If you are playing casually you are likely not required to use every button. Some spells are situational. I understand that it can be daunting, but in this case it’s just having a larger toolbox where every now and then you may dig in the box and go “oh, look at this, I have the correct size screwdriver that I rarely get to use [or whatever].”
Take Mind Vision, for example. It can be useful in some situations, but not having it on your bars isn’t going to make-or-break your ability to play the game or get you yelled at. Doesn’t mean that there might be a situation, say, where someone’s running back from a wipe and they get lost, and you can use Mind Vision to help them find their way back. I’d certainly be disappointed to lose it even though I rarely use it.
And yet despite all of the “new buttons,” we’re still missing some tools. If you don’t want to macro them, or think it’s too overwhelming, don’t use them. Pick the ones that you think make the most sense for most situations, and stick to those. Yes, the Blizzard spell-book will highlight spells that aren’t on your bars, but it’ll do that anyway with macro’ed spells, too.
Adopt the old WotLK mentality: Just because it’s in my spellbook doesn’t mean I need to press it.
Use the scrolling bar function, even UI Add-Ons will typically allow for this. Have one for straight up DPS, and one for focused healing. Or just use help/harm macros.
In the content I’ve been doing lately to get back into the groove on my Hpriest, I’ve really only found myself casting SW:P on bosses. I still smite spam, toss holy fires around, chastise mobs that need the stun, and even cooler is I can execute mobs now. I quite like having all of the new buttons back.
It’s going to get easier for you once you see what you really need, what you situationally need, and what you never need, and then adapt your keybinds/playstyle to this.
Don’t feel like you would have in Legion, where you may feel compelled to use a spell rotationally just because you have it. It’s back to the good ol’ days of priorities.
I agree there are quite a bit more that we need to watch/use but I am under the impression that my Holy toolbox is now quite a bit better equipped for more situations. So I am a happy camper (until Mythic prog starts up again and I get asked “are you disc” a hundred times)!
One thing I am thankful I picked up, and maybe you can check it out, is get a new keyboard with some side macro keys… like the Logitech G910 or any of a new gaming keyboards. Then you can add another action bar (or memorize some binds like I have and dont display them) and go to town.
If not, get a mouse with a couple extra buttons. Either choice will give you more space to expand your macro setup and maybe find a new routine.
I’ve been casting SW:P a lot lately and it’s my biggest damage outputter at the end of M+ dungeons. Even if I’m not in a position to pew-pew I can still tab target SW:P everything. Since I can do that I’m not spamming Holy Nova as much either.
I find this point to be moot because the GCD does exist. Unless you’re extremely arthritic or far from being sober, it’s very easy to manage healing in any situation without mouseovers because of the GCD and cast times of abilities. During that .9-1.5 seconds (depending on haste) that is when I would change my target to line up another spell.
I think an often overlooked negative of mouseovers is that you have to be doubly aware of mouse position in case your ability goes on a target that you did not intend.
There’s also some limitations on camera maneuvering while on the go when it comes to mouseovers. It’s a niche case, but it does arise.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sticky targeting casts if you use a bit of anticipation on where your abilities need to go and planning around the GCD/cast time.
I transitioned from a click-to-cast to a mouse over healer and this was coming from somebody who had like 300+ days played as a priest click-and-casting healing. Mouse over macro healing and everything else starts getting a bit much to juggle when you’re trying to PvP, especially if you’re the focus of attention.
I’d also disagree here. If you’re getting focused, then you’re either stutter stepping healing yourself trying to bait an interrupt, you’ve been interrupted and can’t cast anyway, or you’re blowing instants and defensives while maneuvering. Not much of that requires mouseovers, just auto self cast.
For interrupting a CC on you, if you’re not LoSing it, it’s a matter of just having a few addons like omnicc or gladius to show you.
There’s a fluid motion that comes to people that sticky target where the mouse click to target overall not much slower than mouseover, often like an experienced skeet shooter with a shotgun where the reload can be seen nearly instantaneously after a shot is fired.
I’d wager spell batching and internet lag could be bigger hinderances if you’re smoothed in this art. All in all, just stick to what is comfortable and develop it.
Well mouseover macros are related to the topic since it’s a way to help people who think there are too many buttons when in reality there aren’t.
Yes there are more buttons than BFA, but still less buttons than all of previous expansions.
As someone said it before you need a WotLK mentality about spells. You are not going to use every spell.
For example PW: Shield: Back in previous expansions we had PW: S as holy priests but we didn’t even press it most of the time because it wasn’t core for our rotation, it was a discipline priest thing. Now it’s pretty much the same, PW: Shield won’t save anyone nor change your healing meters because the spell isn’t core in our rotation.
So for the people who just think there are too many buttons and don’t like macros just get rid of PW: Shield from the bar, and there are many other spells that you could just remove from the bar that aren’t part of the rotation.
I’d agree with you here. Not sure what the other guy is on about. Especially in the context of disc. If you play disc as well as holy, and are trying to juggle two different ways of pushing out heals, you’re in for a bad time. That being said, if you’re having to regularly drop your priority DPS target to heal your party, you’re at a loss. Period. Full stop.
For them to try and imply that having to be “doubly aware of mouse position” would result in a net loss over having to manage your priority DPS target is just insane. There are far better ways, objectively better ways I will add, to heal than sticky target. Whether it’s VuhDo, mouseover, Healbot, etc. Obviously, whatever works best for an individual player as an individual is how they should proceed, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that mouseover/VuhDo are the fastest options available. GCD or not(If you rely on the global to give you a cushion for slow healing, I’ve got bad news.)
If you break it down to the basics, any play-style which requires you to switch targets 5 times in a 7 second window will always perform worse overall than a play-style which requires 1 or 2. If someone can’t handle mouseovers because being “doubly aware of mouse position” is a group-wiping problem, play however you must to beat the content.
Wait are you telling me I can get banned for using the native tools that blizzard provided me in the game? I thought that the macro containing more than 1 action per button press will simply not work, excluding off-GCD abilities of course which is the whole point of off-GCD
Please tell me one example of a macro that could earn me that, I would really love one so that I can have a solid excuse to leave this world of bloatcraft for good
The only situation I’m aware of where any macro at all could net you an account action is one which is external, through your hardware, which circumvents the in-game macro tool restrictions. And even this is unlikely since, if it’s popular enough, they’ll just break the ability to abuse this.
DH cancel animations in early legion is the one which comes to mind, where a very specific (Razer?) mouse had a button which let you cancel one of the abilities animations while still getting the damage, and continuing on your rotation. Functioned similarly to, hypothetically, a warrior cancelling bladestorm while the damage still ticked out, so they could continue on doing damage.
What the person you’re replying to is referencing is either not possible using the native macro tool, or not going to get you banned.
The context of the post you are referring to was in reply to someone who mentioned using their new keyboard’s extra physical button macros and that keyboard’s software, not blizzard software.
I think I managed to fit the holy spells I want/need in the binds so no issues yet. Im waiting to see how many on use trinkets and other abilities these covenants will be giving us. Im expecting to need at least 2-4 more binds/slots when the time comes.
At the moment, and based on beta info (which is always subject to change), SW:D and SW:P are both integral parts of a holy priests damage rotation, assuming you care most about doing the leet deeps.
I had to add a 3rd bar back into my Dominos for the first time since…MoP? It looks absolutely disgusting to me right now but I’m hoping I warm up to it. I was able to fill it using every ability in the toolkit, including fort and shackle undead, which I usually have hidden but bound. Keybinds are so wonky right now for some of the more infrequently used abilities. Just hoping I can get used to them all again.
Both are, SW:P in particular. It’s my main DPS source in M+ dungeons now because I can tab-target SW:P everything in my vicinity. Also, it’s amazing during this Volcanic week because they really nerfed the orbs because you can kill them in one SW:P cast. I actually killed more orbs than the whole group combined last night in a 22 ML run.
SW:D is just more of a filler spell you dump when targets get below 20% because it hits hard when it crits.
Basically. I didn’t do any serious tests nor do I have logs to back up what I’m about to say, but after several dungeon runs where i was able to reasonably DoT up every pack and maintain them without much problem, SW:P was around 25% of my overall. Death was lower than smite and fire but I was also using Apoth and trying to maximize it just so I can get used to using it again, so I was slacking a bit with it for sure.
Also on the beta, it seems like every holy priest and their brother that is doing raid/key testing is aiming for very high up-times on pain.
Before we could only focus on a single target or spam Holy Nova, but now we can damage multiple things simultaneously with just set-and-forget SW:P, and I hardly ever use Holy Nova anymore. My overall damage output is higher than it was before the patch.