So I've been playing through the DPS healers recently. This includes Atonement, Cryotherapist, and Vampire Lord. I'd like to provide my feedback about these builds from a balancing and gameplay perspective. The common thing I will repeat between all of them is a lack of Single Target/Tank Healing.
Atonement
- This RE should probably be locked down to Spirit stat like the other two to make it easier to balance.
- I'm not sure why Atonement can't heal the player when both Cryotherapist and Vampire Lord can. If you lock it to Spirit only that should cut off self-healing abuse for other weird builds.
- You are almost required to run Graceful Prayer. So like Vampire Lord if the Prayer puts Grace on Pets, you are severely hindered and get to watch people die.
- You have to invest a lot into damage to get reasonable group healing so you have almost no ability to heal tanks.
- Otherwise relatively okay out of the three RE's
Cryotherapist
- It's a benefit the build requires no particularly rare abilities. But I think this may also cause it to lack much personality. It's just Atonement but it flows better and you can replace Smite with Frostbolt. I would love to see a stronger Frost and Ice theme worked in.
- Suffers from ability to heal tanks/single-targets like the rest of the RE's. Otherwise feels pretty good, just wish it had more frost interactions.
- Not severely impeded by Pets since your "atonement"/"frozen light" applicators don't have arbitrary cooldowns attached to them.
Vampire Lord
- This is the one I was most excited for and it disappointed me the most. Thematically it is good, but that's the only redeeming feature
- Pets severely harm this build. Unholy Prayer has a 6 second cooldown and if it picks pets you just get to watch party members die. Remove the cooldown on the Prayer or expand it to heal all players AND pets in the targeted group. Or have it simply buff YOUR overall healing instead of the healing received of allies with the buff.
- Very VERY poor tank/spot healing and if there is not something nearby to hit you have to stance-swap to literally do any healing at all. And the RE locks you out of casting the only Holy version of a single target heal you could use if you wanted while the RE is active (Holy Light).
- This RE has decent potential when you can set up and ramp for awhile but it is absolutely infuriating to play in non-raids where you can't even cast your Unholy Light before something dies.
- Unholy Light should apply Vampiric Bond to the tank or Vampiric Bond should not affect the tank like Lesser Frozen Light from Cryotherapist doesn't, and then buff the Beacon of Shadow healing significantly. Even better would be to let Unholy Light be usable on an ally and then damage an enemy. Rather than requiring an enemy and heals only the Beacon.
All 3 builds perform relatively well on group healing. All three suffer from abysmal tank healing. Vampire Lord is also a nightmare (no pun intended) to play because of how janky all the abilities interact. It really needs to be cleaned up.
Source: I am Cutting Edge (Top 1%) healer on retail. I hold numerous Rank 1 parses for the entire world. Usually I heal keys in the 23 area for fun but don't otherwise push much M+. I only mention this because I want to say I know my way around a healer. This isn't a skill issue thing. These 3 specs I think are overall nice, they just need better tank healing and de-cluttered a bit, especially VL.