A Look Back at Holy Priest in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial

Posted 2024/02/05 at 4:30 PM by AutomaticJak

Our Guide Writers have reviewed their specs throughout Dragonflight and share wishlists of what they'd like to see in the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials below.

Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists

Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK

Havoc DHVengeance DH

Balance DruidFeral DruidGuardian Druid
Restoration Druid

Augmentation EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker

BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter

Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage
Brewmaster Monk
Mistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk

Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin

Discipline Priest
Holy PriestShadow Priest

Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue

Elemental ShamanEnhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman

Affliction WarlockDemonology WarlockDestruction Warlock

Holy Retrospective & War Within WishlistPrayer of MendingHoly Priest's Overall GameplayHoly Word: SerenityFlash HealHealHoly Word: SanctifyPrayer of HealingFlash ConcentrationPrayer of MendingPrayer of HealingHoly Word: SanctifyFlash ConcentrationFae GuardiansMiracle WorkerLightwellLightweaverDivine WordHoly Priest Throughout DragonflightSurge of LightPrayer CircleMastery: Echo of LightPrayer of MendingAnswered PrayersHoly Word: SalvationApotheosisSymbol of HopeHoly Word: SalvationSymbol of HopeMiracle WorkerHoly Word: SerenityHoly Word: SerenityPower InfusionPotential Holy Priest Changes for The War WithinLightwellDivine WordAtonementPrayer of HealingClosing ThoughtsHoly Word: SalvationApotheosisMiracle WorkerPrayer of HealingPrayer of Mending

Comment by fireflylightDps is part of the identity though :< Just not it's focus but Holy in certain expacs could be a comparable dps to other specs, it just didn't have the utility (or as in Classic, that and worse mana issues than Shadow).Comment by SciencebirdIt's always fun to compare the specializations that have not been picked, or did uncompetitive numbers all expansion mentioning this throughout their articles. And then the winners of the roulette come in and have very, very little to say about it. Exceptions to the pattern are the most interesting authors. It's like a little repeat of the principle of privilege. "Hey, how important is money?" "not important at all"Comment by KiezklatscheI like the idea of short term atonement but i´d want reverse atonement. Let me mark targets and they get dmg from my healing.Comment by SnackermzI usually like Jak's take on things, but this one seems a bit silly. Holy priest's identity has never been damage focused. I'm not saying they don't do damage, especially in PvP, one might argue their damage is close to disc in a 3v3 environment. However, his current take on holy is to make it more like disc - give it atonement or some sort of burst pet healing - both of which are current disc components. That would completely eliminate the throughput aspect of holy and just make it disc v2.Comment by PeacemoonI’d like some customisation of the naaru talent, really does not fit well with my priest’s concept and sort of put me off him. Not that important I agree, but always hate it when a new talent or spell forces something like that on you - and not all priests want a pet Naaru.

As a SL Season 4 healer, I really miss Flash Concentration. It was a really fun play style and it was nice making Heal such a powerful and useful spell. It’s nice that Holy Words are so impactful but.. they were impactful before without being so dominant.

I agree with the Prayer of Mending criticism. It’s a fun spell and always loved the concept, but having so many talents focused on buffing its bounciness is… odd. Especially considering once it is ‘let loose’ it operates completely independently of the Priest.

If think there is a space which can focus on apotheosis and light weaver for single target healing, and Holy Word: Salvation and group prayers for group/raid healing, and let Holy priests balance between the two sides of the tree as they prefer.Comment by KcoplinI’d like some customisation of the naaru talent, really does not fit well with my priest’s concept and sort of put me off him. Not that important I agree, but always hate it when a new talent or spell forces something like that on you - and not all priests want a pet Naaru.

Comment by ixnorpThis is such an incredibly uninspired, dispassionate post about the state of Holy Priest. Where was the wish list? There was barely one wish in the entire article to say nothing of an whole actual list. What about the other things that were taken from us at the start of Dragonflight? And then they took more during it?Comment by ComeAndSeeThese are the issues with Holy atm.

1. Holy needs a talent tree overhaul next expansion. There's 8 PoM talents,.. 4 out of 6 end tree talents are useless, we have only 3 bottom tree talent choices (most classes get 4-5), and there's too many 2 point sinks on the bottom of the tree.
2. Divine Image + Miracle Worker are the only worthwhile end tree talents and are mandatory. There's no build options for any game mode that doesn't take these.
3. Holy got giga nerfed because of our new tier set bonus when 10.2 came out and our HPS performance dropped to 7th place (worst its been the whole expansion). It took 3 hotfixes to revert all the unnecessary nerfs that they implemented. We need somebody who actually knows what they're doing here. This happened in the DF beta with Holy getting giga nerfed and then all the nerfs are reverted in hotfixes.
4. Holy's damage keeps falling behind every update. Disc, Mistweavers, and Resto Druids got like a +50% dps buff in the patch and Holy got nothing until recently. We need a better AOE system than Empyreal Blaze. Bring back Boon of the Ascended!
5. Holy lacks a persistent set and forget group AOE for M+ like Tyr's Deliverance. We have to sit there and spam single target heals on the entire group while on Disc you just set up Atonement and just cast dps spells.
6. Holy got its utility stomped on hard in the patch with Symbol of Hope made borderline useless and it takes a lot more work to reset Holy Word Salvation. Holy needs some kind of other utility for M+ distinct from Disc. Disc has Barrier, 2 Pain Sups, -3% group DR, etc.,
7. Holy is locked into one playstyle for raid. Just push CoH + PoM on cd, cast Holy Words, and use filler spells while everything is down. It'd be nice to have some different options.Comment by AutomaticJakThese are the issues with Holy atm.

8. Automaticjak is a Disc main and is writing the Holy priest guide. That should not be the case. We need an actual CE + top key pushing Holy Priest to write this stuff for us.https://raider.io/characters/us/tichondrius/JakbcastinComment by EvilwillNothing about PI and mass dispell nerfs?Comment by KoreandooI can only speak about M+, because I‘m more casual Mythic raiding but for me Holy lacks one thing especially. „How to deal with heavy burst group five man damage?“ Since S1 Hyrja up to today everbloom 3rd Boss every Boss with more than one Heavy Burst Damage phase on 25+ feels around the 3rd Phase extremely hard to heal. Sanctify feels way worse as it should and combined with movement requirements bad design like. Divine Hymn is great in Raid but extremely lackluster in M+, we should either Buff Divine Hymn in 5 man more, or give a shared Talent spot with some sort of 5 Man Damage reduction 3 minute Cooldown skill.
I liked the damage changes they did for Holy this whole expansion at S1 damage was extremely bad rearranging the Holy Fire burst, Holy Nova Buff, buffing Holy Fire, Smite etc. helped extremely and the S3 is extremely fun to play, for me only this lack of burst group healing or damage reduction is holding Holy back, hope they make changes in the mew expansion.

€: Changed Salvation to Sanctify shouldn’t write posts at 4amComment by Dhel210Divine Hymn is great in Raid but extremely lackluster in M+, we should either Buff Divine Hymn in 5 man more, or give a shared Talent spot with some sort of 5 Man Damage reduction 3 minute Cooldown skill.
Not going anywhere, stay mad :)Comment by ComeAndSeeNothing wrong with you playing Discipline, however making Holy play like Discipline isn't a solution, is literally removing our spec from the game.Comment by AzjhewittWas looking forward to this retrospective but I can't help but feel a little disappointed by the short length and that there seems to be a lot of things, which the Holy community talks about, left off the table - like some of the other commenters have mentioned.

I only want to give constructive criticism, and there's no doubt about Jak's credentials, but it feels like this isn't written by someone who is an active advocate for Holy specifically (not just Priest) and his responses in the comments seem dismissive considering the community is providing feedback on how the article reads.

I might be missing a lot of historical context regarding Jak's relationship with the Holy community but it seems there is a clear disconnect with what thoughts and wishes I'm reading on Discord and what I'm reading here.Comment by Jayjay2kayNever a good sign when an author gets so defensive. Holy has become such a neglected spec that even the supposed experts couldn’t be bothered.Comment by Dhel210
There's definitely some things that Disc has which Holy could use though. With Disc in M+ you just cruise control most of the group healing by just keeping atonement up via Power Word Radiance and casting DPS spells.
With Holy... each time somebody takes damage you need to manually heal them one at a time.
When we had Boon of the Ascended in Shadowlands you had 10s where every time you casted a nova or blast you healed the group and at the end of the cast you bursted out a big group heal.
It would be nice to have at least some capability to do light healing via dps spells without turning into Disc. I shouldn't have to stop casting dps spells to flash heal 2 people from 70% to 100% whereas on Disc its just automatic via atonement.
Divine Hymn sucks in M+ compared to Ultimate Penitence. UP gives me a 50% absorb shield and does 2.5x the healing that Divine Hymn does while also doing a bunch of damage. With Divine Hymn I'm just sitting there channeling for 6s unable to do anything and hoping that I don't get hit by some random ground aoe.
Also, Disc for w/e reason has just as strong single target heals as Holy. My Flash Heal on Disc does the same amount on Holy. I can also buff my Penance to do 700k+ healing. Holy just has the advantage of Holy Word Serenity charges on speed dial, but Holy should 100% have like 50% stronger single target heals than Disc by default.
Symbol of Hope is garbage for M+ post-nerf. It was great when it was a 1 minute cd CDR because you could reset tank defensives like Ardent Defender, Bark skin, etc. Now it's not even worth the point in M+.
Disc also has way better mana management then Holy. I can get 500k+ mana back from Mindbender on Disc alone and it's like having infinite mana. On Holy I can oom myself on Tyrannical bosses...
Holy's just been all over the place this expansion. S1 had the Lightweaver playstyle until Divine Image was updated. Our DPS talents were at the bottom of the tree and then moved up. S2 we got crapped on when the god comp came out and in S3 were only good because of our 4-piece bonus. However, to get that 4-piece bonus incurred taking massive hps nerfs in 10.2 that were mostly reverted.
Lastly, my final complaint about Priest in general is we need to be handheld by other specs to do the last bosses in Mythic. Raz pushed Priests off the ledge if there wasn't an Evoker to save them and with Tindral a hunter or paladin has to external the Priest to remove roots on them.Comment by AutomaticJak
Even with the current build it references Epiphany when you should be using Rapid Recovery instead because it amplifies your 2 and 4 piece healing by +35% and leads to your Renew healing being your 2nd highest heal.

This is constructive criticism, not meant to be a personal insult. Telling us to "stay mad" as a response just tells us how they really think about us.https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/35#metric=hps&class=Priest&spec=Holyhttps://www.archon.gg/wow/builds/holy/priest/raid/talents/mythic/all-bossesComment by SpilledstarsHmmmmmm

1. I don't want any of my healers to be a pet class. I feel this way about Druid treants too. Maybe they can give us Glyphs back, and have alternate art for these that brings glorious sunbeams across the range or to the affected players? cuz THAT would feel holy.

2. If they really want to make healers feel powerful among fellow players maybe we should be allowed to eat and drink while moving.
2.A. Cuz socially our biggest problem is grouchy tanks and pre-pulling DPS not caring if we're unready, somehow we're always supposed to be ready for anything.
2.B. eh, skip this digging through bags for nom of the minute, it's full of macros and basically a mess. Also any character who's not-max-level lives this even worse.

3. Maybe our OOC resource regain speed should be better.Comment by PoromaniaI usually like Jak's take on things, but this one seems a bit silly. Holy priest's identity has never been damage focused. I'm not saying they don't do damage, especially in PvP, one might argue their damage is close to disc in a 3v3 environment. However, his current take on holy is to make it more like disc - give it atonement or some sort of burst pet healing - both of which are current disc components. That would completely eliminate the throughput aspect of holy and just make it disc v2.