makes me sore and feel old lol.
Lower the CD on circle of healing and make it worth casting, make it interact with sanctify in an interesting way. Just throw us a bone.
That being said, I love playing my holy priest and the areas of the game I enjoy, I have no major complaints about the spec. I have tons of fun raiding and delving with it. Also if you don’t play with mouseover macros and a grid like interface, you’re really capping your healing potential. Clique/healbot can suffice, but I’m not a fan personally.
They need to make Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing into a choice node.
It’s apparent that right now majority of builds don’t even take either spell. If Circle of Healing was buffed, and put into a choice node with Prayer of Healing, instead of being gated BY it, I could see it actually getting use.
Talent points are too hard to allocate in the Priest trees in general. What really needs to happen is a large scale class rework, but I think most people understand that.
No they need to take these two spells back to the drawing board and reimagine them in modern WoW. These spells are relics from a time when AoE healing spells, except for Chain Heal, tended to be restricted to the group of the target. This meant it was often you only got 2-3 targets with it, or only that many actually needed the healing, and PoH used to be the priests group only.
These spells have been problem children since removing those limitations due to how efficient and strong they can be and Blizzard has never really found a solid place for them. During Ulduar when they took the first baby step and allowed you to heal the group of the target of PoH Holy became so damn strong they literally gutted the scaling of every spell not named renew in the kit just to try and balance these things.
Now the spells are piss weak because a heal 5 targets for large amounts without a CD, see PoH, or in insta-cast see CoH just don’t fit. The only real spells we see do stuff like that have lengthy CDs, like Sanctify, are the entire kit, like Atonement, or have other limiters, like resources/holy power/etc.
CoH and PoH simply don’t fit in modern WoW and blizzard trying to make them fit instead of just accepting they don’t, removing them and then creating something new that would is one of the many reasons the spec feels so bad right now.
Yes, I already said that there’s nearly nothing in these dungeons that these will prevent you from climbing. In my post specifically I mentioned that our utility is worse. But seriously, there’s very few lethal interrupts right now. Again, the only dungeon I can think of this applying to is Arak, and it’s if the tank pulls big AND the group misses 2 interrupts. That’s exceedingly rare when you’re attempting 7s.
What I’m disagreeing with, SPECIFICALLY, is this notion that Holy is dead, it can’t be pugged, you can’t play it to high key, it’s doomed and you should play meta instead.
The ONLY time that is true is if you plan to play to TITLE and you plan to do it with ONLY PUG groups. If that was ever your plan, you should never have picked anything except whatever the current content creators said was S tier. This is true regardless of your role. If you’re a DPS, and that’s your plan, you can’t play anything but Mage, Augvoker, Frost DK, ENH or Balance Druid.
If you are struggling in low keys, you need to look at your own performance first, period. People are complaining about a lack of HPS in unsurvivable BOSS mechanics (that cannot be interrupted). This is just not true currently. Holy priest is not lacking HPS at the moment.
It’s OK to acknowledge that the class lacks utility, that Blizzard needs to add utility to the spec, but also aknowledge that if you’re having HPS problems, it’s probably something you need to work on.
I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I say exactly what I think the majority of the time. If I AGREE with something I often just don’t respond to it, I guess. But no idea where this idea that I’m changing the subject. I’ve more than once said in this thread exactly where Holy Priest is weak. I’ve said it could use some buffs.
I am disagreeing with a specific notion that you can’t play this class even if you like it because it’s that bad. It’s simply not true.
I’m not referring to this forum alone. You are an avid poster, and I read a lot on here, even if I don’t always respond. I learned to understand some avid poster’s personalities and tendencies.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t what the poster actually meant. I took it as hyperbole rather than literally. Yes, you can play Holy as a skilled player and get decent results, but the point always was Shaman makes it no contest by comparison, and we shouldn’t be content with that or apologize for bad game design.
Well, I’m not really sure how they could rework these spells then if this is truly a problem. But I would hate to see them removed from the class. They are so flavorful to Holy.