Broad healing changes are being made. There are discrepancies between healing in raids vs. Mythic+. As a result, the team looked at healing as a whole and they are increasing the power of single-target healing and looking at big cooldowns and AoE healing.
To ensure decision-based healing instead of pushing your highest input AoE healing spell, they are making some pretty significant Mana adjustments.
Quite a few Druid specializations are being looked at.
They are looking to simplify the Discipline Priest rotation so it’s not so heavily reliant on stacking modifiers.
Power Infusion is being looked at. Some of it is tuning and how it interacts with very specific specs like Demonology Warlocks or Unholy Death Knights that benefit more from it than other classes.
My predictions:
Power Infusion is probably going to be changed to a damage increase imho.
Disc -
Current tier set bonus converted into a talent.
Shadow Covenant / Schism are overhauled/removed.
TE + Harsh Discipline + Expiation overhauled/removed.
End tree talents completely overhauled to not be garbage.
Damage/atonement healing increased by like 30%+ to compensate for the talent changes.
Hopefully a simplified rotation where you just cast Mind Blast + Smite + Penance and don’t need to weave abilities.
Maybe less overwhelming to play in raid with applying atonement on everyone.
Holy -
Less PoM/CoH reliance on raid healing. Maybe they’ll trim down on the 7-8 required PoM talents.
Flash Heal + Heal merged into one ability. Lightweaver removed.
Holy Words overhaul.
Apotheosis on a 1 minute cd.
Lightwell is buffed and moved higher up in the tree and functions similar to Tyr’s Deliverance.
This kind of bums me out. I use PI often as a healing CD so it would feel like a healing nerf. But, if they shift other things around, maybe it won’t be so bad.
What I’d like to see with changes among healing priests:
I hope they make more PoM talents that could help with burst healing. A 30 second cooldown that causes all active PoM’s to jump and heal instantly with a 25% increased effectiveness would definitely help with spike damage that sanctify wouldn’t be able to cover with it’s fairly small radius. Perhaps this can replace or rework Divine Word since it can hardly complete with Divine Image. I just love PoM, it’s so fun!
Lightwell a 40 yard range or at least moveable every 30 seconds.
I’m expecting they’re going to pull more healing away from passive group heals and put more of it into direct healing casts for raid. Holy in Shadowlands did the bulk of its healing through Flash Concentration Heal, but this expansion its all PoM. You’re also just flat out punished for spamming PoH/Flash Heal/etc. because you’ll go oom. Also with so much passive group healing going out: people get topped off fast and you do a lot of overhealing (40%+).
In M+ it’s all about spot healing. 50%+ of Holy’s healing is going to come from single target heals and everything else feels kind of doo-doo to press. There’s also a lack of spot healing outside of Apotheosis and Answered Prayers procs leaving you with often nothing inbetween boss mechanics.
(2) Set Bonus: Holy Word: Serenity applies 14 seconds of Renew to its target. Holy Word: Sanctify applies 5 seconds of Renew to allies it heals.
(4) Set Bonus: Renew’s healing has a chance to cause your next Holy Word: Sanctify or Holy Word: Serenity to not consume a charge when cast and cost 50% less Mana, stacking up to 2 times.
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Ok.
So, do the renews that proc from sanctify and serenity buff CoH if we take that talent?
Also, do they stack? Like if you cast 2 sanctifies in succession, do you end up with 10 sec renews on your group?
Does this mean that if you take miracle worker you can potentially cast 4 serenity or sanctify quickly in a row?
I feel like renewed faith is a must with all of these renews flying all over the place.
Aaaannnnd. Can the renews from the 2 set proc the 4 set? Lol. Like do we have to hard cast renew to proc the 4 set?
yeah, maybe they could make a Prayer of Mending related burst cd at the bottom of the tree, something nice like what Paladin’s get in Divine Toll.
like a 90 sec cd or something that fires off 5 turbo PoM’s at different players (5 so its good burst for dungeons/m+) that heal for more, or immediately do all their bounces. and they could give it some fancy latin name like Exegesis of Mercy, or Vow of Ardor, or Gravity of the Unwavering, or something like that : P who knows.
prayer has always seemed like a signature move of Holy priest, although i guess Disc can access it now in the class tree
This is not the solution and is bad design for dungeons. Reduce AoE healing OUTPUT and reduce AoE dungeon damage.
This prevents the ridiculous “players have had their health increased by 40%, enemies have had their damage increased by 40%” change that the team keeps making that ALSO coincidentally is what ruined spot healing from the start of Dragonflight.
Why are they planning on reducing mana Regen? Healers are the only one that needs to manage a non-replenishable resource. This is going further backwards. You know what makes healing fun? Saving the group when all seems lost. Not going on in the first third of a fight and feeling hopeless the rest of the time.
Honestly, the main issue with Dicipline preist in a large raid was the atonement spread, the DPS maybe could use a tweak to remove the misstiming of certain Holy/shadow spells not lining up with weaving.
Lets face it " setting up for big AOE Heals" is basicly spreading atonement, then exteindig those atonements before casting AOE atonement.
Renew does not do significant enough work to remain on the GCD.
The whole spec is basicly GCD locked when spreading atonement.
Need better tools to deal with NO DPS moments.
Having to blow attonement spreads when you have no intent to use the atonement because you just needed a quick bursty AOE heal.
Good example of this is bursting affixes or any other fight ls where the damage keeps ticking heavy after the target is dead. Havibg to save cooldowns to use after the target is dead is ridiculious IMO.
New Talent: Ultimate Penitence – Ascend into the air and unleash a massive barrage of Penance bolts, causing Holy damage to enemies or healing to allies over 6 seconds. While ascended, gain a shield for 50% of your health. In addition, you are unaffected by knockbacks or crowd control effects.
New Talent: Heaven’s Wrath – Each Penance bolt you fire reduces the cooldown of Ultimate Penitence by 2 seconds.
New Talent: Overloaded with Light – Ultimate Penitence emits an explosion of light, healing up to 10 allies around you and applying Atonement at 50% of normal duration.
Holy Word: Salvation’s cooldown is now reduced by 15 seconds (was 30 seconds) by Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify.
I guess we’ll have to see what disc gives up for that talent and how easy it is to reset the CD but seems disc is getting love while Holy is taking a hit. Trying to use a second salvation in raid fights is going to be fun. Like here raid lead let me just blow this at the start when we don’t need it so I can work on trying to get it back up before the fight ends.
We really have to see how effective these free holy word procs on the Holy 4p are to know if that will have a significant reduction on Salvation. I would prefer a raid CD that is not balanced around a tier set reducing it’s CD.
Holy is one of the most played healers if not THE most played healer sometimes. Disc is one of the bottom. Its not love, its simplifying the spec so the, “insert diplomatic word here” people can play the spec and maybe increase the disc population.
If it’s unpopular it’s because people don’t enjoy atonement style healing. I don’t see something like this changing that. Unpopular or not it’s usually the superior spec for PVP and progression raiding. Often holy is sidelined where it matters in my experience.
This seems like an ability that especially had pvp in mind. CC immunity, melee escape, 50% max health shield. I imagine it has interrupt immunity built in. Like an upgraded version of Holy priest Ascendance PVP talent. They’ve been making it more difficult for people to prevent healers raid cooldowns in pvp and this goes right along those lines.
Disc was somewhat unique not having a simple press and forget raid CD. It indeed looks like they are trying to simplify the spec. Besides PW: Barrier ofc, which required stacking. I didn’t mention it, but Barrier is being nerfed from 25% to 20% reduction, perhaps as compensation for this new ability or to go along with the general aoe nerf theme of the patch.
