The Current State of Priests as Healers

[Kurse]

Priest healing is broken currently: in my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of the community. This is largely due to fairly major underpowering of the spirit stat which is shoved down priests throats on set items and on most cloth healing drops. To look at the holy tree you would think priests should be in love with spirit, and I truely would like to be. But the maths and the experience shows its completely gimped.

forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=287010814&sid=1

With the move into tBC spirit hasn't changed but the fights have and spirit now does way less than it used to in terms of mana regen. Time outside the five second rule has plummeted on the more challenging end of content. Down ranking of healing spells also got gimped ---> even worse mana efficiency. Even the friggin 3 piece transcendence bonus got nerfed - this was bloody-minded in the extreme.

All other healing classes have a great deal more choice when it comes to gear - its very common to see even pallys wearing cloth, so they aren't pigeonholed into taking the gimped stat.

Ok now take a look at this

www.wowinsider.com/2007/05/03/armory-data-popular-and-unpopular-specs/

This was a reasonably sized survey (>6000 profiles) of what talents people take in each tree. To cut to the chase 76.7 % of *holy* priests skip the 31 point talent and 83.7% skip the 41 point talent. Think about that for a second please. Thats *holy* priests not total priests. You guessed it these are in fact the least popular 31/41 point talents there are in any class of any spec.

The upshot is the stereotypical main healing class is actually most likely the worst at healing at the moment item point for item point and talent point for talent point. The only saving grace of priest healing is the players skill, a lot of priests have been healing a long time, and this can compensate for the above unfortunate situation. Hats off to those persisting with it - these guys are gems.

If you then notice that currently, at the level of scaling we are at, shadow dps/ utility are second to none - and the average priest's choice of spec is a no-brainer. I have no doubt that the old scaling problems will re-emerge, I am also fairly sure Blizzard will have to wake up and fix spirit or its item point cost or change the 5 second rule. Just give it time.

[drisnak]

i dont whine about healing whit a priest becouse there is not anything to whine about still think priest is the best healing class on raids. im happy whit my regen and healing 30% overhealing on raids and i dont still run oom very often on fights

[Kurse]

Probably the conclusion "priests are the worst healing class" was a bit over-the-top. I reposted the whole text from editing another post I was making. On the other hand there probably aren't too many people who can say they have direct experience of healing with more than one class at tBC end game.

However I still think there's something terribly wrong when the stat your gear forces you to take, and which your talents strongly suggest is your primary stat, turns out to be significantly worse than its competition even after you might invest up to 13 talent points to directly pimp it out. The only direct comparison I can think of would be if rogue gear all had +str on it instead of +ap (spirit isn't quite as bad as that, but there again, on my rogue I have a total of +0 str as it is easily avoided.)

Your 31 and 41 point talents should be the defining talents of a spec or at the very least fun and useful not something the majority find worth avoiding. For other healing classes the rates of avoiding 31 point talents are around 2.5%, with the 41 point talents its around 20-25 % (much less for shamans.)

To me this shows a lack of cohesion in the design of the class and its itemisation, but maybe giving priests talents and items that made sense would be overpowered /shrug.

[Kurse]

I now feel I have to point out that I was thoroughly justified in this opinion as priests just basicly got double the mana regen from spirit. Oh hey and and only 5 months down the line.

[Zianna]

/agree

Although call me crazy but I really don't feel the change to meditation as much on Zianna as I feel the change to Arcane meditation on my mage eventhough it's the exact same change (now 30% regen while casting on both classes). Sure, Zianna's mp5 gear can explain it to some extent but it just feels a massive difference. Ah well

[Cinxia]

Priest healing is still broken imho, and the main problem is still regen as far as I see. In the end you can either go for the mana efficient road (PoM, renews, gheals) and get slaughtered by other healing classes (druids, paladins primarily) or if you have mana backup (say shadowpriest) go for circle of healing and devastate all other classes in AoE healing. This is, however, a very situational heal and while it is quite possible to use as a main heal with the backup of a shadowpriest, it is not usable in all situations. Oh, and you will be aggro capped very quickly.

What it all comes down to, I think, is that priests have two talent trees they need to utilize in order to heal properly. And they're both gimped. Compare either discipline or holy - with the eyes of a full time raider - to restoration, restoration and holy of druids, shamans and paladins. There are so many talents there that are massively superior to anything a priest has.

I think what priests have become is a jack of all trades, master of none. Ironically, between shamans, druids, paladins and priests, priests are the hybrid healers. The others have very specific hybrid roles, but as healers, they have very specific roles. Druids are HoT'ers, paladins spam holy light, shamans have insane raid healing with chain heal once their +healing goes up. Priests? Hmmm! Priests get to do a little of everything, but they don't do it particularly good. Their gheals will be consistently eaten by a paladin's holy light spam (who, by the way, will place these faster and with a LOT more mana efficiency and staying power than a priest), renew pales in comparison to rejuvenation/lifebloom with which a druid can be a massive asset in a raid, soaking up the bulk of the "normal" damage output of raid bosses while others deal with the spikes. And then there's AoE healing. Potentially priests have the upper hand here, but they are limited by party-restrictions. The reason for this is quite clear, as an AoE raid heal would mean the new tactic in raids would be to simply bunch up on three priests and make them spam their HealAll spell eternally. So, in order to be useful in AoE healing a priest needs very specific group composition. For instance, place a priest with the melee. But then again, you don't really want to be with the melee, you'll go splat. Shamans of course are limited by the time it takes for them to cast chain heal, but the amount of healing they can pump out through this spell is simply scary. Shamans would definitely be my recommendation for bulk raid healing in any encounter. For priests, the only real AoE healing option is to spec for Circle of Healing and you really CAN do superior AoE healing. If you have the mana backup. It's a lot of fun to try, I'll admit, but it's situational and when looking at the overall picture of how priests compare to other classes, it's looking grim.

In general, I feel like priests have a lot of really fun tools compared to other classes, but they do them all rather poorly. I definitely feel like we need a revamp.

[Zianna]

To what Cinx said: Priests currently cover the misses between chain heals, buy the druid's hots time to tick, do the greater heals on a tank to buy the paly time to land more small heals and spam rogue/mage groups with CoH on AOE events


We're the patchers. Don't really matter that much if we're squishy as f**k and die in 1-2 hits, cause we're oom anyway and get 10 seconds free heals in imp dying. Nope, not a joke at all.

/bitter

[Jalani]

Ooooh, healing discussion!
*registers, just to join in*

Well... Hello everyone, I'm a resto druid... and I wish I was a priest.
(I also get nerfed with about 600 +healing this patch, that has nothing to do with my decision )

In my opinion, for raids - most healers are one trick ponies:

Shamans: Chain heal on raid.
Druids: HoT's viable on MT only, too slow for raid healing.
Paladins: Singletarget healers - not perfect for raid healing to due missing BoL.

Priests are special in this case, since they can be awesome MT healers - and also awesome raid healers (at a mana cost - but still awesome).
We had priests spread out in the raid for Vael in BWL - and I cant see things have changed much since then . There are several fights which needs the priest's full skill set - from easy healing at Chess trash, via VR melee pounding - and all the way to BT.

Relying on HoT's for raid healing is is just too slow. Having to wait 10 seconds for a rejuv or renew to tick 2k healing is unacceptable on most tough fights these days. Chess trash will kill people faster than that, and some fights are even build around that gimmick (http://www.wowwiki.com/Rage_Winterchill_%28tactics%29 - heal 2k within 2 seconds on a random person - or he dies).

Mana regen is abit of an odd mechanic - progression raid encounters these days assume you have infinite mana; either by drinking mana pots at each cooldown available - or by using shadowpriests (I wish we had some *pokes Cinx & Zi*).
For anything not on farm - people will be taking so much cleave/aoe/woops damage, that healers need to be fast thinking, versatile and with burst capabilities - priests have all that.
Healing in raids isnt that much about Mana efficiency - its becoming more of an issue about willingness to use pots to get the job done.

As a raid-leader, I'm likely to assign a priest, a paladin & a druid to the tank. The three work great - there is a nice synergy between the available spells. I'm also likely to assign a shaman to raid healing - since they work great at that.
I'm actually not likely to assign "spare" priests to anything, since they are capable of doing just about everything well - and often have the skill & capacity to do so. Either if its OT's, raid healing - or helping the MT in a tight spot.

[Zianna]

Oh hi Jal and welcome to the forum!! ^^

I do agree to most you've said tbh and since I posted the above, one thing has been tickling in the back of my mind: If all heals has their mana cost and threat cut down by 5-10%, priests would be able to fulfill their role completely in tBC.

As for Shadowpriest, all you gotta do is ask *pokes back*



Edit: I still fail at typing properly

[Kurse]

This is probably complete bollox, but some guy I grouped with the other day claimed he had some inside source at Bliz (like his friends cousins uncle or some such) and *apparently* the discipline tree is going to be reworked into..... melee dps !

ok it sounds a pretty far from the current state of affairs, and itemisation obviously is completely absent currently, but remember inner fire used to give attack power ! I guess it'd basicly be like a monk sub-class.

er and oh look what I found

forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=86069421&sid=1&pageNo=1

does have the flavour of one of their april-fools jokes - maybe the joke got leaked early this year ?

[terridon]

no matter what it brought a smile to my face.

Edit:
bluepost:
/fake

Pretty much like any notes you find that we haven't released ourselves. We've already stated previously that we don't have any plans to do large sweeping class changes to anyone. We are continuing to do changes over time to classes as felt necessary.

[Kurse]

terridon said:

no matter what it brought a smile to my face.

Edit:
bluepost:
/fake

Pretty much like any notes you find that we haven't released ourselves. We've already stated previously that we don't have any plans to do large sweeping class changes to anyone. We are continuing to do changes over time to classes as felt necessary.

Thats even more funny than the original post

Of course notes they release themselves are always true on the other hand *cough* hero classes *cough* spellbreakers.