Priest Talent Trees Part 2: Holy

In the last installment I talked about Discipline; where it came from, where it is, where its going. In this second installment I'll be talking about Holy: a tree with a much different story.

Discipline is a tree that was historically very bad with poor direction. Each expansion pack so far has added to its viability in different areas (BC for pvp LK for pve) but its still plagued by an inconsistant direction for the tree. Holy, on the other hand, has always had a singular vision: to be the best damn healer in the game.

On the character creation screen, Blizzard describes priests as "the masters of healing." This is sort of a cruel trick on their part because they aren't actually describing priests, the are describing Holy priests the way the were during vanilla WoW. At level 60, priests were sought after by guilds so they could slap a Benediction on their backs and have them cast 6 second greater heals on their protection warriors until purple things dropped out of all the bosses. Yea that's right, greater heal used to have a 6 second cast time. Lame right? Renew used to not stack either. It was probably annoying but I didn't start playing my priest until after all that nonsense.

The major complaint of holy priests back then (and still is 5 years later) was how terrible their 11, 21, and 31 point talent spells are. For years, Holy Nova was the 11 point holy talent. No one speced for Holy Nova. NO ONE. It's a crappy spell now and it was even worse back then. For a while, Holy Nova was the 31 point talent if you can actually beleive that. It costs a ton of mana, heals for practically nothing, requires you to be standing next to the people you want to heal, and is limited to the people in your party. Some priests would spec for it so they could kill the rats under the gates in UD strat but that's really about it.

Currently the 11 point talent is Desperate Prayer. Its basically an instant-cast greater heal that you can only cast on yourself every 2 minutes. Its a life saver in PvP, but its about as useful as having an extra health stone in pve. Still heals the crap out of Holy Nova though.

For 21 points you get Spirit of Redemption. This is the talent that turns you into a Spirit Healer for 15 seconds after you die allowing you to continue to heal for a bit before dieing. Now, I've heard a lot of people try to defend this talent. "But Ilpapa! I've saved wipes with this talent! It's a good spell!" It's a talent that only starts working after you die. Why not just be better at healing and not die all the time? This spell is about as useful as the Night Elf racial that lets you run faster while you're dead. And no, this spell doesn't prevent wipes. It might put off a wipe for 15 seconds, but then its gonna wear off, the person you wanted to heal will die, and the raid will continue to wipe as intended.

Spirit of Redemption IS a talent worth taking, however, because a little while ago a 5% passive spirit increase was added to the talent. 5% spirit for 1 talent point is pretty decent. Even still, I always hated that I turned into a chick every time I died. Pet peeve, but whatever.

When Lich King came out and Blizzard made the Glyph system, Spirit of Redemption saw a breif period of being over powered. It was pretty awesome actually. The original glyph for this spell made it so that critting any heals while in spirit form extended the duration of the spell by a few seconds. In PvE a holy priest could stay in spirit form indeffinately by getting a 20-30% crit chance and spamming Circle of Healing. This was kinda neat but required killing one of your healers to do it. Kinda risky. PvP priests, however, started specing for Spirit of Redemption because a priest dieing in PvP is the norm. The glyph for this spell absolutely won games by itself for me in 2s with Carthas. Priest/Warrior is a pretty weak comp, but I would consistantly get to heal in spirit form for 40 seconds to a minute which propelled us to many victories. This glyph was changed pretty quickly because of this sort of abuse. Right now all the glpyh does is add 6 seconds to the duration.

Then finally the 31 point talent in the holy tree is Lightwell. Also known as LOLwell, Failwell, badwell, and "the worst talent in the game" by most of the priest community. I could do an entire article on how bad this spell is so I won't go into it too deeply. If you want a good idea about how bad it is, though, I'll just mention that there was a petition that used to pop-up now and again on the priest forums to have Lightwell replaced with a made-up spell called "Confetti Explosion." CE would instantly kill the priest, causing no durability damage, and making a loud POP noise and spray confetti all over the place. The spell could be guaranteed to have a really cool looking spell graphic. The petition reached the page limit. A little while later someone started a new petition. This petition also reached the post limit. I'm still waiting to add confettit explosion to my hotbar personally.

Thankfully, Blizzard figured out how to make good spells by the time BC came out and priests got Circle of Healing. Sure, priests weren't considered the ultimate healers anymore, but with CoH, we were kings of healing the massive raid damage that bosses put out during t5+ content. In fact, there was plenty of fights that seemed designed around CoH specificly. There simply was no way for a guild to clear Black Temple without a couple of geared priests speced for CoH.

Simultaniusly, Improved Divine Spirit appeared in the discipline tree. This nice little buff was very good, but specing for it made it impossible to also have CoH. In BC, raid stacking was all the rage so a lot of guilds would have 1 priest spec for IDS: gimping their own healing in order to buff everyone else. A net gain for the raid overall.

The 2 accepted raiding specs for healing during BC were 23/38/0 (IDS + 3/5 Empowered Healing) and 20/41/0 (5/5 Mental Quickness + CoH). I always speced 23/28/0. God I miss that spec, but it just doesn't feel right without downranking.

The original CoH is not the CoH of today. At first, CoH would only heal people in the same group as whoever you targeted and had no cooldown. This version was fine, but Blizzard wanted to phase out group-only spells and buffs so they changed it when Lich King came out so that it will heal your target and the 4 closest friendly units targeting the ones with the lowest health first. This "smart" version of CoH prooved to be wildly over-powered. I only speced for it once, but holy shit I immediately knew what all those resto shaman were complaining about. It was simply too good. That's why they added a 6 second cooldown to it.

Some priests complained. Sorry, but even with the 6 second cooldown, priests are still the best raid healers thanks to the new version of Surge of Light and Prayer of Mending also being a smart heal. If you use your Surge of Light procs and hit Prayer of Mending every time its cooled down you should stomp everyone else into the groud on the healing meters during fights with heavy raid damage.

Holy also got Guardian Spirit in LK. Unlike other 51 point talents for the other 4 healing trees (Beacon of Light, Wild Growth, Riptide, Penence) Guardian Spirit doesn't usually get used every time its available. It's situational, but it's a life saver when that situation arises. Still, the defining talent in the Holy Tree is Circle of Healing.

I've spent a lot of time talking about raiding as holy. PvP was holy,...well...its kind of like PvP as a destruction warlock or a combat rogue. When you're really low on resiliance, Blessed Resiliance is an amazing talent, but in terms of survivability Focused Will in the discipline tree is really the talent to get. Sure a holy priest can heal for a lot more than a discipline priest in pvp, but the challenge for any priest of any spec is staying alive first and healing/dpsing second. Blizzard has said they plan to make holy more pvp viable. We'll see.