For those who don’t know - Holy priest has been incredibly gimped since the introduction of m+ in Legion, and we are also a bottom tier healer in progression mythic raid.
As a healer, we are quite strong. The issue is we lack mobility, utility, and disaster recovery - which are critical to the meta of the end game. We also lack the ability to DPS and heal at the same time - which makes playing us in m+ much harder than say hpal/rdruid/mw which dps as part of their normal rotation.
Many of us had hoped that Blizzard would listen to our feedback and make changes that would retool us for the content that they are putting out. Many of us have spent two xpacs sitting out of raid and getting passed over for keys waiting for big changes to come.
So what did we get? They made one of our healing spells baseline from a talent, and are giving us a few DPS spells we still have to stop healing to cast (which will do atonement healing for disc by the way).
No DR.
No Utility.
No way to synthesize damage and healing.
No mobility.
I hope that people on the forums will support a call for Blizzard to rethink these changes and retool Holy priest to be competitive with the other healers. With things like power infusion, mind blast, and healing coming to dome - it’s going to be all the more important that we are buffed so that people aren’t asking us to “just play disc”.
In terms of actual suggestions:
People have been asking for baseline feather for forever.
Apothesis allowing us to move while casting would give us mobility in m+.
At this point a brez would be much more valuable than spirit.
Letting our heals do passive damage the same way TD or the rings I have equipped work based on damage/number of spells cast.
Making shield baseline so we have some absorbs.
Making desperate prayer a strong damage reduction CD that is castable on tanks.
Make greater fade baseline.
Make fade grant invisibility for its duration.
Buff chastise so apoth can give us a damage burst window.
Pom should be instant cast and renew should scale so we have more hots for m+.
Give us some sort of jade status that converts healing into damage when cast on it.
Give us a lightspawn pet that does damage and is buffed when healed.
Make shackle work on all targets so that it functions like cyclone.
Make pers work on all allies for a group wide castable damage reducer (renew is useless as is).
AGREE!!
Pretty much every other class has been getting nerfed/buffed for balance but holy priest has been garbage tier this whole expansion. What the heck?! Please fix!
Healing in general feels really bad. I didn’t sign up to be a healer for all of these years to be constantly pestered to play disc instead or some other dps hybrid healer. Boss design has favored lighter healing for awhile now for the sake of having more interesting mechanics. They haven’t figured out a way to allow healers to spend most of their time healing instead of smite being their top cast. Because of this dpsing is always more important and blizzard is creating more and more ways for other classes like paladin or shaman to dps in raid better and better pushing out the core heal focused specs.
Blizzard needs to pick one. Either this game becomes one where healers are all hybrid dps and the pure healers are compensated to do the same damage across the board or we go back to near constant raid wide damage so healers are actually allowed to heal. Either way I want to be pressing heal buttons and not 30+ casts of smite on every boss because of dead air or fear of being replaced.
The thing is we are good at healing - but Blizzard has made healing 1/5th of the healing role’s requirements and so we end up at the bottom of the stack.
We need to be redesigned around the game as it is now.
While Holy has had very strong hps output for majority of BFA, what we’re lacking in other areas usually means we’re not going to be looked at as an option over healers with more utility (eg, every. other. healer.)
Literally just something as simple as instant PoM would be nice to give us a bit extra mobility. I love my Holy Priest and want to be able to main Holy again but the utility of other healers when we offer absolutely nothing on that front is hard to compete with.
I think this would be the best change they could make for allowing you to deal damage - Give holy priests a passive that, as an idea, causes a small burst of AoE holy damage every time you cast a heal or cleanse on anyone. It’d provide an interesting contrast between both priest healing specs, as well; Disc priests would heal by dealing damage, holy priests would damage by healing.
Great list! I love the feather, apotheosis, and fade suggestions the best. POM instant cast and PW:S back are also things that I would love to see return.
One thing I would add to your list, and this would probably be my number one wishlist item, is give us the legendary cloak effect from legion back as a baseline passive. The one where you return to life after spirit of redemption ends with health based on how much healing you did. It was mostly used as a wipe protect but also felt great thematically where you die to save others and then come back to life.
