Trouble

Since the release of the expansion and the beginning of TBC raiding game it has slowly begun to dawn on people the inferiority of holy priests. It has been a slow realization by many because habits die hard and priests were the superior healers for a long long time. Not only that, but those of us on horde took time to get our Paladins to 70 and sufficiently geared. With the release of the Armory and subsequent scouring of the rosters for the top guilds, this inferiority has also been shown to not just be in theory but acted on practically by the guilds who have the most to gain by min/maxing.

In comparing the healing classes in utility and healing ability, we find the priest to be strictly inferior in nearly all capabilities. Not only does a priest provide very little utility, but even their healing is at best comparable to some of the other healers. In most cases the capabilities of the priest fall far short of every other healing class. Let's look at the various healing roles:

Multi-target healing: This is one of the strengths of the priest with Prayer of Healing. Druids and paladins lack multi-target healing (aside from tranquility). Shamans have an extremely strong multi-target heal with chain heal which is arguably a lot better than PoH since it is smart with its target selection. Its only weakness compared to PoH is that with PoH you know who you will be healing.

Single-target sustained healing (tank healing): Paladins excel at long-term sustained healing. Using Flash of Light with Blessing of Light on their target as their primary healing spell will net them almost twice the mana efficiency of the most mana efficient spells available to other classes while providing medium throughput. Priests, druids, and shaman have roughly equivalent large heals but druids come out on top with their plethora of HoTs to go along with their main heal. Shamans lose out here most likely with heals only comparable to the efficiency of druids and priests while having no enhanced while-casting mana regeneration.

Raid/spot healing: Paladins and druids both excel here in their own styles. Paladins have their super efficient flash heal with a reasonably efficient large heal that has a 2 second cast (talented). Druids have tree form and a large amount of HoTs to choose from, all being very powerful. Shaman have chain heal which is good for raid healing in any situations where lots of people are taking damage. Priests come in dead last here, with their best spot healing capabilities being a very inefficient fast heal and a sub par HoT as compared to anything a druid can provide.

After evaluating the various healing abilities each class provides, along with their mana efficiency and longevity, priests do not bring much if anything to the table that is more desirable than what another class brings. The one exception would be Prayer of Healing which is considered useful and is not quite replicated by the other classes.

Looking further, the utility of priests as compared to other healing classes is their biggest failing. Every class is asked to do things beyond their primary role. When evaluating what classes and specs to bring to your raid you have to ask: why should I bring this class/spec over another class/spec that can do a similar role? Let's evaluate what each healing class brings (this is as all-inclusive a list I could come up with a few minutes of research. I may have missed some abilities but the ones listed should cover all the key abilities):

Druid: Innervate, Rebirth, MotW, Tree of Life healing bonus, Tranquility (not counting this as a strictly healing ability because it falls outside of "normal" use and is used in emergencies)

Paladin: Blessings (more paladins = more blessings), Judgments (mainly JoW), Blessing of Protection, Auras, Lay on Hands, Consecration (does have quite a few uses), Hammer of Justice, Cleanse

Priest: Fortitude, Spirit, Shadow Protection, Shield, Dispel (defensive and offensive), Cure Disease, Shackle, Mind Control

Shaman: Totems (including the notably powerful ones such as Bloodlust and Mana Tide), Earth Shield, Earth Shock (spell interrupt), Purge

The comparable lengths of the list do not do any justice to the relative usefulness of each. Experienced raiders should be able to go down that list and see how big the difference in usefulness between each of those abilities. On top of that, much of the utility a priest provides is in buffs which can be done by a single priest in the raid. Assuming you bring your one token holy priest, the utility the rest of the holy priests provide is almost zero.

The final factor in comparing the healing classes is survivability. While this is a bigger issue in PvP, this is still a factor in raiding. Undoubtedly Paladins are the kings of healer survivability, with plate armor, blessing of protection, and divine shield. The other three classes all come in far behind. In theory, shamans have the highest survivability of the three and priests and druids have comparable survivability when factoring in bear form, shield, barkskin, and inner fire. In practice, at least in the current raiding environment, none except paladins last very long when the situation gets out of hand. Mobs hit so hard that the result is often a one or two shot with people dead before any chance of a heal landing. The result is mostly the same whether it be shaman, druid, or priest.

To summarize this analysis, we find that holy priests are inferior in almost all ways. Their healing on the whole is inferior to druids and paladins and comparable to shamans. Their utility is very limited, with most of it being covered by a single token improved divine spirit specced priest. Their survivability is on the low end of the spectrum and in practice priests have zero survivability in a chaotic situation.

The result of this is that if you investigate the top guilds in the world you'll find something that most would have thought unimaginable until recently: almost all the priests have gone shadow. Where holy priests lack, shadow priests make up for much of it. They do very good dps while providing extremely valuable utility and decent survivability. You'll also find these guilds using paladins, druids, and to a lesser extent shaman to build their healing core.

The real question here is not whether holy priests are viable enough to build your healing core with them, because they are most surely not. The question is: is the current situation the way its going to be? Is this what Blizzard intended, and if not, do they realize it and will they change it? Blizzard describes priests as "the masters of healing and preservation" yet this is most definitely not true at all currently, and in fact would be a much more accurate description applied to paladins. Should priests be angry that their role as the masters of healing has been co-opted and in fact completely usurped? Or should priests just be happy that they can do the mad dps now?

For my own part, I have gone shadow now as have the other priests in my guild besides one. Within a week of hard work to gear myself I have 973 shadow damage and I am near the top of the damage meters and being much more useful to my guild in raids than I was as holy. I also still find myself frustrated despite having an alternative to being inferior. I'm not burnt out on healing, I quite enjoy it. If I had a choice, over being shadow I'd either A.) be a paladin or b,) have the priest class brought up to par with the others. I don't have the willpower to level a paladin up to 70 so that's not an option at the moment. For now I'll continue to be a shadow priest and do my best to be useful to my guild and enjoy it as much as I can.

 

Pane

Every healing class has its unique tools. I don't find priests lacking as such. Paladins beat them in terms of mana efficiency, sure. But paladins lack in healing flexibility. Shamans have probably the worst mana efficiency, but are extremely flexible. etc etc. You can probably make a case for every healing class where they come out looking weak. Equally you could build a case where they come out looking strong.

You'll want several classes along as healers, so their strengths and weaknesses offset eachother. I don't see how shield, fortitude, spirit buff, dispells etc would ever become undesirable.

 

Hannibal777

You are comparing a priest with 3 classes not one other class. You said shaman has multi-heal capability and paladin has good heal efficiency. Whitle true, note that no single other heal class "has it all".

It isn't as if one other heal class is superior to priest in every heal situation. While shaman may be good with multi-heal, it is not the best in effciency. While paladin is good at single target endurance heal, it has no multi-heal to speak of.

Priest in fact has the most versatile heal class. It has tool for every situation which makes it strong. In raid situation it is the only other class that can take advantage of blessing of light, thus improve heal effiency a lot. The class also comes with good multi-heal. Good emergency heal in terms of shield, only rivaled by paladin's blessing of protection.

In terms of utility, none of the other hybrid classes have good CC but a priest has one for undead. Many have said this makes it invaluable previously in Naxx and now in Karazhan too.

In terms of buff, fort is arguably the strongest of all the buffs.

 

Huntemup

Only issues I see are agro and survivability issues. Most of these are improved by gear and changing healing tactics. What you should have titled the thread is, "Obsolesence of Pre TBC healing styles and Holy Priests", I certainly wouldn't tag the spec obsolete.

Priest - http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...her&n=Chastiti
Hunter - http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...her&n=Huntemup

Ikandi <Serious Casual> - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...Ganis&n=Ikandi

 

Lanthon

You're completely overlooking Prayer of Mending. Despite the cooldown being added, the mana efficiency of Prayer of Mending (when used correctly) is amazing. This is in addition to the Misdirect-type threat caused (which only Druids can match with Lifebloom). I think you're also overlooking the cast time of Greater Heal (and the hp/sec healed) compared to Healing Touch. Often times, the tank will die in a Heroic mode if relying on Healing Touch, but would have lived with Greater Heal.

That said, I agree that holy priests need a buff. Druids and Paladins can both max their healing abilities with many talent points to spare (Druids can do it before hitting level 60 even). Priests on the other hand would love to have a few more points.

 

Litany

I've been fumbling with my words and thoughts on this subject for awhile, it's good to see someone else make a post.

For my part, I have very little experience with Druid and Shaman healing in the expansion (I'm Alliance, so they're new to me.. and all our Druids are high on the feral smack). That said, are Druids and Shaman really all that much better off than Priests? If others agree, I won't argue, seeing as I have little experience, but intuitively I would think not.

Definitely, however, I see no reason to bring a second Holy priest to a raid in a utopian world where you have whatever you want of whatever class. Particularly, this is evident when compared against a Paladin. You covered pretty much the scope of it, but to reiterate: while group heals, renew, Power Word: Shield, etc., are great on paper, the truth of it is raiding comes down to spamming your most efficient heal most of the time, and then the rest you're going for highest HPS possible. Without a doubt, Paladins have efficiency down. Now, with Light's Grace, I believe with equal gear they are also the highest sustained HPS (i.e. not counting burst healing from things like NS); if this is incorrect, feel free to correct me here, but at the very least, the difference is negligible.

The problem I see is: let's say Paladins are the 'best healers', I don't think anyone could argue that this makes sense, given their additional survivability (which is extremely important in the TBC encounter's I've seen so far). However, Paladins lack an alternate tree that is valuable in a raid situation. Priests do have that tree (as do Druids and Shaman -- though to varying degrees depending on raid composition and the fight).

Obviously, this isn't good for anyone. It pigeonholes Paladins as healers, and Priests as Shadow, and perhaps Shaman/Druid as specs they'd prefer not to be. I think, the appropriate solution would be to buff either Ret/Prot trees and give them something that is absolutely vital to a raid (much like VT is for Priests). They came close with Sanctified Crusader, but as I understand it's still not all that amazing. Once Paladins have a viable secondary role, Priests could then be adjusted to the most effiecient/highest HPS/whatever healers, but maintain their low survivability, while Paladins would still remain valuable as Holy due to their high survivability (which is by no means a niche role). Some small tweaks could be afforded to Druid/Shaman as well, assuming I was right in my assumption that they're in need of help as well; if not, pack up and call it a day.

Though these are rather broad changes, it's perhaps a bit overambitious given that there will likely be no broad sweeping class changes until the next talent revamps and/or expansion. If that's the case, I suppose Priests still have Lightwell and Circle of Healing which could be changed to a talent that grants a bit more longevity/HPS (which is what we really need, not more useless gimmick heals).

Edit:
I'd definitely argue that. It's better than MotW, for sure, but when stacked up against Paladin buffs? How often do you see people taking Kings instead of Might/Wisdom/Salvation? Kings doesn't give nearly as many HP as Fort for most classes, true, but the utility of Paladin buffs is undeniable. This is nothing new though, it's always been an advantage of the Paladin class (as any longtime Horde player can tell you!). However, as he mentioned in his post, it takes a single Priest to do buffs (and even a Shadowpriest can do talented Fort). This is not an advantage of Holy Priests in a raid situation. Also, fill out your profile.

 

Kamna

If there's one thing that'll make holy priests obsolete in my opinion it's the synergy between paladins and shadow priests. With a shadow priest feeding a paladin mana through vampiric touch and spiritual attunement the paladin has to work hard to run out of mana. If you've got a choice between a guy who can keep up 1500 hps indefinitely and a guy who needs to pots, oil, and whatnot on top of chain eating pots to do that, the choice is pretty easy to me.
The problem could easily be solved by retuning either spiritual purity or vampiric touch, but fiddling with spiritual purity would most likely remove the paladin's ability to tank anything but five man dungeons - pigeon holing the paladins. Taking some of the mana gain away from vampiric touch would make shadow priests less attractive in a raid setting, also effectively pigeon holing priests.

 

Hannibal777

Very common problem. Grass seems greener on the other side when you don't know enough of "the other side".


New forum member, will get round to do it some time. Also for the record, I am a feral druid but have done enough healing to know the in and out of my class. I also have both a paladin and shaman at level 58.

 

vorda

New forum members are advised to fill out their profile before posting, as posting with an empty profile will make you loose your posting rights very quick here.

 

Northerner

Bingo. The Paladin-sPriest synergy is really just too strong.

Don't get me wrong, I love shadow priests in my raid and I even quite enjoy levelling up my alt spriest. Still, the class is causing some serious issues in raids right now and I do think there will need to be some rebalancing at some point. I'd honestly just hate to run a 25-man without at least one and preferably two.

I would hope that spiritual attunement is where the changes lie (perhaps mana only on actualy health healed) and shadow priests are mostly left alone. I'm not confident on that though.

P.S. Hannibal777: The profile here is not a suggestion but rather a house rule. I'd encourage you to read the stickies on the subject if you'd like to continue posting without interruption.

 

Thelyna

Other way around, if you lower Spiritual Attunement's return then paladins can't tank anything but raid bosses (at least not without drinking a lot). If you rework SA so that instead of 10% of all healing, it's 20% of effective healing, that would change a lot. It removes most of the ridiculous synergy between shadow priests and paladins, and also makes them more effective tanks in five-mans (if I bring a solo healer, I tend to wear most of my mitigation gear, leading to mana starvation at the end of a pull).

 

Linnet

Nah, it'd be easy to tune. Just tie in spiritual purity to righteous defense. And while you're at it, let them take normal aggro from healing - at this point in the game, it won't break anything if paladins want to get healing aggro to tank with, tanking paladins already have some of the best aggro generation in the game.

I really think that paladins are too strong in support right now. They need a tune to their passive mana regen when not tanking, a boost to their non healing trees, and to get more healing aggro. You know something's out of whack when loads of priests reroll paladins because they want to heal. Shadow priests are fine.

Having said all that, the sky isn't falling. Priests are great and versatile healers and can fill in for any of the other classes if they need to. Just because one high end raiding guild has all their priests go shadow is a single data point.

 

Trouble

Yes, I compared priests to three other classes. Through those three classes, almost all the job can do can be done better by one of those other classes. The one exception, as I stated, being Prayed of Healing. All the healing classes can do most of the roles so this isn't really a case of "jack of all trades, master of none" for the priest class. Truthfully it is: priests are inferior to bringing the other classes because priests don't offer enough to want them over another class.

Priests are in no way more versatile than any of the other healers. I wouldn't say they are less versatile either, each healing class has a similar amount of healing tools to work with. Once again it all comes back to PoH which is the one thing that priests do have to offer over other classes. However you have to ask, is it worth bringing a priest over say a paladin simply for PoH? There aren't many who would say yes.

Unless I'm mistaken, Blessing of Light only applies to Flash of Light and Holy Light. It only improves paladin healing. This serves to make paladins even stronger healers and widen the gap between them and priests.

I won't deny the usefulness of shackle in current raid content. However, it becomes null and void on any content without undead. Not only that but this role is just as served by a shadow priest. If this is your only argument that holy priests have good utility, then I think even you see how thin the veil is.


In talking about Circle of Healing, one of my arguments against it and why it is so useless is that there is always a better tool for the job. There's PoH, renew, flash heal, etc. Circle of healing is never the right tool because has too many limitations and is simply inferior to the other options. This description aptly describes holy priests as a whole. There is always a better option. Priests don't offer anything that would make them more valuable to bring over another healing class. They simply don't. Nearly everything they do can be done at least equally as good if not better by another class, with that other class also offering more utility to boot. So why bring a holy priest?

 

Lamaros

Obsolescence.

There are many threads like this. Priests are still fine and wanted for many reasons, detailed here and elsewhere.

 

Litany

I said nothing about the grass being greener for Druid or Shaman healers, which is where I noted that I lacked experience (actually I have a 60 Druid with ~tier 2 gear, but I'm not ignorant enough to think that knowledge is worth much with how drastically the raid game has changed). In fact, you'll note that I made the explicit point that perhaps Druid/Shaman healing isn't on par with Paladin healing as well. I do, however, have a decent amount of experience on Paladin healing in TBC, though I won't claim to be an expert.

Unless of course, you were using a quip I made to argue against the original poster instead of actually debating his content. In which case, well, I think the ridiculousness of that stands for itself.

For the record, I agree, Priests are not obsolete by any means. I don't think the original poster believes they are either, by the technical definition of the word. Priests, do however, have a few very visible shortcomings that need to be addressed. For example: despite all our versatility, what's something that makes you go, gee, I wish a Priest were here; I think they tried to do this with talents like Circle of Healing and Lightwell, but obviously they didn't quite hit the mark. Furthermore, Priests have two trees dedicated to healing (though with slightly different focuses), but neither (especially Holy) really have talents at the end of the tree that make you salivate; adding a decent talent or two and swapping a few talents around more obviously specialize the trees would go a long way to fixing the problems with the class/spec (23/38 builds are dumb, especially since Priests intentionally skip their 31 point Holy talent when speccing this way -- I don't believe many other classes do this).

Edit: On Spiritual Attunement: this would be a sizable nerf, I suppose, but why not make Spiritual Attunement a Protection talent (perhaps not so deep that a hybrid build couldn't pick it up)? I agree the tree could also use some other buffs, but not many Druids do tanking while resto/balance specced. Warriors can pull it off, but I think this comes as a utility of the Warrior class. I also like the solution of overheal not contributing to the mana returned. And also, I agree Paladins should have their healing threat changed to normal values. This is a decent buff to any raid group I think, if someone's going to pull healing agro, it might as well be the Paladin. And as someone hinted at, I don't think Paladins are going to be solo healing *and* tanking any instances that people care about.

 

TheOnly

THe OP is one of the funnier jokes I've read in a while.

Talk about circular logic.

You know, my friend has a BMW M3. Talk about a useless car! Its not as fast in a straight line as a corvette, a lotus handles better on turns, and it doesn't have the cargo space that my A4 has. I can't think of a single time i'd want to use it!

Ok enough sarcastic analogies. And back to reality.

 

Liar

But how can any class in the game look good compared when compared against *three* other classes? The comparison is not fair at all, is it?

 

Theros

Trouble:
I think you should add Inspiration/Ancestral Healing to the list. Those are very nice to decrease spike dmg and improve long term healing efficiency.

 

Jayde

Threads like this are kinda silly IMO. Too much self-loathing going around.

Priests are great. Always my first choice for primary healers as a raid leader and generally irreplacable. If I don't have one of my better Priests in a raid, I know I'm in for a rough time.

Compare all you want, but Priests are still fine.

If you're trying to justify why you spec'd shadow, you really don't have to do it here--or at all. Just say you wanted to spec Shadow. But, really, there is nothing wrong with Priest healing at all. Priests are invaluable as main healers and I don't see that ever changing.

(On a related note, I really don't see what the big fuss is in regard to Shadow Priests + Paladins. Paladins "never" run out of mana anyway. Never have. They're the nearly-infinite source of spam heals, and have been for the last year or two of raiding. Shadow Priests keep Paladins from having to waste money on mana pots, which is always a plus I guess, but I don't think it fundamentally changes things in a game-breaking way.)

 

◊ Cadfael

What the OP says is that each aspect of the priest is at least surpassed by one of the other three healing capable classes.

In the case of the paladin, it's almost ALL aspects of a healing priests abilities that this class can do better now, and even then adds his blessings and a far more utility to the table than the holy priest.

This is rather frustrating for long-time healing priests that just have to spend all 61 points into disc and holy to be effective, and then seeing one outhealed (palas casts are faster !) by a "hybrid" class that only puts 41-45 points into their respective healing tree.

In case of raid stacking and min/maxing, it really is not worth anymore bringing more than one holy priest (actually rather a discipline with divine spirit) for buff and AOE heal reasons. For fortitude, almost all shadow priests have that anyway and being the party mana batteries with a rather good to very good DPS output and the ability to still heal should the emergency arise, are just worth that much more.


So the situation has reversed post TBC. Be shadow, get invited in raid. Be holy, compete with other priests for the one single slot reserved.

Granted, old habits die hard and many still see the holy priest (actually holy/disc) as the master of healing. If that definition happens to be "good allrounder, not excelling anywhere" (isn't that the definition of hybrid/jack of all trades, master of none??) then this still holds. However every single aspect can now be done better by at least any of the three other classes. Sometimes the difference is not that large, but in some cases it is. Even pre-TBC, no priest could rival a druid healing with HoTs for example. (I'm not saying that's bad)

I'm myself a priest, playing the class since europe launch. I was main healer from MC through Naxx. I was one of the best priests in my raidgroups and I was one of those MCing at Razuvious, Faerlina. I set up the healer distribution for Patchwerk. But I heal no longer. Since 5 days I'm shadow now. Not because I use this as an excuse to finally do this in a raid. I don't want to, actually. I want to heal. But why bother if others do it better and I still have to forego all my solo-abilities and be freekill in PVP and still only "medocre" (ok, good, but not best) in healing ?

Priest is no longer the master of healing. For master we are no longer. We're maybe the most versatile healer, but you still have to ask yourself where that shines in which encounter/instances when you min/max. And that, quite frankly, is a huge blow in the face of an already "weak" class/spec, imho.

All the priest forums are currently filling up with threads regarding this. About half doesn't agree to this and half do. As I see it, it only gets worse with gear progression (what little of that is there, that is). Grab a holy paladin with a dress (they shine even more when wearing cloth !!) and go see for yourself.

"Hybrids" > "Master", sad fact of priest healing, at the moment.

YMMV.

 

Jayde

When Blizzard gives Paladins HoTs, PW:S, PoH, GH, PW:F, and Inspiration (among other things) then Priests will be obsolete. But, as that will never happen, it's somewhat of a lost cause to argue a non-existant scenario.

 

Litany

Blizzard did give Paladins PW:S, they gave them a better version. It's called Blessing of Protection. Sure, you wouldn't use it on a tank, but you wouldn't use PW:S on a tank either. It doesn't 'protect' against enough damage to be used as an 'oh crap' button anymore. It is a decent buffer for ourselves before impending AEs to make up for our lacklustre base HP, though!

I posted this in another thread just a moment ago, my healing numbers the past 2 weeksish:

Greater Heal: 5505033 healing done, 72%
Flash Heal: 1319725 healing done, 17%
Renew: 547663 healing done, 6%
Prayer of Healing: 52459 healing done, 0%
Binding Heal: 38462 healing done, 0%

Yeah. Renew and Prayer of Healing: the saviors of the Priest class. PW:F, as covered time and time again, is not something that a Holy Priest is limited to doing. A Shadowpriest will have the same exact Fort as a Holy Priest. And so I guess we have Inspiration, though with smaller raid sizes, it's unlikely Inspiration is up any majority of the time (whereas Devotion Aura is always up, though it contributes much less armor, of course).

And I'm not sure why you mention Greater Heal. Paladins have Light's Grace, I believe they have higher HPS than a Priest with equal gear, if not it's quite close.

 

Liar

Alright. Let me show you the foolishness of this argument by taking it ad absurdum:

Hunters are useless because Warlocks got the better pets, Mages AoE better and Rogues do better direct damage. Agree?

Let's just assume you are correct in that assessment. Even if you are not, it doesn't really matter. Exactly what does said Pala do with the leftover 20-16 points? Spec for utility I am sure. Exactly how is that different from Priests that split their points between Holy and Disciple for Healing and Utility? Also, honest question because I really don't know. But do Shadow Priests have to spend all their 61 points into Shadow to compete with the other DPS classes or is it more like 41-45?

You could probably argue the Hybridity of a Priest but those arguments usually are too longwinded so it's not worth it - atleast for me.

 

Hannibal777

As you said it, it can be done better by one of the classes. That means, for example, paladin is good at healing efficiency, shaman is good at multi-heal, etc. In another word, the other classes are more specialized. No other class is good at everything. Sounds fair?

Perhaps but definitely different healing tools. As a druid, I would love to have a good "oh sh*t" heal that both the paladin and priest has. (BoP and shield) Nature swiftness just doesn't cut it. As a shaman I envy the healing efficiency of other classes. All the healing classes have their weaknesses.

My understanding is that blessing of light boost all holy spells and priest heals with holy.

Well name one CC that is useful in all situations. Sheep works only on humanoids and beasts. Trap doesn't last as long. Sap is pre-combat and humanoid only. Fear is not useful in crowded areas. But I would think all can agree that CC is better than no CC.

So shadow priest has access to it but that does not diminish holy priest's access to it. And if I understand right, you are primarily comparing holy priest with other healers. Other healers do not have shackle and in fact compared with other healers, shackle is probably the best CC.

Finally to turn your arguement around, if holy priest can multi-heal better than shaman, better single target heal efficiency than paladin, better HoTs than druid, has CC that is not undead only (perhaps works on all mobs?). What does that do to balance? Something to think about.

 

Tristanian

This seems to be the case as far as I'm concerned as well. The comparison versus druids is what really cracked me up. Fact is, holy priests are still the best single target healers when it comes to mana efficiency/healing output after paladins (and I agree that this is an issue but I don't agree that it warrants so much QQing) with way superior heals both speed wise and amount healed wise, than druids or shamans. They have an amazing AoE heal (though mana inefficient) that is still very good for situations when you are getting tons of damage in a limited amount of time. Most importantly their AoE heal isn't on a 10 minute cd. As far as utility goes they certainly beat us on almost every field.

It's funny how many priests want to go shadow because of encounters such as Gruul, then come back and claim that "raid stacking and min/maxing" dictates that shadow is better because of dps and VT. In all seriousness if you think that holy priests are obsolete because of dps limited fights then you might be surprised when you lose your spots to them.

Each class has a variety of healing styles that compliment each other quite decently. If you want to be successful and progress you need to make the best of them.