Spiritual Guidance: Holy Priests join the Legion alpha

Quick on the heels of Discipline’s addition to the Legion alpha, Holy flaunted in, much to everyone’s delight. We’ve had quite a few changes since its initial talent tree and spell debuts, but it seems like everything is coming together nicely with the class fantasy. Core gameplay features our new Holy Words, giving Holy a much needed niche.

Notable spells and changes

Long lacking an interrupt, Holy now has an incapacitate in the form of Chastise or a stun by upgrading to Censure, which will help us when trying to solo or quest out in the world. Symbol of Hope had its 12 second channel removed in favor of an instant cast. While the channel made sense during Hymn of Hope when it was a simple mechanic to refill mana bars, the cast time here was counter-productive, only providing utility to the rest of the raid while giving you no benefit. The instant cast allows Holy to benefit from its own spell and hold its weight by performing along with the raid, rather than merely acting as a “mana battery” à la Shadow in Burning Crusade.

Our long requested “Holy form” has come in the form of Apotheosis, and though the mechanics seem to be sound, the visual is pretty underwhelming. It’s pretty much a golden version of today’s Shadowform, with your character transformed to translucent yellow with Archangel wings. While I hate to take any pointers from Shadow, we could definitely use a similar upgrade that Voidform received. In my opinion, it definitely calls for more sparkles and glitter. The wings, so characteristic of Discipline, also feel out of place and I wish Blizzard would return to Guardian Spirit’s old graphic.

Artifact talents have changed slightly. Your starter talent, Invoke the Naaru, is now Light of T’uure. Our close and personal relationship with the Naaru has been downgraded slightly from T’uure helping at your side to the Light doing a bit of healing and increasing your healing in return. Renew the Faith has also been adjusted, substituting Prayer of Mending during your Divine Hymn channels over Renew.

Questing and soloing

Questing is honestly a little boring. Chastise, Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, repeat. Not that Discipline’s rotation is terribly different, but at least Penance is sparkly and gives you a visual for the damage you’re doing while both Chastise and Smite are practically invisible. While Holy Fire has always had a rather interesting “called down from the heavens to smite the non-believer” feel to it, it’s a one-time thing every 10 seconds, and then it’s back to making the motions of a cast while not actually seeing a spell.

Other than my visual gripes about what will honestly be a very small part of our role as a Holy Priest, the damage seems to be working well as far as “all healers can DPS can quest.” Sure, it may get a little slow at times or you won’t be able to pull an entire field and AOE to your heart’s content, but at least you can get the job done in your healing spec which is an improvement over the live game.

Healing groups

Here is the core of our spec and where everything matters. Holy has unfortunately not fared well in the past couple expansions, though not necessarily through any fault of its own. Discipline has long reigned as king due to the difficulty in balancing absorbs and Holy was often forgotten on the wayside. If you had a Priest in your raid, there was not often a reason to go Holy when you could go Discipline; it was just too useful. Finally, however, we have our chance to shine.

Holy’s gameplay revolves around our Holy Words and Serendipity synergy. While Holy has often excelled at raid healing in the past, we’ve never particularly been known for our ability to effectively heal tanks. Even with Chakras we were never very strong but with Legion we’ll see that change. Not to be pigeon-holed into a single role, Holy will be able to tank heal or group heal. As I’ve often discussed with Discipline, this can lead to fears of “Jack of all trades, master of none.” There’s quite a difference in dungeon healing and raid healing though, which is usually where you see the distinction of tank healing versus raid healing now, as opposed to the days of Wrath of the Lich King where we had dedicated tank healers. Dungeons tend to focus on immediate tank healing and spot healing the group while raids are usually focused more widely on the larger group due the cadre of healers at your disposal to lighten the load. In dungeons you can get away with using your larger and more expensive spells, due to fights being shorter and fewer targets for mechanics. Flash Heal, Binding Heal, and Serenity will likely see a lot of use in dungeons, combined with your single target talents such as Trail of Light or Light of the Naaru.

In raids, the focus is definitely on our single target heals with HOTs playing support. Warlords featured a heavy playstyle of blanketing Renew to decrease Circle of Healing cooldown and a lot Prayer of Mending use, but the playstyle veered too much into Resto Druid territory and Blizzard wants each class and spec to feel unique. With Holy Words, we get close to the burst healing Holy excelled at back in Ulduar though with longer cooldowns to offset the strength so we are not overly powerful. The idea here seems to be Holy Words as our core, with Serendipty’s spells as filler depending on what our role is. Flash Heal and Heal work with Serenity for powerful single target or tank healing, while Prayer of Healing works with Sanctify for AOE or raid healing. Your level 75 talent will add additional cooldown reducing options: Prayer of Mending to Sanctify via Piety or Binding Heal to both Holy Words.

Concerns

I enjoy the focus on Holy Words and I feel that it adds a useful niche to Holy’s arsenal, but I also feel that there is change simply for the sake of change. One thing that always bothered me was the pruning done in Warlords. Originally we had the trifecta of Heal/Flash Heal/Greater Heal, varying in both cast time and strength. Warlords renamed Greater Heal to Heal (removing the lesser version) and reduced its strength, essentially making Flash Heal and Greater Heal the same spell with a long cast time or expensive mana cost. In response Priests opted for neither, eschewing them in favor of more forgiving HOTs and AOE.

If the gameplay is clunky, the community will just veer toward one extreme, as they always do, and Holy will find itself limited in use again. With the way the Holy Word spells work, using the Serendipity fillers to significantly reduce the Holy Word cooldowns can be very mana intensive. Apotheosis will practically wipe your entire mana bar if you go crazy. I see very minor cooldown reductions to be in play here through moderated filler usage, and apparently it’s intended that we won’t always have our Holy Words available when we need them, which will require thought and planning during encounters. The goal of any spec ideally is “easy to play, difficult to master,” but I hope Holy’s play will not be too prohibitive to those newer to the spec.

Along the same lines, Prayer of Healing also has limited use. As I mentioned before, Prayer of Healing is quite similar of Circle of Healing. Circle of Healing was temporarily given a cast time, which made it nearly identical in terms of mechanic and function to Prayer of Healing. Now with its instant cast restored, it is the more preferable of the two. Unless you need the insane burst healing from Apotheosis, Circle of Healing will likely be a staple talent due to its usefulness in sustained damage. I fear Holy’s Prayer of Healing in Legion will end up like Discipline’s Prayer of Healing in Warlords: only used sporadically for the buff it can provide and not on its own. I actually enjoyed Holy’s iteration of Prayer of Healing in Blackrock Foundry, where it interacted so well with Prayer of Mending due to the 4-piece set. I know Blizzard is trying to veer away from AOEs and HOTs taking up too much of our gameplay, but synergy between spells makes gameplay more rewarding rather than just casting a spell every 30 seconds because you’re supposed to.

Artifact quest

In a stark contrast with Discipline’s artifact quest (which appears to be the Arcane Mage quest in disguise), our Holy artifact quest deals specifically with the expansion’s main and pressing concern: the Burning Legion. Having overheard rumors of “T’uure” from an injured Draenei, you head to the Broken Front to deal with the Legion itself and investigate the Naaru’s lost sacred staff. Conveniently enough, the invading demons happen to be carrying this very powerful staff that you can wield, but hey stranger things have happened. Much like the Ashbringer’s first appearance in Warcraft, T’uure’s crystal is in a void state and it’s up to you to bring it back to the Light.

The quest seems to make good use of our toolkit: DPS here and there, dispels, healing the newfound friends you collect along the way. Some parts appear overturned at the moment, but the gameplay appears fairly interactive and providing a nice introduction to Holy’s wide array of spells. I’m relatively pleased with the Holy quest and its place in lore, and I’m excited to see what’s in store.