Holy Priest Review (PTR)

[Kelesti]

Or we're intended for mana to actually matter, while being appropriately geared for an encounter (which he was not).

Apart from the lack of questing gear, most of this looks to be intended from what they've said the direction they want to take healing.

I remember running OoM in raids, in heroics, in a lot of things really, in early TBC. It sucked, but then I learned to play better and how to manage not only my mana but also my time.

Double Sentinel pull in heroic Arcatraz before it was taken out? If you've actually suceeded at that one pull (those that did know exactly what I'm talking about) you knew that you could handle many things after that.

[Ultima]

Okay, well my example is in the situation where you are appropriately geared for the encounters. Not heavily under-geared, not over-geared.

I'm not sure how the response makes an impact on what I've said.

[Kelesti]

Reading back, I'm not sure either. My head's a little fuzzy from the storm I'm under, but I can't go outside

[Ultima]

Fantastic. We'll come back to this thread tomorrow.

[Ebbikenezer]

Beware of Holy Nova spam ( when glyphed ) , went from 35k mana to 0 in 10 seconds flat

Casting only Heal non-stop will actually make your mana go up ( well , i regen more than the ~350 mana it cost to cast )

My FH heals for about the same as GH and the mana cost is only ~50 less

at lvl80
Heal : ~6k
FH: ~11k
GH: ~12k
Holy Word : Sanctuary ticks for ~525 , crits for ~780 ( crit value is 150% )

I healed a couple of heroics and yes do you have time to throw some holy fire and smite around. Of course , that might change as we level.

Glyph of Guardian Spirit now reduces the CD by 30 sec ... no more 1 min CD if the target doesnt die

Something isn't right about FH and GH there. GH has a MUCH larger coefficient than FH sooo... that number is either a crit FH and non-crit GH or it is a huge bug and/or wrong.

It's simple math really.. GH has almost twice (maybe more?) the coefficient of FH so, getting them that close in number is literally impossible unless they are as I said: crit then non-crit.

Not shooting it down it just... doesn't add-up.

[Spasme]

Both were non-crit ... it didn't add up with me neither. It's PTR after all.

I thought FH was supposed to be more or less equal to Heal in output ( trading cast time for mana cost ) where as GH was the big heal with the same cast time but higher mana cost than Heal. So far, FH feel more like a fast GH to me.

[Kelesti]

We will have the ability and need to flow through various Chakra states to meet the needs of the encounter and Blizzard's philosophy. Or, we will need to use different Chakra states for different encounters.

Latter meets the requirement, but is boring as fuck. The former us plausable, but requires number tuning.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

After taking a small nap, and having a clear head...

I think closer to the first, except... no number tuning? With the exception of Heal refreshing Renew, all the chakra states are based on output, not mana. When hitting up multiple targets with renew, the only difference between the Chakras is output (both in speed of application and amount healed). Tuning Numbers of Chakra's mechanic will not effectively increase the duration of your mana pool unless the targets were at 0% overheal across multiple applications of Renew.

Considering it's designed to be a bonus, not a penalty or restriction, I think it's fine. We're not "needed" but encouraged to shift between them. If we fail to do this, our output may suffer but our spell choice selection matters more than anything else.

[Astronomical]

I am very thrilled about the new changes for holy priests! Well done Blizzard, well done .

[Wulon]

This thread seams close enough to a topic i been pondering over, hope its not to much of a hijack

Well anyhow, been wondering what Holy priests are supposed to do with crit? Holy Concentration is a passive ability and Surge of Light procs from using Heal or Smite. Reforging is possible on the ptr, been thinking of just doing all crit into mastery. Sure a crit heal will still be nice every now and then, but I don't think it will be that useful most of the times it happen. Am I missing something or will crit be even less usefull then it is today?

[dekadron]

Crit is supposed to be more useful, from what i understand, because with larger health pools you'll get more bang for your buck. (edited to remove an error)

Crit stopped mattering in wotlk because our spellpower got so big compared to lifepools that there was lots of overhealing. I do believe (though I'm not in beta or ptr or anything) that with the larger healthpools, crit will be good. The same way that tanks will value avoidance again, and not just stam.

[Kelesti]

Crit stopped mattering not because of our spellpower, but because of the "Must be full health 100% of the time" that Wrath brought. If you were relying on a crit, you didn't have enough output. Because if you crit, great. If you didn't, your target died. Thus we ignored it, treated it like crap RNG that it is, and moved on to reliable stats.

Now that proportionally higher HP in comparison to healing done, health acts as a "buffer zone", allowing crit to not be wasteful:

You're winding up a Heal. Tank takes a second (special) hit, hard. You tell yourself you need to push either a Greater or a Flash out, to help catch up. Your heal crits. Congratulations, the tank won't need more than another Heal and you can save yourself some mana.

Multiple healers can play both into and against this, depending on the content, latency, and most importantly the level of coordination/camaraderie between them.

[Starphish]

I'm not on the PTR, but I am on the Beta, so I thought I would add to this. I've tried out discipline and holy.

Last night I did a ton of testing on the holy tree and chakra states and what I can tell you is, while each state is pretty fun, Chakra renew and Chakra Prayer of Healing had me OOM very very fast. I'm talking, like a minute.

However, Chakra Heal, I could go on and on and on, using my shadowfiend, and a trinket and my Hymn of Hope on cooldown. I'd get to a point where all my mana was gone and no spells were available, but I'd only be there maybe half a second before they lit up again.

Chakra Prayer of Healing is my second favorite Chakra state, and the AoE displays are really sweet looking, however, just being OOM so quickly worries me. Not sure how this will play out yet, but as of now, when I run Stonecore tonight, it will have to be with Chakra Heal.

The cooldown on Chakra was very annoying. I was using Chakra Heal then I wanted to switch over because of "heavy faux raid damage" but found myself waiting and waiting for the cooldown, using heal over and over.

Overall, the spells are good, they just need tweaking. They definitely have potential and will be very fun if they can just tweak mana costs on AE chakra and remove or lower the cooldown on Chakra.

My .02.

[Nuronv]

I've also noticed that the healing numbers for the PTR do seem very skewed towards FH. I don't really see the niche for Greater Heal as it stands at the moment, but that is in the context of WOTLK 4.0 healing.

Could someone on the Beta confirm if the ratio between the 3 major heals is still the same.

I did also notice on the last PTR build if you put down a Holy Word Sanctuary it will stop ticking if you get stunned.