You don't shield your tanks after Mortal Strikes to prevent them from dying on the next 1 or 2 swings by the mob? Exactly which 1.5/instant healing spell heals for twice the amount of a Shield? I honestly can't think of any but NS/HT but those are far from spammable with their 3 min CD.

They do. But exactly what do you expect a Paladin to do to heal burst damage? LoH once an hour?

EDIT:
BoL only boost the Pala heals. http://thottbot.com/s32770

Well, Hunters have better pets, as far as I know, if you're counting DPS. I've played a Hunter before TBC, and they sure as hell had the same problem as Priests though. I can't say if that's still the case, but why do you think most efficient raid compositions in Naxx only brought maybe 2 Hunters except for Gluth, and they brought 8 Rogues? This is exactly the position Priests are fearing now, and is his whole point. Excellent example.

You can check my spec out in my armory profile if you'd like, it's a common healer spec. I can do nothing but heal. Can't tank, can't DPS. I guess you could consider Imp. Divine Spirit a utility talent though. The fact that our healing talents are spread between two over rather weak trees has always been a problem with the Priest class barring us from say, speccing 41 Holy/20 Shadow.

Shadowpriests generally spend 41-45 talents as you say, and the rest in Discipline to gain some moderate DPS benefit, but mostly for the Healing benefit incase it's called on. Shadowpriests are fine, maybe too fine.

Edit: Replying to your latest post
Generally? No. I'll already have a Greater Heal casting when a Mortal Strike goes off, I'll let it land. It'll heal a bit over 2k, and that's more than a PW:S. I'll wait ~1s, then start casting another Great Heal (this insures that my next Greater Heal will land just as MS fades).

If I wasn't casting any heal at the time the time the MS landed, and the tank is almost dead, yeah, I'd probably PW:S. But it's only marginally better than Flash Heal. My Flash Heal hits about 1.1k on an MS'd tank. My PW:S absorbs about 1600 (I think that's being generous, I'm not online and can't remember the precise value offhand though). I guess 500 extra HP is really nice. Sort of.

In the line you quoted, I said that Paladins have approximately the same, if not higher, heals per second than a Priest. How would a Paladin have any problem dealing with burst damage, that a Priest wouldn't have a problem with? That doesn't seem to make sense, unless I'm missing something.

Further clarification about Holy Light: My buddy's Holy Light hits about 3900-4k, and he has similiar +heal values to me (1.4k). I can't say whether or not that's with BoL on (if any Paladins want to clarify here, that'd be nice; he has the Opera healing libram). My Greater Heal does ~4400. HL @ 3.9k, 2s cast is 1950heals per second. Greater Heal @ 4.5k (rounding up here!), 2.5s cast is 1800 heals per second.

Maybe you're confused that Flash Heal has more heals per second than Greater Heal? It doesn't. My Flash does 2200ish, that's ~1450heals per second.

BoP is on a 5 minute cooldown, cannot be chained due to Forebearance, and in no way serves the same purpose as PW:S. Never has, never will. To say that it's a "better version" of PW:S is very short-sighted.

Renew is terribly underrated and does wonders, regardless of what % it was of your healing. Honestly, it doesn't even matter what % it was of your healing, because that ignores its functional benefits.

As an example, people talk about how great Warriors are because they have a 10s Shield Wall once every 30 minutes, which they maybe use once or twice a night (if that) depending on the situation. It doesn't matter how often you use something if the fact that you have it is considerably beneficial in certain scenarios.

Inspiration is a simply massive buff, and always has been extremely good. It is even better now in the age of Druid tanks, where you're adding a huge chunk of armor.

GH is still the most reliable way to -consistantly- land big heals right when the MT gets hit with some [insert uber 8-10k hit of doom here] to bring him back up to a safe level for the incoming crushing blow 1 second later. It has a higher +healing coefficient than Holy Light and slightly higher base value in addition to that, and as such will always have an advantage in that regard.

Either way, I think it's pretty fruitless to go on a whole "healing Priests are useless, let's all go Shadow" crusade. I think it's clear that certain elements of the Priest toolset could use some work (Binding Heal, for instance, is a joke... Circle of Healing is still rather lackluster, and Lightwell even moreso) but that hardly means Priests are "useless" or "obsolete" in the slightest.

Are you talking about 10 man or 25 man raid? In 10 man, it is almost ideal to have 1 of each class.

For 25 man raid, it is debatable how many holy priests you need. But just assume for the moment that it is ideal to bring one and only one holy priest to 25 man raid. Now consider what is ideal for other classes.

Is it good to have more than one Moonkin? More than on prot warrior? More than one marks hunter? (some hunter may even argue no point in bringing hunter if not because of tranquil shot) More than one demon lock?

For min/max purpose is it neccessary for a certain spec to be desirable in more than one in a raid for that spec to be balance and viable?

You're just making a fool out of yourself here. The answer to all these questions is: Yes. The best (and only) reason to have hunters in a raid these days is Misdirection. Sometimes the freezing and slowing traps come in handy, but are never necessairy. In any fight where Misdirection does not help, yes, if I have the choice, I'd not bring a single hunter.

Each healing class has unique abilities that make them important for a raid. The one and only function you desperately want a holy/disc priest in your raid are imp forti and imp spirit buff. That's it. There is no healing area where a priest is better then another healing class, which is pretty sad imho.
The same is true for druids though. Having zero druids in a healing setup doesn't hurt at all, as long as some bear or kitty can provide imp motw.

In another thread someone posted the ideal healing setup, which is something like: 4 Paladins, 1 Priest, 2 Shamans, 1 Druid.

In the end gear/player will make a big difference. It was written above that 'I feel bad about a raid without one of my best priests'. Well, that is mostly the case cause Priests are used to heal and they rolled the class cause they planned to heal. If you give a guy like that a 70 Paladin with equal gear, he will heal more and die less frequently to random stuff.
Sad, but true.

There is nothing debatable about how many holy priests you need in a 25 man raid. You normally have 3-4 priests altogether with 1-2 of them being shadow depending on how much dps/mana intensive the fight is. You could probably get away with 0 shadowpriests if u wanted to. It's all about being flexible in your setup. There are no absolutes and no theoretical "ideal" setups, those look good on paper but not always in action.

PW:S has a Weakened Soul debuff and cannot be chained either. Much lower duration on it, but nevertheless, it can't be chained. They don't serve the same purpose, but any Priest will tell you that PW:S is nearly useless. Bringing it up is silly.

I'm not sure what advantages renew has that healing numbers can't illustrate? It adds 200ish heals per second. It's efficient, but only if you're guaranteed to get the full benefit. The point of the numbers was to show how little it's used. It's a decent heal to toss out when you need to move around a lot, or on Warlocks who are lifetapping. The illustrious role of Holy priests: heal the Warlock, really efficiently (well, almost as efficient as a Paladin anyways). Just kidding, but honestly, it's not really all that great.

Holy Light is just as reliable as Greater Heal. And it casts faster. I don't think Holy Light fizzles every now and then, or anything. Okay, it heals 500 less (it's still higher heals per second though). That's not a big deal on your cited frightening 10k hits of doom, though.

And yes, for the second time, Inspiration is nice. It's unreliable though. I believe you pointed out that the advantage of Greater Heal was that it's more reliable than Holy Light? Well, that's not really true, but you're definitely not counting on Inspiration for anything. It is nice when it's up though, like I said. There's not much else to say here.

Finally, I really wish you'd stop with the strawman argument. This isn't a secret ploy so that we can all spec Shadow. I'm Holy, I want to be Holy. I want to be good at my job. Also, if you'll reread over my posts, you note that I pointed out that I do not think Holy Priests are obsolete. We do have a few decent abilities (i.e. Imp. DS), and healers are always in short supply. But, I do agree with what you said. We have many useless abilities that need to be replaced with talents that improve our single target healing, and maybe some survivability (Disc for survivability talents, Holy for healing improvement talents, please-- no more random placement).

This is precisely the case. Is this intended/balanced? I don't know. As someone pointed out, we probably shouldn't have 3 Holy Priests and 2 Shadowpriests in a raid, that's taking other class/spec's spots. But we're definitely weaker raid healers than Paladins: in this, I have no doubt (though admittedly it isn't a huge gap, but it's a painful one). The encounters and numbers illustrate this quite well, in today's world of high output healing and high area damage.

Show me a single class with a single ability that can't be worked around, and that is _always_ useful.


Hunters still do good dps, never draw agro, and don't suffer dmg unless a boss is designed in such a way that it can't be avoided. Because of this, and the fact that they don't have to reposition very often, they have a lot more dps time on the fights then melee classes, at nearly 0 mana spent by the healers. Yesterday we had a hunter (poorly geared) along in kara that ranked something like 4th in dps, but was well on top in terms of total dmg done. I believe his repairbill was around 40 silver for the whole night.

Ehm. What? An instant max rank heal "just doesn't cut it"? Man you must really be struggling. Nature's Swiftness is, hands down, one of the best "oh shit" heals in the game. I'd take it over a priest's shield anyday.

Horrible thread.

Not the OP per se. But the thread as a whole is terrible.
Worthy of WoW Boards argumentation comparing one class to the strengths of 3 while ignoring their weaknesses.

The "completeness" is what makes a priest a worthy raid contribution.

I had a similar thread in mind for a long time, good thing someone started it.

To all guys claiming holy priests are fine:
- with all the respect, I am not saying warlocks/mages have no clue about priest class; but there is many things you are missing. Take an example, I spend good chunk of time explaining yeasterday, to a warrior, why shield is pretty much useless in MT healing. He kept using the argument that when tank is low, 1.5k extra hp (from shield) would be a real life saver; I failed to picture my healing routine where I chain cast GHeals (and interrupt) and simply cannot afford 1sec global cooldown. Its not something easy to explain and math does not always give you full picture. As someone said, dps is math, but healing is an art.

- note the title of thread: RAID situation. I am entering god-mode when healing in 5 mans, just cause I am so flexible. Druid will miss fast heals, palas will miss HoTs and multitarget heals, etc. 5 mans typically require flexibility from single healer that only priests could give. But, in raid situation, everyone does what it can do best. For example, druids are probably in tree form hence concentrating on hots, and swiftmending on spike damage. Their weakness (lack of fast heals) is irrelevant as there are other classes doing it better.

- about unique priest skills:
-Even if you wanted to use the shield, one priest is still enough to do it. PoH heals only 5 people anyway, so there is 20 others to heal. Druids hotting whole raid typically are way better. Example of "vael fights" - netherspite: 80% of my healing is renew (other is prayer of mending).
-Prayer of mending, on gruul fight there are 2 people that can use it. MT and OT. Now, there can be only 1 prayer at the time, jumping between them. This is how it works, the prayer will not jump to a target that has it already - hence it will jump to a rogue and probably get wasted. Again you need 1 priest to keep it.

- the argument about warlocks and hunters: surely they are doing the same thing (damage) and in some scenarios warlocks might be better and sometimes worse. But normally you would bring just couple of which cause each addtional warlock gives you soulstone, CoE, CoS imp buff, and each addtional hunter gives you misdirection, threat free damage, TA etc. Now, we just want the same thing, to make us at par with other classes. Once you have 1 holy priests, you dont need any more of them. If warlock had no extra utility and had exactly the same dps as hunter (that has tons of utilities), which one would you take? Thats how priests are feeling now.

ekhm, swiftmend any1?



once I have 1k shadow damage gear, I am speccing shadow as well. Note, I will get that gear by healing in 5 man, but for raids I am staying shadow.

Truth.

These days there are very few abilities that are unique to one class and absolutely irreplaceable. The ones that used to be irreplaceable in vanilla WoW have largely been rendered replaceable by new things: Curse of Weakness now substitutes for Demoralizing Shout and doesn't stack, Wounding Poison substitutes for Mortal Strike, etc.

So yes, Greater Heal can be replaced by Holy Light, Renew can be replaced by Rejuv, Prayer of Healing can be replaced (roughly) by Chain Heal. I think the argument that Blessing of Protection replaces Power Word: Shield is extremely weak, but even if it were true, that's just par for the course. Everyone's replaceable these days.

The strengths of Priests as healers are that they have better endurance and efficiency than a shaman, better multi-target healing and HoTs than a paladin, better burst healing than a druid, and more flexibility than any of those classes. Yes, if you like, you can theorycraft a raid in which they're not necessary. But you can do that for any class.

On a meta-note, I predict that the first post from an EJ member in this thread will be an announcement that it's being locked.

You have 4 priests in a 25 man raid?!?!

edit: no need for me to fan the flames.

I'm one of the priest->paladin converts.

Did my share of priest-healing over the old instances, all the way from coping with the burst-damage of pre-nerf Stratholme Barons Mortal Strike to seeing C'thun Pew Pew people down. I'm not the most experience healer around, but I've had a relatively wide experience on healing with different classes in WoW. Beside priest and (my current) paladin, I've also done bit of shamanism, and borrowed a druid for raidhealing on a couple of occasions - but that's neither here nor there.


I feel that paladin heals, while extremely powerful in keeping up a single target, are no where nearly powerful enough to cope with bursty AoE stuff. I've been whining the lack of PoH and Renew on countless of occasions, since FoL HPS just isn't enough at times, and picking people up one by one with HL needs good a bit too good intuition at times. "If I just had renew to slap on that rogue, and PoH to heal 10k HP right now" - pay me a heroic token for each time I've said that, and I'll have enough to get a spare melee-DPS gearset to dust in my bank. Stuff like the Fire-nova / Fire-aura dragonkin by the end of Arcatraz can be very painful healing experience for pally, should you have some melee with you.
However I have been praising my survivability as a pally on just as many occasions. Be it healing in hellfire with a bubble on or simply offtanking a mob or two while healing, I don't have enough fingers in my hands to count the times a priest would've died where I continued healing.
And yes ofcourse, I almost definitely would've been able to pull of healing anything I've done with my pally with my priest instead. Sometimes it would've been harder, sometimes easier, and always very different. I do feel that priests "require" a better organized group for pulling off stuff though, due to extra squishyness there. Not much you can do without trusting your teammates in any case.

As an added little note, I'm predicting that that I'll swap back to priest when next expansion comes out, since healing with one was somewhat more enjoyable overall. This is ofcourse just me, and your sources of joy may vary.

Sometimes people object to an arguement rather than saying holy priests are fine. I object to the OP reasoning but I am not fit to judge if holy priest is fine as I do not have a high level priest.

But even if a holy priest is not fine, it has to be well argued to show that it is the case. People shouldn't just jump on the band wagon because you agree with the conclusion.

This is all covered elsewhere, with a lot more cogent argument behind things as well.

We really don't need a thread, where it is stated that class x is obseleted, by class y. Lets get some more lucid discussion in the multitude of other threads we already have.