Hmm, just came back to see these somewhat interesting changes. Seems like Answered Prayers should be moved up a row and Lightweaver moved much higher (and more accessible) on the tree, since it’s now both a single target and AoE talent and a potentially core part of the spec.
Looks like PoH probably still needs some help, right? And of course, there’s no interrupt, now not even the backdoor Afterlife brez and I’m assuming they haven’t fixed the issue with CC clashing with interrupts problem?
So I’m not sure I’d say near perfect but at least it’s more interesting, not just leaning so heavily into spot healing and praying to muddle through big AoEs. Hopefully the spec doesn’t become too reliant on Apotheosis timings though to the extent it feels weak outside wings.
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The top-and-middle of the tree is very well done because you’re able to get pretty much every useful talent now including dps ones with little tradeoffs. It’s when you get to the bottom that it turns into a hot mess.
You have 2 points less to spend right off the bat due to needing to invest into Holy Celerity and one of the Apotheosis talents. Light in the Darkness is a mando talent as well so it limits your build options.
Answered Prayers over on the right makes it impossible to get a Lightweaver, Divine Image, and Answered Prayers build that everyone runs currently.
All they have to do is trim down some talents and move things slightly around and it’d be good.
The PTR just went down so an update is coming soon.
Ngl won’t be sad if we ever lose divine image. Not really a fun talent that feels mandatory
I loved it in shadowlands, but seemed impossible to get then.
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Yeah, it was a nice bonus proc in the Legion days, but as a talent it was initially way too RNG - and no one wants an unreliable proc.
So they made it reliable but at the expense of overlapping with our holy word cycles, and it seems like every other patch since then they’ve been finding some way or other to nerf it as they slowly push us towards more consistent holy words.
At this point, especially since they’ve also since given the spec decent DPS it’s really just a modifier they could bake into the spells themselves.
Another week, another build with no priest changes. Starting to feel more and more like Blizz thinks the class is perfect after all.
If they do the same all over again i´m out for 11.1, despite the rework… They are like “we did something, take it or leave it”. While it changes the playstyle, i don´t feel like it adresses any of our painpoints (Holypriest PoV). Sadge.
It speaks volumes they didn´t even create an official feedback threat for Priest, the MOST neglected Class / Specs for 2 Addons in a row.
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They could make answered prayers, divine image or lightweaver baseline. They should just consolidate the POM talents as well and please for the love of all things holy, buff POM.
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PoM will be god tier in oracle. Stronger than serenity. But it’s also like 80% stronger than Archon which is maybe too substantial.
I don’t mind having tough choices, tbh. My biggest concerns are when things don’t become choices, like with auto choosing a passive divine image and how divine word almost always gets the back seat when it’s probably one of the coolest spell we have (still think it should proc all 3 choices on use!)
I’d say the only things worth making baseline are the things which every iteration of Holy Priest would take and right now the only talent that fits that bill is Miracle Worker, especially given Apotheosis being the main cooldown and fractional Holy Word cooldown reductions from casts.
Divine Image would not fit that bill as it’s dependent on Miracle Worker being utilized. Answered Prayers doesn’t fit as this season has shown that there are cleaving Lightweaver builds that do not cast it at all.
Lightweaver is a new case as it wasn’t utilized in Dragonflight at all, but now sees usage from expanded health pools and buffed single target heals. But, even Lightweaver can be questionable given the new builds we can come up with on PTR.
I still maintain the current problem is the number of 2 point talent costs in the final tier of the Holy tree.
We have to have the Paladin and Mage privilege I guess to get our class changes modified. This is how it was in 10.2.6 where they just jammed in the Holy Priest end tree changes without making any modifications to feedback.
We only have 2-3 weeks left of the PTR. The Holiday season ate up 2 weeks of development times.
:offers bottle of very large pills:
Try one of these, they’re amazing.
There isn’t a Priest feedback thread because Shadow’s 2-point node consolidation is coming which will move Interrupt to the class tree and our missing class rework is mixed in with that. THEN there’ll be an official feedback thread.
Swallow? Oh, no, no… it’s a sup–
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I´m not sure i can handle such a big pill of copium. I think it´s stuck in my throat. Phew, it went down - suddenly i believe they´ll give us nightfae blink and cascade baseline, together with a cr and a skillable poison or curse dispell.
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I did some PTR DPS testing as Holy on the cleave dummies in the city.
I was playing as Archon w/ Thunderlord Crackling Citrine and my current 636-639 gear.
I only used Apotheosis, Smite, Halo, Chastise, and Holy Fire.
Retail Live w/ Divine Word: 863k dmg overall.
PTR test build w/o Divine Word (Lightweaver and LoTN) : 1.08mil dmg overall
PTR test build w/ Divine Word (Answered Prayers): 1.13mil dmg overall
I was honestly a bit surprised to see the Divine Word build barely doing much better then my LOTN build so I did 2 tests just to confirm it. Yup, they were both pretty much matched.
The main reason why the LOTN build does the same damage is because it takes 2 less smites to reset Chastise which is better then just having +20% damage for 15s.
I think in actuality though the Divine Word would edge out in a real dungeon situation due to having the damage boost upfront on the pulls and getting Answered Prayers procs every 1-2 minutes.
Holy is seeing a +25% overall dps boost in 11.1 and that’s mainly due to Holy Celerity and Eternal Sanctity. Please note that the dps posted above is peak potential dps because in a real key you’ll have a 30-50% dps uptime so it can range from 200-500k.
To put things into perspective my dps as Voidweaver Disc on the same cleave targets is only 515k overall, but Disc is a slow, and steady horse and can maintain that overall an entire dungeon vs Holy who has to weave Healing / DPS spells.
All things considered Holy’s within a +/- 10% difference of Disc now in keys, but If you can free cast DPS the entire key Holy will be the highest dps healer next patch.
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Okay, no way do they let this go live. I mean, I think it’d be hilarious but, uh.
They basically created a holy DPS spec.
I hopped on the PTR and swapped all my gear I could tailor to crit/haste/verse (so I still had 13% mastery because of the necklace I didn’t bother to try to get recrafted. 639 ilvl. No research on which secondary stat is actually the best for us, ended up at 19% crit, 27%haste, 11%verse. I don’t have any on-use dps trinkets so I put on Sacbrood and Gale of shadows.
I went purely for DPS talents, including Divine Image and Divine Word (CEQAmmmbZv0rzNjRHT4p8IjZfzAAAAAAAAMMzsMzMmZYMzwYZmZmBAAAAmFbzG2mZGMLMLzwMGmlFMzMqZBAYmFLTmNDAZMYjNzG).
1 was doing 1.6 million DPS on the 5-set cleave dummies. (and 185kHPS purely from halo and Holy Nova).
You could basically run double-healer in mythic+ at this point. Normal heals + holy priest, and if things get dicey during the heal checks the holy priest stops for a few seconds and pops divine hymn or drops a holy word (which with DI will then empower their next dps casts so low dps loss there). You’re not going to run it in raid since so much of the damage is from AoE, but as long as there’s five targets you’re good.
(As a side note, I honestly wish they’d nerf our AoE and take all that DPS and put it into single target. Double the damage of holy fire, half the damage of AoE in Burning Vehemence )
It’s 10/10 fun, but seriously, no way it makes it live.
Bring back 1 minute cd boon of ascendant where we can hold 6M dps for its duration and we’re good to go!!!
The double healer would be fun until boss fight starts and we’re holding 300k dps on him and causing wipes
How much dps you can do as Holy is really dependent on how much healing you have to do and skill level. I can do 400-450k overall in +10s as Holy, but if I’m in a +12 or higher where the healing is demanding then I’m closer to 275-300k as Holy. Disc is around 375-450k avg for me in +12s and higher and it just comes passive with the territory.
Archon’s single target damage is also a pretty sore point because you’re passively doing -25% less damage than Oracle.
Holy’s potential range is going to be quite wide because it can be anywhere from 300-550k depending on how much time you’re able to dps. If you can free cast most of the key then you’re going to clap every other healer on overall dps.
Testing the single-target scneraior I was holding stead at around 550k, but yeah, single-target is definitely where the holy-dps spec would fall apart.
Oh, agreed: our dps will absolutely be lower if we’re solo-healing/playing as intended. But I’m saying the current tuning actually enables the same sort of “degenerate” play you get like when people run mythic+ with one tank and four DPS. (Or raids with no healers and all DPS ). This would - in situations where most damage is via AoE - probably enable a mythic+ two-healer group to be quite successful. And since I don’t think Blizzard wants to see that I (sadly) expect nerfs.
That’s standing still i spend a lot a time dpsing in holy, pushing in normal raids (my normal raid logs are fun this season ). and keys, so I’ll def. take what I can get! I actually learned a lot on over in the past few years from Caithyra’s posts, which btw Grats on CE!
Blizzard just can’t seem to get Holy’s dps down proper. Since Shadowlands its been a constant up-and-down rollercoaster where at the start of the expansion our dps is near the bottom and then a patch or two later were at the top.
Or, what they lean in and Disc can be the fun ‘heal’ with OK spec and Holy can be the second DPS spec with some solid support healing?