holy word: sanctuary still bad.

06/22/2011 11:30 AMPosted by Wildlifee

Even with the recent buff holy word: sanctuary is still way behind healing rain,eff and radiance. With that said should priest even bother casting this spell?

We think Holy Word: Sanctuary is fine as-is taking all of the variables into account. It is isn’t intended to directly compete with Healing Rain or even Efflorescence, and if we decided that it needed to be, we’d have to nerf Holy priest AE healing in other ways, such as Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing. If you are casting a heal every single GCD, then there may not be many times you would want to use Sanctuary over, say, Prayer of Healing. But you probably aren’t casting every single GCD. Even on heroic raid encounters there are often periods of lower damage, and if you're blowing big heals then when you don’t need to, you’re going to run out of mana. But Sanctuary is the kind of thing you can cast during periods of low damage in preparation for predictable high damage in the near future, at which point it can be ticking away while you also cast other AE heals.

If the ability is not worth using because of low healing output, excessive mana costs, etc. then people should state exactly that. Making comparisons to abilities like Healing Rain, Efflorescence and Holy Radiance isn't going to garner any positive results.

I simply think that Blizzard has far too many healing tools for Holy Priests in general, especially considering most have a short cooldown or none at all. Between Renew, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova and Holy Word: Sanctuary, Holy Priests already have a very large raid healing toolbox and thus its hard to balance around each and every one of these abilities being effective without nerfing their effectiveness elsewhere. Tools that are currently useful for raid healing (Renew, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing) will always take priority over the lesser abilities that aren't as potent for raid healing (Holy Word: Sanctuary and Holy Nova).

Compare this to the raid healing toolboxes of other healers, whom have less flavor abilities built for raid healing (Resto Druids have Rejuvenation, Wild Growth and Efflorescence; Resto Shaman have Riptide, Chain Heal, Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem; Discipline Priests have Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Holy Nova, Penance and Power Word: Shield; Holy Paladins have Holy Radiance, Holy Shock and Light of Dawn).

I'm not saying it's futile trying to make Holy Word: Sanctuary or Holy Nova viable for raid healing, and that Holy Priests shouldn't bother complaining about it; all I'm saying is that Holy Priests already have a large toolbox for raid healing and it's unrealistic to expect every tool you have to be effective because of it. Buffing Holy Word: Sanctuary or Holy Nova could very well lead to nerfs to the already-effective raid healing abilities you have to use.

Some pretty salient points here. We compare the entire class packages when evaluating and making changes. Saying spell X costs more mana than spell Y is just a recipe for X and Y being the same spell.

It's probably also fair that healing priests still have a few too many healing tools, and finding niches for things like Holy Nova continue to be issues without great solutions.

06/22/2011 05:48 PMPosted by Sinter

Also, saying that Sanctuary is there to prepare for high-damage phases is just not a great usage of the spell. The mana tradeoff is just too harsh for such a pathetically weak spell.

I was going to go into a lot of other uses for it, throwing it out for clump-ups and getting in some regen time when possible, obviously for any localized group damage where you're going to get the duration. I probably should have just cut the example part.

06/22/2011 06:27 PMPosted by Senari

I was going to go into a lot of other uses for it, throwing it out for clump-ups and getting in some regen time when possible, obviously for any localized group damage where you're going to get the duration. I probably should have just cut the example part.

Did you just suggest we use HW:S for regen time? O,o?

I was waiting for someone to jump on that. :)

No, I do not suggest that anyone do anything. It depends greatly on your gear, experience, the others in your group, and what content you're actually tackling if not what specific fight.

Personally, I'll throw it out in specific situations that allow me to go make a sandwich while it does its thing, yes.

The disconnect is in its proposed usage. It's not meant to be cast INSTEAD of your other AoEs, except perhaps in a situation where you know you will be unable to get a heal off and you will need AoE healing soon (silence, range, needing to run). Instead, it's really supposed to SUPPLEMENT your AoE healing to provide extra throughput during an AoE burst period.

Quite correct.

It’s fair to say that Sanctuary is too expensive right now. But even if the cost was lowered - given its 40 sec cooldown - if you use Sanctuary every time it’s available, you’re unlikely to be running yourself out of mana by frequent Sanctuary use.

It’s also one of those spells that is more effective in 25-person groups than 10- or 5-person groups. We’ve been considering some options to help spells like this scale better with group size.

If you look at heroic mode logs, you will see plenty of Sanctuary use by top priests.