Hello fellow priests, I am just wondering what peoples thoughts are on Holy in raid right now with the Apotheosis playstyle and tier set, Truth be told after raiding last night I honestly have hated raiding this season and majority of this feeling is towards the Tier set and how holy is currently playing. I feel like a lot of my healing is… well outside of any cooldown, not satisfying or feeling good to use. Even if the numbers were great on the hps side of things that doesn’t bother me much at all compared to how it feels to play my Main spec (went Disc for M+ cause holy felt so underwhelming).
I really dislike the Machine gun playstyle Apotheosis and the tier set encourage in raid, I load in my clip, shoot my shots and then do a lot less while I reload for 2minutes. Honestly this makes my holy words feel so much worse because they probably don’t heal as much because blizzard saw us using them so much during a cd. Nothing feels good to use, I feel like I have no real control like I use too.
At first I thought the tier set was looking pretty good, even though I hated the passive mechanic it gives without really adding much to my kit I still didn’t flinch much at it, this was until I realized that the holy words only applied insurance when you are in Apotheosis. Honestly I think this was the point when I lost my enjoyment of holy this season. This tier set to me really encourages a lot of misplay or punishment for using Apotheosis in the right moment but then you could end up holding it for too long waiting to use it.
Anyway I just wanted to hear other peoples opinions or perspectives, maybe I thinking about it wrong or not the right way of play, Maybe I can find some silver lining in some feedback. Obviously there is a lot of other issues with Holy right now but all of us here already know what they are so won’t go into detail.
Eventhough in M+ the changes are an improvement. I still feel the spec is facing a constant wall with all the limitations it has compared to all the other healers.
That’s why I dropped Hpriest for the first time and started maining this Rdruid.
Prob one of the best decisions I made
Yeah, Unfortunately for me I don’t really have time to gear and level a new main, I’ve only really been interested in playing a healer priest, I’m not a fan on Disc raiding either so I have my own limitations as well. It’s great that its working out for you cause having fun doing what you do is priority.
The highest performing raid spec still eschews our AOE heals except sanctify. It doesn’t even go down the lightweaver path this season for cleave healing. It’s all flash heal, emp renew, pom, halo and insurance. Maintaining as much uptime in apotheosis via it and answered prayers to throw up holy words.
You don’t have to play that way, but prayer of healing requires a prayer circle plus lightweaver stacks to even bother casting if you go that route. Oracle is more playable this season, but still not really competing with Archon.
The bottom of the talent tree feels so restrictive.
The rework has pretty much been a mixed bag for me. I feel like I’m putting up the same relative numbers as last season (if compared at equal ilvl), but it’s not as fun overall. I feel frustrated after most fights and haven’t been able to settle into anything I truly enjoy. Not enough to stop playing my priest, just not as fun now.
I’m playing oracle in raid and I’m loving it so much. I just feel like it’s cd after cd after cd and always a cd is ready to use. So much apoth time, hymn is resetting so quickly, a premonition seems to always been up. Most fun I’ve had in raid tbh. The only thing hurting atm is its more difficult to weave in dps
It certainly feels like I have to be locked in more than normal to achieve my usual numbers, while there are options I feel like I’m gibbing myself by not utilizing the Tier set bonus and yeah I strongly dislike the prayer healing set ups at the moment, I was actually going to go for it but they nerfed the cast time and mana cost and I basically gave up on that, Oracle is nice but its not for me in raid, I use it in M+ though, I like how season one holy played. I’m glad that I am not the only one feeling frustrated once my cds finish I pretty much go afk in my head as nothing feels impactful at that point.
I hate that the website shares our hero spec name.
I tried Oracle out this past week, it’s okay. It’s more fun than Archon, maybe, the pom interactions are pretty cool.
I wish there was a way to practice your spec in a raid without gobbling up a gear slot in normal/heroic. LFR isn’t enough damage to get a feel for anything.
I don’t like the game fully dictate the way I play. I try to work within the limits, and really don’t care how many people are playing what. Just like to find something that works and go with it. Even the talent pts I won’t necessarily follow tbh but this season it happened to coincide with what I’m enjoying
Oh, I agree for the most part, I loved my S2 DF - S1 TWW spec. Unfortunately that playstyle is gone and I’m left with what I find inferior when it comes to fun factor.
I just haven’t found something that jives with me yet. It’s great that Oracle is more viable now. However, I find it disappointing that the best way to achieve the highest hps, isn’t much different than last season, ignoring our casted AOE heals for the most part.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work, just am finding a lack of fun. I don’t know why and I can’t put my finger on it.
Maybe it’s just a numbers adjustment that’s needed.
You can get respectable hps on oracle, archon will win on Raw HPS but that’s halo overhealing unnecessarily. I’m doing just fine, probably just as much as I’d be doing in Archon tbh.
I haven’t found it to be that glaringly different either, though requires more work to get there.
Again, I could likely alleviate this if I could just raid more, even without rewards. Once I kill say Rik Reverb, if I’m disappointed in my performance, I have to wait until the next week to try much new. Trust me, I’ve got about 7 different talent builds right now from trying to find one that I like the most. Lol
IMO, if you’re not in a CE guild, then you should basically feel free to experiment. Class guides for healing priest are generally very good guides - and will get you to your theoretical maximum, but you seriously don’t need that if you’re not trying to finish mythic raid early in the tier. Once I started playing in more casual heroic guilds, I basically did whatever I felt like and generally still parsed well. My disc priest build quite literally never does a full ramp besides uppies + overloaded with light. My holy build I’ve been flip flopping on what I play, and been having fun with it.
Once you have a good idea of what you like about a class/spec, just build towards it and try it out. See what you like or don’t like about it.
I do tend to agree that I’m not a huge fan of playing the minute-long apotheosis build because it feels very awkward to time well in a raid. And I wasn’t a huge fan of removing salv to get there. But that’s kinda the nature of tier sets. Funny that Blizzard said they wanted the tier sets to be more generic, but they still heavily pushed the 4 set to specific talents for quite a few specs. Holy just happens to be among them.
Yes, what you say is true, Currently since my guild is progressing heroic I tend to be more the ‘meta build’ of holy for raid healing for the sake of improving success odds, once we finish heroic we either go on break or do whatever we feel like doing. My main gripes isn’t really me playing my class properly or whatnot but how I am expected to play with Apotheosis and trying to get the most out of the tier set at least until we finish progression, Another issue I just remembered is how awful the GCD usage feels with Apotheosis. I have always loved Holy priest raiding, I have done it since MoP, this is the first time for me where it feelsbadman
My final input on this matter: If you are doing this at your leisure for enjoyment factors, do you want to play your game or do you want to game your play? If I’m doing something less optimal, to me it’s more of a challenge at the end of the day and if things take longer then they (Aotc) will just be that much more rewarding once I accomplish it.
Depends on if you have the luxury of a guild or not, too. I just joined a new one, though they are a bit younger than me and I feel out of place, but hopefully it works out.
It’s hard to try out something new, when your performance might far more impact the raids success with a bunch of strangers.
This season I don’t feel like I can make many choices; I don’t feel like I can make many “good plays”. I try to time my rotation well but I pay almost all the bosses the same way and my only goal has become pushing out as much healing as possible.
I don’t completely dislike it. I find that I do hold onto Apotheosis a bit longer than I should in case things go sideways. I miss the satisfaction of Holy Word: Salvation.
My ability to burst heal feels like it has been diminished but increased in frequency, and the frequency seems to line up with many of the fights well.
I love it. I think the update is the most I have enjoyed Holy since SL.
I miss HW: Salv, but I would take losing Salv for this update any day.
In raid, I always thought the recommended Answered Prayers for talents route was boring. It’s a good talent and synergizes well with the tier set, especially with Seraphic Crescendo, just borng imo. I drop that for Lightweaver and enjoy it much more. Lightweaver is also a good talent and performs great too.
Lightweaver makes the downtime between Apotheosis not as boring and makes Archon’s Halo a much bigger CD. You don’t really need to take Seraphic Crescendo when you go with Lightweaver. As you just don’t get the free Apotheosis procs from Answered Prayers so the talent loses value. Divinity is a good option or just don’t take a cojoining Apotheosis talent.
I think after this tier, barring major changes, the recommended talent choice for raid will go to Lightweaver. The tier set just works so well with Answered Prayers.
Right? That’s why I say it’s a mixed bag. I just can’t quite pinpoint why. Part of it is likely that I’m not a major fan of leaning so hard on apotheosis.
I completely ignore the Apotheosis windows for the Insurance! procs. I just use it for the three instant cast PoH and the 20% healing buff. So I don’t feel like I need to save anything for it or do anything different with it, I just pop it when there’s a lot to heal and then heal like I normally do and I’m having fun with it like that. It feels good.
I think if I had to play the way that Wowhead suggests that I would dislike it much more than I do. I’m really digging the Prayer of Healing playstyle. The buff to it was welcome and I’d argue that I’m probably doing better than I would be trying to do that Insurance! maximization or Lightweaver. Prayer of Healing really decreases the output of Divine Image though, or at least it feels like it does.
It’s also hard to manage such a long cast time so I end up standing in stuff a bit too much. But I really am excited and having fun doing something different.
But to the point, I just consider Apotheosis a passive healing buff to be used when there’s a lot of damage and don’t pay much more attention to it than that.
The only thing slapped here is holy priest by most mechanics as you have low to none defensives lmao
It’s season 1 all over again but with a few improvements.
