Should holy have a talent to make PoH smart?

[exquisite]

Holy needs a talent to make Divine Hymn a 3 minute cooldown to compete with Barrier. I do agree that PoH in its current state is clunky, as it's the only spell that still requires me to move people around in groups to use it effectively.

[Pottsy710]

i'm not necessarily for or against this idea, just spitballing, as it's obvious that either the encounter designs need to change so it's no longer about who has what 3 min cd for "insert massive raid damage x here"... or holy needs to receive it's own raidwide 3 min cd and/or have a significant boost in throughput...

the numbers don't lie, very few raids are using holy priests....

[Arlee]

One odd thing that my raid group noticed (and this is purely anecdotal so you know I am not stating facts here) but our priest healer decided he wanted to do holy for domo last week. Our raid healers are druid, shammy, and priest... so he did holy and we all used the lightwell and it worked. The odd thing was at the end the dps and tanks felt like him being holy had made it easier in some respects while the healers all felt it was harder.

Only reasoning for this which makes sense that I can think of is that with the lightwell it gave the dps and tanks a feeling like we had more control over our own health than we do otherwise (i do remember feeling worried whenever there wasn't a lightwell up). On the other hand it made the healers feel less in control and with one less raid CD they weren't comfortable.

Which is also funny because when Firelands first came out our priest was talking to me and mentioned that he wished Disc was viable for raid healing, to which I told him he was crazy and sent him to do some reading/talk to some people and he went Disc...

[UunaPriest]

I agree buffing Divine Hymn AND reducing it's CD to 3mins with talents in holy would be a great solution. ( can it trigger echos of light?)

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

No. Doing this would make PoH the best spell for pretty much every situation in which AoE damage comes in.

if they would make it a smart heal, it's use wouldnt change much in those "oh shit need epic grpheal"-moments, you would be spammhealing PoH, CoH (maybe Sanctuary?) regardless of PoH being intelligent or not.
It would change its frequency in usage in other moments. where only a few people get some damage for example. or when the grp is nearly full, and some last bruises spread throughout the grp have te be healed up.

I dought that making PoH intelligent would yeild the desired results. It would be a buff, but would make it to powerfull (like CoH/Chainheal used to be)
PoH is an a good place, I dont think they should change too much there...
maybe buff throughput of CoH and Sanc, because thats more easily controllable.

PoH being the only grp-based does disturb me a lot, but I just don't see how they could solve the issue without major changes in Priest Healing...
And Blizz does obviously also not see a simple way to fix it, otherwise they would have done it in cata...

[Deleted]

making PoH a smartheal would be the worst thing they can do to holy playstyle in raids. In every fight there is a ton aof aoe dmg which has to be healed. It will result in casting POH on himself while standing in the middle of the area, while keeping PoM and CoH on CD...there are 3 more important things hpriests need:

#1 Buff Divine Hymn...for obvious lack of CD-reasons

#2 Change Holy Concentration: with FL gear you lose lots of spirit (but gain lots of int). Change the talent into something that is based on max mana like rapture, AA, revitalize (druid) or even resurgence (shaman). A static +20% more manareg off spirit was nice in 4.0 and 4.1 but not running oom by beeing forced to wear non-spirit items or old gear sucks.
Maybe something like the old Chacra; if you cast the same spell twice(thrice) in a row you gain X% of max mana, can only be triggered every Y sec

#3 Buff Holy Word Sanctuary: seriously, it costs tons of mana and heals for nothing. Maybe add some "increases healing recieved by 10-20%" buff like divine hymn

[Demonidze]

I agree that making PoH smart will make me just spam it all the time. to increase our effectiveness we should probably get a buff on other spells.. imho give heal/greater heal 10-15% heal bonus, while in chakra?

[Pottsy710]

i'm not sure how it is in ten mans, but in 25s if i do get the chance to play as holy, i'm generally spamming PoH as it is... what bothers me about it is that it can be clunky, holy priests, by design seemingly, are supposed to be near the (if not the top) aoe healer in the game, however every other healing class has a smart heal that rivals CoH in it's effectiveness (wild growth, chain heal, light of dawn, healing rain, efflorescence, etc) in addition to bringing a cooldown that is at least moderately useful to the entire raid...

my concern is that it seems that holy really lacks a "direction" per se, we do great aoe healing, but not the best, we're decent tank healers, but not the best, but we have no real raid cool down...

---------- Post added 2011-08-24 at 02:30 PM ----------

Ok there are reasons why these buffs won't be put in place

If you buff DH to 3 min and +healing, you just copied Tranq (Blizz has already stated they don't want to homogenize to that point)

If you buff Sanc, you make it into HR

If you buff Renew, you make it into rejuv

If you buff CoH, you just buffed an already strong instacast, smart heal; pushing it to an op point

The best ways to give Holy a unique buff is to change how ProM functions for holy, change DH, rework sanc; or change how lightwell functions (not likely);

I like the sanc + healing idea, but it'd be op considering how often you can have it up ( mostly in regards to 25-man), a personal + healing, or increasing the cd might work

Something to where PoH casts reduce the cd left on CoH sounds good to me too (Like SoS/ToT)

i like this idea, every PoH cast while in chakra: sanctuary either reduces the CD of CoH by a set amount OR increases the healing done by CoH (stacking)...

[Kelesti]

#1 Buff Divine Hymn...for obvious lack of CD-reasons

#2 Change Holy Concentration: with FL gear you lose lots of spirit (but gain lots of int). Change the talent into something that is based on max mana like rapture, AA, revitalize (druid) or even resurgence (shaman).

Maybe something like the old Chacra; if you cast the same spell twice(thrice) in a row you gain X% of max mana, can only be triggered every Y sec

Resurgence isn't based off your mana pool at all. It's a flat value, just like Improved Water Shield was. And being forced to cast three spells in a row every Y seconds is clunkier than Rapture without a timer. Really. The problem isn't the lack of spirit gear, because we can get Spirit on everything except the belt. It's the fact that we're using more and more expensive spells to make up for our lack of cooldowns, as fights push harder and harder to say that we need them.

The "fix" to Holy's regen (it affects Discipline too, especially when two healing, by the by, and they have Intellect scaling regen) would need to wait for a completely new model, like the one Spiritus brought up in the State of Holy thread.

#3 Buff Holy Word Sanctuary: seriously, it costs tons of mana and heals for nothing. Maybe add some "increases healing recieved by 10-20%" buff like divine hymn

If Holy Word: Sanctuary had its mana cost increased by about 10%, the healing kept the same (pre-breaking of the target cap), but basically became Holy's version of Archangel where anyone standing in it would recieve 15% more healing from the Priest, it would be much more respected for what it's trying to do, a spell you don't push for it to show up on meters and say "oh yeah, we should have it down all the time" (healing rain).

Keeping the unique functionality while giving us the mini-boost in output that Discipline can enjoy with Archangel without busting our butts off to hopefully make use of that ridiculous amount of mana we put into Evangelism/Archangel and getting nothing out of it.

Easiest fix to Holy's problems in the current setting: State of Mind in its current iteration is destroyed. Flat out gone. In its place, we get this:

Blessed Voice (2pts):
Your Holy Word: Serenity increases the effect of Renew and Echo of Light on the target by 7/15%. Targets within your Holy Word: Sanctuary receive 5-10% more healing from the Priest. The cooldown of your Divine Hymn is reduced by 2/5 minutes, and while channeling it, party/raid members gain 25% healing recieved from all sources, in addition to its current effects.

Then by 4.0, Tranquility is turned back into an 8 minute cooldown. Raid Stand, Raid Wall, Barrier, Spirit Link, and Aura Mastery are all nerfed hardcore, with 6+ minute cooldowns, probably shared cooldowns for some of them. Push the game away from the cooldowns, back into the hands of the raid itself.

[Veiled]

I'd rather have smart healers than smart heals.

[Noradin]

I don't think we would like the other changes they would additionally make if they changed PoH into a smart heal. Maybe having a talent reducing the CD of the existing AoE smartheal (CoH) would be ok, but then they should change Holy Nova to give Disc a AoE smart heal as well - they don't have one, yet, holy does.
Changing PoM to not jump to tartgets who already have it would be nice, too.

[Kelesti]

I'd rather have smart healers than smart heals.

So say we all.

I thought this expansion was supposed to push us away from smart heals, and making every spell cast a potential choice anyways? I dunno, maybe that's just in my head.

[Veiled]

So say we all.

I thought this expansion was supposed to push us away from smart heals, and making every spell cast a potential choice anyways? I dunno, maybe that's just in my head.

It's all an ILLUSIONNNNN Kel!

[ramennoodleking]

Yes, let's please take away more of the skill needed to play a holy priest by turning PoH into a smart heal. Sounds like a fantastic idea.

[Raynet]

I would say they should make it a smart heal, and also get rid of groups in raids altogether as they are unnecessary. Us priests have to get raid leaders to setup groups properly for melee/ranged or else our AOE healing will be hurting somewhat. I don't think it will make it too OP, they may have to reduce the healing a little bit or something. And as far as priests wanting to spam it...I am confused as to what they do to AOE heal now? You'd use CoH when it's off CD and spam PoH generally so I don't see that changing any.

To note though the real fix for holy right now is easy. Blizz just needs to remove State of Mind from the holy tree and replace it with a talent to buff Divine Hymn and lower it's CD. This talent should essentially make it as powerful as tranquillity and have the same CD. Yeah I know they don't want all spells to be the same but come on, it's very unfair right now that holy priests don't have a raid CD like that.

[Pottsy710]

Yes, let's please take away more of the skill needed to play a holy priest by turning PoH into a smart heal. Sounds like a fantastic idea.

no need to get snarky, just trying to generate some discussion points... and as i stated earlier in this thread, i'm mainly playing devil's advocate on how to actually fix holy... and already i've seen some post very good suggestions...

[Deleted]

TBH Priest healing is perfect ATM. Holy and Disco =]

[Raynet]

TBH Priest healing is perfect ATM. Holy and Disco =]

Healing-wise they are close to perfect I agree. Though I think Disc can come out as superior in a lot of situations from my experience which is unfortunately as I hate playing a disc priest so I stick with holy. The real problem with holy priests right now is the lack of a raid CD. If they fix this then everything is all good.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

great ideas kelesti!
I was just thinking about something similar aswell.
As we dont have a raidcooldown, the could give us a healboost CD.
DH would be the most obvious place to do this, but if blizz doesnt want to change it because of homogenisation, they could give Holy a AE-Heal-CD, and copple it to HW:Sanctuary, as Kelesti proposed.
Increase CD to 1.5mins or something like that, increase its healing (optional), ceep manacosts the same and give all people in the sanctuary a buff that increases healing taken by the priest by 25%, giving you higher spike-HPS when needed.

a little fix, but great change I would like to see for DH: make the 10% bonus heal stack! (but then they would really have to fix the additional ticks you gain from haste) it would give it a more flexible use, for example as tank CD (time it when no grp dmg, tank gehts 4 stacks +40% heal on tank, yeil!)

[Irisel]

If they do, they better makes healing stream raid wide...