Light’s Hammer and Holy Prism both received massive buffs today and while I’m incredibly glad that they did, I do have to ask: how does this kind of thing happen?
- Light’s Hammer healing increased by 60%.
- Holy Prism healing increased by 150%.
- Holy Prism damage increased by 100%.
Whenever I see a 100%+ buff to anything I think, something must have gone wrong there.
For basically ever, these spells have been low impact but now that our tier is buffing them with CDR, throughput and Holy Power gen. Now is the time to double their damage, now?!?
How do these spells exist for so long doing so little and then get doubled?
My crack pot conspiracy. It’s like the tier set was designed with no idea on how these spells actually perform, when someone was running the numbers, it shone a light on how underwhelming and underperforming they were as cooldowns so they buffed them to be impactful given their CD.
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They were extremely weak, even with the tier set. They were basically just generators, only pressed for holy power.
They have both been relatively weak for a long time, LH less so if you get full value from it. We’ve been asking for buffs to prism for a long, long time now. So i’m really happy to see this
This is really nice for us now. That is a massive buff baseline to both, especially prism, so outside of the tier set they are even better choices now. And now with the tier set, they are insane.
I do think this is indicative of them not knowing that hp/lh were underperformers prior, but at least they looked at raid testing and corrected it. Can’t really ask for more than that right now.
To be honest, Hpal has been such a good performer in almost every form of content up until this tier for the most part. Double hpal all throughout bfa and shadowlands up until SoFo, and in legion we were insane once Aura of sac was discovered as being really good. So the devs probably focus their efforts on underperforming classes especially ones that have been consistant underperformers (ret, ele/resto sham, shadow priest, etc). Same reason mages havent gotten much
These changes while welcome aren’t the extent of help HPal needs. We aren’t totally borked, but some additional adjustments (many for the sake of lore, gameplay, and most importantly fun are needed). There are plenty of great ideas on this forum that would pick up HPals without a full rework or redefining the meta.
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Seems like Holy Prism is going to be way too good, compared to Lights Hammer. More damage, more flexibility in use.
Maybe - I haven’t ptr tested today, but I preferred the simplicity of hammer. The flexibility of prism and HP generation was nice, but I found myself overcapping HP while trying to use prism on cooldown. Imo, the more exciting tidbit is the boost to holy shock crits.
Hammer is simple drop on cooldown and hope the tank stays in it when possible. Having to choose healing vs dps/holy power feels odd. And the animation is kinda dodgy
Yeah we’ll have to see how these changes impact the decision. IMO Holy Prism is a cool idea, but in practice is a little more awkward than Light’s Hammer.
- It’s HoPo gen is upfront so you need to be at 0-2 HoPo to use it.
- You have to use it as a ST heal to get the full HoPo potential. This could be good for AoE damage in m+ but that’s yet to be seen.
- Every Holy Shock from Divine toll can reduce the CD via the tier set. With a 20 second CD on Holy Prism and a 1 second CDR, casting a Divine toll is more likely to munch some of that CDR potential. More so than Light’s Hammer given its longer CD.
It will be less damage than lights hammer for sure. 100% is not much when you see how much damage it was doing prior, whereas lights hammer was already able to do decent damage and got a pretty size-able buff to that today putting it further ahead there.
For healing, tbd but my feelycraft goes towards holy prism. Healing 5 targets for around 75-80k ish while generating 1 holy power is very strong, especially considering the cd is likely to be anywhere from 15-18 seconds. If you use it for single target healing it’ll heal for around 100kish, but generate 3 holy power. So for healing I think prism will be very good
I disagree I think it’s the opposite. Also you don’t have to be at 0-2 holy power, you can opt to use it the other way and only generate 1 holy power while healing 5 targets (which seems to be quite strong now) as needed.
I find lights hammer far more awkward, you have to keep track of the ticks to know when you are going to get your next holy power, similar to divine resonance. Divine resonance gets wasted a ton in a lot of log reviews that I do, so I am certain LH will be the same way. It’s just annoying to track and a bit awkward especially with AC build since it swims in holy power. If you waste the holy power you lose a lot of the value behind it, so you have to track the ticks and not press cs/hs or any generator if you are close to overcapping. I am not a fan of generating holy power this way at all
Only Light’s Hammer healing was buffed, not damage. That might still mean light’s hammer is still better but I haven’t run the numbers.
Yeah I hadn’t even considered using it to heal 5 friendlies, pre buff I assumed the 3 hopo was the way we’d use it but I guess that calculation has changed.
Yeah the hopo generation in the background is an evolution of hopo that I wish they didn’t pursue.
On current ptr,
Test was based on using 1 Avenging Wrath at start, using Holy Prism/Light’s Hammer/ Holy Shock on cd, and with no trinket procs or giving me static Int. No weapon enchant as well.
424 Ilvl Stats
9536 Int
17% crit
35% haste
27% mastery
17% vers
Light’s Hammer I did 3 times for 2.20 mil healing. 14 Holy Shock crits. 2 min 28 secs~
Holy Prism I did 9 times for 2.07 mil healing. 19 Holy Shock crits. 2 min 34 secs~
Also based on if no overhealing and hit every target every time. Plus LoD healing not included from extra holy power. In which Holy Prism and Light’s Hammer would give 3 more LoD or WoG.
Now with Holy Prism healing 1 target, casting LoD right after, and no awakening(for testing).
It did about 2.17 mil healing. 2 min 40 secs~
Damage
Holy Prism AoE Damage was 608k~.
Light’s Hammer Aoe Damage was 668k~.
Depending on crits you can get 3 Light’s Hammer in 2 min and possibly more with higher crit or more consistent.
Misspoke there yeah, sorry. LH will do more damage than prism though unfortunately, 100% is still not really enough to make prism that much better damage wise. It could potentially pull ahead if you use prism for single target and hit 5 enemies but the damage was so bad before that 100% doesn’t really move that needle too much.
In terms of the healing, yeah, it heals for about 100kish single target and if you use it for aoe it heals for 70-80k per player hit. These buffs were pretty massive overall for prism. Very good for LH too and I’m sure that’ll have it’s uses but I vastly prefer prism because of how it generates.
Previously we were using either of them just as generators because they weren’t strong enough healing wise, but now they will both be very good healing options. I like prism a lot more because it’s on demand holy power that you can use in two different ways which is very nice. I can get an on demand 3 hp or on demand 1, and change how I heal based on that. If someone needs a big heal, I can use prism ST and get a huge holy power benefit, otherwise I just heal 5 people and get 1.
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I updated my other post. I always liked Holy Prism as a ability but it sucks as they nerfed it’s range and healing potential with every expansion. MoP Holy Prism was fun seeing the lines got out of Immerseus boss in Siege of Orgrimmar.
Holy Prism has more flexibility and higher mana cost but not really a issue in M+.
My guess is that they knew the talents were undertuned, but not by how much since no one used them. But after the Aberrus raid tests Blizzard have managed to gather enough data to realize they were horribly undertuned even with the new set bonus.
Or alternatively. They intentionally overbuffed the spells to “force” people to use them.
WIth the 2 and 4 set bonus. Holy Prism will do about 200k heals on a sub 20 second basis.
Now if only they can fix our mana issues so we can take full advantage of our tier sets. 
I have been playing Holy and Ret on the PTR, both feel very weak. But for holy in particular the Buffs were semi noticible but putting sprikles on dookie doesnt really take away from the fact its still dookie.
Holy Prism was healing for 90k-150k max on crits. Thats with us having 500k+ ho when fully geared.
Lights Hammer was healing for 9k per tick for 14 seconds.
These are both with the 4Pc tier and the buffs.
The heals feel underwhelming, Evokers were pressing their instant heals for 300k crits.
Holy shock heals 90k - 120k on crits. Its sad and with the hugge damage numbers other classes are getting we heal bad.
As far as rets are concerned. Our flash heals for 60k and wog heals for 90k crits. Its sad on top of our defence nerfs ret feels semi unplayable currently on the ptr.
Now if they’d adjust the mana cost we’d be on to something.
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I dont agree here. A 150% healing buff baseline put holy prism into a very good spot considering where it is in the talent tree. Then you add in the 80% from tier set and it pumps hard. Single target it heals for around 120k for me and aoe it heals for about 70-80k non crit (with tier). That is really really good for what holy prism is.
I agree with holy shock feeling weak, its been an issue this entire expansion and will probably continue to be. Even worse with the blanket 3% nerf now too. It was only semi decent this tier because of our tier set, but when you didnt have that up and hit holy shock it healed for 30k. Still does, that is very sad. WoG without any modifiers heals for like 60k lol
It will not be doing 200k, it’ll come close with crits but regular heals will be closer to 130-140k and thats only if you use it for single target, most of the time it will be used for aoe healing unless someone is in need of a big st heal and you dont have wog available
You know that with full season 2 gear, and the set bonus of 80% increased healing and the buff of 100% increased healing on Holy prism in( total about 2.8x the amount of healing), we will hit 200k+?