Priest whine/complaint thread about raiding

tl;dr summary:

Priests kinda get the short end of the stick for raids since thier gear provides no benefit for anything other than raiding compared to all other classes (perhaps not Druids). This leads to priests rolling alts to ever do things not raiding and such. And once you get 3 pieces of Trancendance you don't need much of anything any more really.

I found it pretty interesting, similar experience with my few characters at least.

Priest I only raid with, a Warlock and Warrior alt that I play whenever not raiding, and people like to somewhat guilt priests that do this sort of thing to only playing their priest.

I'd like to hear what EJ/other long term raiders might have to say about it.

I only started raiding fully with my priest since the first CG Ragnoros kill (unsure of the time line), no where near you guys, but I'm kinda stuck as only playing a priest since the Aeternus split basicly gutted our priest ranks that we had before.

More likely their guilds are just shitty.

That just isn't true.

Anyway, moving on...

Personally, I'm like the paladin in Xi's guild -- I enjoy healing in raids and in PvP. I've been known to lament the fact that the shaman epic sets are not just mail versions of Transcendence.

Anyway, I think Xi forgets one type of player:

The guy who rolled a priest because priests are always needed in groups and in guilds, and they wanted to improve their chances of getting into both. This is the guy who I think most often ends up being the one who complains about the role and the class.

No gurg the point is I think that person brought it about themself. They got exactly what they wanted. I feel absolutely no sympathy for them. They wanted the easy way in to raiding, and loot, and they got it. The fact that they really don't like healing, and didn't want to play their priest is no ones fault but their own. I see this problem in our guild with some of our new recruits, and it gets on my nerves.

They join because of a druid they rolled as an alt for example, and then never come online because they don't like druid, or they only come on the DPS class that used to be their main. In my opinion especially from a new member, we should just remove them, and continue looking for someone who enjoys healing because the problem is only going to get bigger.

I rolled a priest initally because after reaching 55 on my first character (a warlock) I found that he was pretty gimp and completly useless to groups well before warlocks were ever fixed or anything. (in my opinion)

I liked to group and had a ton of fun playing my priest doing the 5 man raids and such. After getting to 60 I kinda got sucked into the raid mentality with CG and then GCR after the split.

It was pretty fun while learning the encounters and such no doubt. After the grind to items starts to set in it kinda starts to suck when everyone else realizes that you don't have to really pay much attention, Molten Core for example, to succeed for the majority of players.

Yes it is easy to spam decursive and have the game play for you and such, and now that GCR has finally reached Chromaggus it seems I'm gonna have to relent and actually use it :(

But stuff like Broodlord .... Ugh blink = dead tank (so it seems).

Regarding Trancendance, Gurgthock has said that there isn't much in this game that is mana limited now with the way the gear gives so much stuff. 3 piece Trancendance is like the most amazing thing for priests ever, mana regen while casting. The only other thing to look for is like resistance to whatever the instance du jour is. Or perhaps completing Prophecy/Trancendance. Trancendance seems to be one of the biggest things enabling fights to not be limited by mana and more on hate. Even now I can go for a extreme amount of time given how poor my gear is relative to the other GCR priests now. Extending this will allow blizzard to put in raid content that lasts for 40 minutes instead of 20...

Regarding alts, why would I play on my priest during non-raid times when it's (in my opinion again) to roll another alt to 60 and have that character who is capable of solo farming far faster and more effectivly to provide repair gold and reagent money to my priest.

Kinda frustrating when the only really useful spec for a raid priest totally makes you useless in non-group stuff. I can go farm herbs and such I suppose. So much fun. Only thing more fun is maybe group (it is a MMO after all) while leveling another character to 60, which I did and had a good time tanking instances as a warrior.

Those are the few things I found similar to my thoughts on this topic. I don't really agree lock step with everything in there, just a few comments.

I was sort of like that in FFXI. I played a white mage, pretty much an analog to a priest, and I rather enjoyed being the lynchpin in groups full of retards. It could be pretty painful, though, in most parties I would sit in the corner of the camp and stare at a wall while watching the tiny bars in the bottom corner where my teammates' HP bars were.

When I came to WoW I ended up choosing Rogue as a class simply because I couldn't do that shit all over again. After leveling two rogues up to 60 (yes, I am retarded) I think I might have enjoyed being a priest in this game, if only for the pleasure of occasionally melting a face or two. Certainly, it has to beat the fact that my strongest spell could barely scratch a monster of equivalent level, to say nothing of monsters 10+ levels higher.

My point, I suppose is that priests could be a whole lot worse. I can understand a paladin being unhappy about being pigeonholed in raids and instances, but what the hell did he expect as a priest? There's a reason people complained about the paladin changes by saying, "Paladins are now priests in plate."

Well, the problem is that WoW was designed from the bottom up without any coherent vision of the endgame.

Priests in WoW were touted as "finally priests aren't just healbots, they are some of the best soloers in the game and can kill people in PvP!" And from level 1-59 that's the case. At level 60, it's the case if you're heavily shadow specced.

But that's just not their role in a raid setting, at all.

So you end up with people who rolled a class and played it from 1-60 for one reason, now finding that their preferred playstyle doesn't mesh with the realities of the raiding endgame. (This is the case for druids too, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.)

I'd actually think that priest epics sets (excluding oracle) aren't as bad for shadow as the druid epic sets (again, excluding genesis) are for feral. The extra int, spell crit and mana regen can't hurt now can it?

In a way, I think AQ was just thrown in as a raid instance to do to get kick ass pvp gear since it definitely doesn't help with raid progression.

Edit: I do have to admit that Cenarion/Stormrage and Prophecy/Transcendence are probably about equal to balance druids and shadow priests.

Hah! You don't even have to deal with Paladins.

I have a sixty warrior with some of the best dps gear in the game.

I've had many alts. I have a 52 hunter, a 42 warlock so on and so forth. Never really enjoyed them once I got used to them. By the priest, oh man, loved leveling a shadow priest. Shadow priests dominate mobs and spit on their corpses.

Then I got to 59 and swapped to Holy, finished the last level up with nothing but healing. And from there on I've done nothing but heal. Obviously, it's an alt, so it hasn't done BWL but I've been to green dragons, MC, ZG and Onyxia. I'm a little experienced with her now after a month and a half of raiding.

I really enjoy it. I think it's partially because I have a lot to improve on, and partially because I refuse to use any addon that reduces my thinking while playing. I have no decursive, no mana conserve, so EM, so on.

I think a lot of people need to get away from the idea that addons make you better at the game. They don't. They make it boring and you do a shit job. EM makes for fucking awful healers who let people sit at 51% health for 10 minutes. If you get away from things that rob you of interaction and actually focus on doing a good job, healing is pretty fun. A good healer is noticeable. Of course, you have to actually enjoy doing a good job, which I get the feeling a lot of people don't.

All that being said, I agree with Xi. You get what you played for. If you joined a guild thinking it would be easy to level a healer and get raid slots, you better actually enjoy healing or sure, it sucks. Because you never enjoyed the class in the first place, you enjoyed selfish things.

But I'm a very dedicated raider so perhaps my perspective is skewed.

Not to take away from your post because i know you are trying to make a point, but that guy needs to learn first aid.

That being said, EM only makes you a bad healer if you turn off the rest of your UI and use it exclusively. (or maybe i'm just a bad healer, who knows)