A Retrospective on Holy Priest in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Holy Priest Writer, AutomaticJak, offers a retrospective highlighting Holy's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists

As the latest expansion, Dragonflight, comes to a close and The War Within looms near, players are reflecting on their experiences with different classes and specs. Our Guide Writers have reviewed their specs throughout Dragonflight and share wishlists of what they'd like to see in the War Within. Let's take a look at what our Holy Priest writer has to say.

• Holy Priest's Overall Gameplay

The Holy Priest is known as the "fantasy healer" and their gameplay revolves around Holy Words and supporting spells that reduce their cooldowns. Holy Word: Serenity is a powerful single-target heal, while Holy Word: Sanctify is an AoE heal with a large radius. The spec has shifted away from the single-target raid-healing focus of Shadowlands and embraced a more Holy Word and Prayer of Mending-centric playstyle in Dragonflight.

The power of Holy Words has been emphasized in Dragonflight, bringing the spec back to its roots. However, some players feel that too much strength has been put into the passive healing of Prayer of Mending, at the expense of active spells like Prayer of Healing. This has made Prayer of Healing feel weak in a raid environment, reducing its usefulness to a tool for light healing and cooldown reduction.

While Holy Priest has historically been a flexible and versatile healer, Dragonflight has limited the spec's talent options for competitive play. Talents like Lightwell, Lightweaver, and Divine Word have been overshadowed, resulting in a lack of variety in talent choices for Holy Priests.

• Holy Priest Throughout Dragonflight

Throughout the expansion, Holy Priests have not received a major rework, but they have focused on maximizing the use of Holy Words and generating new Words efficiently through talents like Surge of Light and Prayer Circle. However, the spec has leaned heavily towards passive healing, relying too much on Prayer of Mending. While this has led to engaging gameplay with the Answered Prayers passive and maximizing Holy Word: Salvation, the spec has struggled to maintain a competitive edge in the World First healing compositions due to nerfs to Symbol of Hope and Holy Word: Salvation.

In Mythic+ dungeons, Holy Priests have had a straightforward playstyle, with access to more Holy Words through Season 3 bonuses. This has made it easier to counter the bursty damage in higher-level dungeons. While the spec excels at overall damage and priority target healing, it still has weaknesses in spread-burst healing profiles.

• Potential Holy Priest Changes for The War Within

Looking ahead to The War Within, there are opportunities for Holy Priests to further modify their healing profile through Hero Talents. However, it is important to avoid adding excessive button bloat. The focus should be on reinforcing the spec's identity and bringing overlooked abilities like Lightwell and Divine Word back into competitive options.

One proposal for Hero Talents is to give Holy Priests a short-term version of Disc's Atonement, providing mana-efficient passive healing during downtime while adding damage and potential pet gameplay. This could be used to store burstier healing for challenging situations in Mythic+ or provide more active healing through Holy Words and Prayer of Healing.

Closing Thoughts

While Holy Priest in Dragonflight has a strong foundation, there is room for improvement in talent diversity and active healing abilities. Adjustments to talents and reducing the excessive output of passive healing will enhance the gameplay experience as we enter The War Within.

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