Tristanian

As has been stated numerous times on this thread, it's not priest healing that is bad and results in most raid leaders opting for a different class (with emphasis on paladins/shamans), it's overall utility distribution that is somewhat "broken" so to speak plus the fact that a large portion of the encounters favors heavy dps groups rather than heavy or even medium healing ones. Sure, the reasonable thing to do would be to bring 2 of each healing class but when it comes down to it, it's not always an optimal solution. As a hybrid-healing oriented druid I found myself in a dire situation, looking at the bench on a lot of progression raids, simply because there was no room for compromise, at the very least on a first kill, so I can fully understand how holy priests (supposedly the "kings" of healing) feel about it.

Sadly, I don't see a definite solution to this, as I stated it's a conscious design decision by Blizzard. As long as encounters have time constraints in them (let's say enrage timers), dps will always be more important and utility hybrids will be given priority. There is no easy around this without breaking class balance in general.

 

Teez

I don't know if this is just us, but in our raids it's most certainly the paladins that are carrying the bulk of the healing done (minus heavy aoe fights in which our token resto shaman shines, obviously) - I guess it may have to do with the fact that our priests didn't deem it necessary to go for primal mooncloth, but in some cases the disparity on healing meters is just so shocking that it makes me wonder about paladin healing efficiency.

As an anecdote on the side, we had a paladin spec ret for a night of SSC on Monday ... without our knowledge. He usually tops the meters by far, but ended up 2nd on the healing meters (on Hydross/Tidewalker/Fathomlord) regardless of not having such key talents as Illumination. Talk about a surprise when he went "lol, you guys suck I'm ret" :/

I'm not saying this to detract from Druid/Shaman/Priest healing at all - I personally played a Priest for a while and enjoyed the plethora of options I was offered to go about healing through different types of damage, and thought it added huge versatility, and that holds true until now on certain fights in particular (ProM healing AR tanks on Solarian is just one example). I just feel in terms of sheer healing power priests have unfortunately fallen behind ... either that or my server is haunted with a bunch of terrible priests. They get the job done, but in most situations it feels like the job can get done better by another class, at this point. Kind of makes me want to level my priest to 70 though, just to either make sure that I'm not completely mistaken, or to have a reason to yell at our priests :P


edit: I have a feeling that Prayer of Mending being attributed to the person that it heals, rather than the priest casting it is another aspect that makes priest healing look slightly lackluster at the moment and is something that is, unfortunately, hard to account for (even via WWS parses) if there are multiple healing priests in the raid.

Warrior - Shaman - Priest

 

Doctah

Apologies for going off topic but is anyone aware of a relativly easy way to attribute ProM healing done to the priest if hes the single healing priest via sw stats or wws? Im fairly curious how much its worth since in heroics it accounts for 20-25% of my healing done without hopping close to as much as it does in raids.

 

• constantius

We run without a resto shaman, so it's pretty easy for me to determine how much healing (roughly) PoM does in a given night: look at the lowest 5 people on the healing meters. If they are a non-healing class, then a good chunk of their "healing" was from myself or the other holy priest.

On the last heroic Shadow Labs clear I did, the tank did 95000 healing over the course of the run, and used 0 bandages and 0 healthstones. PoM rocks the casbah.

As well, I've found it very very useful to have it up on a tank in aggro-sensitive fights, about ~ 8-10 seconds before the pull, then refresh it immediately. It means I don't land a heal for the first 6-ish seconds of combat (no threat), and it gives the tank about 4000 points of healing aggro, which is more than a Shield Slam. And more threat = more dps = more fun.

 

Teez

You're forgetting about Lifebloom

Warrior - Shaman - Priest

 

tunah

You don't understand what I'm trying to say. To find out what we'd expect a balanced raid to look like, we have to know what roles classes fulfil in raids. Priests do heal in raids. Paladins do not main tank in raids. Then we can look at how composition should break down.
My point is in either model, two healing priests is the most balanced number. One is probably more balanced than three.

Agreed, within reasonable limits. People roll a warrior expecting to be able to tank, so should raids encourage 3 prot warriors? Priests are a hybrid class now, for better or worse, they have multiple roles.

Of course they should fix paladin tanking, and the result will be half your paladins respec prot and you bring more healing priests (and resto shamans and druids) to adjust.
But at the moment, your paladins are healing.
Last I checked, paladins were a tank/heal hybrid, so unless that's changed I would consider expecting to DPS in raids unreasonable. This is the difference between retribution and every other talent tree in the game (perhaps subtlety?) - it does not enhance one of your class's primary group roles.

 

moowalk

Yes, another advantage of priests is their aggro management. PoM + fade are huge in 5 mans, and even in kara they're invaluable.

I don't have any SSC experience - are these abilities at all useful SSC onwards?

 

Jebraltar

Paladins have an innate 50% aggro reduction on their heals - it's hard for a healing Paladin to pull aggro without intending to, and it's far easier for them to deal with having it. (Plate, Divine Shield, etc.)

 

moowalk

Yeah sorry, stupid moment.

 

bobz0r

Fade has great uses in SSC. When those Loatheb-type lookin guys come out of an Underbog Colossus corpse while you're healing the raid from an Acid Geyser. Fade is great.

Its good on Hydross, A well timed fade can change a badly picked up transition where a healer(you) died from a Spawn of Hydross into a situation where you are no longer in danger.

Its good on Tidewalker. Ive been using fade after landing my first greater heal after an earthquake. I only had to get aggro from healing after earthquake once to realize i should fade.

Its good on Fathom Lord. The hunter in this encounter has two pets to choose from, and one of them is a real pain. He despawns all the time and comes back in a few seconds with reset aggro. This guy killed me alot on our learning attempts, but yelling at our feral druid picking him up, and using fade helped out alot.


I haven't done Lurker, or Vashj- but both multistage fights with heaps of add control thrown in. I cant help but guess it would be useful.
I havent done Leotheras either, but as it's a fight where he resets aggro alot, the answer is yes.

 

Shan

I'm happy to hear that in Black Temple some of the unique priest spells shine so much.

The thing is, PoM, Binding Heal and sometimes PoH are nice but not a reason to bring a holy priest. At least that's the general opinion.

However, extra buffs in the form of blessings or totems or Rebirth are a very good reason to bring one of the other healers.

1x priest + 3x paladins gives you a far stronger raid than 3x priest + 1 paladin, to make an example. I've raided with both of these combinations, and the blessings are pretty much required, or close to. Enrage timers on almost every boss make all the difference.

With 3x priests I do not really see increased survivability as the result of (supposedly) better healing. Unless you're talking about a fight like Doom Lord Kazzak where PoH is just incredibly useful.

 

Trouble

I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand I do believe that priests do need work for the reasons listed above. At the same time, I definitely see the reasoning that guilds don't need any more motivation to stack priests, as they are already very motivated to bring 3-4 (2-3 being shadow). I will continue being dissatisfied with the discipline tree as a whole, and the tier talents in holy (holy nova, lightwell, circle of healing) but at the same time overall the priest class seems "fine" as far as desirability in raids. I guess the remaining problem is the abundance of people who rolled priest to heal, but that is not a problem unique to holy priests and people do need to learn to adapt as many of us who went shadow have.

 

viva

A major shortcoming of the priest class is the albatross which is Improved Divine Spirit. It requires 23 points in the discipline tree and prevents priests who wish to specialize in healing from enjoying a number of the talents available in the holy tree. By giving IDS a place in the discipline tree at the 11 point level, which would be equilavent to the investment paladins are required to make in their protection tree to get Kings, Priests would be able to spend additional points in holy to pick up Empowered Healing, Circle of Healing,Lightwell, etc. If every Holy priest had access to these abilities it would improve the "baseline" for healing priests and I believe enhance their desirablility in 25 man content.

 

subbawt

It would also allow shadow priests to get Improved Divine Spirit, and then there would be no use for holy priests at all!!!

Priests are great for healing versatility, and maybe that IS enough. Really looking back at it, our situation isn't any different than it was pre-bc, at least in terms of what we bring to a raid.

A lot of priests previous prevalence can be attributed to the various fights where you either had to have (or it helped tremendously) A) Dispelling B) Prayer of Healing C) Mind Control (*sigh*) and D) Shackling.

I feel that Blizzard had great intentions when they designed our holy tree. Rather than being depended on for gimmick encounters, I really think they wanted us to stand out as the masters of healing. I don't think they necessarily achieved that result to the degree that they imagined, though I do think we are powerful healers. The concept is good. I don't want to hand out prayer books before fights that restore mana, or buff 20 times per minute, or anything like that. I like the role that they seem to have given us, I just think the talents need some polishing.

Some ideas:

Lightwell - Reduce the cooldown to 3-4 minutes, increase the number of charges to 10 from 5, and make the HoT not break on damage.

Circle of Healing - Increase the range and +healing coefficient.

Spirit of Redemption - Allow the angel to move. The tooltip says "You have become more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine.". I imagine powerful people being able to fucking move.

Improved Divine Spirit - 23 points for imp DS is bad. There's really no point of getting divine spirit without improved divine spirit, so just make the "improved" part of it included in the 21 point talent.

 

Lithose

Your post seems to exaggerate, greatly..On that token, I can't comment on all the fights, obviously, my guild is only in SSC, I can comment on a few.

From just the bosses you mentioned in SSC, I can tell you, easily, that a priest might do the healing *slightly* easier, then, lets say, any other healer...But all the other healers can do the job fairly effectively. In fact, your entire post looks like it was typed by someone who is exasperated by trying to argue with the mobs of the wow idiots on the public forums, I am not one of them, thanks, so please save your "delete priests plz" comments.

Your right, as was said in my post and countless posts before, priest healing is very effective, and its great. It truly is unique among the healers, and they are effective at what they do.

Here is the important part, though.

1.) The healing you stated may be slightly easier with 2 priests, but it can be easily done with one, or by another class.

2.) No matter how well those priests play, they can't do three blessings, or heroism or add combat support feature here-you know them all, they have been listed dozens of times.

Healing can be compensated for by other classes (right now), buffs can't, anyone with the choice, is going to allow for slightly more difficult healing (On a few fights), and take the huge boost in overall raid efficiency. This is the essence of stacking, this is the problem.

Now, if your like most guilds, your priests are some of your best healers, you have played with them for years, and you wouldn't replace them, even if it was the logical choice. That still doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

Again, this is my opinion, your welcome to disagree, right now I think the healing gap is a bit to small to justify the lack of in combat utility/support, your mileage may vary, but please, save the eccentrics.

 

Lithose

Oh, I don't..Again, I think priests are great healers, in fact, we too, run with two priests. The fact is though, that on most fights, I can interchange them, or sub in other classes, I can't do that, with, lets say, a paladin..(I could, but it would be many times more difficult then with the priest, for obvious reasons.)

BT may be different, I would have to defer to you on that.

 

Linnet

Yup.

Now the main thing is that being able to sub other classes in for healing is by design. Blizzard explicitly want that to be an option. They've given no indication that they see balance issues there so there are no plans to change it.

For holy priests, who were used to their main unique advantage being superior healing, this means that they now basically don't have a unique irreplaceable advantage and will probably never have one again (barring the spirit buff). Shadow priests, ofc, do, plus they can bring any priest-baseline type specific abilities.

Is this a problem? Well no, there are still spot/s for holy priests in raids. Is it an issue ... well, you have to decide if you want to stick it out knowing that nothing will change, respec, reroll, or quit. If you are a really keen healer then respeccing will reduce the amount of fun you have in raids, because shadow in raids is pretty dull in comparison.

 

Mags

The basic argument here seems to be that given comparable healing abilities, the buffs of the paladin are preferable to those of the priest.

Priests potentially have 3 buffs they can cast: Fortitude, Spirit and Shadow Protection. Paladins have 5 or 6. The big difference? Each paladin can only cast 1 blessing per player. No problem in a 40 person raid, where a "balanced" raid would probably have 5 paladins. But in the expansion, the number of available raid slots has shrunk but the blessing system remains the same.

The simplest solution to the raid balancing issue would be to allow paladins to cast two different blessing on any given player. Then even the most diligent min/maxing guilds could get all the buffs they wanted from two or three paladins, and could choose the rest of the healing rotation based on other criteria.

 

Ghorthor

Horrible idea and this topic kinda runs into a wrong direction.

The problem isn't buff stacking or priests lacking paladin-like buffs. The core of the problem is, that healing classes in general lack the synergy of DPS classes. That's why we now focus on the buff arguments but this is wrong. Healing needs DPS like synergy, so you do not have to focus on buffstacking. If your priest-paladin combo puts out more effective healing than paladin-paladin you will not only focus on wich combo brings more buffs.

Retribution now has an aura that buffs DPS, why isn't there such a counterpart for healing, wich would penalty a second paladin over a second priest, if we look at more than the usual micro bonuses, cause the original +3% healing aura for healing recieved rather than healing done, was useless.

There are solutions to penalty paladin stacking and make priest more effective, besides the usual focus on wich buffs a single player can push out. But to be realistic i do not think we will see healing synergy any time soon, when you have developers argument with one classes nerfs as buffs for others, hence the dev-chat concerning the illumination nerf.

 

Hyl

Post removed

 

Aditu

I don't want to be a troll but weren't most priests upset about only being allowed to heal before TBC? You have two very viable trees while paladins really essentially have one as do shamans. That can't be ALL bad? =)

 

Zarick

I think most complaints come from priests who did want to heal and that's all they wanted to do. There are also lots of priests who are happy they have a great excuse to go shadow now.

If you're in the former category, I'm guessing you don't care about how many talent trees are viable as much as you care that your old role has been diminished.

I've had fun going shadow with my priest but I can see where the dedicated healers aren't as happy anymore. It's always tough when class roles and strengths change after you made a decision on what you wanted to do.

 

Phantasmal

The best thing to do for raid healing/support balance would be to put a group mana regen buff comparable to Vampiric Touch somewhere in the Holy or Disc trees. Most guilds seem to run somewhere between 2 1/2 to 3 mana groups, and I know my old guild certainly tried to have three shadow priests as often as possible. If mana regen weren't exclusive to Shadow you could balance your priest make-up on the basis of your guild population, and having the option to stack holy priests would allow for more off-specs from the other healing classes. There would still be a point to bringing Shadow Priests given Misery and Shadow Weaving; you just wouldn't see more of them than the entire priest "allotment" of 25/9.