I’d love to run some keys as disc, but in the words of Yumy, “There’s no reason to.” Sigh.
Are the devs going to bring disc up to snuff in Dragonflight?
If not is holy going to be good? And if not, what are you fellow priest healers going to do? Are you going to go meta? I am, and this is for certain, but being a priest I am praying that (pun intended) at least one priest healer spec is at least A tier if not S. I’d like to heal as a priest at least on an alt.
I’ve got my priest, druid, shaman, and Paladin ready to go if I decide to start raiding and M+ again. As a healer it never hurts to cover your bases.
The conventional wisdom used to be that priest with 2 healing specs was a safer choice, but a lot of BFA and SL both priest specs spent a lot of time in the C-tier of healers.
You can make anything work of course but not being meta turns a 10% throughput disadvantage into a 90% rejection rate from decent groups.
Prediction for DF: Disc will be OP 10.0 and nerfed hard. Again. I actually think holy will be A-tier.
I feel both spec look decent so far. We’re in a better spot than we were with the 1st iterarion of our trees. I feel there is a bit of button bloat right now.
Meta-wise. Hard to say still. Disc looks to be able to do decent damage out of all the healers. Although we’re losing shining force and aren’t getting an interrupt like all other healers (might not be a problem for keys but still a bit frustrating). Utility seems okay though.
I haven’t tried beta myself but it feels like we’re getting a bit too bloaty in terms of button to press. Priest is already quite a busy healer I feel so I hope to see something done for that before launch.
As for what I am going to play. I’m going for the most fun. Might not even be priest but that’s highly likely going to be disc for me. 
I’m quite interrested into monk too and will certainly try evoker.
I feel you on the button bloat. SL got bad enough I had to dual macro my DPS spells on my bars. Now I’m wondering how to comfortably fit in Shadowmend, Shadowfiend, possibly Mindgames and HW:Life and any other active ability that makes an appearance…
It is getting to be a lot.
It’s impossible to say without knowing future tuning, but if the talents released in the current state they’re in, for keys specifically I think Holy moves back down to bottom tier, Disc priest a solid A or high B and Evoker S in DF.
We also haven’t seen M+, so we don’t know what’s going to be in the rotation, and that could throw it all for a loop. If you need extreme throughput for a dungeon or two (like current) Holy could shoot up to A. But Disc’s throughput options seem solid and their damage looks OK too.
This pretty much. I feel disc in keys is going to be strong. Pumped up shadow mends, renew as an applicator for more healing. I’m on my phone but that capstone healing talent on the left hand side shores up some issues and surge a light will help mana and healing. Instant flashes to weave In between your dps I don’t see the pws buff as an improvement to our healing really outside rapture but actually healing,….no I feel we will be pretty good. I will agree with caps on B tier prob.
Reason I don’t have it higher is other healers have brez, hero etc.
On the bright side throughput is always more valuable when an expansion is new and people are still gearing up, learning the mechanics, etc.
Hopefully 10.0 doesn’t last like 8 months to the point where healers lose value…
Discipline looks amazing to me in dragonflight.
Renew and pom adding atonement. Mana regen through swp. Mindgames, lights wrath, holy word life, and harsh discipline, devine aegis, all available in the same build
I think having the option to go more defensively in the beginning of launch and switch to a more dps build after getting gear and learning the mechanics will be nice.
Theres also a few default talents we were forced to take like sins of many. I think the option yo skip that since its not very helpful with my playstyle.
We get imporved purge the wicked and divine star
Im personally pumped and think disc is going to be in a way better spot next expansion.
Yeah PoM, renew, flash heal, etc. - basic reliable healing spells - fills in a lot of gaps in the disc playbook. If they had a beacon or something closer to it I’d almost be tempted to switch back to disc.
Holy looks pretty solid come the next expansion. The new Lightweaver talent is Flash Concentration 2.0 and w/ the new talents available our single target healing is going to be in a stronger position than we are now.
The problem I’m having right now is coming up with a Holy build that can actually take damage talents and still get all the important healing talents. Budgeting for Empyreal Blaze requires putting 2 points into the talent that increases your PoM charges even though it’s not particular useful for an M+ build. So that’s 2 points wasted… and then you have multiple 2 point sinks beneath it that eat up your points. I’m hoping this gets cleaned up a bit.
Holy isn’t get an interrupt, but Chastise stun is going to see more usage at least on mobs that can be stunned.
Yup, this is how I’m feeling about holy in keys right now, too.
I don’t think they would have trouble healing, but their damage support is really really low/expensive. Unless the dungeons are all tuned like Kara currently is (which is unlikely) the healing will be more than needed and people will probably be looking for damage.
Well, starting off in the expansion we’re going to be undergeared, under stat prioritized, and dungeons are notoriously overtuned when they’re released. It takes usually 3-6 months before they even get balanced out.
Most of Holys damage is going to be frontloaded on-to Holy Fire now because of Empyreal Blaze. You open up with Holy fire, Divine Star, use Blaze, consume your 3 instant cast Holy Fire, tab SWP, recast Holy Fire + Divine Star again, and by the time you’re done Empyreal Blaze is going to reset soon.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Holy Fire is like 60% of Holy’s M+ damage now.
The tab instant cast Holy Fires will help though in healing intensive situations because you can at least weave it in between heals.
Yeah, they’ve given us the option of really having a completely dysfunctional DPS toolkit… or going over the top. In a way it’s a little scary to look at a tree where you could even give up holy fire, e.g. if you really wanted to or you could triple down on it. 
I’m sure I heard that the dungeons were more healing intensive… might mean healing is more important then dps
Interesting. I’ve grown to really like the healing you can do with Flash Concentration. A tank in a 23 Gambit just today said I was a beast healer–and I honestly have only Flash Concentration to thank. Is it going to be essentially the same? The healing you can pump is insane. 
DPS is essential if you want to push the highest of keys, but not a big concern for Average Joe healers like us. That said, I myself do all I can and like to pump damage as well as heals. Two chesting keys is a lot easier if you can pump big damage, really. That the case I hope we can get the best damage trinket(s) in M+ vs Mythic raiding. I dont have a Mythic Raid team (or even a Heroic one) and despise Blizzard for making it you have to have one to get that trinket.
Bro you are basing your view on this xpac just gone which was different to bfa and legion and prob different to next xpac. But thank you for telling us how important dps is in pushing keys /wink
But currently you dont need big dps cause the current keys are a little more healing centric hence holy being night fae and dps and tanks are cranking dps. Easly next xpac we will be underpowered as will the tanks so we will be healing more
People said the same about Shadowlands dungeons when they were in beta. It’s a combination of overtuned dungeons, undertuned numbers on healers, only wearing blues, and people needing to relearn their classes.
Getting KSM in Season 1 was the hardest out of all the seasons due to the factors above.
and yet in my view SL was the easiest of the mythic plus expacs. I personally dont rememeber them saying that about SL. Im not saying they didint but i dont rememebr it and healingwise i think i would go with legion being a little tougher on the healing, looking at you tyr week on halls of valor over bfa and SL
Shadowlands KSM became a joke after 9.1.5 because instead of it being an achievement like getting all 20s it just became just a participation award. This was mainly as a result of the low amount of people that got KSM in Season 1.
9.0 KSM was the hardest it was because you had to time these dungeons before the pages of dungeon nerfs, tyrannical nerfs, timer extensions, etc. You were also doing this at like iLvl 205-210 when mythic was 226 in Season 1. Also, tanks were way underpowered back then compared to now and had to kite… a lot.
Season 1 is always the hardest for the reasons you mentionned for sure.
Gearing was also slower without valor at that point in time.
I’m always pushing early season for ksm before the nerfs mainly because it’s the time where it’s the most fun because it’s a bit more challenging with gear of previous season + overtuned dungeons 