Sigma
I would say our biggest difference philosophically is that we're not so sanguine about the state of Holy on live, which relies on using
Erneuerung to drive Sanctuary, to the exclusion of most other modes of healing. For one, it does not seem especially versatile or varied--most of the synergies/rewards (more CoH casts and more WoM procs) are relatively passive/smart effects with little player interaction, simply results of casting as many Renews as possible. Also, a heavily
Erneuerung-oriented rotation is not very appropriate for Holy (essentially, their gameplay should not be so similar to Resto Druid), and it's intentional that the direct heals are more in the forefront in Legion.
Erneuerung is available as a reasonable option when an instant or slow top-off is convenient, but is not positioned to be a primary workhorse of the class.
Heal and Flash Heal are somewhat on the strong end of analogous spells across the healing classes. It is possible that buffing them in terms of cost, instead of buffing their heal size as we recently did, would help the rotation flow more smoothly. While Holy Priests do have to get used to a more mana-limited world on alpha like everyone does, being able to fill with the basic heals consistently is intended. Similarly, PoH did suffer a loss in some situations from its targeting change (which we felt was necessary), and we'll keep an eye on it. There's some concern that it could get too attractive or self-working to spam in raids, since it does use smart targeting now.
More generally across all healers, the pace of healing spell use is intentionally being slowed down from the current world of overly abundant mana (as has been discussed elsewhere), so you may have to realign your expectations somewhat of how frequently you can use expensive heals or large heals. Especially so in the context of Holy Words, which justify their unusual strength by having cooldowns that are meaningfully long. It should not feel anything like the regularity with which you press CoH in Warlords--you should expect to typically have situations where a Holy Word is not available and won't be available in time to solve the healing need that's presently at hand.
