The State of Holy Heading into 6.2

[Malivis]

Hi everyone, my name is Malivis and I’m a 10/10 Mythic Holy Priest currently raiding with <Honestly>, World 44, US 7th guild raiding exclusively on a four day a week schedule. I’ve been playing Holy Priest since not long after release, raiding in every tier except for the majority of Ulduar and all of ToT. I’m currently the number one ranked Holy Priest on Warcraftlogs, and have been for almost the entire tier.

I've just made a very long winded post on the WoW forums regarding Holy in 6.2, located at this link:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...10766?page=1#0

Any kind of feedback is of course appreciated, and I'm cross posting it here for visibility and to hopefully spur a larger audience.



I'm more than happy to respond either here or on the WoW forums, or you guys can contact me if you need advice or just want to chat about Holy in game, or over my BTag, Malivis#6860.


Looking forward to responses, and hope people find this helpful and constructive!

[SilentRose]

Great post. Was hoping someone who played holy with top end experience would help add to the discussion. I have tried to give my own thought on this subject but I could never construct a post quite like that one. From a 5/10M priest, you did our class proud in that post.

[Deleted]

A nice post, I think it sums up the state of holy quite well right now.

A couple of points I'd like to bring up.
Since you open with the about yourself I had a little dig through your logs, mostly to see what it took to be #1.
I consider myself a decent holy priest, I've clocked up a few rank1s now and then but rarely maintained them as farm continues so I was curious what you were doing differently. The first thing that stood out was number of healers. I found this particularly interesting (and reassuring!) to notice that the logs where you rank are often underhealed fights (3 heal kromog for example), when your guild does take the extra healers your rankings look more 'average'. I don't mean this in a bad way of course but leads me to a point about the state of holy priest on WCL, do you think we're undertuned or just have a lot of potential that rarely gets used?
My experience is, when there's a lot to heal, I heal a lot. It often seems like my healing is uncapped, if you give me the damage, I will heal it. But this often gets underused, either by other healers sniping (particularly shields) or simply not enough damage from most fights. The amount of damage required for holy to reach the potential is almost certainly fatal damage to some raiders. Is that what we're tuned around?
A disc priest for example doesn't really care much what the other healers are doing, or how much fire the raid is standing in, they can almost always find ways to reach their max hps. I would assume that would lead to a much larger sample size of situations where disc priests can push the top end of rankings on WCL.

More specific points in your post. Regarding HW: Sanc. I entirely ENTIRELY agree that it needs to be stronger. With 'Holy Word' being so closely related to chakra, a key part of holy priests, one would assume from the design that the holy words are supposed to be your go-to spell in that chakra, the focus of power for the spec. Serenity kind of fullfils that fantasy, when playing in serenity chakra the holy word feels like a real benefit given by the stance if not a reason to enter serenity chakra itself. Sanctuary feels like a byproduct, an afterthought. You accurately pointed out what I feel is the biggest weakness, the "likelihood of whether or not that healing will actually result in preventing the death of a raid member". It feels like the definition of padding, it's superfluous healing to boost hps without any meaningful life saving. However it IS mana efficient, almost as mana efficient as a 2 stack serendipity 'heal', more efficient than CoH, about 50% more efficient than renew, etc. All of that assuming max efficiency from each spell, which is of course, a much harsher drawback for Sanc as you mentioned. (for numbers with my recent gear sanc clocks in 32.78hpm, renew, 24.93hpm)

And mastery. I'm not a huge fan, actually I despise it.
I believe it was lackluster before, but since the change to ticking twice after 3sec instead of once per second I believe it is significantly devalued. This is based entirely on the same reasoning as Sanc, is it likely to save anyone?
How useful is a minor heal landing 6 seconds after you wanted to heal them? If there's constant ticking raid damage then it's not awful, but that's awfully niche. If it's ticking on a tank then it's kind of like playing a game of chance, will the tank be topped or not when the echo heals? flip a coin.
Back in SoO I was doing some stat type maths and discovered that crit wasn't 'that' far behind mastery. The drawbacks of crit have long been recognized as 'rng' and even then I valued it above mastery. If I'm casting a heal at someone, specifically a direct heal since renew isn't affected, then it's because I want to heal them NOW, the other stats all allow me to save someone NOW, and for that I will always devalue mastery.

As for the main things I'd like to see addressed for holy in a TLDR;

Adjust Holy Word: Sanctuary to become a reason to be chakra: sanctuary, rather than a byproduct.
Adjust mastery with the aims of making it more immediate
Give more serendipity to open up our toolkit (t17 set bonuses are a good template), potentially this could also be a fix to mastery somehow. spell casts have x% chance to grant serendipity? I wouldn't say no.



oh and that trinket. Burn it with fire. Full redesign. Needs to go opposite way. Would rather it healed 50% less and cast 100% faster. also remove the limitation of sanc chakra.


PS; sadly cannot post on US wow forums :<

[PosPosPos]

And mastery. I'm not a huge fan, actually I despise it.
I believe it was lackluster before, but since the change to ticking twice after 3sec instead of once per second I believe it is significantly devalued. This is based entirely on the same reasoning as Sanc, is it likely to save anyone?
How useful is a minor heal landing 6 seconds after you wanted to heal them? If there's constant ticking raid damage then it's not awful, but that's awfully niche. If it's ticking on a tank then it's kind of like playing a game of chance, will the tank be topped or not when the echo heals? flip a coin.
Back in SoO I was doing some stat type maths and discovered that crit wasn't 'that' far behind mastery. The drawbacks of crit have long been recognized as 'rng' and even then I valued it above mastery. If I'm casting a heal at someone, specifically a direct heal since renew isn't affected, then it's because I want to heal them NOW, the other stats all allow me to save someone NOW, and for that I will always devalue mastery.
.
.
.
Adjust mastery with the aims of making it more immediate

Always thought that mastery could go the Prayer of Mending/Guardian Spirit route and just proc on the next tick of damage taken, or when the target is about to take lethal damage.

So basically, if a target takes non-lethal damage, Echo of Light procs and just heals like Prayer of Mending after damage is taken. But if a target takes otherwise lethal damage, that damage is first subtracted based on the value of the existing EoL buff. For example, if a player has 200k health, a 30k Echo of Light buff and is about to take 210k damage, the player would have 20k health after damage calculations

In exchange for the significant increase in utility the healing wouldn't be guaranteed, and the buff duration should be lowered to <5 seconds in duration so it would be difficult to stack mastery buffs given how good holy priests are at multi-target healing.

This will help cement the identity of Holy Priests as well - bring timely salvation to otherwise dead targets.

P.S. In this particular reimagination of EoL, Renew ticks and HoTs in general would proc EoL as well.

[Thirteen]

Thanks for the post, I'll go through it later and reply here (US forums :C)

Always thought that mastery could go the Prayer of Mending/Guardian Spirit route and just proc on the next tick of damage taken, or when the target is about to take lethal damage.

I'd actually be okay with this. In fact maybe even get rid of PoM altogether and make it the holy mastery.

[ceddya]

It often seems like my healing is uncapped, if you give me the damage, I will heal it. But this often gets underused, either by other healers sniping (particularly shields) or simply not enough damage from most fights. The amount of damage required for holy to reach the potential is almost certainly fatal damage to some raiders. Is that what we're tuned around?
A disc priest for example doesn't really care much what the other healers are doing, or how much fire the raid is standing in, they can almost always find ways to reach their max hps. I would assume that would lead to a much larger sample size of situations where disc priests can push the top end of rankings on WCL.

Isn't this an issue with all the other throughput healers though - their potential is largely hindered because of how undertuned raid damage is relative to healing strength. Being able to pull such good numbers while underhealing at least shows that Holy Priests have the potential for good raw healing.

You've succintly pointed out the issue with Holy and the other throughput specs though - that of their throughput potential rarely being utilized or needed, which is why specs with slightly lower potential but more specialized utility are preferred.

Anyway, it's nice that Blizz has decided to address this issue for MWs and Resto Druids (well, to a certain extent), but it's just a little annoying that Holy Priests have been left out. I really hope we see a major overhaul to the spec trinket that addresses Holy's glaring lack of utility. It sucks to require an item to address a spec deficiency, but at this stage, I'll gladly take whatever hand outs they're willing to give out.

[Noradin]

@pospospos:
You are basically describing pseudoabsorbs that are just a tad worse than real absorbs.
Not that I dislike the idea entirely but detracting the amount from the hit first is a bit close, I cannot see them ever implementing that next to absorbs.
Maybe while keeping the same total values give it a longer duration and have it ticking stronger and every second, but only when there is a health deficit.

[PosPosPos]

@pospospos:
You are basically describing pseudoabsorbs that are just a tad worse than real absorbs.

Mhmm, you just described that absorbs(mainly disc shields) are still disproportionately stronger than healing in general, and should be toned down as a whole. Also, the mechanic closest to how the proposed EoL would work is Illuminated Healing, of which the latter isn't much of a problem being stronger as a mechanic given how bad holy paladin multi target healing is.

Holy Priests have very strong options to apply their EoL healing(CoH, Renew, Hymn and Cascade), and thus that should be accounted for by having a more situational mastery.

Not that I dislike the idea entirely but detracting the amount from the hit first is a bit close, I cannot see them ever implementing that next to absorbs.

I can't see them nerfing disc and holy paladins to the level where they need to be without obtaining a guaranteed raid spot every time either, but that's why we are kind of discussing theory here. :3

[Thirteen]

Mhmm, you just described that absorbs(mainly disc shields) are still disproportionately stronger than healing in general, and should be toned down as a whole.

Do you disagree with that?

I can't see them nerfing disc and holy paladins to the level where they need to be without obtaining a guaranteed raid spot every time either, but that's why we are kind of discussing theory here. :3

I'm not sure I understand this part. Are you saying that disc and paladins don't need nerfs or that they're not a necessity for a solid raid composition? Because if you are, I disagree on both.

[PosPosPos]

Do you disagree with that?

I just said rather plainly that absorbs(Illuminated Healing is currently weak enough that it's fine though) need to be toned down as a whole, I couldn't be any clearer with my intentions.

I'm not sure I understand this part. Are you saying that disc and paladins don't need nerfs or that they're not a necessity for a solid raid composition? Because if you are, I disagree on both.

Basically, I believe Blizzard is incompetent. Every time they make a claim, they tend to either overshoot their intended design by a mile, and/or accomplish the exact opposite.

Still remember the start of MoP where PoH had a 100% DA application and it was obviously broken? They nerfed PoH at that time but created another problem by buffing Spirit Shell and introducing the scaling nightmare which was disc's mastery which became really overbearing especially in ToT due to an increase in overall stat availability. In between ToT and SoO they finally realized Spirit Shell and absorbs were way too strong and decided that giving Priests uncapped T90 was a fantastic idea to solve that. In the meantime, they over nerfed Holy Paladins to the level of Resto Druids, Mistweavers(another victim of the excessive nerf batting by blizzard and Holy Priests) and they were pretty bad the entire tier compared to Resto Shamans and Disc Priests.

Fast forward to today, Disc dominates every encounter in terms of utility and output, Holy Paladins are next on the mandatory list with double beacons. Is that in any way good balancing on the part of Blizzard?

I do want Disc and Holy Paladins to be nerfed appropriately, i.e. not completely neutered, but normalized to the level of other healers, but given Blizzard's marvelous track record, I would have to be clinically delusional to even have a single spark of hope that could ever happen.

[Deleted]

I actually love the place holy paladins are in right now. Honestly they aren't OP, they feel (or legitimately are) mandatory for cutting edge raiding because of their UNIQUE style of beacon healing. They certainly have a lot of other utility (bubble, sac, HoP etc) but really it's that beacon tank healing that makes them so desirable. And that's because it's something they do, do well and nobody else has.
Similar for disc, even if the numbers were lower (say they parsed, on average, behind all other healers) they still bring the unique shields. I know a lot of people would like to see the focus of disc shifted more to 'healing' than absorbs, I don't really disagree but at the moment they're desired more because of absorbs than purely because 'big numbers!'.
This leaves the other 4 healers, none of these healers really have that niche role and I think that's the inherent problem. A problem I don't have an easy solution for. Seeing how homogenizing the DPS specs has gone I don't think removing the tools disc and paladins have is the answer, nor giving those same tools to the other healers. Finding unique niches for the other healers is the answer, although I'm at a loss for suggestions.
Previously shamans kind of had the 'stacked up healing' thing, but then their strength lies in how many encounters in an instance have the raid stacked up.

Regardless, my view of holy priests is that they have the ability to dip into these niches and that WAS their niche. If the paladin died then the holy priest can fill that gap for a bit. Not as good, but maybe a bandaid. The resto shaman died? Holy priest can pick up the slack on that clumped up healing, but not as good as the resto shaman. Spread out healing and the resto druid died? You get the idea.
It's a model I kind of like in principle and honestly I think would work well for 'most' raid teams. Cutting edge progression though? Holy paladin dies, wipe. Fight has clumped healing? bench the holy priest, bring the resto shaman.

I don't have an answer. At this point in the game I can't really say what Blizzards design philosophy for each healer is, and maybe that's the problem.

[Deleted]

Really like the post. Thankyou for compiling it and giving us a strong voice moving into 6.2. Although I doubt there'll be any changes to make holy strong enough to bring onto many of the progression bosses with the current state of shaman/druid/monks set bonuses, maybe we can see something happen in the future to bring us on par or maybe give us our time to shine.

Til then, time to gear my Mistweaver.

[Thirteen]

I actually love the place holy paladins are in right now. Honestly they aren't OP, they feel (or legitimately are) mandatory for cutting edge raiding because of their UNIQUE style of beacon healing. They certainly have a lot of other utility (bubble, sac, HoP etc) but really it's that beacon tank healing that makes them so desirable. And that's because it's something they do, do well and nobody else has.
Similar for disc, even if the numbers were lower (say they parsed, on average, behind all other healers) they still bring the unique shields. I know a lot of people would like to see the focus of disc shifted more to 'healing' than absorbs, I don't really disagree but at the moment they're desired more because of absorbs than purely because 'big numbers!'.
This leaves the other 4 healers, none of these healers really have that niche role and I think that's the inherent problem. A problem I don't have an easy solution for. Seeing how homogenizing the DPS specs has gone I don't think removing the tools disc and paladins have is the answer, nor giving those same tools to the other healers. Finding unique niches for the other healers is the answer, although I'm at a loss for suggestions.

Well, that's really all there is to be said. We supposedly play a game where classes are homogenized, yet you have two classes with their own "niche" - tank healing and absorbs, but both of them are exceptionally good on every encounter. I'm fine with niches, really - but you either let everyone have them, or make none at all - and furthermore, make those niches situational. Having your niche be as general as "the best tank healer" isn't really doing anything other than promoting "bring the player, then make him reroll the right class." From 20 raid spots, you have 2-3 reserved exclusively for disc and paladins (or disc + 2 paladins), and you end up with FOUR classes competing for one spot (and on the odd-boss, two spots). That's just stupid, putting it most kindly.

[Deleted]

@ Thirteen, I suppose that is the problem. Niches are fine but paladin + disc niches are just too general. EVERY fight has damage (for absorbs) and tanks always take damage.
Even if resto shamans did have their niche of being good (really good, making everyone else irrelevent) on stacked raids, you'd still need an instance where every fight keeps the raid stacked for them to compete against the 'niche' of absorbs or tank healing.

Still no suggestions for a fix

[Thirteen]

Still no suggestions for a fix

I feel like there should be people that Blizzard would be paying to come up with ideas regarding the game and balance in it. Shame there don't appear to be any.

[PosPosPos]

I actually love the place holy paladins are in right now. Honestly they aren't OP, they feel (or legitimately are) mandatory for cutting edge raiding because of their UNIQUE style of beacon healing.

The fact that Holy Paladins have the best utility out of all the healers in the game(save maybe Disc) while having Devo and comparable output with other throughput healers(and said throughput healers have their 3 minutes factored into their output) makes them very overpowered.

The power of healers aren't tied to purely their output.

They certainly have a lot of other utility (bubble, sac, HoP etc) but really it's that beacon tank healing that makes them so desirable. And that's because it's something they do, do well and nobody else has.

Exactly. Paladins are already overloaded simply because of BoF, now add everything else they are capable of that other healers aren't. Is that not the very definition of overpowered?

Similar for disc, even if the numbers were lower (say they parsed, on average, behind all other healers) they still bring the unique shields. I know a lot of people would like to see the focus of disc shifted more to 'healing' than absorbs, I don't really disagree but at the moment they're desired more because of absorbs than purely because 'big numbers!'.

Yes, they are desired because they can subvert lethal mechanics and trivialize mechanics on demand. To an extent, it's actually okay for that to be their class identity, but they shouldn't be able to do it to the extent they are capable of currently. Or they can, but it should have a noticeable drawback for doing so, like mana limitations, or very short-term diminishing returns.

This leaves the other 4 healers, none of these healers really have that niche role and I think that's the inherent problem. A problem I don't have an easy solution for. Seeing how homogenizing the DPS specs has gone I don't think removing the tools disc and paladins have is the answer, nor giving those same tools to the other healers. Finding unique niches for the other healers is the answer, although I'm at a loss for suggestions.
Previously shamans kind of had the 'stacked up healing' thing, but then their strength lies in how many encounters in an instance have the raid stacked up.

I believe the actual problem is that encounters don't feature enough raid damage most of the time for throughput healers to shine. Imagine if every encounter had raid damage on the level of Blast Furnace and higher?

If you looked at the throughput healers a bit closer, you would noticed that some of them already have their special niche - Shamans and Deep Healing, Mistweavers with Fistweaving and Revival, Resto Druids with unparalleled heals-over-time.

If every encounter actually had tighter sustained throughput demands("we want players to stay below 100% more often" my ass), all of them(except Holy Priests) would have their special niche. Resto Druids would have that stable output regardless of how injured the raid was, Shamans would be the healer who excelled at triaging dangerously low targets and Mistweavers would be the less reliable(in terms of targeted healing) Resto Druid with the in-fight option of doing good dps with good healing output.

Regardless, my view of holy priests is that they have the ability to dip into these niches and that WAS their niche. If the paladin died then the holy priest can fill that gap for a bit. Not as good, but maybe a bandaid. The resto shaman died? Holy priest can pick up the slack on that clumped up healing, but not as good as the resto shaman. Spread out healing and the resto druid died? You get the idea.
It's a model I kind of like in principle and honestly I think would work well for 'most' raid teams. Cutting edge progression though? Holy paladin dies, wipe. Fight has clumped healing? bench the holy priest, bring the resto shaman.

Ah, but here's the problem - even if the healer "specialists" are dead, there are better options than holy priests to fill in, that Malivis has gone into in-depth - the part about Druids with LB and double Rejuv and Shamans with Deep Healing and Earth Shield temporarily covering for what a Holy Paladin is capable of, is exactly what I mean.

I feel that rather than having Holy Priest continue with their "niche" as a jack-of-all-trades, why not simply give them a proper one of their own? Talk about Holy Priests and the first spells that should be on players' minds as "what spells define a holy priest that no other healers have" should be Prayer of Mending(technically Disc has it, but mostly avoids anyway due to PW:S) and Guardian Spirit. Work on those spells and rework mastery along with it.

I don't have an answer. At this point in the game I can't really say what Blizzards design philosophy for each healer is, and maybe that's the problem.

Even before philosophy, they can't even get numerical tuning right. Of which the latter is so easy anyone with access to google spreadsheets, a calculator and some nominal proficiency in high school-level math can do it, just maybe takes some time if one is doing all of it by oneself.

[Deleted]

I don't think there's any disagreement between people in this thread.
There's a lot that needs changing and it's not as simple as a pure numbers tweek to holy priest (although it would still be a nice bandaid). The whole healing model (imo) is a lot better this xpac than it has been but there's still a long way to go to making all healers feel valuable to a raid aside from topping skada.
The changes required I don't believe are something we'll see mid-xpac either. For now I think the best we can hope for are set bonus bandaids and some number tweeks and hope our 'niche' is topping the meters.

[Talhooo]

I believe the actual problem is that encounters don't feature enough raid damage most of the time for throughput healers to shine. Imagine if every encounter had raid damage on the level of Blast Furnace and higher?

This can't be stressed enough. A disc raw healing output is like 20 to 40% lower than other healers. If you looked at the first 50 kills of BF you'd see that disc was not top. You even saw priests going holy just because it had more output.

The reason why holy is not that great atm (altho they are just good enough for progression where you are not overgearing) is the same reason why disc is very strong. There is not enough damage.

[PosPosPos]

This can't be stressed enough. A disc raw healing output is like 20 to 40% lower than other healers. If you looked at the first 50 kills of BF you'd see that disc was not top. You even saw priests going holy just because it had more output.

The reason why holy is not that great atm (altho they are just good enough for progression where you are not overgearing) is the same reason why disc is very strong. There is not enough damage.

Specifically, it's not about the damage per se, but the sustained damage the raid takes - it's just really low. Nearly every fight this tier features extended healer snoozefests in various parts of the encounter to varying extents, except maybe Blast Furnace.

The burst damage taken is really high though, which is essentially the situation Blizzard clearly wants to move away from in SoO(another reason why they are incompetent), the "high burst but significantly lower sustained damage" model.

As you have mentioned, as raid damage gets more and more consistent like on Blast Furnace, disc loses value because there isn't enough time in between damage mechanics to preshield half the raid.

[Thirteen]

This can't be stressed enough. A disc raw healing output is like 20 to 40% lower than other healers. If you looked at the first 50 kills of BF you'd see that disc was not top. You even saw priests going holy just because it had more output.

The reason why holy is not that great atm (altho they are just good enough for progression where you are not overgearing) is the same reason why disc is very strong. There is not enough damage.

No, this isn't true. Disc's throughput is not only not lower than anyone else's, it is in fact higher. Actually, even you go check out the oldest Furnace log, you'll see that disc logs only slightly lower than everyone else (as opposed to holy), but as you're looking at it bear in mind that Barrier, which is maybe the strongest cooldown on Furnace, is the only healing CD that doesn't parse AND there's a strong possibility that they were mind controlling too.