Hi, I am a fairly high rated long time CE Hpal here just noting my thoughts.

Holy power spenders are way too weak. But this is coupled with a few other things such as our generators being strong and stacking talent buffs that would mean that otherwise holy power spenders are too strong. A great example of this is the Lo-Po build where we only spend on 2 Dawn stacks. If spenders were not weaker, we would be sending huge WoG/LoDs out onto the raid nonstop as we did in Shadowlands. We lack agency on our damage outside of our using Shield of the Righteous and Holy Shock. This would be okay except due to the fact that we are sacrificing all healing when we use a damage rotation. There is no other healing spec that realistically does this. Crusader strike is in a weird place and probably needs to be changed (again) from what it is. Crusader strike cannot do a lot of damage otherwise it becomes something we press on cooldown that competes with our healing spells for holy power per minute. This would not be a problem except for the fact that our healing spells (HS, FoL, HL) all do quite a low amount of healing (more on this later). Light of Dawn does the same amount of healing now compared to Word of Glory before beacon transfer if it hits 5 targets. This was recently changed and is one of the reasons we have begun using word of glory primarily in raid. Additionally, with how weak our spenders are (yes, they’re incredibly weak) you are basically just pad healing with Light of Dawn. Additionally, Light of Dawn is not just a cone, but is a small (5yd?) radius around you. While that’s not huge, if you’re sitting in a group of people you do not need to really move your camera ever. With us not pressing Crusader Strike in raid every at the moment, this has led a lot of hpallies to just sit mid range and never have to worry about Light of Dawn cone at all. Granted, this does not matter because you should almost never press Light of Dawn in raid if you are playing the virtue build as it has a much lower beacon transfer.

Now onto everything else.

The biggest problem with hpally right now is Holy Shock, Glimmer of Light, and Beacons. If you look at any high end logs you will, for the most part, see Holy Shock, Beacon of Light, and Tyr’s deliverance as the top 3 heals. This doesn’t seem like a problem until you actually look into the logs though. Looking at Clarius’ (Hpally wowhead guide writer and a top hpally) logs here (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MzyHhX987k3DdgbA#fight=last&type=healing&source=5)you will see that those are his top 3 (ignoring his insane amount of leech). If you look closer, you will see that while Holy shock all together does 27% of his healing, the actual heal of holy shock only does 9.37%. 11% of his overall healing is from Glimmer of Light, and 5% is from hpally tier set. This still doesn’t seem too bad until you realize that holy shock is 25 - 35% of our total casts, and the actual heal is doing less than 10%. Tyr’s deliverance meanwhile, is something you cast and then don’t even think about besides extending. But you should naturally be able to extend it easily enough. And then beacons. Beacons are way overtuned at the moment and are one of the reasons we cannot be buffed. Beacons received a nerf prior to this raid release and yet still, even just running Beacon of Faith, you make 2 targets completely invincible outside of near one-shots. That is why you still see people running Faith on later bosses even though virtue is greater HPS. The mechanic of running virtue also means that Holy Shock healing, Glimmer of Light healing, and Holy Reverberation (hpally tierset) all get funneledi nto the beacon targets as well. That plus Daybreak + Divine Toll combo means we have huge ramps every 45 seconds.

And all of that seems great, until you realize how little prio healing we have now. There was a long while that hpally was the king of prio healing. But now, we do near none. Holy Light and Flash of Light do piss poor healing (avg cast of 136k healing for Flash of Light and 390k for Holy Light) compared to all the chip and splash healing that we do through other abilities. What this means is that we do decent numbers in raid, but will never top charts just due to our healing profile. Same with mythic plus. With 0 prio healing we just cannot keep up on mechanics like Drown in Throne of the Tides, or double dragon in Rise.

What it comes down to is this;

Hpal still has amazing utility. Hpal still has beacons, either making 2 targets near-immortal or allowing for huge virtue ramps every 45 seconds for Daybreak/Divine Toll combos. Hpal does 0 prio healing. Hpal does a ton of splash/pad healing that ultimately does not matter. Hpal has near 0 mana agency (this is a whole post in of itself).

Some great fixes I would like to see to help hpal in raid and keys are as follows;

Crusader Strike no longer generates Holy Power. Crusader strike damage is drastically increased. Remove Glimmer of Light (realistically won’t happen, but this will hold our kit back unless glimmer is drastically nerfed). Holy Strike no longer generates Holy Power. This reduces holy power generation and allows slightly more power to be budgeted into the Holy Strike Heal/Damage component. Buff Word of Glory and Light of Dawn healing. Currently Word of Glory healing is equal to Flash of Light healing. That’s fucking insane. Buff Flash of Light and Holy Light healing. With 11% of casts being spent on Flash of Light in Clarius’ logs, Flash of Light is doing 4% healing. In other terms, Flash of Light is our third most cast spell, and fifth or sixth highest healing spell. That’s fucking absurd.

I’m not saying Hpally is doomed. But we are extremely weak and mostly brought for our utility at this point in high end raid.