Holy Priest State in Shadowlands Alpha - Lackluster GCDs, Covenant Abilities, Toolkit Changes

posted 2020/06/10 at 1:14 AM by Jaydaa

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This article is written by Jaydaa a veteran healer and contributing writer to both World of Warcraft content and other Blizzard games content here on Wowhead. I've been raiding in WoW for almost 15 years at various levels of progression. I've contributed to the theorycrafting of multiple healing classes, notably Mistweaver Monks and Restoration Druids. Find me on Twitter or on the Wowhead Discord username Jaydaa#2814.

Contributions by Jak, Healer for Future on EU-Twisting Nether, author of the Holy, Discipline, and Advanced Mythic+ Priest Guides.
He is also the Host of the official World of Warcraft Mythic Dungeon International events. You can catch Jak on Twitter and streaming on Twitch.

Holy PriestIneffable TruthIneffable TruthIneffable TruthBaseline Toolkit Changes

New Baseline Holy Priest Abilities:
Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death - This array of damaging abilities offers up additional damage to Holy Priests that invest time in dealing damage. How much more damage and whether we'll use all these abilities will mostly depend on final tuning. More ways to contribute to the group is nice, but requiring a completely active damaging playstyle means that Discipline's passive damage contributions may overshadow Holy for another expansion if healer damage contributions remain a major factor in Shadowlands.

Circle of Healing - After being relegated to a talent in Legion, this ability returns baseline to the class. While not super compelling as an instant cast on cooldown type of ability, it offers decent throughput and some much needed mobility to a fairly stationary healer. Ideally, I'd like to see this have some interaction with the Holy Word playstyle or something added to help differentiate it from Prayer of Healing.

Power Word: Shield - This instant cast absorb returns to Holy complete with Weakened Soul. The power of absorbs vs. actual healing can't be overstated so it's nice to see this ability return, but unless you absolutely need the absorb then Renew tends to be more efficient at almost half the mana cost of Power Word: Shield and with the added benefit of reducing the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify.

NEW (Level 52) - After its removal in Mists of Pandaria, Mind Soothe returns. While it was extremely niche in most situations, it might possibly have renewed use in Mythic+ as skips can be highly valued. i don't expect this one to be cast very often, but I'm sure we'll see a video of a Mind Soothe skip in Shadowlands at some point.

NEW Power Infusion (Level 58) - The haste steroid returns as a baseline ability and can now be cast on any player rather than just the Priest. An interesting piece of utility that I'm sure everyone in your raid/party will be clamoring for during their cooldowns. Expect juicy bribes on farm content. With the removal of the mana cost reduction, you'll probably see a greater mix of targets than just the priest.

Shadowlands Leveling Perks:

NEW Rank 2 (Level 17) Fade now reduces the range at which enemies will attack you when used while active.

If Mind Soothe is meant as a group-wide aggro radius reduction, then this perk is the personal version. Niche perk at best but I'm sure someone will find a use for it somewhere.

Rank 2 (Level 54)

As something that already exists in the live game, it seems weird to remove this for the prepatch just to re-add it as a leveling perk for Shadowlands. On the plus side, you'll likely see this used more often in PvE content such as removing One With Death from Sathel the Accursed in Theater of Pain.

Rank 2 (Level 48)

The Holy Priest strobe light just got a whole lot more spammy. Overall not a huge change, but a nice quality of life one. Brings the spell up to near Mind Sear levels of damage. This perk creates an issue for AoE damage where you now choose between the player-centered Holy Nova with a mana cost and miniscule healing or the target-centered Mind Sear that's free but does not offer healing.

Rank 2 (Level 48)

Fantastic change that returns Prayer of Mending to a better feeling spell. It may not seem like much but offers up another GCD of mobility to a fairly stationary healer. Ideally, I'd also like to add Word of Mending cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Sanctify to this perk as well so that Prayer of Mending isn't in competition with Renew.

Reworked Holy Priest Abilities:

Power Word: Fortitude Infuses the target with vitality, increasing their Stamina by 10%5% for 1 hour.
Already the least mandatory buff, cutting Power Word: Fortitude in half makes it feel even less mandatory, but will still be a nice buff when you can bring a priest.

Holy Fire

All the cooldown reset functionality has been removed from Holy Fire meaning it's a much more straightforward fire on cooldown ability for Holy Priests wanting to do damage. Because the DoT no longer stacks and the cooldown can't be reset, the base damage has been significantly increased. The cast time means you'll have to commit to a full stationary GCD to the ability.

Mind SootheHealTalent Changes

Afterlife Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 50% and increases the range of your healing spells while in Spirit of Redemption by 30%.
As one of the least picked talents for Holy Priests, it's nice to see this one get some love in the form of a range increase for the stationary Spirit of Redemption. However, this change doesn't really address the issue with this talent row and Afterlife in general. Both Guardian Angel and Afterlife have to compete with the pure throughput of Cosmic Ripple. In almost all situations Cosmic Ripple's extra healing will be valuable. For Guardian Angel to be valuable you have to make considerable use of Guardian Spirit for single target healing. While that sounds easy, you tend to save Guardian Spirit to work around your tank's cooldowns, and you only get the benefit if you don't save the target from death. With Afterlife, you only benefit from this talent if you die and you generally don't want to plan on dying in most situations. If Spirit of Redemption was Spirit of the Redeemer, then you could at least make more strategic use of this ability as a way to extend a pseudo-Innervate without the downside of permanent death upon leaving Spirit of Redemption.

Circle of Healing

Turns Circle of Healing into an activator that boosts burst AoE healing. I generally like this talent as a way to quickly get out some fast Prayer of Healing, but without any mana cost reduction you could find yourself struggling for mana if you get too carried away.

Holy Word: SerenityMiracle WorkerHoly Word: SerenityCovenant Abilities

Kyrian:
Boon of the Ascended via Ascended Nova and Ascended Blast - Due to Ascended Blast's short cooldown, you'll utilize a combination of Ascended Nova and Ascended Blast to heal and build up stacks culminating in a huge detonation of healing via Ascended Eruption increasing based on the number of stacks built. Ideally, I'd like to see Ascended Nova build stacks based on the number of players healed or enemies hit (whichever is higher), but overall the numbers on this one for a 3min cooldown are pretty strong as long as you can hit a majority of players with the Ascended Nova and the final Ascended Eruption. At 3 minutes, this is basically another healer raid cooldown which is strong but for a class that already has two raid cooldowns with Divine Hymn and Holy Word: Salvation this might feel like overkill.

Summon Steward - The steward offers some quality of life options like free talent changes or a vendor to sell things, but it essentially boils down to Phial of Serenity, a glorified healthstone for all intents and purposes. The healing will be nice and contribute albeit minimally to throughput, and the personal bleed, curse, and poison dispel for Holy Priests could come in handy as you can't normally dispel those; however, the circumstances where the phial will be invaluable will be few and far between compared to other covenant abilities which are more universally valuable.

Venthyr:
Mindgames - A cool idea of turning an enemy against themselves and utilizing their damage to heal is awesome. I dream of a world where I can turn N'Zoth the Corruptor's Evoke Anguish against him to heal the raid, but I feel like the limitations on this one are just too difficult to overcome. For starters there's no upfront healing, so you'll only get roughly 400% spell power worth of healing and 4% of mana from the damage conversion out of each 45s use. Compare that to the massive amounts of AoE healing you'll get from the other covenant abilities and this one starts to feel a bit small potatoes. Interesting concept, but the numbers need to be there as well.

Door of Shadows - Quite possibly the star of the covenant signature abilities, it's hard to say no to a 35yd teleport with a minute cooldown even if it has a 1.5s cast time. This type of movement is almost universally valuable and it's hard to think of an occasion where it'd be useless. Full Venthyr dungeon groups can plan skips around this ability. As a Holy Priest, I will never say no mobility.

Necrolord:
Unholy Nova - A massive 15yd AoE heal that also infects enemies with an AoE DoT with a Judgment of Light-like healing component. As of the current build, they've nerfed the healing from striking enemies with Unholy Transfusion down to 12% spell power, but because there's no internal cooldown and every damaging event including DoTs counts, the healing especially in AoE situations is still absolutely massive. Combine this with a short 1 min cooldown and a 15s Unholy Transfusion duration and I'm sold.

Fleshcraft - This extra self survivability will be nice and as an absorb will contribute minimally to overall throughput, but where this one loses me is the 4s channel. Holy Priests already know how impossible it can sometimes be to find the perfect opportunity to channel a full Divine Hymn or Symbol of Hope. Adding another long channel to our toolkit is not exactly something we want. I would really like to see the channel time reduced or allowing this ability to channel while moving would go a long way to making this ability more palatable. Even with those changes it's a bit of a hard sell against the other movement oriented covenant signature abilities.

Night Fae:
Fae Guardians - While the other Covenant abilities focus more on raw throughput, Fae Guardians is primarily focused on utility. The 10% damage reduction from Heal and Flash Heal could be strong in Mythic+. If you plan your spell usage correctly, you can keep the 10% damage reduction rolling on your tank and another target for 1min and 15s out of every 1.5 mins, an 83% uptime. While it's not much, for Holy Priest without any traditional damage reduction cooldowns it can amount to a lot. Where I start to become skeptical on this ability is the remaining two benefits. Because Power Word: Shield still has the Weakened Soul effect for Holy and no way to bypass it, you'll likely be using this on a few different targets so at best 200% resource or 20% mana spread over a few different targets. While that can be helpful, the granted mana hardly pays for the 3.4% mana cost for each Power Word: Shield paid by the Priest. So you're actually losing mana in the process of granting it to other healers so not actually generating additional healing from this ability. It's more efficient to generate resource and therefore damage but how much damage is questionable, especially when you consider that you're not picking another covenant ability which has damage baked into the cast so you're already losing out on that. Finally, the Prayer of Healing benefit grants the 5 targets 3s off one of their major abilities. In total that's 2.5 mins worth of cooldown reduction spread across the Prayer of Healing targets. That sure sounds powerful but let's try to remember some things. Prayer of Healing hits the player you target and 4 other near allies making it difficult to select who is getting the cooldown reduction. Prayer of Healing costs 5% mana meaning that 10 casts will cost a Holy Priest half their mana bar resulting in some expensive cooldown reduction. Is it worth it considering how much throughput both healing and damage that Holy Priests are sacrificing by not choosing another covenant? For me it's just not worth it. I'm sure you'll see videos of a Priest reducing cooldowns or granting resource here and there for the spectacle, but it's just not a realistic scenario.

Soulshape As someone who adored Displacer Beast, it's nice to see this come back as an option although more watered down. Blinks and teleports are universally valuable and while it might not be the Venthyr ability this is a strong second place option. You likely won't be coming up with skips for such a limited 10 yard blink, but you get 3 in the 12s duration so you may have some opportunities to blink over some particularly nasty mechanics. It should be noted that you can cast while shapeshifted. Comes with a cosmetic collecting minigame which is fantastic.

NecrolordKyrianBoon of the AscendedUnholy NovaLackluster GCDs

Apotheosis - Even after spending this GCD, you'll still need to use multiple healing spells to reap the benefits of Apotheosis's increased Holy Words cooldown reduction. If you need healing now and fast then this ability helps but doesn't get there without some delays making this GCD feel even worse. If a lot of the power of this cooldown is going to be delayed behind Holy Word cooldowns then taking Apotheosis off the GCD makes sense. Alternatively, add some of that power upfront to make the GCD feel more powerful. Having Apotheosis instantly reset the cooldowns of your Holy Words would go a long way in making this GCD feel impactful. Nearly back-to-back Holy Word: Serenity is a powerful dungeon tool.

Symbol of Hope - With the return of Mana Tide Totem, Symbol of Hope starts to feel like a much worse ability. Mana Tide Totem always regens a consistent 6.4% of max mana, doesn't require a channel, and has a 3 min cooldown. You can use this ability immediately early in an encounter to maximize the number of uses and no mana is wasted as long as all healers don't cap on mana. Symbol of Hope is a 5s channel, returns a max 12% of missing mana, and has a 5 minute cooldown. Because it's based on missing mana, you'll likely only get one use out of this ability. While I can appreciate that differently abilities should have different functionality I think the disparity is a bit too far in this circumstance and something needs to be done to make Symbol of Hope feel better to press and channel.

Power Infusion - With the return of Power Infusion, there's been some concern about whether it would be on the GCD or not. Before it's removal at the start of BFA it was intended to be placed on the GCD, but due to it's removal this never occurred. With its return in Shadowlands, Power Infusion remains off the GCD. For parity with abilities like Innervate, it probably should be placed on the GCD, but I urge developers to reconsider this and so many other abilities. With Power Infusion once again being allowed to be used on any ally player, the Priest shouldn't have to pay the GCD cost for another player to have fun.

Mythic+ Viability - While there are a lot of factors that determine how well a spec performs in Mythic+ (utility, damage, single target throughput, etc.), I'd really appreciate if future development could be focused on helping Holy Priests become stronger and more relevant in dungeon content. I know it's a big ask and there isn't an exact solution, but perhaps the additional systems of Shadowlands could really offer some more tools for Holy Priests. Holy Priest has always felt like the fairly straightforward healer and many people looking to learn healing tend to use Holy Priest as their gateway specialization. While that tends to work out in raid, for a lot of players the spec tends to let them down in dungeon content causing players to feel forced to class swap to feel more viable.

Overshadowed by Discipline - The issues with Holy for a lot of BFA had nothing to do with Holy's failing and more to do with it just not being Discipline. Discipline brings passive damage, absorbs, and damage reduction; all of which are highly valued in the current healing meta. While I can appreciate Shadowlands increased focus on class identity instead of spec identity, I would like to see Holy step out of Discipline's shadow for once and be able to stand strong on its own benefits and merits. Make the choice between the specializations more meaningful instead of a default answer.

Leap of Faith - While it's cool to be able to move your allies across the field of battle, I miss the added mobility of Reverse Life Grip allowing you to grip yourself to an allies position. While I think it'd be super similar to Druid's Wild Charge, perhaps we can give it a more Clash-like functionality that causes the two players to meet in the middle.

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Comment by AcccattoneNice writeup, but...

It's =/= its.Comment by VedneyApotheosis resetting Holy Words rather than going off the GCD is personally more preferable for me.Comment by DewrotosUntil holy gets a way to do dps while healing, disc will continue to outshine it in most situations.Comment by DCCXVIIIHaha, resto druid go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.Comment by AndromortSo, basically, priests are probably the worst class as of now?
SP are terrible, probably the worst DPS spec in the game. Holy is mediocre, it can be good but in the same situation other healing specs are just easier and/or better. And only Discs can be at least somewhat good.Comment by AcrivecYes, and this breaks my heart.
I'll most likely try Shadowlands a bit and then stop playing. For raids leaders want discipline priests because of damage reduction and nice damage/healing. For m+ playing as holy is terrible because we lack burst healing and single target healing.

Now they are adding Convenants that cannot be changed, and picking best for holy makes it unusable on shadow (my offspec), and picking best for shadow makes it quite lame for holy.

Guess it's time to stop playing, because I don't want to change my main character, as of progress and achievments are not shared.Comment by TomaotabcI think I've seen lackluster gcds on every post about shadowlands classesComment by TomaotabcI see holy priests on the more hps intesive fights for uhhh think its symbol of hopeComment by TomaotabcI see holy priests on the more hps intesive fights for uhhh think its symbol of hopeComment by MoguWhats about playing a different specs and covenants? I play my priest in all three specs: shadow for quests and visions, holy for raids and disci for m+. If i can choose only one covenant thats mean can i be good in only one spec? I want play shadow and one healing spec...Comment by CozzeneNice writeup, but...

It's =/= its.Comment by apedosmilUntil holy gets a way to do dps while healing, disc will continue to outshine it in most situations.Comment by PoromaniaI needed to drop Mythic plus as main holy priest, my friends pulled me throughs some of them, M+15, but they needed to drop me off when they went for higher keys, while i have synergy with tanks, thanks to my guardian angel, i really struggle in them, holy priest is maybe the weakest healer in dungeon, we dont have reliable CC, we have only chastise, which sometimes drop dots, we dont have silence, we dont have roots and we have fear, which means we need to be near and give chance for mobs pull more mobs, really, only chastise and Shackle undead, but shackle dont work on most mobsComment by JMjuristI still rly hate the power infusion change, I get this awesome spell back bu hey, I can never use it on myself -.-Comment by TaomaHoly has not been a meta healer since TBC I think :(Comment by Aniona04Holy looks awful.
As of now and in Shadowlands.
We've got the weakest flash heal, it's hard to heal a tank with huge damage, while it's not a problem for other healers.
Prayer of healing without smart heal...
Bigger mana cost for all active spells looks like a joke. Priest is suffering very much with mana.

So "thanks" Blizz looks like all should play restoDruComment by CysrelThis make me so sad, btw priest should have battle ress.Comment by RhapthornRemovedComment by JMjuristThis make me so sad, btw priest should have battle ress.Comment by KisakiiI have played with priest main since the end of the classic until now. I am SP of main, and what I like the most afterwards is holy (since they changed discipline in legion I no longer like too much this spec). And between the article dedicated to the sp where I see that they do not remove the void form and now with the holy one that seems not to be of much use ... what a general disappointment. I don't wanna changing my main but I have been suffering for two expas ... and my alter is an elemental shaman, so it is not to jump for joy either....

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