Holy talents after patch

[Swizzington]

I'm wondering if raid size would affect what talents you choose? I feel like in a small, 10-12 man raid ( I only raid hc these days, I'm a pleb) Apotheosis with a direct flash heal spam playstyle would be more effective than a benediction, get many renews rolling playstyle, which is perhaps more suited to larger raids with more healers? Maybe I'm totally off the right track with this line of thinking.

Thoughts?

[Dawon]

Yes, I'm supertorn in how to play my priest atm... I really love the pom/renew/benediction-style but I feel that when I apply them, everything gets snapshotted by the other healers and my renew just overheal-ticking into oblivion... Only time in yesterdays raid (normal alt-gearing run, 12ppl) I felt it kinda worked was in the end of Cenarius where both other healers managed to die at 30:ish % and I could actually see the nice synergy of that playstyle when being alone for ~1min. Tho, I still had to FH like a mofo to not lose the raid.. which makes me think if pom/renew are kinda useless anyway...

I dunno, I really dont know... I want to be as far away from retarded-FH-spamming-24/7 style as possible, it's such a boring healing style and 100% mindless whack'a'mole. But if the other option is so far behind, what to do?

I'm gonna test next some kind of build around Binding Heal for the raids but dunno if that is viable either, feels stupid to drop SoL as we already have too few instant-casts. But perhaps using Binding Heal will synergize well with renew... still (and it always falls back to this), is it worth it as renew is so lame (even after buff).


Yeah as u notice, a lot of concerns and no real answers to anything. I've been testing a lot and I always drop behind our other holypriest that simply spends 85% of the time spamming FH... but if that playstyle is the only way to go, I will give up on my priest!

How do you guys play your holy and what talents do you find useful? Are you "all" FH-spammers? :/

[Deleted]

I have the artifact traits that improve the whole PoM Benediction setup (don't have the legendary legs yet) and i feel it's still underwhelming. The only fights i use this setup are Cenarius and Nythendra Mythic. The rest of the time FoH spam with Trail of Light (and sometimes weaving holy words and PoH) comes up ahead. I also think SoL is favored against Binding Heal. As you said, we lack instant heals and it also saves our mana.

[Sevyvia]

Just roughly calculating HPM of Renew & FH, without any talents involved:

FH: 16,96 healing per mana.
Renew: 18,6 healing per mana.

FH with ToL: 23,744 healing per mana.

Now, granted, there is a lot of PoM/Renew interaction from artifact/talents that I am quite frankly not smart enough to figure into this that will buff up Renew's number healthily. It won't change, however, that not only is Renew a HoT and thus more likely to get sniped or not deliver enough healing in time, the extra renews or heals are largely out of your hands. They could land on someone where you'll get full effect. Or they could land on someone who's on 99%.

With FH, you have full control and at the very least equal theoretical HPS, likely higher practical HPS due to increased control, plus an instant/mana saver in SoL.

This is just napkin math and me speculating, as I am definitely not a mythic raider. But outside of fights with constant ticking damage, I have trouble seeing Renew being viable until it gets another buff. So nothing's changed. But hey, I could be talking out my ass.

[Deleted]

We shoudlnt cast renew.. The new "buffs" were an addition to benediction, nothing else and the "buff" was mabe 5%. We should still play with Apo 90% of the time, except for Nythendra, Dragons and Cenarius.

7.1 changed nothing

[Dawon]

Ye, the more I read and test, the more sad I become that everything but FH-whack'a'mole is inferior... Even our mastery is mostly ticking into overheals (in a raid situation), so perhaps time to dump all my mastery and renew/benediction talents, go full crit, everything in FH synergy and sit clicking one button for the next 3hr in every raid?

Renew needs to get a shitlot stronger, else they should just remove it and let druids have the hot-playstyle. Also I'd like some of the druids talents like being able to "proc what's left of the renew in one big heal instead", which would open up for some interesting playstyle.
Also PoM really *needs* to go back to instant-cast, it's completely stupid that it's not especially as you have 0 control over it after the initial target. Such a random spell must be instant or a smartheal that always picks next target with lowest health.

I think Blizzard is tried to make holy a bit of a middleground jack-of-all-trades healer (i.e. play how you like, you got all tools!), but the completely overtuned FH (well, in comparison to our other skills) totally ruined that and pigeon-holed us all into the greatest whack'a'mole-expansion ever. I've tested everything, there simply isn't anything that comes close to just spam FH for 3 hrs!

[cruxxy]

You have to remember that raid healing is different than dungeon healing. Because of the high priority of HPM and mana efficiency in raid healing, this will lend itself to a more monotonous playstyle.

I have never really found raid healing "fun" even though I have mained a healer for many years. Dungeon healing is where a good healer really shines because you can use a more complete toolkit. So hopefully you can find the healing enjoyment in M+ and Kara and "tolerate" the whack-a-mole play in raids

[Dawon]

You have to remember that raid healing is different than dungeon healing. Because of the high priority of HPM and mana efficiency in raid healing, this will lend itself to a more monotonous playstyle.

I have never really found raid healing "fun" even though I have mained a healer for many years. Dungeon healing is where a good healer really shines because you can use a more complete toolkit. So hopefully you can find the healing enjoyment in M+ and Kara and "tolerate" the whack-a-mole play in raids

Yeah I understand that but I rarely do 5mans, time is lacking nowadays with a kid so bascially all I can commit to is daily WQ and our 3 raid-days, everything else it put on hold for now... So, I'm looking for the optimal raid-spec/playstyle as we'll soon start pushing into the nastier bosses in Mythic.
I'm not happy with FH-spamming, so if that's the only future for holy, I might consider using my pally as healer instead... but I really love my priest and would hurt to give him up!

[Talleh]

We shoudlnt cast renew.. The new "buffs" were an addition to benediction, nothing else and the "buff" was mabe 5%. We should still play with Apo 90% of the time, except for Nythendra, Dragons and Cenarius.

7.1 changed nothing

Oh god, this, so much this.

At worst the divinity nerf is 1-2% of our overall healing, it brings Halo/DS closer but it still pulls ahead.

Most of the healing we lose in divinity will be returned with the slight buffs we received, over the past week I've noticed it more through PoM than renew (because I don't cast that pleb spell unless I want to proc SoL/5 mans).

If there is a major change, I'm sure there will be a lot of community theory crafting and information around it

[spiritsurge]

I'm still the top heals in my raid group for most of the fights with the old tried and true flash heal spam method. Until Renew is worth casting it won't be on my bars

[lifebinderx]

As a 4/7M healer in emeral nightmare, I can honestly say things do not work as intended. Most of the time I'm focused on keeping ppl alive who drop below 20 percent health and still keep taking constant damage. In such a case, u dont really have the luxury to cast some renew or prayer of mending. You mainly focus on flash heal spam with trail of light talent. But ofc in an ideal world where things dont go messy, combination of BH, benediction and enduring renewal is also great if you have enough haste on ur items. Managing binding heal is easy, cause I can simple assign it instead of "heal" which I never ever even cast once during a mythic progression raid.

Guys another update here: Last night after mythic dragons of nightmare fight I saw myself as world rank 7th holy priest for that fight. We used no tricks to increase my healing and that was a regular progress fight. I used enduring renewal, binding heal and benediction combo with legendary pants. Renew was active 99 percent of thr time on players "according to logs" and result was amazing.
Most of the ppl who keeps saying "flash heal spam is the only way" are totally wrong for me. On cenarius or dragons Mythic, no flash heal setup can beat this.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...4&type=healing


If you wanna check out the logs, here is the link.

Oh btw on my second divine hymn I got fear before completing the cast, results could be higher.

[Deja Thoris]

Most of the ppl who keeps saying "flash heal spam is the only way" are totally wrong for me.

So a playstyle that relies on a legendary? Not very useful for most people.

[lifebinderx]

So a playstyle that relies on a legendary? Not very useful for most people.

Legendary increases the effectiveness of the style but that does not mean it is not good without it. Overall it is a very mana friendly build.

Reality is u have no use without having legendary cloak anyways. But it does not stop me from playing my toon.

[Negato]

Guys another update here: Last night after mythic dragons of nightmare fight I saw myself as world rank 7th holy priest for that fight. We used no tricks to increase my healing and that was a regular progress fight. I used enduring renewal, binding heal and benediction combo with legendary pants. Renew was active 99 percent of thr time on players "according to logs" and result was amazing.
Most of the ppl who keeps saying "flash heal spam is the only way" are totally wrong for me. On cenarius or dragons Mythic, no flash heal setup can beat this.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...4&type=healing


If you wanna check out the logs, here is the link.

Oh btw on my second divine hymn I got fear before completing the cast, results could be higher.

Keep in mind that a lot of guilds are choosing to 6 or 7 heal this fight for their first kill. As it drastically makes the fight easier with 3 dispel per side. In order to do a proper comparison you would have to find another log that had similar number of healers, and where their holy priest went Apoth instead of Benediction. Anyways I do believe this to be one of the fights that Renew can really shine, both hardcasted and with Benediction. The damage pattern just suits it very well.

[Volo]

I've been using Benediction during Mythic Eyeball in Tree boss progression as well. It seems to do pretty well with all the random damage going out. I'm consistently topping the meters in my guild on that fight with 2 x RDruids, 2 x HPallies and myself.

The only fight I'm having trouble figuring out the right combination of talents/spellcasting is Ursoc. I can't decide if Apotheosis or Benediction is the way to go. I'm seeing an equal mix of high parses for both talent builds. I tried doing Benediction but my numbers were real low:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=15&source=9

I think I need to cast Flash Heal more but maybe it's also because my crit isn't high enough. 6691 crit, 10,065 mast.

[Nephthysis]

I've been using Benediction during Mythic Eyeball in Tree boss progression as well. It seems to do pretty well with all the random damage going out. I'm consistently topping the meters in my guild on that fight with 2 x RDruids, 2 x HPallies and myself.

The only fight I'm having trouble figuring out the right combination of talents/spellcasting is Ursoc. I can't decide if Apotheosis or Benediction is the way to go. I'm seeing an equal mix of high parses for both talent builds. I tried doing Benediction but my numbers were real low:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=15&source=9

I think I need to cast Flash Heal more but maybe it's also because my crit isn't high enough. 6691 crit, 10,065 mast.

Just depends on what your healing assignment in that fight is I guess. People on tank duty take Benediction for the fire and forget raid healing. People on raid healing take Apotheosis for the Sanc -> PoH -> PoH -> Sanc cycles.