Savos

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.

 

XI-

So what? I constantly see these complaints about you don't understand what its like to be a healer, etc, etc. You're right, I don't, I hate healing, thus I didn't roll a healing class. By contrast I know some people who absolutely love healing. After I moved from archimonde one of our priests from discordia rolled a warlock. After about 6 weeks at level 60, he rerolled a dwarf priest because he didn't like playing warlock. Or the paladin I play with that I sometimes have to berate into taking out his sulfuras to hit the random idiot we're trying to kill so they die faster, because he likes healing in groups.

Yes, priest sucks in disorganized PvP. No priests are not good solo farmers. Neither are paladins or resto spec druids. Group with a mage or someone for some serious AoE farming and you can outdo pretty much any solo person.

My main is a rogue, but I spend less than 10 hours a week on him. Is it because he's boring? Or I don't like to play him? No, there's no gear upgrades outside of raiding, and thus the only thing I can do is farm gold or reputation endlessly for no reason.

The difference is when someone asks you to play your priest you say they are "guilting" you into playing your priest. No, they're asking you to do something because they need a healer. Warriors can't heal, and neither can warlocks. When someone asks me to play my rogue, say for DM tribute, or they want to do a stealth run or something, they aren't "guilting" me into. They require a set of skills that my class has.

 

diospadre

More likely their guilds are just shitty.

 

◊ Praetorian

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.

 

XI-

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.

 

◊ Praetorian

Oh, I agree with you.

From a guild's perspective, if you recruit a guy because you need another priest, but then he plays his rogue alt at every possible opportunity rather than working to improve his priest, of course the guild is going to be pissed. If he'd been a rogue, he never would've gotten in to begin with.

If your enjoyment comes from raiding and you picked a class solely to maximize your raiding opportunities, then I don't think you have a leg to stand on when you complain about being pigeonholed.

 

Savos

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.

 

• Zellyn

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."

<08-07-09 02:09>[Velth] This is the behavior of a benefactor of the EJ forums?

 

◊ Praetorian

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.)

 

• Zellyn

That and balancing PvP and PvE is extremely tricky. It positively drives me up the wall that I can top a damagemeters chart at 57 in a Rend run, but in BGs I'm like the local whipping boy (AV admitedly is the worst possible BG for a rogue, but also the only one I want rewards from). Being a pure PvE sword spec doesn't help either. <_<

<08-07-09 02:09>[Velth] This is the behavior of a benefactor of the EJ forums?

 

decimus

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.

 

• Arawethion

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

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Taeme

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.

you're the one that decided to trust me

 

Torael_7

I agree with this, although I've found that I'm probably one of the only healers on the planet that actually enjoys combat (ie, PvP) healing. I dont find PvE healing quite as fun, most of the time. Perhaps having the shaman's array of tactical nukes to apply surgically and at my discretion so as to best aid those I'm healing helps keep the combat medic role fun...

 

Assassyn

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)

 

Revenj

I've been playing a Mage since beta. Mage is an amazingly in-depth class for PvP, but in PvE the Mage is quite linear. Considering my recent shift to be a more "PvE centric" player, I decided to play a Priest.

I love it. The sense of responsibility. Knowing that you can indeed make the difference between a wipe or a win. When my current guild was learning BWL (which is quite recently actually), I would design the healing for each fight... sometimes things would go wrong with healing and I would tell myself "omg, if only I was healing". With those sentiments in mind, I made a Priest so I could personally shoulder the responsibility of healing the raid.... it sure is more exciting/rewarding than spamming Frostbolts.

Infact, Ive noticed this trend where a person re-rolls a healer class because they want a more decisive role in raids.

One last note, I think people vastly underestimate the dmg of SW:Pain over the duration of the fight.
My Mage and my Priest are in different guilds (both killed Nef). The Priest class leader of my Priest's guild, constantly reminds us to put SW:P in the healer channel. Its amazing to see the boss mob always have 5-6 SW:P stacked on him for the whole fight.

 

subscience

Hehe, join the club. I had 2 60 Mages and a 43 Mage in retail and another one in beta. Also, a 60 Shaman and 30ish Shaman too. All on the same server, no less. <_<


Edit- And my friends are asking me to roll another Mage on Mal'Ganis. :unsure:

 

◊ Kaubel

Gurg said it already. Sure people pick a class because they like a certain playstyle, but things change for some of those classes in the endgame. Druids in EQ had the same problems. In the early going, they were autonomous and efficient, but later found themselves gimped and not really needed for hardcore raiding.

Still, I don't see why priests would feel special in this regard. Feral druids are in the exact same boat. What we need to see are more opportunities for these "specialty" builds to contribute to large raids instead of always telling them, "You're a healing class so heal."

 

XI-

I've got 2 60 warriors for you.

Here's a really scary thought I had the other day. Almost a year ago, before the honor system ever came out, I was running around with over 6khp unbuffed, and ~1100AP with BS, and before they changed wrath I had like 26% crit in addition to those two, and ~50-75 all resistances.

 

XI-

Or we need blizzard to admit that they have a PvE based game and PvP is just a sideshow.

 

subscience

Ugh, yea... A friend of mine that quit WoW a while back (as soon as the weapon speed normalization change went in) came back a few days ago. He watched me play on my Warrior a bit and noted that my damage seemed really sub-par. I showed him my gear and he said: "Wow, you should be hitting tons harder with your gear. I used to crit for way more than you with just an AR."

Then I had to tell him that Warriors got nerfed six ways from Sunday since he left. It made me cry a little. :(

 

subscience

I think it's worth noting that a lot of new players get lulled into playing a healing class because Blizzard has given WoW healers a plethora of non-healing skills. They try these classes out and are amazed at their versatility in not only soloing but in groups as well. This is the class that people seem to fall in love with.

However, as pointed out a few times in the thread, once you hit 60 and become an active raider, you hit a wall on two fronts: First, a lot of guilds ask their healers to spec a certain way for the benefit of the raid. Obviously, this detracts from that healer's soloability and PvP skill set. Secondly, raid items for healers tend to further pidgeon-hole healers into the heal-bot role by giving them only +healing and such rather than a more well-rounded +damage/healing.

A lot of people will put up with this for a while, but eventually they realize that they're not having any more fun. I know a lot of guilds that are letting their healers spec however they like and don't mind giving Priests a ZHC or RoVP either. Thankfully, AQ has some very good sets for healing classes that address the issue of itemization pidgeon-holing healers.

 

◊ Praetorian

EM makes me a much better healer.

I have it set to 90% threshold so that it only misses someone if they barely have a paper cut. I would never automate targetting/healing through EM. It's just information, and the very same information that I used to have to work harder to get.

(Decursive is unnecessary. I keep 20 people free of poison and disease using the default UI and manual targeting/casting, and it never feels hard.)

Before EM, I had the whole raid of party windows on my screen, and I had to spend much of my time scanning through them for people who were low on health so I would know who needed healing. I was doing all that scanning to learn two pieces of information: 1) Who has the lowest % health in the raid; and 2) whose health just dropped sharply (and thus is likely to drop again in the very near future)? Staying on top of that information took probably 60-70% of my attention at any given time in a hectic fight. EM does that for me, and presents it in a form that I can easily see peripherally, allowing me to focus on other things that are happening. I can react faster when Firemaw decides to be clever and teleport the MT into the middle of the lab. I can see that guy who just got punted by Rag flying through the air out of the corner of my eye, target him, and start casting a heal since I know he's going to be in the lava soon. I can see the Wyrmguard turn away from the warrior and start heading for the warlock and start a heal before he's taken a single point of damage, so that the heal can land right after the first melee hit and buy the warlock enough time for another warrior to save him. And so forth.

I like all of the above, and I find it to be a lot of fun. I don't think it's boring, and I don't understand people who do. The ones who complain about boredom also tend to be the same ones who have automated their UIs and just mash one decursive/heal macro every few seconds for 3 hours a night. Those people would probably be better off switching classes, mostly because their laziness would rapidly be revealed once they had to DPS.

 

subscience

More information is NEVER a bad thing. But an AddOn can't make a judgement call for you. That's what separates the good healers from the mediocre healers, in my opinion.

 

GIJebus

I rolled a priest to get into groups :(

Actually I rolled a priest because during the couple weeks and 25 levels in OB, I was a warrior, and the healing was rather awful and it was hard to find a priest, so I figured I'd fill the slot.

I think the greater problem is that priest are a one spell trick, gogo Flash Heal, fortunatly the priest changes will make gheal our best friend. You can't imagine the frustration there is in seeing a tank down 2500 hp and pooling up a gheal that'll hit just as they get down to 3000 hp, but them bam, three people go in with heals and if you're unlucky you just blew 1000 mana. I hope that after the priest changes, we can assign healing to where priest will take care of the tank while others watch whomever, therefore mana waste isn't terrible and nobody dies.

The SW:P sounds like a good idea and I believe it's been brought up before. 6 priest can manage 5000 damage every 15 seconds or so for the cost of one flash heal.

As content comes, it seems the priest roll expands. For instance we will be mana burning in AQ, and disease and dispeling will never go away.

Reguarding addons, I don't use any besides an untouched Raid Assist. It can lead to mana waste and potentialy losing someone in the raid that could have hung at low health for too long (assuming the healers in their group are dead, because if they're not watching their group they should be shot). But I can see no reason this could ever make me a lesser healer because it requires a keen eye for examining health bars, positioning, the rate at which health is lost, debuffs, and all that wonderful junk.

In good fights I'm dancing all over the keyboard which is why I get a kick out of being a priest.