Is the new divine hymn still not worth it?

[Sikizim]

if you dont think its worth it, go onto the PTR and use it.

It's so awesome right now. I can see the top top guilds having at least 1 holy maybe even 2 depending on the fight. Best aoe healing spell in the game easily. 25 man raids will be smart to have one in their raids.

[Afflictid]

Yes.



One of the strats for heroic domo is to not take any scorpion hits. Shannox really the only people that take damage are the rage face and tanks, and the lightwell is meh for that IMO. I'm looking forward to trying it out for sure, but I still see me being sucked in to playing Disc.

So instead of having to play Disc on every fight, you can now play Holy on most except for ones that favor single target healing. What is the problem?

[Kelesti]

So instead of having to play Disc on every fight, you can now play Holy on most except for ones that favor single target healing. What is the problem?

And even with the single target healing, Holy can win in some situations (Shannox).

[Deleted]

Well, the problem I see with your setup is mostly the shammy and the disc who is underperfoming, I can easily solo tank heal as a druid WHILE raid healing without going oom, we duo heal Firelands, Our disc priest is mostly the raid healer (Due to him being punished if he tank heals, and me not so much). And Holy is really good in really good gear, sure they have mana issues in your current gear, but get into 383 Ilvl, and you have better mana regen than the shammy, you can spam non-stop, due to your talent, 30% of the spirit (which you really should focus on going for) is ALOT, I am a resto shaman as a main, I have as much spirit as our holy priest, yet, he can spam alot more than I (we tried this on beth), but yes, the mana issues to a rshammy doesn't come untill you have to keep HR up while CH spamming, and as for the shammy not being able to keep the tank alive? That's pretty lame, since shammys have really good direct heals (GHW hello, fast, heals for alot). So yes, a holy priest should never be put on a tank alone, they should be assisting at most, then raid healing (since they currently lack the way of solo healing a tank like the other healers can. Besides, on Shannox, the shammy haz to tank heal due to him being more punished raid healing wise than you are. And where holy priests are really strong, that is the lack of mana cost of your sanctuary, where it heals as much as HR, but needs to be put down every 28 sec (will be changed ofc), while HR costs more and needs to be kept up every 10 sec, which means 3 times more mana cost.

[Afflictid]

Well, the problem I see with your setup is mostly the shammy and the disc who is underperfoming, I can easily solo tank heal as a druid WHILE raid healing without going oom, we duo heal Firelands, Our disc priest is mostly the raid healer (Due to him being punished if he tank heals, and me not so much). And Holy is really good in really good gear, sure they have mana issues in your current gear, but get into 383 Ilvl, and you have better mana regen than the shammy, you can spam non-stop, due to your talent, 30% of the spirit (which you really should focus on going for) is ALOT, I am a resto shaman as a main, I have as much spirit as our holy priest, yet, he can spam alot more than I (we tried this on beth), but yes, the mana issues to a rshammy doesn't come untill you have to keep HR up while CH spamming, and as for the shammy not being able to keep the tank alive? That's pretty lame, since shammys have really good direct heals (GHW hello, fast, heals for alot). So yes, a holy priest should never be put on a tank alone, they should be assisting at most, then raid healing (since they currently lack the way of solo healing a tank like the other healers can. Besides, on Shannox, the shammy haz to tank heal due to him being more punished raid healing wise than you are. And where holy priests are really strong, that is the lack of mana cost of your sanctuary, where it heals as much as HR, but needs to be put down every 28 sec (will be changed ofc), while HR costs more and needs to be kept up every 10 sec, which means 3 times more mana cost.

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure why you have a Disc Priest on raid and a Resto Druid on tanks. And Holy Priests can not spam non-stop without ooming. At least not their PoH/CoH spam.

[Themos]

I don't think I'm bad at healing. My holypriest kicks ass. But I need a period of ~30 sec of low healing after going all out to avoid OOMing. And in 10mans, I cannot get that.

It sounds like you're not managing your mana properly. Did you hymn/fiend at the same time? Do you keep conc or mana pots stocked for situational oh shit moments?

And Themos:
I was on the MT. The OT was left to the disc priest, but we had to help him out a lot. Partly that was the tank's fault. We tried switching, but it didn't work much since the disc didn't manage to keep the MT up.

Yea, I MT heal this fight and I've done it on heroic pre-nerfs. Holy does very well on this fight compared to the other ones, imo. BnS and Life Grip are win.

How high on average did the MT let the bleed stack up to? If it's more than 5 or so at any moment through the fight that's a tank fuck up.
None the less, I've been able to brute force up to 8-9 stacks during H-Shannox (prenerf).

Make sure you use Binding Heal whenever given the opportunity. It's a very hpm spell and gives you serendipity which is even more efficiency
It's hard to be more helpful without seeing a log of some sort.

To be honest, the main problem was that the fight dragged out so long. If I conservated mana and cancelcasted just right, I could last for roughly 5 minutes. But then it was really GG as far as my manabar was concerned. Tank died immediately after.

Shannox is probably the only fight in FLs I'm comfortable healing the MT perpetually.
We did the bucket achievement where we dragged Shannox around the whole damn zone and I was pretty much fine the whole time and was actually disappointed when we finally killed him in Baeloric's room. :/

So this is one of many reasons I say a holypriest need more mana. Maybe it is just me. Maybe I have never learned that Holy Concentration need to be explicitly activated for every fight or something outlandish like that. But when dealing with a bad group, I wasn't up to it. The shaman, the alt paladin and the crappy disc was.

YMMV, but I think especially with tank healing, holy's mana holds up just fine. Are you chucking out PoH or CoH? What's your overheal look like?
Are you using Fheal at all? If so, you really shouldn't. My Fheals mostly come from opportunity SoL procs.

Again, a log of some sort would go a long way. Post one if you have it available. PM it to me if you want.

[Danner]

I am afraid I don't have much logs of the fight. I was mostly sitting on the tank, and mostly spamming GHeal. The tank took some massive hits, which required both me and the shaman to outheal. Obviously, a paladin would have been ideal to counter the tank-being-undergeared issue. And turns out, it was.

H&H + Shadowfiend is a combination nobody can afford to miss. I usually cancel H&H it after getting the buff myself though, as people still need heals. I have however noticed that you can get the buff multiple times as of late, so it is posisble they have changed how this spell works.

But there was nothing wrong with my HPS; it was excellent, and by almost solely tankhealing I was keeping up with the shaman. The only issue was my mana. I could have used Serenity more I guess. And it would obviously have helped to masively overgear the content. But if that is a prerequisite for healing well as Holy, then that is the problem right there.

[Deleted]

I am afraid I don't have much logs of the fight. I was mostly sitting on the tank, and mostly spamming GHeal. The tank took some massive hits, which required both me and the shaman to outheal. Obviously, a paladin would have been ideal to counter the tank-being-undergeared issue. And turns out, it was.

H&H + Shadowfiend is a combination nobody can afford to miss. I usually cancel H&H it after getting the buff myself though, as people still need heals. I have however noticed that you can get the buff multiple times as of late, so it is posisble they have changed how this spell works.

I don't think there's any cap how much HoH can stack. On some Ulduar run we had 7*times HoH at the same time for funzies, 100k mana bro

[Themos]

I am afraid I don't have much logs of the fight. I was mostly sitting on the tank, and mostly spamming GHeal. The tank took some massive hits, which required both me and the shaman to outheal. Obviously, a paladin would have been ideal to counter the tank-being-undergeared issue. And turns out, it was.

That assumes you're both doing everything right and the limitation is solely on spec, and it sounds like you aren't.

H&H + Shadowfiend is a combination nobody can afford to miss. I usually cancel H&H it after getting the buff myself though, as people still need heals. I have however noticed that you can get the buff multiple times as of late, so it is posisble they have changed how this spell works.

Don't do that again, hymn should only be canceled in emergencies. Each time it ticks it gives mana to the people in the raid that need it most. If you're popping both at ~20-30% mana, you're pretty much guaranteed to get each tick. Not letting Hymn of Hope complete is a significant loss of mana, not only for you but for the whole raid. Sometimes on Baeloric I need to cancel it, and it really does *HURT* my mana pool as well as the other healers. Get better at when to use it, you only need about 6 seconds.

And then there is Tide. Was your shaman casting it early in the fight and each time the cd was up, or only when the shaman needed more mana? Keep in mind that this isn't a carry, they get mana back from your Hymn. It's a trade, get them to tide more often. A resto shaman and holy priest are very nice synergy on 10 man. If the resto druid doesn't need the innervate, as for it as well. They get your hymn as well.

Then there are concentration potions or mana potions. Which are further mana gains to be used when you're running on fumes. These are best saved to keep you going until your fiend is up again on longer fights.

But there was nothing wrong with my HPS; it was excellent, and by almost solely tankhealing I was keeping up with the shaman. The only issue was my mana. I could have used Serenity more I guess. And it would obviously have helped to masively overgear the content. But if that is a prerequisite for healing well as Holy, then that is the problem right there.

HPS should be one of the last things you look at on a healing meter. The go to things to look at are death counts, seeing exactly who died first and what heals they got in the last 5 seconds prior to death. If mana is your serious issue, looking at a spell by spell breakdown would also be very helpful and so would an armory. If you're stacking haste, go reforge into Mastery as Haste drains your mana that much faster. And definitely consider minor tweaks in your spec. Surge of Light opportunity procs don't do much for HPS but each one you use is mana free healing. 3-4 procs are on par with a concentration potion or an innervate.

Very minor tweaks in play style can have fairly massive repercussions in holy's performance.
ex/ If you renew yourself at all, stop it. Rely on Binding Heal to do it while you heal somoene else. It's way better HPM and you get opportunity Serendipity for further mana gains. The devil is in the details, cause our mana efficiency is balanced around it.


Yes, Disc has much less mana issues. But where our mana regen is at is where Blizzard wants it for all healers, the other spec needs to be brought down in line, imo and Resto druids are getting hit in 4.3. Holy's mana efficiency is perfectly fine.

[Lightbone]

sounds great

[Scrubity]

The new divine hymn and changes to serenity are the main reasons I want to go back to holy.

[Deleted]

I'll be honest, I'm not exactly sure why you have a Disc Priest on raid and a Resto Druid on tanks. And Holy Priests can not spam non-stop without ooming. At least not their PoH/CoH spam.

We do it because I and the disc priest know that I am able to do it, while raid healing, it is not hard as a resto druid to tank heal while raid healing, sure, on a few fights, putting a priest on tank is better, but mostly, I feel more comfortable knowing I am the one who keeps the tank alive, rather than him having to worry about it, besides, he does shield / penance it on cd, and get a smite or 2 in, but mostly, he's more comfortable raid healing.

[Blakkeyez]

A bit off topic still (but I can't help feeling a bit sad for this fragile little priest in need of advice): If mana is an issue on Shannox, normal or heroic then something else is wrong. In a raid that has decent gear it is not that hard to heal on two. We usually run with 3 healers just becasue it's comfortable and we are lazy but if everyone is doing their job the extra dps and one more player freed up to help out on cancelling the face rages makes raid healing a breeze. Judging from what you describe above I'd say the problem is not the healing at all but that the debuffs are not allowed to reset on the tanks. That makes tank healing a pain on this fight. If handled properly there isn't that much to heal really.

A bit more on topic: The new Divine Hymn is exactly what holy needed. It is of course sad that balancing these days is all about the big equalization hammer but at least that means paladins no longer can get away with only one button so it may be worth it in the end. Personally I'd like to see more interesting solutions for shorter raid cooldowns to be used on the run and encounters designed around them, but thats just me.

[zito]

The new divine hymn and changes to serenity are the main reasons I want to go back to holy.

My divine hymn is ticking for 60k a crit and this is with the Ilvl debuff.

!

[Irisel]

Does DH proc DA?

edit: nevermind.

[Kelesti]

Personally I'd like to see more interesting solutions for shorter raid cooldowns to be used on the run and encounters designed around them, but thats just me.

Make them all output based cooldowns (not Hymn or Tranq, but Guardian of the Ancient Kings, Avenging Wrath, Archangel, Power Infusion, Tree of Life) and encounter design will hinge not on pushing a button at a predetermined time, but making use of the button which still has a skillcap involved (A discipline Priest that pushes Archangel and Power INfusion at the same time may be capable of higher HPS, but is he using them to the best he can?).

[Deleted]

I read this thread with interest and wrote out a lovely long post about my experiences about swapping between disc/holy... but i figured it was off topic and so will summarise with:

Holy throughput fixes may fix some things but until the spirit regen model is tweaked, I think it'll continue to struggle for sustained throughput on long fights. Disc can rely on Intellect for regen almost completely, and has many more benefits than just mana regeneration. This will leave holy forever at a disadvantage.

[Deiae]

From my limited PTR experience the new divine hymn will be a great tool for phases with very high raid damage and definitely a reason to bring holy. On yesterdays Warlord Zon'ozz kill which we one-tanked, three-healed between a premade* resto druid, a premade holy priest and a premade disc (myself), the hymn did 25% percent of the total healing of said holy priest and was used only twice during 'Zon'ozz diffused' phases, where raid damage ramps up quiet high.
The healing meter was lead by disc, followed very closely by holy and further behind the druid.
*We weren't able to copy our live chars over yet, because of the EU issues.

[Deleted]

Imo holy is build around 25 man not 10 man - noone is forcing you to take up a spec you dont like.... but

You wouldnt make a paladin healer raidheal or a resto drood tank heal if there was a paladin. Same here why bring a holy priest to a 10 man when they r more usefull in 25 man. You pick the class+ spec after what is best for the raid and with two healers in 10 man holy is just less viable than disc. In 25 man holy is very good despite the lack of cd's

[Deleted]

One of the strats for heroic domo is to not take any scorpion hits. Shannox really the only people that take damage are the rage face and tanks, and the lightwell is meh for that IMO. I'm looking forward to trying it out for sure, but I still see me being sucked in to playing Disc.

Isn't that a good thing though? That both speccs are fairly even and it just boils down to which one you prefer playing? Also, they're buffing Divine Hymn for both speccs, so Disc might find use for it too.