Holy Priest feedback for 7.2

[Scrysis]

There is a change, Divinity is nerfed... (for patch 7.2.5) 5% less heal. Almost every holy priest take this talent, so, even if it's not overpowered, they nerf it...

They also have some buffs to CoH, Divine Star, and Halo. I don't think the buffs to Divine Star and Halo are enough to unseat Divinity, but the buff to CoH, might give it some traction in the last tier (I hope).

[Deleted]

They actually nerfed us. I have no words.

[Deleted]

Divinity nerf won't be brought live, although with the nerf to 2piece the net result is still a Hpriest nerf coming 7.2.5

[Rici]

A nerf to something that isn't actually implemented yet is hardly a nerf.
We just don't get stronger in the same way other healers do, but hey, that's what we are used to since ICC.

[Spike`]

almost seems that they are tuning holy priests by having 2pc t19 and 4pc t20 on ToS

[Deleted]

Numbers are irrelevant when it comes down to it. Blizzard has not and probably never will adress the real issue, and that is why a certain healer is attractive or not to a raid composition.

Why should you bring a paladin? Uncontested best tank healer.
Why should you bring a shaman? Best utility; ankh, ress totem, spirit link.
Why should you bring a Rdruid? Best HPS throughput in every single fight, best mobility.
Why should you bring a Dpriest? Got some cool stuff, but big bubble is a worse SLT and atonements are worse Rejuvs for more work.
Why should you bring MW/Hpriest? You shouldn't, they bring nothing that a Rdruid doesn't do better.

I am willing to bet a lot of money that Blizzard is unable to come up with a satisfying retort to this, and that's really all we need to know about the state of our spec.

[Popokolara]

Why should you bring a Dpriest? Got some cool stuff, but big bubble is a worse SLT and atonements are worse Rejuvs for more work.

Barrier is nothing like slt, its more like a devo aura, with a serious repositional requirement for the raid, atonement is nothing like a hot, its pure burst.

Agree with previous points though.

[Ynna]

Numbers are irrelevant when it comes down to it. Blizzard has not and probably never will adress the real issue, and that is why a certain healer is attractive or not to a raid composition.

Why should you bring a paladin? Uncontested best tank healer.
Why should you bring a shaman? Best utility; ankh, ress totem, spirit link.
Why should you bring a Rdruid? Best HPS throughput in every single fight, best mobility.
Why should you bring a Dpriest? Got some cool stuff, but big bubble is a worse SLT and atonements are worse Rejuvs for more work.
Why should you bring MW/Hpriest? You shouldn't, they bring nothing that a Rdruid doesn't do better.

I am willing to bet a lot of money that Blizzard is unable to come up with a satisfying retort to this, and that's really all we need to know about the state of our spec.

From a historical perspective (I haven't played in 5 years) this is interesting. The original idea for Holy Priest was to be a jack of all trades, but that's hard to balance. If they're too strong in a particular area, they outshine others in that niche. If they're too weak, all that flexibility is just wasted. During Cataclysm they actually found the sweet spot.

I'm not raiding right now (leveling up from 85), so I can't comment on the current state of Holy Priests, but it's interesting to see this problem popping up again.

[KaPe]

From a historical perspective (I haven't played in 5 years) this is interesting. The original idea for Holy Priest was to be a jack of all trades, but that's hard to balance. If they're too strong in a particular area, they outshine others in that niche. If they're too weak, all that flexibility is just wasted. During Cataclysm they actually found the sweet spot.

I'm not raiding right now (leveling up from 85), so I can't comment on the current state of Holy Priests, but it's interesting to see this problem popping up again.

The problem isn't "popping up again", it simply never went away. Holy Priest performance has varied across expansions, with something like early Cataclysm requiring PoH nerfs, but utility was always lacking. Disc was unmatched in absorbs, Pallies became tank healing gods, Shamans had tons of cooldowns. Druids had their own issues, but at least offered some mobility and combat res.

Meanwhile, Holy was jumping between "why aren't you Disc" and "poor man's Druid", with Renew spam being a crippled version of Rejuv, Divine Hymn being a far worse Tranquility and Guardian Spirit being a tank cooldown that *still* needed a hotfix just a few days ago.

It's laughable that Shamans are almost at the bottom of hps, but still pretty much a "requirement" for any difficult content. Huge utility/cooldowns > output. Sure, not being the worst healer is an improvement over WoD, but it's yet another expansion where Holy is "well, I guess we can take one if there's no one else."

[Deleted]

Numbers are irrelevant when it comes down to it. Blizzard has not and probably never will adress the real issue, and that is why a certain healer is attractive or not to a raid composition.

Why should you bring a paladin? Uncontested best tank healer.
Why should you bring a shaman? Best utility; ankh, ress totem, spirit link.
Why should you bring a Rdruid? Best HPS throughput in every single fight, best mobility.
Why should you bring a Dpriest? Got some cool stuff, but big bubble is a worse SLT and atonements are worse Rejuvs for more work.
Why should you bring MW/Hpriest? You shouldn't, they bring nothing that a Rdruid doesn't do better.

I am willing to bet a lot of money that Blizzard is unable to come up with a satisfying retort to this, and that's really all we need to know about the state of our spec.

Unless you have the cloak and the warlocks are too lazy to soulstone your ass. Then you might bring a holy priest.

[Deleted]

Why should you bring a paladin? Uncontested best tank healer.

You acknowledge the existence of resto druids after this so I'm a little confused.

[laplacedemon]

Unless you have the cloak and the warlocks are too lazy to soulstone your ass. Then you might bring a holy priest.

Yeah, faster wipe recovery! Best utility ever on raids with long runs.

[Deleted]

Yep, the issues of holy were somewhat offset by the existence of disc. Like with dps classes, no one really cared that frost was bad in PvE, you just raided as fire or arcane, depending on what was better at the time. But in legion, AP and legendaries make it harder to switch to disc, especially if you were keeping up shadow as an offspec (as you should normally, to have flexibility in raid setups). And now disc is in a pretty bad place since the launch, so it's not even a real choice any more, not counting the completely different playstyle from all healers, that many players do not like.

[davesignal]

Yeah, faster wipe recovery! Best utility ever on raids with long runs.

You joke, but our raid has a holy priest with the cloak and we save so much time on progression it's easily another pull or two before the night's over. It's super convenient.

[Deja Thoris]

You joke, but our raid has a holy priest with the cloak and we save so much time on progression it's easily another pull or two before the night's over. It's super convenient.

The cloak was our MVP on krosus progress.

[KaPe]

You joke, but our raid has a holy priest with the cloak and we save so much time on progression it's easily another pull or two before the night's over. It's super convenient.

It's kinda annoying at times. Different legendary could potentially offer superior hps, but it adds so much runback time that's it's not really worth it. Same with potential respec to Disc.

Honestly, they could add part of cloak utility as a baseline. "If you exit combat while SoR is still active, you come back to life".

[Druglol]

It's kinda annoying at times. Different legendary could potentially offer superior hps, but it adds so much runback time that's it's not really worth it.

22 seconds of free casting and an extra potion is nothing to overlook

[Deleted]

You joke, but our raid has a holy priest with the cloak and we save so much time on progression it's easily another pull or two before the night's over. It's super convenient.

I also have the cloak. But for that reason alone, you can just soulstone someone prepull. Just assign a warlock to always soulstone you and your wipe recovery will be the same as if you used the cloak.

- - - Updated - - -

22 seconds of free casting and an extra potion is nothing to overlook

You have 22 seconds of free casting regardless if you have the cloak or not.

Of course an extra mana pot is nice, though.

[Deleted]

I totally agree with those saying that HPriests moved from "Why aren't you disc?" to "Why don't you reroll druid?". The point is that, as a healer, you cannot simply change spec if yours is undeperforming, you are forced to change main. That could be not the case for priests, since they have 2 healing specs, but now Disc is awful and Holy pulls out big number - for sure - but adds nothing special to a raid: that is also why in the first 10 top guilds worldwide, only 1 priest is featured as healer.

As I said in another topic, Blizz could seriously evaluate the chance to make the pvp talent that makes SoR an active ability a pve one: that would save the flavour of "miraculous healer", would add something unique (without making people PRAY to drop the legendary cloak) and, together with Symbol of Hope, would make HPriests a good pick for progression.

Also, another thing I do not get is why Enlightment has to be a talent and not a baseline or artifact tree trait...

[KaPe]

Also, another thing I do not get is why Enlightment has to be a talent and not a baseline or artifact tree trait...

Probably because someone believes that's the only way we are held back from becoming Healing Gods. As if that talent was somehow superior to Innervate or Wisdom, which break mana balance to a far worse extent. I assume it's the same guy who believes that refreshing renew is equal to the other two, or that Halo buffs will suddenly make it useful - especially with new tier bonuses which will make Divinity even stronger.

Sometimes I think dev team is stuck in the past, where Holy Priest could dump a huge amount of mana into 2 x Binding Heal -> PoH and achieve great hps. Except it only lasted for few seconds before going oom, Serendipity worked in a different way and all that still didn't put Holy on top. And overall mana balance didn't include absurdly powerful external sources.

I mean, I suppose it's good that they finally reworked Chakra into something usable and we're not at the bottom of hps, but who knows what will happen in the next patch. Monks aren't very optimistic about their rework, but they might very well shot to the top, leaving us in our usual last place