Holy priest Love?

[Selerious]

So, Disc Priests seem to be doing alright. I wont say great as I've seen a few posts with them complaining as well and I've never played Disc so I can't say. Though they are now pretty much a main tank healer with some limited raid healing ability?

Holy Priests on the other hand have had a few pretty decent size changes to our mana regen. A couple major changes and the removal of some talents that effected our mana regen and spell haste mechanics. Some not as useful though interesting spell haste mechanics that situationaly instead of random are more useful? .. yeah.. Now if that isn't confusing..

Holy priests at the moment are pretty much set as raid healers. We do not have the mana regen now or the spell mana endurance to keep up our big spells for a long fight. As we can no longer use the OO5SR. Our new talent that adds mana regen is inferior to those that where taken out as well as the mana regen we got out side the five second rule. NOW! I will agree that right now our mana regen is insane. However the current changes to mana for Holy Priests make it difficult to heal 10 man Patchwork without blowing every cool down and using a potion and this is with full 25 man gear. Myself I think this seem a little broken. Though our raid healing has gone up.

I don't want to have to spec two different healing specs as a priest just to be a decent healer for whatever situation I need to heal with.. What other class has the option (or currently the need) to spec two PVE healing specs currently?

Now, I know this is the PTR still. I do feel a little worried though as in the last 3-4 patch notes there has been no changes or info related to Holy Priests. And the fact that our 4 set tier bonus is focused on Disc.. Seems a bit lop-sided.

Thoughts, flames, opinions and all such stuffs?

[dascia]

As far as the tier 8 set goes, I'm gonna pick 2 pieces (probably robes/ shoulders for the looks) and the rest random items, the bonus is just too crappy for a holy priest and there has to be other items that are more useful.

As far as 2 healing specs, no way I'm paying 1k gold to spent it on a disc off heal spec. I'm going for a disc/holy dps build as my off spec.
Disc would require a completely different gear set anyways then my holy set, so simply isn't worth the trouble.

Right now I haven't been able to test the new healing yet with my holy build, but the few minor tests I did run so far suggest that I might actually regen more mana now then I did before 3.10, my itemization helps a lot on this though (24% holy crit and almost 1200 spi unbuffed). It just sucks that I don't have the amount of mana saving abilities I used to have, but in return I got a lot better heals now that I'm really looking forward to.
Overal I think I gained a bit more then that I lost.

Also sure it'll require some adeption to the new situation, but that's what seperates the good priests from the bad. Those that still keep mindlesly spamming heals will find themselves oom rather fast and those that manage to adept will shine like they used before.
I always liked having so many healing spells and being able to adept to any situation, now that prayer of healing gets a haste boost and is targetable on every group it'll give us the potential to dominate the healing meters.
Who knows, we might actually find some use of mana potions now. The 1st time I had to use one of those was on sath 3d tries with 10m and only 2 healers.

[Healbot411]

We have gotten some love. CoH got buffed 40%, PoH is now targetable, Renew got a nice buff, Diving Spirit baseline, Divine Hymn reworked, and Holy Nova mana cost reduced (mainly grinding buff but still).

Ya when you only look at nerfs it looks kinda bad, and at times i catch myself doing it, but it'll work out. Blizzard will make sure priest, or any healing class for that matter, has the sufficient abilities to raid.

If anything it will separate healers who are efficient and know what they are doing from those who don't. Like the Priest that healed for my alt warrior on sarth (no drakes) pug the other week. She went oom about 2 mins into the fight and when i looked at recount, 60% of her heals were PoH and i just laughed when she tried to explain how to heal as a priest to the raid.

Although im kinda sad most of these nerfs wont effect those type of people, they probably wont even notice them, but does Blizzard really need to make it harder for them? come on.

[Danner]

Holy priests did get a lot of love this patch. Apart from major expansion patches, the holy tree has never seen bigger changes. "Holy priests are fine, don't touch them" was a design mantra throughout all of TBC; this mantra is no longer the guiding principle for the tree. And that's kind of nice, because time was catching up to the holypriest.

Problem is, no developer plays a holy priest. That's a bold claim, but it's sort of shining through the complete package. 6 seconds disaster, lightwell, improved death, guardian spirit bugs galore, 60% spellhasted improved holy concentration... the list of things that would've been caught a lot earlier had anyone dev actually had any holy play experience - that list is long. When ghostcrawler is doing an open letter to the priest community to figure out why the hell holies were complaining in the first place - that's just not Ghostcrawler not playing a holypriest. It's understandable that one man can't play all specs and classes. That means a lack of holypriest playing in the entire devteam. And that's a bit worse.

As such, when holy priests get love, we usually arbitrarily get more throughput. Let me be the first to say; our 3.1 throughput is kind of insane if you blow all your cooldowns. Of course, as any holypriest can tell, we don't need throughput. We need endurance. When raiding, the damage is periodic, repeatable and kind of predictable. As a result, healers need to be able to heal in a periodic, repeatable and predictable fashion. And that's where the shoe is hurting holypriests. In 3.1, it's hurting almost all healers, but holypriests got the shaft here.

Holypriests are already glyphing, gearing and talenting as much as humanly possible for additional regen. I used my TBC staff for a long time due to its superior regen. Regularly turned down a +200 spellpower boost by upgrading weapons, as it would've cost me 30 MP5 worth of manaregen to do so. I don't expect to heal like a paladin. But I do expect to counter the damage that is coming in. With my current gear, I can - provided I stick to single target spells and aim to proc serendipity.

As much as I hated the serendipity mechanic, it was a lesser, holypriest version of illumination. The OOFSR dancing was the holypriest identity. Clearcasting was one of the best way of conserving mana. Taking all this away from a holypriest is a disaster.

In many ways, holy priests got a new red sports car in 3.1. Problem is, the gastank only lasts for half a mile. I'd rather have an un-sexy slow horse-and-carriage which will get me to the destination eventually, than the sports car which will get me a quarter to the destination extremely fast.

[Healbot411]

I understand what your saying Danner. I loved FSR dancing and Clearcasting procs, it added flavor to healing. Plus I felt it was kinda a staple priest thing (like Hots were to druids). But I think most holy priests can agree mana regen was outa controll.

But that were the options from Blizzard PoV?

1. Make eveything as easy as nax? Noone wants this.

2. Make massive AoE dmg? They have already stated that this wasn't the direction they wanted to go in WOTLK.

3. Have massive dmg spikes? I don't think they wanna have so much rng with huge spike to make or break a encounter.

4. They could make encounters more interactive that require more planning and execution. But if they make to many encounters like this or make them to hard for some people, then they single out their main player base. Im not suggesting they should cater to casual players, but lets face it, thats where about 90% of their money comes from. And don't bite the hand that feeds you as the saying goes.

5. Or they could nerf mana regen. This forces healers to communicate effectively, rely on you other healers, and force us to make decisions between efficiency or throughput.

Although I would like to see more fun and complicated fights, I still feel that option 5 is the best for the progression of the game. If healers aren't working together then they will have mana problems. I think option 5 is a subtle enough nerf not to piss of casual players and still allow them to do reasonable content, but will make endgame content and "hard modes" that much more challenging.

Now if a raid group is geared for the encounter, healers are working together, have a well knowledge of their rolls, and mana is still a problem then it is on Blizzard to either buff regen or fine tune the encounter.

[Lady Jane]

What Danner mentioned about the dev's not playing holy priests seems to be so true and its sad.

Take a look at the 4p Healing setbonus on the priest set and GC's response that they wanted to add something to what you are already doing, as a holy priest.... With all the mana nerfs incoming, Im really not going to throw out expensive shields that absorb near to nothing to gain a whopping 250 spellpower (I mean wow, I might heal for 100 more <.<)

[dascia]

Technically to save out mana you could keep up 1 shield every 30 sec on just yourself, personally I'd rather have had extra mana regen, crit or maybe even haste.
On the other hand, with my current gear it's about 12,5% spell power increase, which isn't bad I guess. Then again, the better your gear gets the lower that % will be and I already have enough spellpower as it is.

[Danner]

The holypriest playstyle was to run oom. As a holypriest, you have insane throughput, but the cost is reliability. You can heal for two healers for a short while, like when it really matters, but you cannot do that for prolonged periods. You would be limited by your manapool, and holy priests heals are simply put, expensive. In a raid with one of each healer, the holy priest would be the first and second healer to run OOM. At least that's what I did in our first weeks of naxx raiding.

But unlike the shaman, running OOM was not a major problem for a holypriest. It just meant having to take a few seconds of downtime, get some OOFSR regen, and go back into the action. Those seconds were a problem for your designated healing targets, as holy priest assigns often were at risk of dying simply because their healer had to take breaks. But overall, it worked as long as you could give the holy priest a more liberal assign. A good holy priest would be all over the place stepping in where needed, but not all the time. "Gap fillers", ghostcrawler called us. I think he nailed it.

Being a gap filler was not that glorious. I think many holypriests wanted to be more reliable, at least I did. And we got it, sort of.

The "glyph of flash + serendipity + holy concentration + surge of light + accidental oofsr dance" healing style gave us the option to be reliable. We suddenly had a basic heal that could be spammed virtually forever as long as we procced every single part of that chain. It was a boring spell to spam, and turned priests into bad paladins. The overhealing requirement for serendipity for it to work was annoying. We were very much slaves of the RNG. But we were reliable when using that style. And WoTLK healing requires reliability above anything else. But we could still go all out when needed, blowing our manabar at problems arising. Right now, we are reliable, powerful against burst damage and ... boring. Two out of three ain't too bad.

3.1 basically removes our reliability. There is no heal that a holy priest can utilize to counter the steady damage that happens. You either blow your manabar against the steady incoming damage and run OOM 92 seconds into the fight. But now, being OOM is supposedly final. Or you don't heal, in which case you should be replaced with any other healer that still has the reliability required, if only marginally so. I'm not saying shamans, druids and discpriests can heal forever anymore. But they can heal for longer. Much longer.

[Abandon]

I just find it funny that this is right next to the post calling Disc the bastard child of healing.

[Kelesti]

I just find it funny that this is right next to the post calling Disc the bastard child of healing.

You totally did go there, didn't you?

[dascia]

I tend to disagree that that holy priests run oom really soon, it's all about using the most mana efficient spell at the right time.
For example; somebody is missing 15k HP, people near that person are almost full health, do you use a PoM + CoH combo on that person then or a greater heal?
In the past you may have though w/e, and pick option nr 1 while option nr 2 would be a lot more logical for this situation.

Or another example, an entire group took huge damage, do you go for prayer of healing or CoH? The 1st heals more but also costs more, but might overal still be more efficient, the 2nd is instant and heals reasonable but also has a cd. In my case with my talents the spells costs almost as much so if the raid doesn't require immediate healing I would probably go for prayer of healing in this case.
A 3rd example, somebody takes low periode damage, do you keep flash healing this person, or do you give him a renew? The last is probably most mana efficient in this case.

You also don't have to heal everybody all the time, if you see that somebody is getting an incoming heal already on Grid then why bother healing that person as well -even if your heal would land faster-?

Not casting a healing spell is a great way to save out mana and make your mana bar last longer, you don't gain as much mana anymore from oofsr, but you still save out mana by not using it.

I haven't been able to do a lot of tests with the current regen though, so I could be completely wrong as well, but the above summarizes how I'll use my heals.

[Healbot411]

I tend to disagree that that holy priests run oom really soon, it's all about using the most mana efficient spell at the right time.
For example; somebody is missing 15k HP, people near that person are almost full health, do you use a PoM + CoH combo on that person then or a greater heal?
In the past you may have though w/e, and pick option nr 1 while option nr 2 would be a lot more logical for this situation.

Or another example, an entire group took huge damage, do you go for prayer of healing or CoH? The 1st heals more but also costs more, but might overal still be more efficient, the 2nd is instant and heals reasonable but also has a cd. In my case with my talents the spells costs almost as much so if the raid doesn't require immediate healing I would probably go for prayer of healing in this case.
A 3rd example, somebody takes low periode damage, do you keep flash healing this person, or do you give him a renew? The last is probably most mana efficient in this case.

You also don't have to heal everybody all the time, if you see that somebody is getting an incoming heal already on Grid then why bother healing that person as well -even if your heal would land faster-?

Not casting a healing spell is a great way to save out mana and make your mana bar last longer, you don't gain as much mana anymore from oofsr, but you still save out mana by not using it.

I haven't been able to do a lot of tests with the current regen though, so I could be completely wrong as well, but the above summarizes how I'll use my heals.

I need more examples....

[Shrié]

I dont know why people say that priest mana gen is so terrible i have 803+ mp5 while casting(w/ full buffs +totem and replen. 645 w/o the two). Now with this amount of mana gen i output 4500 hps on Saph 25. I did need an innervate but it was a semi-long fight seeing as we had a lot of pug dps. But i did not need to use my shadow fiend (like its any good on that fight) or a mana pot. Currently i have 2174 spellpower, 1104 spirit (dragon figurine trinket not included), 15% crit, and 8% haste (w/ innerfire). Personaly im not to angry about our class changes it just means that i might actualy have to use cool downs (shadowfiend, mana pot, hym of hope) on most fights and start relying on the other healer.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...m&n=Shri%C3%A9

[Selerious]

Yay for some intelligent and open answers and not a wall of flames

It's not that our mana rgen is "terrible" if you look at numbers.&#160;&#160; Or if you heal conservatively.&#160; It's when we can't be conservative that we hit the wall.

I don't see this being as big a issue in 25 man raids, But say Sarth 3D 10 man?&#160; 10 man 6min Eoe?&#160; Currently I am the main tank healer for these as a Holy priest.&#160; On the PTR I will say I haven't tried these fights... But.. I don't really want to.&#160; Feel like I'd be wasting the rest of the groups time (and finding a sarth 3D pug to try it on.. doesn't sound fun).&#160; I've done some other raiding and I just don't have the mana for those intensive fights anymore.

I want to be able to do all the 10 man Hardmodes without having to respec because as Holy I can't Main tank heal or As Disc I can't raid heal.&#160; There needs to be a balance here.&#160; And yeah.. As I stated above.&#160; I know it's the PTR.. but,.. It's depressing currently :P

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...wer&n=Distract
Current spec is a little odd, what I use for 10 man Sarth 3D.

[dascia]

Actually I think that sarth 3d will be easier now for me as a holy priest. I have to heal 8/10 people there basicly so I'm constantly casting and since I crit a lot I can probably have an uptime of 100% on holy concentration, 1 CoH (got the glyph) gives me 6 heals, my crit % at 10m 3d is above 30% so in theory I have a 180% chance for 1 garantueed crit every 6 sec. Off course this is still just an average, but you get the idea.

Your build seems very unorthodox, but I always say you should stick to the build that works best for you. I don't exactly have a standard build myself either.

For my main spec I'm staying holy and I made my build in such a way that group heals come by (fairly) cheap, but I'm not neglecting single heals either (my fav heal is still flash heal). I'm the only holy priest left in my guild so sometimes I'm raid healer, other times main tank healer on the same boss and often I like to do both at the same time when possible.
For my off spec I'm going disc/holy dps though, I came up with a great build for farming and dailies and I'm really gonna enjoy that one.

In my holy build melee elites with 65k hp (those undead mobs in ice crown) gave me some minor trouble and I had to shackle/smite kite them till they died, with my dps build I didn't have to bother wit shackle at all and ended on almost full mana compared to 25% mana left in my holy build.
Huge advantage of this spec is that I can keep myself healed while doing nice damage as well. Anyways, I'm going off topic with my ranting now.

[Qualia]

I don't understand why people are worrying about OS3D / Patchwerk healing. Holy priest mana regeneration is not that bad, at least in PTR at the moment. I have healed Deconstructor, Ignis, Iron Council & Holdir thx to some of our healers not appear on PTR without having much trouble about mana (recently no glyphs also, bug FTL -.-). Note that my main spec is shadow, so my holy gear is just mediocre (unbuffed stats were 2100 sp, 20% crit, 950 intel & 1220 spirit, 5 pieces t7, not on PTR atm so I don't remember how much regen I got) and these fights when we killed them were more healing intensive than OS3D/maly imo. So we are not having problem with mana in PTR / live realm, why are you guys asking for more "endurance" ? We still at a better place in mana regen then we were preBC (hi, chain mana pot on progression fights!)

In my opinion, I think holy priest are getting some nice buffs in 3.1 with both improved raid heal & single target output which improves our job as all-rounder healers (all-rounder, not "gap filler" =p) who could take care for anything, from tank healing to single-target healing, add in new GS glyph and asking for more seems to be greedy.
(The holy 4 piece bonus seems sad though =p only if it could be ProM instead of PW:S..)

[Ceirena]

My gulid isn't that far progressed but we do take the occasional trip to Naxx and OS (both normal though) I've been pugging a bit on the side to improve gear.
Eventhough I have mediocre gear my holy priest has a long endurance, or at least I like to think so.
You can start laughing now btw. Our first guild OS normal took us 13 mins 40 secs to down Sarth no drakes! (Boss fight tmie only) Besides healing MT I threw off Renews, shields, flash heals and CoH on raid, ofc I had to blow cooldowns but I could sustain myself for that long without getting an Innervate.
Another example of holy priest awesome mana regen: Guild Naxx run. 2 healers, me and 1 druid. On Razavious I healed both Understudies alone simply by spamming GH on both of them for 6 mins. Blew 1 pot but had to get 1 Innervate from feral druid.
Patch is no problem either...I can easily spam GH on MT throughout fight.

Luckily we one-shotted the lot!


I can't wait to see what Blizzard has in store for us hpriests mana regen wise but tbh I don't see a nerf as that big a problem.

[Selerious]

My gulid isn't that far progressed but we do take the occasional trip to Naxx and OS (both normal though) I've been pugging a bit on the side to improve gear.
Eventhough I have mediocre gear my holy priest has a long endurance, or at least I like to think so.
You can start laughing now btw. Our first guild OS normal took us 13 mins 40 secs to down Sarth no drakes! (Boss fight tmie only) Besides healing MT I threw off Renews, shields, flash heals and CoH on raid, ofc I had to blow cooldowns but I could sustain myself for that long without getting an Innervate.
Another example of holy priest awesome mana regen: Guild Naxx run. 2 healers, me and 1 druid. On Razavious I healed both Understudies alone simply by spamming GH on both of them for 6 mins. Blew 1 pot but had to get 1 Innervate from feral druid.
Patch is no problem either...I can easily spam GH on MT throughout fight.

Luckily we one-shotted the lot!


I can't wait to see what Blizzard has in store for us hpriests mana regen wise but tbh I don't see a nerf as that big a problem.

Yeah, on live servers we have no trouble at all. I don't care if the fight lasted 30 min. I wouldn't go out of mana. What this post was about are the changes on the PTR for 3.1. Not what is currently live. I'm more concerned with my ability to heal hard modes once 3.1 goes live.

[rikken]

A 3rd example, somebody takes low periode damage, do you keep flash healing this person, or do you give him a renew? The last is probably most mana efficient in this case.

Dont mean to poke holes but i was under the impression that flash heal was actually i better choice, mana wise.

[Fuggle]

1 CoH (got the glyph) gives me 6 heals, my crit % at 10m 3d is above 30% so in theory I have a 180% chance for 1 garantueed crit every 6 sec.

Ugh, such a lack of understanding of statistics. It's multiplicative, not additive. It's roughly 88% chance that at least 1 of the CoH heals would crit using 30% crit chance.