Holy in M+

[Yhcti]

Just a simple one really, how effective is it? I find Discipline hideous to play, purely because I'm so used to the old version in wotlk/mop etc... I can't enjoy the BfA piece. Holy however is probably the most fun i've had in this game since TBC.. I didn't know how well they performed in M+? is Discipline still the "go-to" ?

[Fleckens]

Unless you plan to push really high keys you can really use whatever healer, when I do mythic+ on my priest if I'm healing I usually just do it as holy as pretty simple and doesn't rely as much on the group avoiding damage as disc does. Also I imagine after the disc nerfs it's probably just overall better for groups that aren't that well cordinated.

[Deja Thoris]

I just don't get disc in M+. It sucks for a lot of the affixes. It's damage is great but a good holy priest can output good damage too.

Holy is fine but not great. It lacks utility but its throughput is excellent and it has 3 ohshit buttons. Disc really struggles to recover from fuckups imo and thats whats important in pugs.

[Deleted]

Holy becomes a liability at imho ~10+ keys instead of being an asset. There is nothing good about holy at that point in m+. You stop to deal consistent damage at higher keys, with you low tank heals and your big heal on CD. Add to this your immobility, why run holy in m+?

As Discipline you do deliver medium consistent damage, can heal on the move, have cooldowns and spells which reduce incoming damage. Downside, it doesn't work that well in uncoordinated pugs and one affix is worse to deal with.

My opinion, if you want a relaxing holy priest playstyle, with lots of mobility, serious healing, utility and fun gameplay at higher keys, do as I did and reroll monk (after maining priest since vanilla).

[Franarok]

Looking at raider. Io data, the most high the M+ is, the lower number of holy priest you see hahaha (druid is the king there).
The holy has several problems: low survival, low tank heals (the best ones have CD), no de en movement heals (the instant ones have CD too) and doesn't offer something strong, useful or unique to the group (no res in combat or damage).

The holy is on the low tier of the healers on high M+, even if still somehow useful and funny.

I still can't understand why blizz nerfed the mytic main talent... Omg, has no sense!... And they made that also affect heal? When can we cast heal on a M+???? Hahaha. No sense

[Bonkura]

I think Holy is underrated atm now that Disc got nerfed. The spec has great group and tank healing and Guardian Spirit on 2 min CD is really strong, especially on tanks with good self healing as well as the fact that it doesn't DR with many tank CD's like Pain Supp. If you know the spec well you can squeeze in a lot of DPS.

[Romanticide]

I think Holy is underrated atm now that Disc got nerfed. The spec has great group and tank healing and Guardian Spirit on 2 min CD is really strong, especially on tanks with good self healing as well as the fact that it doesn't DR with many tank CD's like Pain Supp. If you know the spec well you can squeeze in a lot of DPS.

It is feeling quite strong with that new trait "Promise of Deliverance" and the synergy it has with Light of the Naaru.

[Deleted]

I think Holy is underrated atm now that Disc got nerfed. The spec has great group and tank healing and Guardian Spirit on 2 min CD is really strong, especially on tanks with good self healing as well as the fact that it doesn't DR with many tank CD's like Pain Supp. If you know the spec well you can squeeze in a lot of DPS.

I disagree strongly on the great group and especially tank heal. No mobility, almost no smartheals so our group has to be positioned for certain skills. Nerfs to binding heals and buffs to heal, so we get even more immobile and our utility can be bought on the auction house with a 3% minus. Holy priest has the lowest representation of all healing specs 15+ up with a 2.6% representation, lower than shaman. 10-14 we're second to last.

[Bonkura]

I disagree strongly on the great group and especially tank heal. No mobility, almost no smartheals so our group has to be positioned for certain skills. Nerfs to binding heals and buffs to heal, so we get even more immobile and our utility can be bought on the auction house with a 3% minus. Holy priest has the lowest representation of all healing specs 15+ up with a 2.6% representation, lower than shaman. 10-14 we're second to last.

Positioned for what heals? Divine Star? Everything else has a long range AoE effect. Binding Heal is a meme in M+. Same with casting Heal. You spot heal with Flash Heal/Serenity with Trail of Light and run with Surge of Light or Circe of Healing depending on dungeon/affixes.

I said that I believe Holy is underrated atm and you point out stats that prove my point. Thanks I guess.

[Fleckens]

Positioned for what heals? Divine Star? Everything else has a long range AoE effect. Binding Heal is a meme in M+. Same with casting Heal. You spot heal with Flash Heal/Serenity with Trail of Light and run with Surge of Light or Circe of Healing depending on dungeon/affixes.

I said that I believe Holy is underrated atm and you point out stats that prove my point. Thanks I guess.

I assume he's talking about sanctify, it's great if you have full melee but if you have a mix of melee and ranged it can be hard to get everyone if you don't coordinate it with them.

That said though I do agree that holy probably is underrated a bit. It's definitely not the strongest in mythic+ but I do feel it can do alright, especially with the new promise of deliverence trait. I imagine once we get the extra ring if you stack 3x that and 3x permeating glow you can have some pretty solid single target healing.

The main issue priest have is utility, we just don't have anything that compares to what a monk or druid brings to the group.

[Yhcti]

Holy becomes a liability at imho ~10+ keys instead of being an asset. There is nothing good about holy at that point in m+. You stop to deal consistent damage at higher keys, with you low tank heals and your big heal on CD. Add to this your immobility, why run holy in m+?

As Discipline you do deliver medium consistent damage, can heal on the move, have cooldowns and spells which reduce incoming damage. Downside, it doesn't work that well in uncoordinated pugs and one affix is worse to deal with.

My opinion, if you want a relaxing holy priest playstyle, with lots of mobility, serious healing, utility and fun gameplay at higher keys, do as I did and reroll monk (after maining priest since vanilla).

Funny you say that, I have Monk at 371 and I dropped him to play the Priest which I then dropped to play th3 Druid. After playing Monk since Mop I kinda just don't enjoy playing it anymore and Druid heals feel so weak (regrowth heals for tiny amounts, maybe a gear issue) Holy feels the most enjoyable to play, I can never get the hang of Disc..

[ZazuuPriest]

Disc is more fun though, and whoever said disc cant do much once people start fucking up is wrong. The only time i dont like disc is one week every month and a half during grievous and thats only if the group is too fucking stupid to eat food between pulls or not stand in shit and not use their defensives

[Reivur]

Disc is more fun though, and whoever said disc cant do much once people start fucking up is wrong. The only time i dont like disc is one week every month and a half during grievous and thats only if the group is too fucking stupid to eat food between pulls or not stand in shit and not use their defensives

So the average LFG Mythic experience. Good thing I can just overpower that with sheer throughput.

Also to earlier people complaining about survivability; almost nothing has the one shot spikiness that Legion had that isn't a tank mechanic (Like Council armor debuff in King's Rest) or something outrageous that was appropriately nerfed like Tol Dagor picking the same target repeatedly at the end. If you carry a lock stone with you at all times you can prevent most awful situations that double spike you from bad rng to 15% that need a quick response in that regard by doing Desperate Prayer + Stone in a macro. If you don't have a warlock in your group, hearth to WoD Garrison and go to the healing Trials NPC real quick to pick up a stone. If you need more than three charges in a dungeon something went wildly wrong anyway.

That said I've found that refunded Guardian cd is practically a requirement. It turns Holy Word Serenity into a once a minute Lay on Hands. Its a much stronger tool to be used to spike health rather than as a cheat death because it allows you to ignore tanks longer and catch up on vulnerable targets who get spiked by affixes or mechanics. I also think Apothestasis, while strong, is overrated and Light of the Naaru feels more practical. Especially since Guardian should be lining up more frequently and Naaru can potentially get you two Serenity's in a window without needing a second cd to line up.

Last but not least I don't see how Heal is a 'meme'. Its one of the most efficient, powerful single target heals in the game. It does make you turrety, but if you're Holy you know what you signed up for. Flash Heal is inefficient and after the buffs to heal noticeably worse. Treat the class like a Wrath healer back before we got two tiers in and infinite mana; precast and interrupt your cast if you don't need it, or frankly just overheal anyway just to stack your mastery up because its so mana efficient you can afford to do so. Holy's damage is dogshit and not noticeable outside of bosses because most good groups cleave and your cleave/AoE option is Holy Nova which is genuine trash.

If you want to do damage as a healer, go Disc, possibly Fistweave, cat Druid or I guess Paladin. Quit trying to shoe-horn a class into it that isn't good at it. It isn't as if this game is like FFXIV where every good healer keeping uptime on its dps will do 45-65% of the damage a dps does; you'll as a holy priest with max uptime and a perfect rotation with little to no heals peak at 20% of single target of anyone else competent at BEST. Its the wrong style for that mindset. Its a throughput disaster aversion healer that still gets stuck with Legion perceived weaknesses that don't exist because the content removed most of that shit, especially after the latest hotfixes.

[Deleted]

Holy becomes a liability at imho ~10+ keys instead of being an asset. There is nothing good about holy at that point in m+. You stop to deal consistent damage at higher keys, with you low tank heals and your big heal on CD. Add to this your immobility, why run holy in m+?

As Discipline you do deliver medium consistent damage, can heal on the move, have cooldowns and spells which reduce incoming damage. Downside, it doesn't work that well in uncoordinated pugs and one affix is worse to deal with.

My opinion, if you want a relaxing holy priest playstyle, with lots of mobility, serious healing, utility and fun gameplay at higher keys, do as I did and reroll monk (after maining priest since vanilla).

Low tank heals? I heal 20k with my flash heal? That's low?

I have done up to 13 without encountering any problems.

[Voidwielder]

Low tank heals? I heal 20k with my flash heal? That's low?

I have done up to 13 without encountering any problems.

Same. Never had any real problems with handling predicted massive AoE and even if something goes wrong, I have enough tools to handle the situation.

[Yhcti]

That's good to hear. I did a +0 as a 365 disc and it felt rough, I was healing a 378dh that was doing crazy pulls but i felt when everyone took damage I was screwed as atonement dpsing wasnt keepong anyone alive. And spamming Shadow mend was doing tiiiiny healing that was hardly noticeable.. I know Holy would be nicer there in the sense that its heals are strong especially when using the talent to drastically reduce my holy words so i can almost spam the huge instagram which I have critting for 60k+, apart from that im not sure?

So far I've yet to play another healer and go "wow this actually is nicer than my monk" both druid and priest feel much weaker... has to be something im not doing right!

[Deleted]

That's good to hear. I did a +0 as a 365 disc and it felt rough, I was healing a 378dh that was doing crazy pulls but i felt when everyone took damage I was screwed as atonement dpsing wasnt keepong anyone alive. And spamming Shadow mend was doing tiiiiny healing that was hardly noticeable.. I know Holy would be nicer there in the sense that its heals are strong especially when using the talent to drastically reduce my holy words so i can almost spam the huge instagram which I have critting for 60k+, apart from that im not sure?

So far I've yet to play another healer and go "wow this actually is nicer than my monk" both druid and priest feel much weaker... has to be something im not doing right!

60k? Mine crit heals for 100k+ at 374. Normal heal is like 50k.

[Yhcti]

60k? Mine crit heals for 100k+ at 374. Normal heal is like 50k.

Then im DEFINITELY doing something wrong here ������������

[Franarok]

Flash heals of 20k? Are you taking in count mastery? If not I am envy of your flash hahaha

And yup, a crit holy Word should heal 100k+

[Xar226]

So far I've yet to play another healer and go "wow this actually is nicer than my monk" both druid and priest feel much weaker... has to be something im not doing right!

Monk is pretty stupid OP and it's a shock they've mostly avoided the nerf bat so far. Its only real weakness is its mana consumption, which very rarely matters in M+ since you can just drink between pulls.

As far as holy/disc in M+, it basically comes down to this: Holy is a very easy healer but does poor DPS, Disc is a strong DPS (at least for a healer) but harder to heal with. (And yes, you'll be spamming a lot of shadow mend.) If you're doing keys sufficiently high enough* that your damage matters, roll a disc. If not, roll whichever you prefer. They're both perfectly viable as healers in keys, even if Disc is a bit harder.

* For your group. If you're sufficiently low enough or your group just isn't good, any key level could benefit from your DPS.