Thre is another practical reason to bringing 2 of each healing type in an 8 man setup. You gear your raid faster if it's balanced (at least on average that should be the case). It's going to take shorter time to gear up 2 healing Pallies than 3 fighting over the same gear.

The Token system skews this a little against Priests since they share the same T4 and T5 set as the tanks (Warrior and Druid). But the general rule still applies. Granted, I'd love to be that single Holy Priest since you would have first dibs on all of the healing cloth gear and wands (maybe staves too). Would suck to be one of those 3 Pallies all looking for the same equipment.

Our guild doesn't have that problem yet, as we have an abundance of Healing Priests but very few Druids and just one Resto Shaman. And that's even after we've had some conversions to shadow.

Just an idea to make Holy Priests more viable:
A talent, which would give an aura to party members amplifying any healing done by say, 3%, or maybe a value based on a percentage of spirit or +healing. Much like the Tree of Life, just reverted.

That would be interesting but it still wouldn't be as desireable as a blessing that could be applied to an entire raid. Since you'd never concievably bring 10 healers to a 25 man raid, part of that Aura (Pallies have those too) would be wasted.

Regardless, that isn't a fix. Adding more healing would effectively do nothing to combat the issue of priest vs XX where the latter has damage enhancing capabilities. Anyway, I'm not really sure this thread is the place for "This buff idea is great, add it to priests!" discussion, even though I think I may have inadvertently caused it to pop up.

Multiple priests are getting into raids. At least one holy and a few shadow if you've got them. I'm not convinced anything needs to be done to encourage stacking more priests.

More or less this is how I perceive this situation
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There are reasons to take at least one healing priest over any other healer or a shadowpriest. There aren't any reasons to take a frost mage over a fire mage in the current schema ever (or perhaps replacing him altogether with a warlock). Stacking certain specs/classes should be avoided, not encouraged.

We're just starting SSC, and it sure feels like priests are still useful. Having threat management tools like fade and prayer of mending has been pretty darn nice in recent weeks, we can heal things at critical times that our druids and paladins cannot without getting beat upon, most noticably on nightbane, hydross, morogrim, and when magtheridon pops. Are there no more threat-sensitive fights as we progress later? Because threat management is the holy priest's strongest area at the moment from my perspective.

Paladins just seem to have it all in terms of healing

They're fast. Their heals will land fast at 2 seconds.

They're big. Since paladins stack so much crit, their heals land either decent size, or big. When the paladin is critting for 8k on a 2 second cast spell, it makes my 3 second heal seem retarded.

They're sustainable. Crits are mana back. While other classes scramble for mana/5 and spirit, paladins can focus on crit to keep them going.

They're immediate. In raids, where things get crazy, people cannot wait for a heal. As a druid, I hate HoTs, because a person cannot wait 7 seconds to be healed. They need it now, or they risk disaster. Its so much better to have your heal all up front

Thats just my perspective on paladnis as one of the last few druid healers left. Its very frustrating. HoTs rarely get a chance to tick more than once. My fast heal is butchered because the back end is a HoT (while a paladin is healing for 3k for the same mana, I'm healing for 1.5 and then having to wait 21 seconds for the rest to work. 21 seconds without being topped off is a death).

I don't even get a chance to put tree aura on a MT. MT groups are normally shaman/paladin/warrior/warlock/warrior (battle shout + commanding). Why? Because I'd rather be in the shadowpriest group so that I can toss out huge mana inefficent heals so I can look like I'm competing with a paladin.

Its just my opinion that without a doubt, paladins are the undisputed gods of raid healing and raid buffing. And unlike other classes, you can stack 3-4 paladins with no diminishing returns on effectiveness. No other class even touches that.

SSDD Ok we get it everyone thinks paladins are freaking amazing, can we not talk about it anymore please? In your defense, I seem to be one of the few people around that agrees that healing druids are basically useless by comparison to anything, outside battle res, but this isn't the thread for it!!! I'll say the same to Zefi, sorry frost mages suck man, how about something constructive next time?

Lifebloom is amazing in its current form for healing any sort of steady damage, including the MT.

Constructive...

This thread has evolved into advocating class / spec stacking which is counter to what has, and will progress this game forward in balancing this game. Remember when everyone was really excited that traditional offspecs were now viable? Well with raid limits you want fewer of each individual spec (for hybrids mostly) and more diversity. This is a good thing (tm).

The nature of paladins blessings and warlock curses encourage class stacking and that is a "bad" thing. Why are people advocating making holy priests in the same boat?

I'm sorry the op can't find a guild as a holy priest but that doesn't mean changes are warranted in the least. I might understand it if raids weren't taking any healing priests but that just isn't the case.

We aren't disagreeing on anything here I think I said earlier in the thread that I thought the best way to resolve the healing priest situation was just to buff up the non-healing trees of the other hybrids

No one wants holy priest stacking to be the new thing, but the fact is there is really no incentive to even bring 2 holy priests. If the cookie cutter healing balance in a raid was 2 druids, 2 priests, 2 shaman, 2 paladins, and there was no reason to deviate from that, this thread wouldn't exist.

edit: double post

Only way to fix Priests is to nerf Paladins.

Ask Blizzard, they agree with me.

Stating a fact is only useful if it means something.

I don't think anyone is going dispute that there is no incentive to bring a second holy priest to the raid. Let's establish that as fact. Saying it over and over again changes nothing, accomplishes nothing, and doesn't even spark discussion. Let's look at why it matters.

I don't think it does. Lack of stackabiliy affects other classes as well. If all holy preists provide is versatile and quality heals to a raid, they are still going to get raid invites. And since there are other desired raid spec's for that class, the priest class is not underrepresented at raids.

If you want support, you probably want to make it clear why this lack of stackability of holy priests is a bad thing. I don't see that it is.

I think those priests who are hating on holy paladins are thinking about this exactly wrong.

Paladin blessings are very, very strong. All classes benefit significantly from 3 of them, and having Might/Kings/Salv or Wisdom/Kings/Salv adds substantially to your raid DPS over the situation where you're missing the 3rd paladin buff. Therefore, you want to have 3 paladins on a raid.

You would be willing to have 3 paladins on a raid, even if they do their job significantly worse than the other class who would be doing that job if they weren't there, because every single class benefits dramatically from the first 3 blessings.

(At minimum, you want two blessings, and you're only happy with that if you're stacking caster DPS over melee and even then you're not excited about the lack of 3rd blessing.)

Holy is the least-bad spec for paladins. In fact, it's pretty decent, even post-nerf. Prot pallies (and I'm one) have major problems competing for a tank slot, and ret pallies have a variety of issues competing for a DPS slot (need specific support to add viable raid damage, no threat reduction).

Therefore, you take 3 holy paladins and fewer other healers, *independent of whether the other healers are better at healing than paladins.* A number of other people in this thread have been saying it, but it's still true.

To make it not true, you either have to nerf the ever-loving crap out of paladin healing-- much more than the already severe Illumination nerf-- or you have to buff other paladin specs to the point where they're competitive for raid slots.

And again, although it's been said before, in a 25-man raiding world if a single class is getting 3 slots that means it's represented slightly over the mean. That goes for both paladins and priests. Count your blessings (as it were).

It may be two completely different roles, and it may not be something everyone enjoys, but it's a luxury that other classes don't have.

If due to raid set-up, holy priests are not in demand beyong the first, they have the ability to respec and fufill a different desired role. If mages (or hunters or rogues) are not in demand due to raid set-up and poor stackability, they can't do much about it.

If my mage wasn't gettting raid invites, and I had the option to heal and get into raids, then I'd be 100% bandage spec. It's not why I rolled the class, but having some options is better then none.

If the biggest problem that holy priests face is that, after the first, they are just another quality healer, what is the problem?

Problem is that many who rolled priests years ago, rolled one to be the king of healing and not just a quality healer. The problem is further that Blizzard kinda missed paladins and priest demands with those new talents.

Paladins prior BC wanted retribution to become what basically is the shadow tree now: a raid compatible damage and support tree. What they got instead was one only one viable raid tree wich pushed them onto the healing throne, something the class never wanted. On the other side you have priest who got ditched from healing into something wich looks like the class does not want to too. Class roles for those two classes probaly changed the most and the general census looks like both classes do not cheer about the changes, they just accept it.

We all have options, and really, rerolling is not much less effort than gearing up for a totally new spec from scratch (esp if you have to drop your crafting and pick up a new set too).

But lets assume you just want to dps or heal -- however your class was described or perceived when you picked it. If that role is taken from you by other classes, you have the choice of shifting to another role that is much less fun for you, or rerolling, or quitting. That's just not a good place to be. Now bear in mind that the majority of priests did roll the class to heal. Its just a recipe for unhappiness, regardless of whether /you/ think it would be nice to be shadow.

While it's true that Shadow Priests are like a completely different class, I don't see how that's a problem. Enhancement Shaman are a completely different class from Resto. Same with Feral druids, and even arguably non-protection warriors.

On the subject of whether good holy priests were good at DPS, my experience has shown a strong correlation. The best healers have a really strong understanding of what's going on in the raid at all times. Knowing who and how to best heal people is difficult if you don't know what the other 24 or 39 people are doing. The best healers have strong raid awareness, and that has immediate dividends for someone doing raid DPS. That doesn't mean they like doing damage, but they are generally better at assisting and moving to the correct position.

This seems like a reasonable claim, but has anyone done research into whether this is actually true? Sounds like an example of Armory to the Rescue. The best way to find out what people want to play is by inspecting their talents before your decision matters too much. In other words, audit priests in the level 15-30 range and see what they pick. I actually think you'd see a pretty heavy mix of holy and shadow.

But whatever the reasons other people chose priest, YOU chose it because you wanted to heal, and raid slots for holy priests can be slim these days. I agree that's a problem, but all you can do is focus on the things you can change, not what you can't.

In other words, start a paladin alt and level them in your spare time. Yes it sucks, and maybe holy priests will be more desirable before you hit 70 on your healer alt. But it's the one thing that's guaranteed to give you a solid healing role if Blizzard changes nothing.

Certainly, 2.1 is not WoW 1.x. Things that were held true in the 40 man raid game of level 60 are not the same in the 25 man level 70 game.

Obviously, changes can lead to uncomfortable transitions, both in process and in changed expectations. So is the problem we're looking at one of imbalance, or people poorly adapting to changes?

I think it's people poorly adapting.

Wanting to be the king of healing is an unreasonable demand. I'd wager most mages wanted to be the kings of ranged dps. Finding out that Hunters and Locks can do comparable or better dps does not mean the mage class is broken.

In fact, I would argue that it was more unbalanced back when priests were undisputed kings of healing, as opposed to now, when they are a comparable quality healer with the other 3 (up from 2) classes they can compete with for healing spots.

It's really tiresome to see people say that rerolling is a trivial effort compared to respecc'ing and regearing. Anything that requires all the steps of the alternative (regearing) and adds over 100 hours played is not trivial. If rerolling was trivial, it would be far more common than it is now.

As for priests being unhappy with the current set-up, I don't know what to tell you. I don't care to speak towards your motivations ( I want to heal/ I want to dps). I know that priests who want to heal have it better then Pallies who want to dps, druids who want to summon treants, or other spec's that are supposedly inferior. If a raid always wants a healing specc'd priest, why is it doom and gloom for healing specc'd preists who want to raid? If raids always want multiple priests, then why should people sit up and take notice of the "plight" of priests as it currently is?

All I'm seeing as the problem, is that some people haven't adapted to a situation that is less imbalanced then the previous one.

even dedicated healers will still often go for a dps spec/gear choice when leveling. this wouldn't be accurate at all.

while on the surface the most reasonable solution seems to be to make pally offspecs more viable (one less holy pally = one more healer spot).. that offspec pally is now taking up a dps slot and you have to take one less mage or hunter most likely. there just isn't room to maneuver in 25 man setups when some classes cannot bring more than 2 players. priests are one of the few classes where you could justify taking 4 or even more.. its not that bad a spot to be. any solution would only make other classes feel the pinch more.

the "no more than one holy" solution could not come from changes to the core priest class, otherwise shadow specs would simply provide it. also, you would have to add *two* mutually exclusive abilities (one in disc, one in holy).. otherwise your spirit buffing priest would be able to get the talent and simply provide both buffs/synergies.