• constantius

Alright, here's a chance to make a difference:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> We don't need a priest anymore....

I got a PM from a helpful person who pointed me to the thread (thanks, btw!). I don't read the WoW general forums at all because they make my brain bleed profusely through my sinus cavity. Still. He's asking for real feedback.

So ... if given the chance ... what would you change about priests (healing priests) in raids, and why? I'll compile a list of all the suggestions and post it, and obviously anyone else who wants to jump in can do so. Let's say ... 36 hours? Friday afternoon I'll take a list of everything we decide / compile, and post it in a nicely bolded, itemized list for GC to read. Anyone who wants to can obviously add to it on the WoW general forums: please don't feel any need to check in if you just want to jump in the fray.

I'll start off:

Circle of Healing: adding a cooldown is a heavy-handed and silly way to fix a problem. Healers don't work well with short-lifetime cooldowns. We're not dps classes running a rotation. If you don't want us to spam it, make it non-spammable another way. Either fix the mana cost (while increasing healing so efficiency isn't changed), or completely rework the spell. Adding a cooldown is a hack solution.

Power Word: Shield: having two cooldowns on this spell is obnoxious. Weakened Soul on its own is a fine deterrent to spamming the spell on a single-target (esp. for PvP applications). Remove the 4-second ICD on the spell and let Discipline priests rejoice.

Renew: fix the coefficient. It's our only HoT; it shouldn't have less efficiency than Flash Heal.


(Snowy edit: I cut all these posts out for this new thread. Please don't report this thread or people for wishlisting. This is a temporary thread, and will get locked after a consensus is reached and sent, because generally we don't engage in wishlisting on these forums. This is a special case since GC is specifically asking for it and it's a much better chance to make an impact with one clear concise post rather than a bunch of noise.)

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Alv!ra

Nice idea Constantius (and the anonymous "helpful person").

I agree with the three you've posted so far, and will just add my views on a few of our spells:

Hymn of Hope: The concept is nice and in accordance with our oofsr mana regen rhythm, but the mana gain from it does not warrant it's use enough. As many of our other spells it is highly situational, but the fact that it's channelled hinders our responsive capability while using the spell. A slight buff to the mana return from it would make it more useful in a number of situations. A solution could be to let the mana regen be 2% every second, but shorten the duration from 8 sec to 5 or 6.

Divine Hymn: The damage reduction on enemy targets cripples it's PvE uses.

Lightwell: Raid members are still reluctant to use this at all, and the fact that you target it when using it, makes them miss precious DPS time. Also increasing the range that it can be used at would make it more viable, since running to it is also a strong deterrent for its use.

I don't consider Holy Priests to be unbalanced as such, so to "fix" any of our current abilities, you will obviously be looking for places to "nerf" us a bit. Obviously the CD to CoH (or any other changes to it) will affect our healing output negatively, but in case you'd like to, say, increase the coefficient on Renew, tweak Prayer of Healing and Lightwell, you may be looking for another place to adjust us. One such place could be PoM:
Prayer of Mending: It's one of our most powerful tools, and we all love it. However, it is incredibly effective on fights where there's steady, yet low, aoe damage on the raid - for example on Sapphiron. Making it only trigger off a certain amount of damage, for example 2000, would make it bounce around slower on such fights thus lowering the healing done from it, whilst still keeping it's good use for bouncing between tanks.

 

Lazare

One of the things I love about being a priest is the huge toolbox of abilities. Depending on how we spec/glyph we get all sorts of instants, fast heals, slow heals, channeled heals, shields, AoE heals, and HoTs. It's great! I accept that we shouldn't be as good at any one aspect of healing as paladins, shamans, or druids - but we should be decent at everything. Unfortunately, we're not.

HoTs: Our only real HoT is Renew (ignoring glyphed PoH, of which more later), but sadly it's a very weak skill. It has a high cost, low coefficient, most key disc and holy talents don't apply to it and its associated glyph and talent are both lackluster and unimaginative. If we find ourselves in a situation that really calls for a HoT, we're able to bring very little to the table. Certainly druids should be better than us, but not this much better. As things stand, all too often the best solution for a priest is to use a FH instead of Renew, and that seems antithetical to the core class ethos. At a minimum Renew needs a straight up buff to cost, duration, and/or coefficient. Even nicer would be something more imaginative - perhaps a secondary effect? Also the glyph, in particular, needs a rethink. However it's done, priests should be able to toss up a useful HoT.

AoE/Raid Healing: This is actually a fairly large problem, hidden for now (at least for Holy) by the undeniably overpowered CoH. Disc lacks good AoE healing tools, and once CoH gets a cooldown Holy will be in a similar boat. The irony here is that priests actually have always had an iconic AoE heal (indeed, arguably the iconic AoE heal) - PoH. Especially when glyphed it's a really nifty spell - but it's also a really weak spell, and, at best, extremely situational. The healing is decent, but its extremely slow, expensive, and difficult to use due to the archaic party restrictions. That's too many drawbacks for a vanilla heal. Again, Shamans should be better than us at this, and I'm certainly not asking for PoH to be buffed up to pre-nerf CoH levels. However, we do need more ability to AoE heal, and it pains me to see PoH relegated to 5 mans and niche uses in 10 mans. Luckily, we can fix both issues at once. First, PoH really needs to be faster, probably by making Divine Fury apply to it, but just reducing the cast time would work too. Second - it should be probably be made a "first class" heal by making some or all of the following talents apply to it: Renewed Hope, Rapture, Grace, Serendipity, HC, IHC, and Empowered Healing. Third - a rethink of the existing party limitation would be very nice, potentially by making it a targeted party heal (like CoH used to be)?

Other Issues: Actually, apart from our lack of HoTs and weak AoE healing (especially for Disc, but even for Holy post 3.0.8), I don't think the priest class has too many issues. We have plenty of useless skills and talents (who doesn't?) but nothing that really impacts our viability as healers. Hymn's are broken, Lightwell sucks, Holy Nova is too weak to be useful when raiding, Penance and Greater Heal don't have glyphs...but those are all minor issues.

 

Zaq

It seems to me that part of the reason CoH got so much use was because it was instant, and for similar reasons FH seems to be replacing GH as our primary heal.

Holy Nova:The limited range and high manacost seem to have turned this into an overly limited spell. It's most effective for ae farming and pvp, but is pretty much garbage beyond that.

Prayer of Healing:The PoH glyph makes it at least usable, but it's still fairly suspect in my mind. The cast-time is forever and a single group heal seems to fly in the face of the 'groups don't matter' raid mentality. It's simply rarely worth the time to cast.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali

 

Sinndir

I'm very much liking where this is going. Hopefully, with our constructive ideas, it will not fall on deaf ears.


Divine Hymn: An alright spell, would be great if it was not on a 6 minute cooldown. It should be a 1 minute cooldown and should not share a cooldown with Psychic Scream for Crowd Control (and I guess pvp :P) usages.

Disease Removal: Minor issue, is there any reason Cure Disease and Abolish disease cost the same?

Divine Providence: Chance equal to our crit % to leave behind a rank X renew/PW: Shield on the targets of our CoH, Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending (or even just PoM).

Hymn of Hope: Leave the spell exactly how it is, but remove the channeling and make it an instant 8 second buff.

Mass Dispel: Leave it be, but please fix the silly targeting. I have see numerous times during a 10-man Naxx where when Noth does his 'slow' magic debuff and I cast a single mass dispel, all, one, or none of the targets that I want to be dispelled actually are.

Disc Spec: The end of the tree feels very bloated, and the spec as a whole could use a bit of loving. Improved Divine Spirit is trumped by a shaman of any spec that will drop flametongue totem, which in a 25 man raid is gauranteed to have and in a 10-man is a very likely possibility as well. Perhaps tack on a -0.5/1.0 cast time to Prayer of Healing to the Focused Power talent.

 

Chirality

The problem with a mini-thread like this (pointing out individual spells that need changed for raiding) is that Blizzard needs to balance for PvP as well. And frankly, PvP is in inifintely more need of rebalancing than PvE. So I'll mostly stick to suggestions that are 'both', with one notable exception.

Divine Hymn Tries to be too many things at once. At times, I love the AE heal. But a mediocre AE heal on a 6 minute cooldown is bad, because the spell's power is balanced around CC and (poorly balanced around, at best) PvP. Split the spell: Make Divine Hymn the rapid AE HoT that it is now but lower the cooldown, and add another CC-spell so that Priests are not helpless against undead rogues, tremor totem spam, and warriors in PvP.

Hymn of Hope The mana-return-to-group aspect of this spell is what makes it so weak, yet also the only thing that makes it vaguely unique. Reduce casting time to 4 or 5 seconds, lower the cooldown, and make it a usable in Shadowform.

Vulnerability to Poisons Add a talent to reduce duration of poisons on the priest by 50%. Paladins got "Pure of Heart" to counter Curse of Tongues. Priests need a way to deal with Deadly Brew and Viper Sting in PvP. 50% Duration reduction would make a huge difference in group PvP, as a peel on a rogue allows a Priest to actually regain HP and distance, and it makes Viper not an I-win button vs. Priest teams.

Enlightenment 5% spirit is not very good for Disc. Should be changed to 5% spell crit / 5% spell haste or something. It's only good for the Haste in PvE and not worth the point investment in general in PvP. This would synergize better with the rest of the tree.

Improved Divine Spirit At least make Improved Divine Spirit give the close same amount of spellpower as Flametongue Totem. Or, as this falls into one of those "buffs the raid but hurts you" spells, like Improved Faerie Fire and Blood Frenzy, give it an additional effect like "While under the effects of Divine Spirit, your critical heals increase your spellpower by an additional 100% of the spirit granted by Divine Spirit for 10 seconds". ANYTHING to make this talent worthy.

Improved Power Word: Fortitude A "mandatory" raiding talent that no one enjoys taking. Bundle this with Improved Power Word: Shield.

Renewed Hope This talent is terrible. It should be increased to at least 6% crit for targets under Weakened Soul.

Basically--Disc needs help with throughput and has a lot of bloated talents that have little (Renewed Hope, Enlightment) or no (Improved Divine Spirit) value for the points invested in them.

 

• Playered

In all honesty there is very little reason that Renew shouldn't near replicate Rejuvenation in terms of heal per tick and cost, there is a disparity of 200 mana per cast and around 200-300 per tick (both in favor of Rejuvenation) before the Glyph and that really has no place in the current environment.
I might be a little envious if it was an exact copy of Rejuvenation with the difference being +3 seconds (talent) for us and -3 seconds +25% per tick (Glyph) for you but it doesn't have to be as distant as it is now.

For the thoughts of it ticking too slow and getting overhealed a lot.. well Rejvenation does really well (15-18 second duration, 3 second ticks, 2k~ per tick) for raid healing even with CoH spam being so prevailant right now.. so trying to get anything beyond cost or scaling changed on the spell is not only unlikely, but unnecessary.

[note] unable to be 100% certain about the difference between ticks as 200-300, as its late a quick glance over some WWS and some armory checks for relative gear is what was used. The disparity on some (where Renew was stronger than my Rejuvenation by a small amount) was assumed to be the Glyph but could be the result of something unknown, the 1700-1800 value was assumed to be the non Glyphed amount.

 

Starfire

Renew: This is a pillar of Priest healing style; so I think the best option would be higher coefficient, then changing somethings in Renewed Hope (because of the name) and perhaps Divine Providence. Surge of Light is an amazingly neat talent, I think it'd be a unique idea to allow Surge of Light to grant a chance on Renew tick to proc the effect. (e.g. 10% chance of Renew tick to proc Surge of Light).

Hymn of Hope: I really like the concept of this, but for sacrificing 8 seconds of our time it really need/should restore more mana. Perhaps coupled to something to improve scaling. I'd suggest spirit since intellect has too many things going for it as is. (Nice idea would be "increases spirit regeneration by 2x while being channeled, in addition to giving mana to the party).

Divine Hymn: This really should be broken into its two component parts and be two spells. One a powerful 10 target heal (or even 20 target) heal on a decent cooldown. 6 minutes is fine. But increase the amount of the healing to double or triple. The other component needs to be it's own spell however.

On that note; I think it would be neat to create a Hymn for each school. Hymn of Hope for Discipline, Divine Hymn (heal) for Holy and Hymn of (the Mind) for Shadow (which does incapacitate).

Prayer of Healing: Make it usable somewhere other than a 5 man. In all honesty; I firmly believe Prayer of Healing should of had smart targetting and Circle of Healing should of been the party-restricted spell. Hell; do that and throw a short cooldown on Prayer of Healing if you have too. (I can dream, right?). It's slow. And the party-mechanics are clunky in Wrath.

Lightwell: If you can't make it so it does not remove the target; just allow it to be a healing aura. e.g. Heals 5 targets within a 10 yard radius with pulses of a small heal. It's cool conceptually.

Rapture: Should affect Binding Heal and maybe Renew.

 

Inken

Will be nice to give GC a positive some what agreed list from priests. Good idea.

I guess my view on the issues are as follows (as a holy priest):

Gheal and its talents: When I look at Gheals vs HoL and HW it starts to look week and too proc based. IHC is ok for the clear casts, but the haste being 45% of crits means you can not control it and it has a low up time. If you look at HoL for example, it heals for a similar amount, is 0.5 secs lower base cast talented, Judgement of the Pure provides 15% haste, Infusion of light also effects HoL (-1 sec?). Then add in the Glyph of holy light and Beacon. Looking at HW and the Tidal Waves talent provides a 100% chance from chain and riptide casts to give HW 30% cast time reduction and +20% healing. This is a better way to go as it means you can manage when its up and not just hope for RNG. I would like to see the IHC part of HC changed in how we get gheals/flash hasted so we have more control over it (i.e. procs from a known cast), or make it from all crits so we can keep it up like other healers. Other wise I think I would prefer it as a flat haste talent. The clear casting side is fine.

Renew: I agree renew is weak, but the biggest change I would like to see isn't how much it heals (a tweak is need), more how it heals. I would like to see it change to be one of two things. The first tick is on cast, or change the ticks to be every second (but at the same hp/sec over all - so current tick / 3 per sec). Hots just get killed but chain and flash spam.

CoH/Non group multi target heals: I agree the CoH nerf was needed but also that it has been badly done. I would like to see priests provided with a tool that lets us heal multiple targets not in our group when needed, i.e. not based on a cool down. The best part of playing a priest is having the wide range of tools GC talks of and being able to use them to match the damage being inflicted on the raid. The CD will stop this from being the case. If CoH stays with a 6 sec CD then I would like to see PoH or Nova change to not be group based or provide a new multi target non group based heal with interesting mechanics (not pom or lightwell style where the priest doesn’t matter). Other wise your suggestion of increasing the amount healed and the mana cost of CoH with no CD sounds good. PoH would be a good change for Disc as well.

Lolwell: Even Blizzard called it lolwell, yet here it is… The problem with it is not the amount it heals or any the brake on dmg etc any more. Its just a bad idea. Having the priest not control it in any way makes it boring for us, DPS etc don’t use it as they can just wait for a heal to hit them (as it will because that’s what we do for a living). I assume blizz will keep it forever… So… Mad idea, make it a pet with commands. My own healing pet with its own mana etc. Could be fun. Make sure its commands are not on my GCD etc and I think you have a winner. What is can do - I will leave that for now as I am sure most people will say bad idea any way :P, think basic hots and one instant cast on a CD.

Lack of utility: We don’t buff that well, we cant combat res or ank in combat, I don’t mind, I rolled a priest to heal, give us all the tool to be the most rounded and a competitive healer in all the areas and I think it’s a fair trade off given the new buff systems.

I don’t like the fact pom can get “beached” on a player, but that’s life and can live with it given the up sides of the spell.

 

Morakk

Renew: Let Renew control where our spells target/bounce. Prayer of Mending could preferentially bounce to Renewed targets, or have Circle of Healing affect everyone in raid with your Renew on them. Something along those lines, possibly for our other group heals, would give the spell a nice bit of utility.

Circle of Healing: Give it a sort of reverse Meteor effect that, when coupled with the above, heals a single target for a little less than a Holy Shock and scaling to heal 10 people (roughly the most you could have Renewed at once) for 1/5 as much as the single person version (say 6k down to 1.2k). Maybe the healing done could depend on, or consume, remaining ticks of Renew. Either way, something like this would give us a nice little perk for tank healing, give us more control over who and how our CoH heals, and prevent us from just hitting the same button fifteen times and winning.

Binding Heal: Make this, you know, bind us. Perhaps some sort of life link.

Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, and Hymn of Hope: Other people have said this but I think it bears restating: group restrictions suck. You know this to be true, since you took out 90% of them. Finish the job.

Glyph of Greater Heal
Major Glyph
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 40
Use: Your Greater Heal spell reduces the cast time of your next Prayer of Healing spell by .5 sec., stacking up to 5 times. Lasts 10 sec.

Glyph of Penance
Major Glyph
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 60
Use: Your Penance spell also dispels the Weakened Soul debuff.

Glyph of Guardian Spirit
Major Glyph
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 60
Use: If your Guardian Spirit is not sacrificed, it will instead grant life to a fallen ally for 20 seconds.

 

Jaeydn

Imp Holy Concentration - Haste buff should include Prayer of Healing, or possibly just a flat out haste buff with no spell restriction.

Serendipity - Include Binding Heal

Test of Faith - Buff to 10% possibly. I love the talent but it feels a bit weak.

Also I've been wondering if it would be a good idea if Serendipity worked like Rapture where it returns based off your mana pool when you overheal.

 

Hungtar

For the near future, a glyph of divine hymn would be nice that reduces the cooldown, reduces the amount healed and removes the incapacitate effect.

I would like to see a rework of the hymns to something more like a hymn system. Let them provide a short duration self buff and let them all share a reasonably short cooldown (same duration as the self buff). These self buffs have a trigger to provide a special effect. The trigger could be something active (casting a spell) or passive (taking damage) or just a trigger spell.

For example, you could start reciting hymn of hope, trigger a mana reg effect by going oo5sr (or by activating inner focus). Or you buff yourself with divine hymn and activate an aoe heal effect on your next prayer of healing.

While the hymn buff is active on you, you gain, well, a minor buff (2% spirit, 2% spell power, whatever ...). And / Or you get a short duration debuff after triggering your hymn (i.e. hymn of hope could provide some up front mana for your group put penalizes your mana reg afterwards; divine hymn could reduce effective healing by 3% or reduce spell power by 2%).

There is a lot of possibilities what to do with hymns and the current implementation is just plain boring (more spells with cooldowns, yay).

 

Pasco

Abolish Disease:
Should work like Abolish Poison (tick every 2s instead of 5s for a shorter duration) and maybe add Poison Dispel through a Major Glyph (same for Druids with Disease). Let me dream

The poison part would help in smaller raids (10 with a Disc and a Holy Priest for example) and of course PvP (which isn't the main subject of this thread but it would help). The 2s instead of 5s part is overdue.

Lightwell:
At some point in the WotLK beta it was clickable without changing your target if I remember correctly, please bring it back.

Another idea for Lightwell floating through my mind at the moment:

Lightwell
Creates a Holy Lightwell which can be healed by the caster. Each heal on the Lightwell is (increased by X% and) shared amongst the 5 lowest people in 15y range of the Lightwell. (increased by Holy Reach) Heals done from the Lightwell ignore 50% Healing reduction effects like Mortal Strike.

I think this could be an interesting mechanic but maybe it would be to limited because of the static form of Lightwell, but even the current version is very situational as well. If this would be to powerful (GH Spam on static encounters) you could add a cooldown ("The heal from Lightwell can not occur more than once every Xs"). All in all just some thoughts into another direction.

Meditation:
Should finally be a baseline ability for all priests, freeing up some points for all specs.

 

Squeakster

I think we are missing the point here. The idea is not for us to simply list which talents/spells we want buffed, but rather for us to identify our roles in raids, why we sometimes feel unable to meet the demands of those roles, and how that can be fixed.

I mean, I too would love to see some new glyphs and to see the hymm's made useful, but do we really think the lack of those are making priests less desirable than other healers now and after the CoH nerf? I think we need to approach this with the mindset of, "what are our roles, where are we struggling to fulfill those roles, and how can it be fixed."

I can't speak for holy priests as I don't have much experience there, but as a disc priest I sometimes find it hard to convince myself that the raid is better served by having me instead of another holy paladin. I think we all agree that discipline priests are best utilized as tank healers, and when it comes to tank healing the king is of course the paladin.

Discipline priests offer advantages over paladins in some ways, in that Penance allows for sometimes quicker reactions that paladins are capable of and Power Word Shield allows us to preemptively heal before a predictable large hit (Sartharion's breath). But the difference in raw, single target throughput so greatly favors paladins that I find it hard to justify bringing a discipline priest instead. The bottom of the discipline tree is bloated already, but I think there needs to be something down there giving a buff to greater heal so that it can at least begin to approach holy light throughput. Paladins should still have higher throughput because they need to have some advantages, but as it is right now it is just too great.

 

Ellyh

Renew. This HoT is seriously behind the times, it has scaled badly and lost all it's mana efficiency. Second it ticks to slowly for the modern game. A 3 sec tick is ok if you have 3 hots rolling but if it's your only HoT it is seriously lacking. Fixing renew efficiency and tick speed will make both specs of priest better for raid healing without overpowering PvP in any way.

Lightwell no matter how much they buff it (and its already at stupid efficincy levels) it fails in game sociology, it is also the clasic case of NOT FUN. we want a healing talent we can rely on, not one that works if the rest of the raid decides not to suck. It's still woefully undertaken given the number of holy priests so It's time to put this spell out of it's misery and do somthing else.

Hymns Need work but GC has already indicated that these are in the works.

 

Suhné

CoH: current smart healing without a cd CoH does triviliaze some kind of AoE damage, specially on trash, promoting a “let’s stand in the fire and let healers take care of it” mentality that should be avoided. However, adding a cooldown is an easy way out, adds watching cooldowns to the healer’s role which is not fun, and doesn’t work well with the healers' role, who aren’t dps and don’t have rotations. Change the mechanics of the spell so spamming it isn’t desirable.

CoH associated talents: Surge of light, Holy reach, Test of faith and Divine providence have had their returns for talent point diminished as a result of the addition of a cd to CoH. They should be reevaluated so the holy tree as whole does not lose power.

Renew: Throughout BC and now WotLK, renew has been increasingly lagging behind the rest of our spell arsenal, too little talents benefit from it and it’s throughput it’s lacking, specially considering most of its ticks are wasted in a raid environment. It should tick faster and scale better.

AoE heals: With the CoH nerf, holy priests AoE heals potential, which is what is supposed to differentiate them from discipline ones, is reduced. In fact, the only difference regarding AoE heals between the two would be the new CoH with a cd and shorter cd for PoM. Talents which increase the holy tree AoE potential should be weaved into the tree. Party restrictions should be lifted from PoH and HN, even if that means rethinking those spells.

Divine hymn: Current implementation of Hymns make both of them highly situational, specially Divine hymn. Divine hymn’s long cooldown is already a harsh limit on the spell's power. Making it besides share its cooldown with Psychic Scream means we get no increased survavility from it. It’s a holy spell, so shadowpriests, the ones who already really benefit from Psychic Scream, have to drop shadowform if they wanna cast it. Unlink both cooldowns.

Hymn of hope: Its effect on the priest casting it is too weak taking into account the opportunity cost of not casting for 8 seconds, it should have and added effect such as “While channelling Hymn of Hope your mana regeneration is active and increased by a 50%”.

Lack of utility: current guidelines seem to be that every spec of a single class contributes to the raid with at least an specific buff/debuff, even if that buff/debuff effect is shared with another couple of specs from other classes. Currently holy priests add no utility whatsoever, either shared or not with other specs from other classes. PW:F and Shadow Protection are class wide, not provided specifically by holy priests.

Dispel types and abolish disease: I agree with Pasco about Abolish disease and being able to dispel poisons, maybe with a glyph.

Spirit returns: This is just personal opinion, but I always liked being the spirit class. Current game mechanics, in which intellect is king as a regen stat, and crit shares the spirit role of increasing both thoughput and regen diminish its value. It would be nice having spirit buffed somewhat.

 

Cydon

I have a couple of discipline changes, listed changes for Aspiration and Renewed Hope in italic.

Talents:

Aspiration: Reduces the cooldown of your Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression and Penance spells by 10/20% And reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield by 50/100%

Renewed Hope: Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 2/4% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect. Also increases your your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20% of your total intellect

Divine Aegis stacking shouldn't be too much to ask for if there's a cap. Since this has been discussed relentlessly I wont go into an argument of the how and why here, I'll just propose my idea of letting it scale on a fixed amount. (Not relative to targets hp) Around 5-6k absorbed, added to the already existing shield if one's up.

 

François

In addition to everything already written on Hymns, group-only heals, I'd like to add the problem of Binding Heal not receiving benefit of deep Discipline talents (Rapture has been covered by Starfire, but I find very irritating to risk losing Grace when I heal myself). I think it is against the design of Priest class (big toolbox) to make Binding Heal undesirable for a spec.

 

Hegen

If we assume that the holy priest is intended to be both a good tank healer and a good raid healer, then my view on these roles after the CoH nerf is as follows:

1. Tank healing role

Overall we are ok regarding this role. If Inspiration is factored in, we are not that much behind paladins when purely tank healing. I think the difference is about right.

Inspiration

One minor adjustment here: if the damage on the single target involves significant spell damage, then we do fall in fact far behind a holy paladin. This could be adjusted by giving Inspiration a magic resistance component that should do roughly the same in mitigation as the armor effect.

2. Raid healing role

Since it is intended for shamans to be played around chain heal, it's okay for them to have more throughput when raid healing. Then it would make sense to base the strengths of holy priests around mobility - this would nicely fit in with our large arsenal of tools.

In order to achieve this, we need to get rid of a bit of the complexity. Mobility and arsenal of tools is fine, but managing an arsenal of short cooldowns as well is no fun at all and frankly asked too much from the huge majority of players.

Power Word: Shield

The cooldown on PW:S needs to go away. Weakened soul is really enough to keep in mind.

Renew

Renew is definitely too weak to be used in most situations. I think the best way to boost it would be to make it just cheaper. I want to use it in a way where I check if the target will probably get at least half the amount of the full duration, and if so, invest the GcD and the mana without remorse. Using it for a bit more of mana efficiency compared to flash heal will not change the way we use renew. Using it as a fire-and-forget heal will however do that for us.

Option for Renew

As an alternative to making renew a lot cheaper, an interesting change would be to let renew place a HoT on yourself as well as the target with the HoT on yourself ticking for something like 50% of the amount of the regular renew. This would not stack but overwrite an existing renew effect. This would make the priest stronger in mobile raid healing situations while in stationary situations you would probably still use binding heal just for speed and crit effects. Maybe this would also need to make renew a bit cheaper - at least to make it just noticably more mana efficient than a glyphed flash heal (at the risk of it overhealing, of course).

Circle of Healing

I agree the cooldown feels like a cludge, many short cooldowns are no fun at all. That said, if we get rid of the PW:S cooldown at the same time AND get a noticable change of renew as outlined above, then I believe we can very well live with the cooldown and actually enjoy playing more.

Holy Nova

Now with the CD on CoH, make Holy Nova an intelligent "oh shit" ability that heals up to 10 targets, raid wide, with no range issues, for a very significant amount, but with a very significant cooldown, like 5 minutes. CD-based "Oh shit" abilities are good fun, don't introduce too many balancing problems and feel very rewarding at the same time: "look, I saved the show". This kind of ability also rewards proper understanding of encounters and watching what exactly goes on.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

Crow

I guess the list that is forming here is way to long, with half of our spells mentioned. I guess it wouldn’t be really helpful for the devs. Also I am afraid there is quite some of QQing instead of rational feedback. EJ is, well, Elitist. I would expect a list compiled by Constantius to be really well thought, innovative and implementable. Right now most suggestions aren’t much different from what we are reading on official forums.

Before I continue I would like to add however, that I don’t think that priests are ‘unneeded’ in any way. For me they are a great, all around healers, that can fit any role. Even with CoH nerf. Also the majority of suggestions mentioned above are minor tweaks, rather than answers to the ‘we don’t need priests anymore’ issue, if anyone believes it exists in first place.

I believe that Constantius list should consist only of few points (renew, AE heals), skipping all the minor tweaks suggested here. Even than it wouldn’t really change our raid role, but as I said in the beginning – I don’t really believe we need change there anyway.

Some people claim that Hymns are not worth mentioning, as Blizz is going to rethink them. But this is the whole point here – to give them tips and ideas instead of just listing things that ‘need to be fixed’.

For reference you might look at similar thread from PvP perspective on Arena Junkies forums: Priests: All Issues and Bugs - Arena Junkies Forums

 

The Not So Evil

So far, everyone here has posted changes they want on spells. Am I the only one that wants a bit of a change/improvement of the Priest role? Both Holy and Discipline are made for Healing, and due to cooldowns (Disc Penance/PW: Shield, Holy Circle of Healing), they are not sufficiently different.

Discipline needs more help down the path of "Damage Prevention" than they already do. Several things are currently preventing this from happening. First of all, the Weakened Soul effect. There is no way to remove this effect early, hindering discipline from preventing more damage. That Divine Aegis does not stack with itself is another problem. Also having Inspiration in Holy tree makes little sense. (Although its not problematically placed in Holy for a level 80 player)

Meanwhile, Holy has been squeezed into the "AoE Healing" box since the introduction of Black Temple. Sunwell did not improve upon this. What I believe Holy should be doing, is "Damage Repairing". And they have all the tools in the world to do it. Actually, they have so many tools to do it that most of them stay unused. Renew and Lightwell are probably the 2 most common victims. Over the time, you have given Shaman the Reactive-Renew (Earthshield) and Druids the AoE-Renew (Wild Growth). With the introduction of a cooldown based Circle of Healing, you are making a lot of Priests lose their healing skills, forcing them to dig deeper into their toolbox. What are they going to find there? They are going to find: Nothing. Prayer of Healing suffers from a long cast time, and it is party limited, and Holy Nova which is instant, is both party limited and range limited. So Priests are going to reach for the Flash Heal, which is in every way inferior to Beacon-Flash of Light, Wild Growth-Nourish and Chain Heal.

Obviously, the final spec is going under "Damage Dealing". Apart from PvP issues they seem to be working more or less as I'd expect.

Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules.
Get Your Rawr 2.2.20!

 

• constantius

I'm not going to copy/paste all this stuff into GCs thread. I will, however, make a compilation of it, and post that. Then anyone whose post was missed / not included should hop over and throw in their 2.6c to add to the discussion. It's mouth-breather land over there, people ... read some of the pages and shudder.

[e] Just caught up on some threads, and apparently some people have posted about our little corner of heaven around here. If anyone comes wandering by and wants to jump into the discussion (new poster, etc) read the forum guidelines at the top before you do.. Thanks.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Hegen

Well, I for one want a strengthening of the "raid healing" role for holy priests, which I consider to be a bit different from just AoE healing. And in order to achieve just this I come to the same conclusion as you: that basically we have everything we need - we "just" need some changes to existing tools. Which is the same as changes on spells.

I would not underestimate the effect of managing lots of short cooldowns: when the crap hits the fan, even the very best players will have execution problems when they have to watch the environment and the raidframes at the same time as cooldowns on 4s, 6s, and 7s (or 10) intervals as well as proc effects and whatnot. I firmly believe that a few small changes here and there (including a renew buff as outlined in my earlier post) will make raid healing more fun and effective while still feeling significantly different from the playstyle of druids or shamans.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

Centaurée

Quoting Ghostcrawler on the official forum :
It would appear holy priests are very popular (probably TOO popular), and I think it has to do with how it is easy right now to top healing meters, be efficient in raid, and thus feeling important, only by pressing one single button (CoH) most of the time. Sure, one could use for example PoM, shield or binding heal to be a better priest, but you don't have to, to top meters and impress your guildmates.

From a casual point of view, CoH was the perfect spell to "have fun" in raid and be super efficient at the same time. With the next patch, Blizzard pops their happy little bubble. I think that's the obvious reason why so many priests are very angry with the nerf. The class will not be broken at all, bad priests will ^^'


It's a pity seeing Ghostcrawler wasting his energy on trying to understand and confort priests who played the class only because of broken CoH, while he could put efforts in updating other talents, and make the priest a more fun class to play. Emphasize smart decision making by offering the priest various viable healing options (renew, GH, holy nova, PoH, light well, divine hymn) is one interesting way to do it.
The list of outdated or too situational spells is too long right now.

IMO, what is defining the priest class, is not only the fact that we have the tools to fill any role in a raid, but also that priest is the class with the more depth in its gameplay, and is "hard to master". I really hope Blizzard will stay away from cheap spells like old CoH and focus on giving priest his intelligent and various tools back.

By the way, good luck Constantius

 

MavSteele

I'll start off by saying that I tend to fall into the "Priests are fine" category, but I've been following the threads on the official forums for a few days and I understand why people are upset even if I disagree. As some of the posters in this thread have pointed out, I don't think it's as simple as "our spells are broken, so we don't get invited to raids". Every class could generate a laundry list of how they want their spells changed and while the EJ posters are more informed than most, and have a better understanding of balance, ultimately these lists are little more than wishful thinking even when GC asks for constructive feedback. He wants to know why priests feel that with a CoH nerf they won't get invited to raids, but I don't think that many of the posters here even feel that way.

The posts that led to GC's comments all had to do with utility and a priests place in the raiding hierarchy. They were back to the BC debate of "Why bring more than one priest when paladins/druids/shaman bring blessings/brezs/totems". I posted a few times to point out the fallacy of this notion, since in the new buff/debuff scheme it's so easy to cover all major buffs that raid-stacking healer classes for buffs really is a thing of the past in all but the most extreme situation. That didn't stop people from creating 20+ pages on why the CoH nerf was going to ruin healing for priests, or the follow up post (to which Constantius linked) which is now 28+ pages. There are a lot of people who feel that without the meter-topping power of CoH, we don't bring enough to the raiding scene to justify our position over the other healers. In some ways, I feel like we're the BC rogues of the healer world; in our current state we're capable of more throughput than anyone else but we have the lowest utility.

In the post-CoH nerf world, our throughput will certainly decrease, but I think it remains to be seen exactly how this will all shake out. I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that current raid content is easy and we bring way too many healers. A lot of complaints, even in this thread, are that renew ticks too slowly and GH/PoH are too slow to cast and too likely to be sniped by other healers. The issue, though, is that there is way too much healing power available and not enough raid damage to be healed. In more tightly tuned content (Sarth 3D or doing some of the achievements like 5 min Maly, Dedicated few, etc.) where there are tighter DPS/tanking requirements so we bring fewer healers, some of our talents really seem to shine more. Renew is a lot more powerful when there aren't 3 bored shaman in the back of the raid spamming CH at the first sign of trouble. GH isn't getting sniped when you're trying to keep the drake tank and the add tank up while the rest of your raid is in a portal. We've resorted to CoH spam because there is so much healing power available that if we don't use an instant cast spell, we're likely to never get anything off at all. Once CoH has a CD, it will force us to use some of our other skills, but it will also force other healers to change as well. Maybe not dramatically, but there will be a slight shift in how healing works, and maybe a little more sense of triage that separates good healers from bad.

I don't think we're fundamentally broken, and while many of the suggestions in this thread are nice, I think they miss the point of what GC is asking. Why are priests unhappy? What makes them think they won't be brought to raids? What would need to change about priests to make them a more compelling choice to bring to raids? Very few of the suggestions here have really touched on this issue, and I think ultimately it's because it's a non-issue. Even after 3.0.8 priests will be a viable choice to bring to raids.

I apologize for derailing the thread a bit, since I do think it's useful/important to get all of these ideas in once place. I just think the "GC is looking for suggestions on the priest class" has been taken a bit out of context.