How the CoH-nerf will hit us completly depends on encounters. Prayer of Healing might get its renaissance, Prayer of Mending will be more important. Shamans certainly will move up the ladder and once again be king of raidhealers together with druids.

Priests will be "support healers" on both raid and tanks and typically the first healer you boot if you need more DPS for an enrage timer or just want to run more light on healers. Or: You stack priests for PoH and more CoH+GS. It depends on the encounters ... Prayer of Healing is still extremly strong if you can use it, let's not forget that.

I don't think any raiding priest like the idea of getting another of our major spells on a CD. We now have both Prayer of Mending and CoH CDs to keep track of, and suddenly not using CoH on CD will be a major nerf to HPS instead of choosing freely when to use the spell. I can easily imagine tightly planned rotations if the fight demands it, which is bad gameplay if you ask me.

@Shaarra:

The whole mp/5 portion of your argument, is in my eyes pretty much worthless, seeing as how its next to impossible to go oom as a paladin if you use your cooldowns properly, even when spamming holy light. Beacon and mending also can't be compared at all because a) beacon is only one global a minute b) beacon provides way more actual hps on two targets taking a heavy amount of damage and c) beacon can't randomly jump to a shitty target.

Also,

Good luck getting people to use lightwell. As good as it may be, it isn't practical to expect someone tanking to worry about clicking on the thing. Especially someone who's AoE tanking and probably can't even find the thing behind all the mobs.

I'm with Rukli on pretty much everything regarding that discussion. As far as priests in the future go, I still think an optimal 6 healer raid is 2 holy plds 2 holy priests 1 resto druid 1 resto shaman for progression. Guardian spirits so good, I think it still earns priest that raid slot. I guess it depends on just how much AoE dmg is out there. I don't think shaman will become the king of AoE healing again. We've gone from 1 class having a good AoE heal, to 3 having them cooldown or not. Add-in glyph of holy light and its still nowhere near as insane.

Heal > You're a holy priest, and you already have quite a good mana regen, so I would say that adding crit will be better for you (will give you more procs of clear casting)

For CoH CD > it's really too powerful currently, even holy priests feel it, so... :P . It will completely depends on how Blizzard will nerf it. Wait & See

If their intention was to allow for more flexibility with groups, putting a cooldown on CoH was a very dumb move. As you say, PoH is a very strong spell. Belive it or not, I found myself using it over CoH in many situations just because I knew who'd it be hitting, and having casting time on a spell isn't always a drawback. Some sort of change to CoH was needed. I was a bit sceptical at first, but I misjudged how much mana I would have in a 25 man raid setting. Healing did turn in to completly mindless CoH spam the majority of time. I'm not very satisfied with that cooldown though, adding casting time to the heal instead would have been preferable. Oh well, it's not the end of the world as some seem to think, just means that I won't snipe 90% of the shamans chain heals.

Have raided Holy and Disc so far in Wrath and so far, have found Divine Hymn to be pretty useful in a few circumstances. Most useful thing is that it doesn't use an inner focus charge, but I expect that will be fixed soon enough. It's nice when the entire raid is huddled behind the same iceblock. It's nice when landing from a vortex. But the range is far too small atm, and the cooldown is about 2 mins too long.

Doesn't make the graduation to a good hotkey though. Shame.

Hymn of Hope has been occasionally useful, but I suspect that I don't regen mana @ full rate if I start casting it whilst inside the FSR - but not tested yet - maybe I missed the conclusion on this elsewhere.

Guardian Spirit, I've found it to be nearly useless. What's going to get gibbed the next hit after, gets gibbed the next hit after. And even with an annoying "you now have Guardian Spirit" whisper macro, it still causes the tanks to take action themself. Last Stand, Shield Wall - or equiv. In all the raiding I've done, I think it has only procced three times. Kind of tempted to respec it and take an ice bomb on purpose to see what would happen.

First time it procced was at Grobbulus 10 man, the other healer was dead for some reason and I got a disease - so I put it on the MT and ran away. Normally I'd ask an offspec healer to cover MT, but I wanted that first proc. Had to ask the MT very nicely not to use his cooldowns. Another time was at Thaddius. Other healer was dead again. 10 seconds of mana break and 15s of asking the MT to save his cooldowns. Third time, apparently soul shatter was already on cooldown.

Lightwell... well. Still not about the spell, it's peoples inability to use it.

Desperate Prayer. Well, I like this for learning encounters. Going for a portal during a Lava Tsuami and being tail swiped back by the MT swinging around? Desperate Prayer. Tho PW:S is practically as effective.

Prayer of Healing. Used a lot for 5 mans. Mana cost feels very high at the moment, esp. as very few people will spec Healing Prayers as there's just very few free talent points.

Also, annoys me a bit that people aren't speccing Healing Focus. I think it needs a secondary effect, just as mages/locks get

THIS. I have seen a lot of complaining in this thread, most of it is justified complaining, if content becomes unbeatable due to it. With some danger of repeating myself; Blizzard is aware of the situation. The reason why there is so much AoE damage is because of the "Overpoweredness" of Circle of Healing. Anything less, and CoH would trivialize it. So instead of going entirely nutters over a much needed change (from the point of view of a Discipline Priest and Resto Shaman), try to believe that Blizzard knows what they are doing with this change, in order to bring Holy Priests down from AoE Gods to an excellent supplement to Chain Heal.

In order to try to bring the thread back on track, I want to say what I believe this change will do for Holy:
- Surge of Light: The Cooldown on CoH will leave you more time to do other things like Flash Heal.
- Holy Concentration/Improved Holy Concentration: More free spells and faster spells between CoH.
- Divine Providence vs Mental Agility: This change will moot this discussion, +10% heal is now better than -10% cost. The reduction of ProM to 7s is also excellent.
- Test of Faith: Required for CoH now?
- Improved Renew: An (better?) alternative to CoH spam on steady damage? (Pre-Vortex Maly/Sapphiron)

While I'm not a big CoH fan, I don't think adding a cooldown it's the best option. Of course some encounters would have to be changed (Malygos, mostly) if a cd would be added, I take that for granted.

What I don't like is the consequences it has to the holy tree:

- SoL procs would diminish a lot, reducing the value of a talent whose bigger synergy is with CoH.
- ToF would also be affected, an in turn this would again affect SoL effectiveness.
- DP would loose a big part of its value.
- Holy Reach would be affected too. Of course you can argue it would be more important if CoH had a cd, but the fact is that it would provide much less throughput post cooldown than now.

All in all, the holy tree would loose it's focus in raid healing (in fact, for predictable raid damage disc and it's shields would be better) and many of the holy talents would be affected (13 talent points would give less now than what they provided pre CoH cooldown).

If a cd has to added to CoH, the holy tree must be revamped.

My only problem with the cd on CoH is that it's against the blizzard design philosophies. They've clearly said that removing the smart targetting isn't an option since you'll then have to think about group setup, but the cd on CoH is actually enforcing a much bigger party awareness in raids than before. PoH and Holy Nova, our only real aoe spells out of CoH cooldown are party bound and requires intense raid planning for future aoe-intensive fights.

Maybe a buff to Holy Nova would be fitting? Moving it to smart target raid healing and being affected by a few more holy talents (to prevent discipline of having the same raid healing capabilities). It's still going to be a very strategic spell where you are the epicentre of the heal yourself, leading to strategic positioning and movement. A very fun and challenging idea in my opinion.

Also while we're still at it. Divine Hymn's actual heal is very very interesting, maybe put it on a 30 sec cd and make the incapacitate another spell?

I welcome the cd on CoH it's simply too good, but please add some flexibility to our other spells.

In my opinion the CD nerf is the worst way to go. It feels cheap nerf, like the -30% hp to all bosses prewotlk, except now it's the class we're talking about, not some raid content that will be useless in 1month.
I do agree that some sort of nerf is needed and truly, would be fun to see the difference in healing input between the cohspammers with max 3 spells used per fight and a good priest. However a CD is not a wise way to go. Two major things come to mind:
- CoH can't be used anymore as a raid life saver sort of thing. Bumping fast a pile of hp to raid and then going back to other spells. A system of stacking increased mana cost per cast would've supported this. You can spam coh for a moment but there's relatively high price to pay. High enough that it truly encourages people to think of their priorities before spammage
- 6sec cd on CoH really violates the 5sec rule. Before priest was able to cast couple of CoHs, regen a bit and go again. With 6sec cd you can hardly do it at all, most of the time you must be casting always in between if you want to keep raid HP nice and steady. I'm sure there's several ways to manage and snipe some oo5sr time but just the idea of blizzard slapping 6sec cd on major heal of a class that has their mana conservation based on 5sr is already silly.

In general this mentality of nerfing is just stupid. "If CoH cd makes priests unwanted and shamans stacked, we will nerf shamans" Oh come on! Also feels like they've given up proper testing+thinking, all the statements are "if this will be major nerf to priests, we'll look into it" and "if this makes encounter X too difficult, we'll consider changing the encounter." Which means these things take months and months to fix. If the CoH nerf takes priest raiding to hell, we're most likely to expect a change to it around next summer.

A totally personal opinion is that I dislike CDs while healing. Priest got couple and they're manageable and surely, CoH cd will be manageable, I can prolly handle it. But it doesn't mean it'll be fun, especially considering how it'll affect the 5sec rule.

I have a hard time swallowing this, but I will have a look. I took everything into account including 50% crit, divine illumination and using DP on cooldown in my calculations, but perhaps there is something I missed.

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Its not possible to get everyone past the 3rd tick, by effectively lowering your own HPS by putting CoH at the end for a short lived burst. You might think this is fine, but a shaman or druid can deal with this situation better. Because of tidal waves and haste totem the shaman can use a sequence, chain heal, LHWx2, chain heal, LHW, chain heal, LHW, chain heal combo, to keep the group alive through effectively 5 ticks.

I am not sure about the numbers with druids but I a quick and dirty calc says WG and lifeblooms/rejuve, swiftmend and some single targets will keep ppl up to the 5th tick.

Now do you want to add insult to injury? Even a paladin blowing a beacon on 1 target can get past the 5th tick with a HL-HL+HS-HL spam sequence if his HS crit (and with 50% crit chance there is a pretty good chance it will). Ok its far fetched, but the fact that despite your high HPS output you don't have much more power at keeping ppl taking simultanous damage alive should say somehting.

As for the rest, I don't undestand what you mean by what this change will do. It does not DO anything. It just limits our options.

Renew and PoM are not going to see any greater usage than they do now. The change means that instead of priests healing mostly with CoH, PoM and flash heal, they will heal mostly with Flash heal, PoM and CoH. It will make encounters challenging for sure, but in a frustrating not a fun way. Consider how much better would a mechanic be, where CoH triggers a stacking buff, that nerfs CoH while buffing renew and gheal. Now that would be a great balance, you would have so many more tactical choices and some real reasons to use more of your spells. All that the cooldown has done is destroy our ability to respond to aoe damage outside our group and force us to interchance flash heal for CoH. Gheal is even more out of the window now, because everytime you use it you are going to lose either casting time or CoH CD time. Its really the worst case senario for holy priests.

I do not bemoan the loss of CoH, what annoys me the most is that I am now chained to a 6sec and a 7 sec CD for my raid healing. I cannot describe how annoying and frustrating this is and how much it restricts my healing style and tactical options. I loved my priest exactly because I had so much freedom with rotations and tactics. I resent being put in a straightjacket. I would be happier if they removed CoH completely and gave us something that has a real impact on our healing power, rather than just padding for the healing meters.


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At the end of the day any real value CoH had is gone once the CD goes it. Its going to be a great tool for padding the meters, but the ability of priests to keep ppl alive through aoe damage is out the window. Even with CoH on a 6 sec CD, you can get decently high HPS, if you are really good as a priest, but your ability to heal aoe damage is without question less than druids or shamans, in the same way that paladins can outdo you when it comes to single target healing.

With Aoe damage tuned out of encounters, there is no question that priests are the healer 25man raids want the least. Priests are not going to be taken because of their healing power in 25 man raids, they will get taken because the raid does not have another healer to bring along.

We are either going to see a corresponding nerf to both paladins and shamans, or holy priests will only be able to carry the weight in 10mans.

This is the shortsighted logic that has led us to a change that has singlehandedly undone everything that holy priests priests gain since the begining of TBC. Holy Light spam has a higher throughput than chain heal, does that make paladins the best aoe healers? In fact if you stop to consider it the current CoH heals 6 targets for about 1.8k so a total of 11k damage in 1.5 seconds, while a paladin can fire a HL for 10k every 1.7 seconds just about, so a holy paladin should be about as good as a CoH priest in healing multitarget damage. On top of that SoL decreases throughput, it does not increase it.

Without a CoH you can cast multiple times, your ability to deal with multitarget damage is not as good as a shamans and that is the end of it really. You may be able to keep up in the healing meters if you are able to chain cast flash heal and CoH with little overheal, but when it comes to keeping ppl afflicted with multitarget damage alive, you are nowhere near as good as a shaman, no matter how much you calculate HPS. Run through any senario you like and you will see how dangerous and awkward the 3 second delay between casting an instant and landing a flash heal really is in a multitarget senario.

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