Patch 7.1.5 - Holy/Disc expectations

[Iatros]

After starting 7.0 as Holy and see me in the middle of the pack on HPS an almost zero utility and no self CD, i rerolled Disc just to see it get a mana or dps nerf (keep mindbender with less mana regen or drop it to shield) on 7.1.
After the annouce of 7.1.5 patch to retune not only numbers, but some class utility review i got really hopefull that holy could get a really good utility buff and a little worried that disc receives another nerf.
I have a feeling (really just a feeling, not based on facts) that Disc is performing better than intended.

What u guys think will happen with priest healing on 7.1.5?

[Kinny]

Hoping for Binding Heal, Piety(also Instant PoM pls), CoH to become baseline for Holy. Desperate Prayer for all specs.

Return of Divine Insight in-place of Piety.
Cascade instead of taking Divinity's place.
Divinity taking CoH's place and going back up to 8 seconds.

Basically, I want the world.

[rosastolemyseat]

After starting 7.0 as Holy and see me in the middle of the pack on HPS an almost zero utility and no self CD, i rerolled Disc just to see it get a mana or dps nerf (keep mindbender with less mana regen or drop it to shield) on 7.1.
After the annouce of 7.1.5 patch to retune not only numbers, but some class utility review i got really hopefull that holy could get a really good utility buff and a little worried that disc receives another nerf.
I have a feeling (really just a feeling, not based on facts) that Disc is performing better than intended.

What u guys think will happen with priest healing on 7.1.5?

I feel that disc is in a great spot. Maybe they will nerf our dps a little more, but I don't think that it will be anything over the top. If it's anything like the current patch, they're just going to trim our dps since they don't want to ruin the spec. What does bring disc over the edge is the fact that they can utilize innervate better than any other healer. I feel like that's where they might get us, nerf innervate a bit, maybe even remove it or make it a personal cd for resto.

As for holy, our situation is just so bad right now. I don't think that we will get a sick utility buff, but I'd also be amazed if we didn't get something. I'm just hoping that they revert the changes to angelic feather and rework desperate prayer or focused will

[Nzete]

I want "Say Your Prayers" to be functional again. A bug fix. I'm not convinced that we will get it.

[drivec]

Hoping for Binding Heal, Piety(also Instant PoM pls), CoH to become baseline for Holy. Desperate Prayer for all specs.

Return of Divine Insight in-place of Piety.
Cascade instead of taking Divinity's place.
Divinity taking CoH's place and going back up to 8 seconds.

Basically, I want the world.

one can only dream

[SafariDiscoLion]

I think Disc is fine if you really know the playstyle but a few tweaks to make it more intuitive and easier to understand and smooth out the learning curve would be nice. Holy just really needs to have spells like Renew and PoM be actually worth casting (the broken traits don't help either), and to have SOME form of utility to make up for the lackluster HPS we put out when compared to other healers who can do so much more than we can in more situations.

[Danner]

What u guys think will happen with priest healing on 7.1.5?

Holypriest feedback only here.

Not really much. Holypriests have been in a far worse state than right now, and back then the official word was "priests are fine, l2notQQ". So by comparison, what in the world could one possibly imagine Blizzard will do given that holypriest right now is both competitive and fun to play? I fully expect no changes whatsoever. And most of the time, that's not really cynicism. That's a a desperate plea to the universe: please let Blizzard ignore my class yet again. Because I have no faith in Blizzard knowing what they actually do with this class; anything they will change at this point will likely be for the worse!

Now, what I would like to see changing is...
- Rebalancing of some secondary stats. I'm not sure I buy the "mastery is 3x as good as haste" stat weights from Ask Mr Robot, but clearly Haste is by far the worst stat, and versatility is not exactly in the crit/mastery league either. They don't have to be equal, but they can be better balanced. I have lost count of the number of times I pass up on a 5 ilvl gear upgrade due to the secondary stats being all wrong.
- Improvement of healing spells that aren't competitive with Flash Heal spam (IE, virtually every spell not prefixed with 'Holy Word')
- No priest takes the Benediction talent, according to wowpopular. Possibly because renew and ProM both not being particularly ... notable.
- No priest takes Divine Star of Halo, according to wowpopular. Possibly because they heal for less than two renew ticks, but more likely because flash heal spam is the only viable playstyle out there, and the other talent is actually damned amazing with that playstyle.
- No priest takes Guardian Angel, according to wowpopular. The talent simply cannot compete with the competition.
- No priest takes the Shining Force talent, according to wowpopular. Because the spell literally does nothing useful in any content whatsoever. On a 1 minute cooldown.
- No priest takes the Desperate Prayer talent. Not because it's bad, but because it means giving up having a movement buff. Which is alpha and omega in all content.
- No priest takes the Enduring Renewal talent. Again because Renew kinda sucks.
- Kill the Leap of Faith artifact talent. And ban the designer from ever smoking weed at work again. I mean, not all talents have to be equally good, but I can count the number of times I've used Leap of Faith this expansion on one hand. And vast the majority of those, IE once, was me trolling a friend. Yes, I'm trying to say I've not used the spell the entire expansion. I know I'm not the only one. Having an artifact talent boosting that spell shows such a major lack of understanding of the spell's role in the spec that I start my posts saying that I have no faith in Blizzard knowing that they are doing. In fact, it's so bad that you could literally put a talent that marginally reduce the movement speed of mobs that are already eating your face into the mix, and it would have a higher ranking. Oh wait...
-- SUGGESTION: Replace the talent with this: Fade now makes you 5/10/15% more transparent. It would be a significant upgrade in usefulness!
- I kinda miss lightwell. It's the feeling that you know this is going to be a though fight ahead, but there is literally nothing you can cast to prepare for the storm you know is coming.
- I also miss Mind Vision. Because it was cool.

[Lahkesis]

Hoping for Binding Heal, Piety(also Instant PoM pls), CoH to become baseline for Holy. Desperate Prayer for all specs.

Return of Divine Insight in-place of Piety.
Cascade instead of taking Divinity's place.
Divinity taking CoH's place and going back up to 8 seconds.

Basically, I want the world.

Yeah, all those things would be nice. I doubt we'd get them. I don't think we'd get Divine Insight AND Benediction as a talent and functioning artifact traits buffing the two.

Personally: (reasonable requests)

- Angelic Feathers baseline for Holy/Disc/Shadow
- Angelic Bulwark back as baseline or a talent.
- Prayer of Mending Instant cast.
- Fade has a damage reduction component (20 - 30%)
- Leap of Faith talent to let me pull myself to someone

I realize I can't have all these things at once, but a combination of them to improve my survivability and mobility would welcome.

Wishlist (perhaps unreasonable)

Spirit of Redemption rework. I shouldn't have to DIE to use one of my 'iconic' abilities. Yes, it's a good thematic concept, but I get tired of the insinuation that it's my 'utility'. I would like to see SoR reworked into some kind of cooldown, or if I can't get Angelic Bulwark back, I would like to see the functionality of the legendary cloak baked into it so it acts that way baseline.

I also miss Lightwell.

Artifact Feedback:

- Leap of Faith trait is terrible.
- T'uure proc (the baseline) is way too unpredictable.
- Renew the Faith and Say Your Prayers are both bugged and non-functioning.

[KaPe]

Holypriest feedback only here.

Not really much. Holypriests have been in a far worse state than right now, and back then the official word was "priests are fine, l2notQQ". So by comparison, what in the world could one possibly imagine Blizzard will do given that holypriest right now is both competitive and fun to play? I fully expect no changes whatsoever. And most of the time, that's not really cynicism. That's a a desperate plea to the universe: please let Blizzard ignore my class yet again. Because I have no faith in Blizzard knowing what they actually do with this class; anything they will change at this point will likely be for the worse!

Even if the spec is fine... ish, it's best to complain early. Otherwise, we'll get the usual "well, you can still respec Disc" treatment that seems to happen every expansion. It's usually quite similar, too - hps isn't that bad, there are decent set bonuses, but then comes Tier X and Holy is down at the bottom. Granted, there's no shield spam or passive absorbs on crits in this expansion, but still... I fully expect them to screw up again.

Personally, I'd like to have Symbol of Hope as baseline. It wouldn't actually increase our utility, but at least it would let us grab something else in its place. Without that spell, we offer pretty much nothing of value, other than the usual raid/tank cooldowns - none of which are really spectacular. And it's not even that much better than other options (well, one of them) at this tier.

Same with Desperate Prayer... or Feathers. It's really awkward tier, making our only defensive cooldown compete with our only movement option. I suppose they want to make it a choice, but really... what choice is that.

The major thing they need to thing about is to make Holy healing something different than Flash Heal -> Holy Word spam. Offer *good* alternatives to Trail of Light. Don't tie our +20% healing trait to Flash Heal crits. Make mastery somehow useful for Renew, instead of making it lose 30-40% power by ignoring our "best" stat. But that's something for a big rework, instead of some minor tweaks.

Realistically, I expect nothing good. Too many expansions spent with the spec being in dumpster - even though Ghostcrawler claimed he played Holy Priest. I suppose doing pet battles technically counts as playing, but still...

[Isheria]

Here are some changes that are semi-confirmed for now and you can pretty much expect them.

Holy:

- Desperate prayer is now baseline, a new utility talent will be added on that place.

Disc:

- Shadow Covenant removed or redesigned/replaced with an ability that doesn't replace power word: radiance with the goal to provide an instant heal when there's no atonement setup.

These changes have been mentioned on streams which you can see right about here: http://www.wowhead.com/news=257471/b...treams-roundup.

[Zka]

DISC feedback

Some talents like feathers should be baseline. Some others like penitent that aren't taken by anyone ever should be reworked.

Some traits are a joke. The rapture extension for dungeon disc is almost completely worthless. PS cd reduction... 30s off of 4min for 3 points, come on? Sins of the Many is also very weak in dungeons. I'd like to see some tuning on these traits.

- - - Updated - - -

- No priest takes the Shining Force talent, according to wowpopular. Because the spell literally does nothing useful in any content whatsoever. On a 1 minute cooldown.

I do. It's good to get distance from aggroed mobs during solo play.
Also some very limited use in dungeons (interrupt/breather to catch up on tank heal). All talents in this tier are utter shit (disc). This is the least shitty one.

- Kill the Leap of Faith artifact talent. And ban the designer from ever smoking weed at work again. I mean, not all talents have to be equally good, but I can count the number of times I've used Leap of Faith this expansion on one hand.

Kind of agree

[Mintra]

What I really want for disc is Lights Wrath scaling better in 5-mens. It's a freaking 1.5 minute cooldown, but has a really long cast and hits barely more then penance. I wish it would scale 20% per atonement in dungeons, similar to Divine hymn and tranquillity healing per person is increased in dungeons.
I also wish we could have Holy nova back, even without healing part and with no atonement transfer. My dps seems so weak on trash pack, it's ridiculous. I mean, disc is supposed to bring dps, but any other healer can aoe on trash and bring significant numbers (those paladins, ouch) so much better

[Menz]

For disc.. I am really hoping for the Penitent rework. The healing Penance should be baseline, the new Penitent maybe can be made into something ' Casting Penance on Target affected by Atonement will spread healing (or creates divine shields?) to xx targets withing 40 yards.'

[Danner]

I do. It's good to get distance from aggroed mobs during solo play.
Also some very limited use in dungeons (interrupt/breather to catch up on tank heal). All talents in this tier are utter shit (disc). This is the least shitty one.

I tried this talent when the expansion hit.
My impression:

Situation: Mob is eating my face.
I cast this spell.
Mob is knocked back a tiny distance.
I use this window of opportunity to cast smite.
But the mob is back to eating my face before smite lands.
I unspec this talent, as this was a complete waste of a GCD.
My DPS bar now has this annoying Shining-force shaped hole in it (where SWP used to be).

I could probably gain some decent ground if I started moving once a mob is slowed.
But - I can't cast and move. And the duration is only three seconds, and once that time is up, the mob is gonna catch up to me VERY quickly.
Basically: I don't see the rationale for this spell. At least in PVE.

I do fully agree the other talents in this tier are utter shit. That goes for holy as well!
I never understood the point of upgrading Chastise to do a stun. As far as I can tell, that doesn't make the spell better in any way, just ... visually different?
As a result, most holypriests take the afterlife talent. Which is literally improving your ability to die.

[Zka]

I never understood the point of upgrading Chastise to do a stun.

Could be good in pvp and m+
Anyway, some talent tiers are garbage for both healer specs and this should be addressed.

[Noradin]

- I also miss Mind Vision. Because it was cool.

It is a shadow spell, disc and shadow can use it still :P

[Deleted]

- Disc: Attonment should stack.
- direct heals should effect attonment targets.
- Plea manacost cap at 6 stacks.
- Give both specs something for movement.

Would make the lurning curve a lot easier.

[Danner]

It is a shadow spell, disc and shadow can use it still :P

So not helping

[MendUS]

Disc:
I'm fully expecting Shadow Covenant to be redesigned or replaced. I'm not sure what they will make base-line but I'm interested to see what they come up with. Just hoping it doesn't make us broken (good or bad). I like where we are right now.

[Negato]

I do fully agree the other talents in this tier are utter shit. That goes for holy as well!
I never understood the point of upgrading Chastise to do a stun. As far as I can tell, that doesn't make the spell better in any way, just ... visually different?
As a result, most holypriests take the afterlife talent. Which is literally improving your ability to die.

Um please no, the Chastise stun talent is literally amazing in M+ and PvP. It's not just a visual difference, one is a hard stun, the untalented version breaks on any damage other than holy fire. Can't count the number of times Chastice stun has come in handy in either M+ to disable crucial mobs or in solo content, or in PvP when you need a peel (the stun is not dispelable making it again amazing) combined with the fact that each smite reduces its CD. Long story short please don't give them any ideas about changing this talent.

For raiding, the longer CD on Spirit or Redemption is particularly nice with the Holy cloak legendary, but nothing game breaking or amazing.

I agree with you that the blinding light knock back talent in that row is pretty much garbage for Holy in all situations.