06/22/2011 11:30 AMPosted by Wildlifee
Even with the recent buff holy word: sanctuary is still way behind healing rain,eff and radiance. With that said should priest even bother casting this spell?

We think Holy Word: Sanctuary is fine as-is taking all of the variables into account. It is isn’t intended to directly compete with Healing Rain or even Efflorescence, and if we decided that it needed to be, we’d have to nerf Holy priest AE healing in other ways, such as Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing. If you are casting a heal every single GCD, then there may not be many times you would want to use Sanctuary over, say, Prayer of Healing. But you probably aren’t casting every single GCD. Even on heroic raid encounters there are often periods of lower damage, and if you're blowing big heals then when you don’t need to, you’re going to run out of mana. But Sanctuary is the kind of thing you can cast during periods of low damage in preparation for predictable high damage in the near future, at which point it can be ticking away while you also cast other AE heals.

If the ability is not worth using because of low healing output, excessive mana costs, etc. then people should state exactly that. Making comparisons to abilities like Healing Rain, Efflorescence and Holy Radiance isn't going to garner any positive results.

I simply think that Blizzard has far too many healing tools for Holy Priests in general, especially considering most have a short cooldown or none at all. Between Renew, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova and Holy Word: Sanctuary, Holy Priests already have a very large raid healing toolbox and thus its hard to balance around each and every one of these abilities being effective without nerfing their effectiveness elsewhere. Tools that are currently useful for raid healing (Renew, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing) will always take priority over the lesser abilities that aren't as potent for raid healing (Holy Word: Sanctuary and Holy Nova).

Compare this to the raid healing toolboxes of other healers, whom have less flavor abilities built for raid healing (Resto Druids have Rejuvenation, Wild Growth and Efflorescence; Resto Shaman have Riptide, Chain Heal, Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem; Discipline Priests have Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova, Penance and Power Word: Shield; Holy Paladins have Holy Radiance, Holy Shock and Light of Dawn).

I'm not saying it's futile trying to make Holy Word: Sanctuary or Holy Nova viable for raid healing, and that Holy Priests shouldn't bother complaining about it; all I'm saying is that Holy Priests already have a large toolbox for raid healing and it's unrealistic to expect every tool you have to be effective because of it. Buffing Holy Word: Sanctuary or Holy Nova could very well lead to nerfs to the already-effective raid healing abilities you have to use.

Some pretty salient points here. We compare the entire class packages when evaluating and making changes. Saying spell X costs more mana than spell Y is just a recipe for X and Y being the same spell.

It's probably also fair that healing priests still have a few too many healing tools, and finding niches for things like Holy Nova continue to be issues without great solutions.

holy word: sanctuary still bad.