WoD healing priest things

[appro]

Thought an open post could be handy to discuss everything while changes are being made, particularly for healing priests.
It goes without saying that everything at this point is subject to change.

Currently Disc is complete rubbish, would only get a raid spot of barrier/pain supp/spirit shell are 100% required for an encounter. Its throughput and shielding are both lacking substantially.

Holy is interesting, throughput feels quite strong in its current form but I imagine changes are afoot.

100 talents:

Clarity of Purpose (replaces Prayer of Healing) - Heals an ally for 2,505, increased by up to 100% based on how injured the target is. Also heals up to 5 injured allies within 10 yards of the target for the same amount.

Unless this talent can be cheesed to constantly heal a target with super low HP to give the 100% buff its not worth it.
Prayer of Healing currently does 5,549 healing to 5 targets for a total of 27,745
Clarity of Purpose heals at maximum for 2*2505 (5010) on 6 targets for a theoretical maximum of 30,060.
The problem with Clarity is the range requirement is 10 yards as opposed to 30 for PoH and it only overtakes when you have 6 targets stacks with at least 1 having a HP close to zero.

Just to make it worse, right now Serendipity (When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 20% and mana cost reduced by 20%. Stacks up to 2 times. Lasts 20 sec.) doesn't work with Clarity of Purpose but does with Prayer of Healing.

Saving Grace: instantly heals a friendly target for 19,870. Reduces your absorbs and healing done by 10% for 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times.

Given that the current healing model is less bursty this will rarely (if ever) be useful in its current form. Probably better to use Guardian Spirit (Calls upon a guardian spirit to watch over the friendly target. The spirit increases the healing received by the target by 60%, and also prevents the target from dying by sacrificing itself. This sacrifice terminates the effect but heals the target of 50% of their maximum health. Lasts 10 sec. Castable while stunned.) even though its a 3 min cd.

Words of Mending: Your healing and shielding spell casts grant you a stack of Word of Mending. When you gain 10 stacks of Word of Mending, your next targeted healing or shielding spell also casts a Prayer of Mending at them.

Sadly, given that we're now able to have multiple PoMs floating around the raid this passive ability looks like it will be the most useful for Holy and Disc priests bar a few potential niche circumstances.


What are you thoughts?

[Larynx]

One thing to say about Clarity of Purpose is that it functions as a psuedo-smart heal and is not group dependent. That is one of the major benefits, compared to PoH. The number tuning is likely off, but in a stack scenario with non-consistent raid damage CoP will pull ahead. That may be a bit too niche, I do not know yet. For all we know, CoP will go through another iteration.

I'm personally not very happy with any of the talents. Clarity of Purpose and Will are interesting at least, but Words of Mending and Saving Grace seem just borderline useless or boring. I guess the default choice will be Words of Mending, but is that really a fun T100 talent?

[appro]

One thing to say about Clarity of Purpose is that it functions as a psuedo-smart heal and is not group dependent. That is one of the major benefits, compared to PoH. The number tuning is likely off, but in a stack scenario with non-consistent raid damage CoP will pull ahead. That may be a bit too niche, I do not know yet. For all we know, CoP will go through another iteration.

I'm personally not very happy with any of the talents. Clarity of Purpose and Will are interesting at least, but Words of Mending and Saving Grace seem just borderline useless or boring. I guess the default choice will be Words of Mending, but is that really a fun T100 talent?

The pseudo-smart heal you mention is only useful when the raid isn't organised properly though. Most of the time a good healing officer will recognise and organise groups to suit PoH (eg. melee with tanks). Its certainly a benefit but I wouldn't call it major by any means - I've yet to see an encounter where groups had to change several times before stacking, its always a pre-organised and never changes.

I agree, a passive 100 talent is super boring and I highly doubt the risk per reward for saving grace will ever see it being used outside super niche occasions.
Here's to hoping CoP will get a huge buff and make it worth taking at least sometimes.

[Spotnick]

I have been healing Auchidoun and Skyreach last night as discipline..

Must say, I really felt like my heals were hitting like a wet noodle, but my mana was never low.. penance and heal were not healing much, seems the only efficient way to heal was Flash Heal. Clarity of Will also seemed nice to me.

Seems I was doing 9k HPS in Skyreach, that was scaled down to 570 ilvl.

Granted I still have to figure out how to bind more stuff in stock UI, but really felt weak.

I have yet to try holy.

[Larynx]

The pseudo-smart heal you mention is only useful when the raid isn't organised properly though. Most of the time a good healing officer will recognise and organise groups to suit PoH (eg. melee with tanks). Its certainly a benefit but I wouldn't call it major by any means - I've yet to see an encounter where groups had to change several times before stacking, its always a pre-organised and never changes.

I agree, a passive 100 talent is super boring and I highly doubt the risk per reward for saving grace will ever see it being used outside super niche occasions.
Here's to hoping CoP will get a huge buff and make it worth taking at least sometimes.

Imagine a fight like Juggernaut, Paragons, Sha, or Nazgrim with the raid stacked for the duration. That's the environment CoP would win out. Random spike damage to single players, nothing any group changes could fix.

We have yet to see the raid encounters for WoD yet, so most anything is really up in the air. In its current form, even in a perfect storm scenario, I agree though that CoP still is really lackluster. It barely breaks even with PoH.

- - - Updated - - -

I have been healing Auchidoun and Skyreach last night as discipline..

Must say, I really felt like my heals were hitting like a wet noodle, but my mana was never low.. penance and heal were not healing much, seems the only efficient way to heal was Flash Heal. Clarity of Will also seemed nice to me.

Seems I was doing 9k HPS in Skyreach, that was scaled down to 570 ilvl.

Granted I still have to figure out how to bind more stuff in stock UI, but really felt weak.

I have yet to try holy.

Haven't played the beta for a while, but that's basically my experience. My heals do shit HPS, but I can never go OOM even if I try. Disc is just unbearable in the beta atm, so I wouldn't bother playing. Holy is very strong, especially compared to Disc. I found myself just spamming glyphed Binding Heal in a lot of 5ms, it was pretty absurd how little mana mattered.

[methz]

The pseudo-smart heal you mention is only useful when the raid isn't organised properly though. Most of the time a good healing officer will recognise and organise groups to suit PoH (eg. melee with tanks). Its certainly a benefit but I wouldn't call it major by any means - I've yet to see an encounter where groups had to change several times before stacking, its always a pre-organised and never changes.

I agree, a passive 100 talent is super boring and I highly doubt the risk per reward for saving grace will ever see it being used outside super niche occasions.
Here's to hoping CoP will get a huge buff and make it worth taking at least sometimes.

Have you even tried it?

[h3lladvocate]

I have been healing Auchidoun and Skyreach last night as discipline..

Must say, I really felt like my heals were hitting like a wet noodle, but my mana was never low.. penance and heal were not healing much, seems the only efficient way to heal was Flash Heal. Clarity of Will also seemed nice to me.

Seems I was doing 9k HPS in Skyreach, that was scaled down to 570 ilvl.

Granted I still have to figure out how to bind more stuff in stock UI, but really felt weak.

I have yet to try holy.

Disc is in a weird place. It is super dependent on Archangel now, but Attonement is so weak, and everything else is weak without Archangel up. Makes really weird play style as you have to cast extremely weak "smart" heals in order to get Archangel which then you can play catch up. But you end up need to wieve shields and other stuff in and it just doesn't feel like anything works well.

Holy Nova is terrible, heals for like HW:Sanctuary numbers almost.

Holy on the other hand is really good. Great synergy between spells, it feels really smooth and well put together (much like Live). Chakra isn't really as important as I think it should be, I mostly stay in Serenity because HW:Sanc is so pointless and renew is so strong. Mana isn't too big of a deal in beta.

Disc just lost too many spells. Shouldnt have lost binding heal IMO. Attonement needs some sort of work, so that when I'm forced to use it to build AA (which we are), it doesn't feel like I'm wasting 5 globals.

[appro]

Have you even tried it?

Yes, I've tried all the 100 talents in a variety on dungeons for both holy and disc.
CoP feels gimped, like its trying to be greater in design and theory than PoH but the practical application falls short due to an almost twice as long cast and twice as much mana for only slight improvement in overall healing done - and that is only when circumstances are perfect (6 people stacked within 10 yards and your target on almost zero HP).

Yes it has its niche, but its so rare that I doubt it will ever be taken in its current form.

Disc is in a weird place. It is super dependent on Archangel now, but Attonement is so weak, and everything else is weak without Archangel up. Makes really weird play style as you have to cast extremely weak "smart" heals in order to get Archangel which then you can play catch up. But you end up need to wieve shields and other stuff in and it just doesn't feel like anything works well.

Holy Nova is terrible, heals for like HW:Sanctuary numbers almost.

Holy on the other hand is really good. Great synergy between spells, it feels really smooth and well put together (much like Live). Chakra isn't really as important as I think it should be, I mostly stay in Serenity because HW:Sanc is so pointless and renew is so strong. Mana isn't too big of a deal in beta.

Disc just lost too many spells. Shouldnt have lost binding heal IMO. Attonement needs some sort of work, so that when I'm forced to use it to build AA (which we are), it doesn't feel like I'm wasting 5 globals.

Completely agree with everything you said.
I main a disc priest and I think its fair that absorbs were nerf'd. But there is a big difference between nerfing and trashing a spec, and nerfing shields shouldn't have been done without buffing disc's throughput considerably to compensate.

Having a super brief look at other healing classes;
Druid has specialisation of using nature based HoTs
Shaman has 'ancestral spirits and the cleansing power of water' (totems, chain heal, rip tide etc.)
Monk mixes 'herbal medicine with Pandaren martial arts.' for a strong HoT, uplift, and the use of heals using Chi.
Paladin invokes the power of the Light to protect and to heal and gets holy power.
Holy Priest's specialisation is its ability to provide strong triage healing in AoE, single target or dealing damage through chakra.

and then we have disc...
"Uses magic to shield allies from taking damage as well as heal their wounds."
Every other classes is currently strong at their given specialisation, the problem with Disciplines shields in WoD is that they're largely useless. They don't shield for enough to prevent any meaningful amount of damage, and then they don't have the throughput to compensate.

Due to their current status Disc will be brought pure for PW:B and Pain Supp - if at all.
The result is disc feeling like a very generic healer with no strength, only 1 handy raid cd and 1 handy single target cd - both of these are by no means essential in WoD's current healing meta.
I know a lot of people desperately want to play a support class and disc is very close to being there, all it needs the ability to do something useful.

[methz]

Yes, I've tried all the 100 talents in a variety on dungeons for both holy and disc.
CoP feels gimped, like its trying to be greater in design and theory than PoH but the practical application falls short due to an almost twice as long cast and twice as much mana for only slight improvement in overall healing done - and that is only when circumstances are perfect (6 people stacked within 10 yards and your target on almost zero HP).

Yes it has its niche, but its so rare that I doubt it will ever be taken in its current form.

I think you're confused about the beta. Right now, the 100 talents aren't tuned. PoH and formerly existing spells have been nerfed/buffed because of how strong/weak they were previously, whereas the new abilities have no benchmark, and the tuning pass hasn't taken place. The entire philosophy behind the talents is to give players an 'interesting choice,' and if it's dramatically undertuned vs. the alternative, it would never be used, so it's pretty clearly not at the level it will be on live.

About that design, though. Circumstances don't need to be 'perfect' for it to be a strong ability. We lost a lot of strength in divine star, and any situation in which DS was a strong talent, CoP will also be strong, getting better the heavier the damage is. Alternatively, any raid group in which the melee are going to be taking heavy damage, it's a great way to focus on them. Remember that it'll be tuned for 20m raids.

Also that, the raids. We have no context for these abilities to determine how well they're going to perform without actually raiding with them.

We're only testing functionality.

[Mdev]

Saving Grace is extremely strong in 5 mans and presumably challenge modes - hard to say whether or not it will see much use in a raiding environment.

[Well]

Why would anyone prefer PW:B instead of Divine Hymn though? Disc is just bad :P

T100 talents are underwhelming to say the least. I really hope they rework every single one of them.

What I'd suggest for Disc is moving towards managing PW:S and the WS debuff while buffing PW:S' power by quite a lot. I cannot imagine any disc not taking Spirit Shell and not taking CoP, since PoM heals for so low it's not even funny. Saving Grace will be good for PvP, but that does not mean much

[Deleted]

Holy priests are very good at the moment.

Key to win is binding heal glyph & chakra serentiy. All you do is keep renew on all and 2x binding heal in to heal. With the glyph u refresh the duration of renew on 3 targets and given that binding heal gives serendipity stacks u can catch up healing with poh or heal.

Ive tried mastery vs multistrike alot. My first impression by simply testing it was that mastery was better, but after some hc i did some more serious testing and found out that multistrike is better, by far.

First of all, it benefits from our passive, 5% more multistrike and 25% more healing/absorb on our multistrikes. Since we are mostly only healing via renew, mastery does almost nothing as it only proccs of renews initial ticks, where MS can procc on renew ticks.

Im not sure about this, but since MS hits are delayd, i think they give another second to renew duration since they hit 2 more times, btu like i said, not sure about this, never payed attention to it, just something that came to mind.

I see people are complaining about PoM, I agree that its not our strongest heal, as renew is op and not really in a competition to anything. But casting pom on cd and doing the rotatiton 2x binding in to 1 heal gives us a lot of instant PoM. If u are using the pvp set, u also get 5 stacks of off it instnat and thats 375 versatality. (i dont think the set2 bonus is working tho)

TLR - holy is very good atm on beta!

[methz]

I see people are complaining about PoM, I agree that its not our strongest heal, as renew is op and not really in a competition to anything. But casting pom on cd and doing the rotatiton 2x binding in to 1 heal gives us a lot of instant PoM. If u are using the pvp set, u also get 5 stacks of off it instnat and thats 375 versatality. (i dont think the set2 bonus is working tho)

TLR - holy is very good atm on beta!

I'm just having a lot of trouble getting used to the cast time of PoM. It really doesn't feel intuitive. I haven't tried DI though, will do so tonight.

[Deleted]

I'm just having a lot of trouble getting used to the cast time of PoM. It really doesn't feel intuitive. I haven't tried DI though, will do so tonight.

If its a lot of aoe dmg, keeping the renews up has higher prio. But if theres not much going on/ prepare for big aoe, then casting a pom isnt bad.

WHat i said before tho, its mostly binding heal in to heal and instant poms.

[appro]

Why would anyone prefer PW:B instead of Divine Hymn though? Disc is just bad :P

In the past during early progression it was common to use barrier when the raid was taking heavy AoE damage that could be stacked for (the raid didn't always have enough HP to survive the bigger hits).
This will likely be a non-issue for WoD though due to the healing/damages changes which will probably remove disc's niche from the game, shields to counter large damage spikes.

[Aparthia]

Triage healing doesn't mean there won't be mechanics that requires everyone to be topped off or that barrier isn't good. It just means there will be fewer of these compared to what we're coming from.

Shields, and PWB, can still be immensely powerful for preventing/mitigating the damage that do come, you just need to play it smarter than you currently do.

[Deleted]

In the past during early progression it was common to use barrier when the raid was taking heavy AoE damage that could be stacked for (the raid didn't always have enough HP to survive the bigger hits).
This will likely be a non-issue for WoD though due to the healing/damages changes which will probably remove disc's niche from the game, shields to counter large damage spikes.

Pw:b will always have more potential than hymn, it will also scale way better with higher tier compared to hymn, especially in a 20man enviroment. As it looks right not on beta, hymn does rouhly 200k healing, thats about as much hp as 1 non-tank player has. Lets not forget that barrier is also a 25% dmg reduction for tanks.

Barrier can also phase, works for example on 2nd boss in shadowmoon.

[Post]

I'm not sure what it's like for other classes, but PoH is extremely expensive for priests, anything that reduces the # of those we have to cast (barrier) is great still.

[Well]

Pw:b will always have more potential than hymn, it will also scale way better with higher tier compared to hymn, especially in a 20man enviroment. As it looks right not on beta, hymn does rouhly 200k healing, thats about as much hp as 1 non-tank player has. Lets not forget that barrier is also a 25% dmg reduction for tanks.

Barrier can also phase, works for example on 2nd boss in shadowmoon.

It would be quite absurd if Hymn is not buffed to live healing levels (obviously scaled down to WoD health pools). Else it won't be a healing cd and will get scrapped.

[Thirteen]

Pw:b will always have more potential than hymn, it will also scale way better with higher tier compared to hymn, especially in a 20man enviroment.

This just isn't true tbh. PW:B is far more niche than Hymn, since it covers a tiny area and needs the entire raid to be stacked up to be effective. And it's unlikely that all the bosses will need you to be stacked when large damage is going out, meaning Hymn will be significantly better in those encounters. Not to mention it gives +10% healing buff.