That keeps it from being a better tier healing class?
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Nothing. Itâs already good.
Holy excels at raw throughput, and raw throughput is perfectly fine for all but the absolute highest keys (Way above +15) and Mythic raiding.
That doesnât mean Holy canât be improved. Every spec can be improved. But to suggest that Holy somehow canât do virtually every piece of content in the game, much less unable to do so without some sort of âutilityâ which is never elaborated on outside that vague term, is a misconception.
Personally, I donât prescribe to hyperbole, exaggerations of fact, or doomsday-speak. Itâs not a healthy view to hold.
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Thank you. Ive just always heard holy is bad and you need to play something else. Honestly find it the most fun for me and cant wait to try pushing max lvl stuff with it
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If youâre doing casual PvE stuff, Holy is fine - even powerful. If youâre doing very high keys, itâs pretty squishy with few defensives, less mobility, and contributes less dps. The lack of dps is pretty much the only thing keeping it from being meta in mythic raid, although itâs still the 3rd most common healer there because of its high hps throughput. I canât speak for PVP.
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Thereâs no exaggeration. Holyâs weaknesses (which do in fact prevent it from being a top tier healer in all high end content) have been elaborated on dozens of times. It lacks the following:
-DPS (Disc and Paladin have it in mythic raiding; in m+, druid, paladin, disc, and monk all offer far far better DPS than holy)
-Damage Reduction (Disc and Paladin have it)
-A good external (guardian spirit is pretty much the worst, only shaman is worse off because they have no external)
-Battle rez (druid has it)
-A good defensive (desperate prayer is trash compared to damage reduction personals)
-Mobility
-Good healing options when forced to move
-Good CC (most specs have better options that meager psychic scream and chastise, like druid roots, typhoon, shaman capacitor totem, monk ring, etcâŚ)
-Other miscellaneous utility (shaman totems, paladin BOP/divine shield, druid cat form stealth, the list goes on⌠nobody gives a damn about symbol of hope)
Raid throughput is all holy has, and it still is weaker than paladin in its best area. Itâs throughput isnt even good in m+ because its single target healing is mediocre.
Iâm not saying holy canât do high end content, I in fact do that content as holy because itâs a spec I enjoy, but its weaknesses are clear and they are many, and Iâm merely stating what has been stated dozens of times before.
24 Likes
holy is great in raids. One of the best. In PVP content its great to, due to how their big PVP talent heal works, and greater fade as well as other mitigation they gain in PVP situations.
In mythic plus they lack proper self immunities, and their damage is insanely low. They also lack poison dispel and a sooth. (but in my opinion sooth isnât something that should have come to mythic plus).
Its great class for raiding and arenas. Otherwise you probably will find it hard to get into mythic plus keys due to how much stronger druids are.
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Holys weaknesses are pretty well known imo. Whatâs not known is how much they need to be adjusted. IMO the spec needs a lot of work but I understand that others disagree.
The survival/mobility for holy is pretty top tier garbage. Doing good HPS is great but the rest of the kit is clunky clunky clunky.
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Nothing? Now thatâs strangeâŚ
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Increasingly healers are being asked to do more and more rather than just keep a team alive: you gotta be able to contribute significant dps, youâve gotta have external CDs, youâve gotta have utility. Your job isnât just healing anymore, youâve got to carry your weight beyond that.
We keep calling resto druid to the front because they have significant healing throughput, significant moblity without compromising that throughput, catweave provides significant dps, they have a battle rez, they have Ironbark (probably one of the best tank CDs in the game), their personal defensives are powerful (never in my time as a priest has Desperate Prayer saved me), they have stuns, a knockback, they can stealthâŚ
Holy gets criticized because when you hold it up next to other healers who are outperforming them, when the top 100 M+ runners are almost entirely composed of Rdruid and Hpal, it lags behind. And that trickles down to how the average player views the spec and influences to who gets picked to go to what content.
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I disagree. In M+, DPS contributions are only important at keys above the maximum +15. +15 is the highest you need to go in order to get the best gear. If you want to run higher than that, then thatâs your prerogative, but Holy is perfectly capable of timing keys <= +15 without contributing any DPS. M+ isnât designed to only be timed with the added shortening of time through healer DPS unless youâre pushing those highest keys.
Secondly, Holy already has âexternal cooldownsâ and utility. Itâs not Disc utility, but itâs utility. Iâve already pointed out in another thread that pushing yourself to the absolute highest levels in any competitive standpoint is going to naturally limit your viable options due to the more restrictive constraints you put yourself under. But Holy is perfectly capable of doing the vast majority of content without issue and without whatever you would consider to be utility cooldowns.
Third, no, healers are not expected to do more than just heal. At no point has Blizzard ever specified that, or designed any encounters, in M+ or raids, around that. Thereâs literally no boss or trash encounter where the healer is required to do DPS in order for the group to succeed. Does it help? Obviously, no one is saying that healers chipping in with any amount of DPS isnât useful. But itâs not required.
Lastly, no healing spec should be judged against the top echelon of any end-game content. Thatâs not where most players are playing. Balance and design decisions arenât made with Mythic raiders or the highest M+ guilds/groups in mind. They canât be, because revolving your balancing designs around that would turn into a complete mess of seemingly meaningless, exceptionally granular changes that likely wouldnât make sense or be useful to the playerbase as a whole.
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These posts always dissolve into dichotomous arguments of âitâs absolute trash tierâ to âitâs completely fine.â The OP got the message: it depends on the level of play and your subjective level of frustration.
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The only thing we tend to care about is the highest content. Otherwise discussion is nearly meaningless, because you can play whatever you want in Heroic raids and mythic keys 1-15. Utility becomes a very big deal for the hardest content in the game and holy does lacks utility badly.
Iâm kinda half and half on this. There is quite a few people that do enjoy mythic raiding and high M+. I wouldnât discount them as a meager representation. I will say that âcasualâ Mythic raiders can be way too try hard attempting to do everything 100% optimally - the way more competitive guilds or even world first guilds do it. They do usually save time, but sometimes at the expense of enjoyment.
Perhaps not the highest guilds/groups, but they should at least try to balance for the average mythic raider, M+, pvp player. They should most certainly balance the classes for the highest content in my opinion. The only balance that matters before the highest content is fun factor (I guess).
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Half of the healer specs directly/indirectly utilize damage to heal. Saying Blizzard doesnât design encounters with that in mind might be a bit ignorant.
And, balancing issues are made with the highest skilled in mind.
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I would say thatâs not a small factor. This is a game. The POINT is fun. The playerâs subjective experience is important to Blizzard - they had a dev watercooler about that once, but I canât find it. These arguments usually come down to âMY subjective experience should be listened to.â And frankly, they all should - I donât expect individuals on this board to care about another personâs subjective experience, but Blizzard does - that is their job.
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I disagree with your last sentence, but more pertinently, I donât feel itâs ignorant.
Discipline is the only spec in the entire game that heals through damage. Its kit is designed around that, supplemented by absorption/mitigation. Disc isnât a â50-50â spec. Itâs a healer that happens to heal through damage, thatâs it.
Consider the fact that throughout the entire leveling process, foregoing things like potential scaling difficulties in monster health/damage, etc, but no leveling dungeon has ever been made with healers contributing DPS. Thatâs important because the leveling experience is designed to teach new players to the game how dungeons are expected to function, getting progressively more mechanically demanding (AKA: See Classic dungeons vs BFA leveling dungeons).
If Blizzard wanted to have healers contribute DPS as part of their core rotation, that would be more evident, and design encounters at all levels, not just endgame, would reflect that.
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I didnât realize weâre talking about the leveling process.
Iâm a bit pressed for time at this very moment, but you said,
âHalf of the healer specs directly/indirectly utilize damage to heal. Saying Blizzard doesnât design encounters with that in mind might be a bit ignorant.â
I refuted the first half with my Discipline comment. The second I refuted through the argument that if Blizzard did design encounters with healer DPS in mind, it wouldâve been made evident through the leveling process since thatâs where the core understanding of dungeons and class rotations come from.
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Identifying and explaining what a spec lacks that holds it back from being more competitive at the higher levels of play is not necessarily hyperbole, exaggeration of facts, or doomsday-speak. It can also be constructive feedback.
Iâm pretty sure most of us here will tell you Holy Priest is a great choice for Normal and Heroic and itâs even decent for âcasualâ mythic raiding (referring to someone who looks for clearing the first few Mythic bosses) and also decent for lower to mid-tier M+.
But saying thereâs ânothingâ lacking is very dismissing. There are many things lacking form Holy for it to be a higher tier healer (as the OP asked). Aside from HPS which Holy Priest does well (as do every other healer), there are 4 main categories that play a factor, those are: DPS contribution, Mobility, Defensives, and Utility. No spec should be top tier at all of those (apparently only Druid in M+) if Holy was bad on a few of those but good on others then it would be fine, but currently Holy sits at the very bottom of every one of those.
Itâs true that good HPS is enough for most content, that doesnât mean that everything else should be ignored.
And again, I fully understand that at the highest levels of play there will always be meta classes anyone whoâs doing that content should understand that. That doesnât mean we should dismiss the glaring issues and imbalances, thereâs nothing wrong about asking for the devs to do a better job at attempting to balance out what every spec brings to the table other than raw throughput.
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What ? Lmao. This is so distanced from reality that I donât think weâre even playing the same game.
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Mobility or the ability to heal while moving.
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Damage mitigation defensive.
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Healing throughput virtually zero while dealing damage.
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Holy word mechanic requiring you to stand and Spam cast constantly.
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Greater heal being the biggest bandaid crutch ever in PvP.
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