Ghostcrawler's Thoughts on the state of Holy

[Kelesti]

Sucks to be a pally then. And Shadow. Gotta love how Balance Druids can actually have a stronger Tranq than Resto though.

I didn't realize that Shadow's healing was giving them a raid spot. Gotta love how Balance Druids have an 8 minute cooldown on Tranquility, instead of 3 (and it's not better, just an FYI). I also didn't realize it sucked to be a Paladin now that they're finally given tools to do more than tank heal+ spend a single GCD on raid support.

Wow, I must really be out of the loop.

[Deleted]

Having a bit of a look at the datamined items, I see they're putting more spirit cloth available this tier. Also an arseload of sockets on everything.

Perhaps any spirit QQ's will be met with "well stop socketing for intellect everywhere and use some +spirit gems"?

Discipline healing feels bigger (numbers and the occasional DA) and higher throughput over all. Holy doesnt show that so much, but it's early days. We can also throw those smaller numbers faster than disco..

I anticipate more changes to come. Particularly to make holy fit better in 10 mans.

[draconisaerius]

OK so I'm being a little generic there. Ok alot. But my point is a Balance Druids Tranq is still a lot better than a Shadow Priests Divine Hymn, and I am well aware that Shadow is not there for it's healing, but having that utility if it's needed is *never* a bad thing. And hpally's are brilliant at what they do. Our Hpally is a fantastic healer and there is no way I would ever want to have a guild raid without him (or several of our other good members) present.

I wish people wouldn't take things so literally. Nothing is ever just black and white, especially the words coming out of my fingers.

[Deleted]

The change to Divine Hymn for Holy is great news, the lack of any response regarding Holy's regen model is less good. I also miss any input regarding Holy's ability to tank heal, or any sort of thought into how Holy's tank healing abilities could be made more efficient. Sure, it is *possible* to tank heal as Holy (I do it for Raggy 10 man, was always Disc for 25 man), but it is far more inefficient, whichever way you look at it. Disc's PW:Shield, Inner Focus, Penance and especially Divine Aegis combined makes tank healing as Disc both more efficient and also safer than Holy, due to absorbtion mechanisms.

Of course, every healing spec can't be everything, but it feels Disc is getting a far better deal both when it comes to tank healing and raid healing, what with guaranteed Aegis on PoH, archangel +PI for temporary boosting and PW:barrier. Holy can provide some nice raid healing, but I always find myself missing the short CD boosts for spikes, plus Holy's mastery sometimes isn't fast enough or extensive enough to be really useful for the next AoE pulse; especially compared to the super efficient Aegis.

The buff and talent concerning Divine Hymn is a nice start, but it's not enough to address the entire set of concerns regarding Holy, especially how it compares with Disc.

[Hugs Monolith]

I think the change to DH is great and look forward to trying out Holy again. I strongly question if it will be enough to edge out disc in throughput and makeup for losing a real raid CD in Barrier. I do agree that it's a bandaid fix. I would have liked to see some love for Renew. It's disappointing we have to spend so many talent points to prop it up and it's still rarely worth casting.