Priests. Why we are so ..umm.. difficult.

[Rinnhart]

Nice to meet you.

To give you an example:
Last weekend while attending a Scholomance raid, immediatly after raid formation, small talk erupted on the group channel of the group I had been assigned to. The topic was the priest in the other group of this raid (let's call him P2).

"Thank goodnees P2 is on the other group"
"Yeah he's a real bitch"
"You know what xy said about P2? It's good to have him in the party, as long as you also have him on ignore"
"lol"

Now I didn't know P2, but during the whole raid, he never did something stupid or demanded something excessivly burdening on the group, just warning people not to take unnecessary risks, when discipline on the raid was temporarily waning. In fact, I would rate him as a very good player, who knows what he's doing. I really don't want to know what people are chatting behind my back, then.
So what is the reason behind the "priest hate"?
Trying to explain this to myself, I have come up with some points that may explaín this:

1.) Priests are needed and there are not much high-lvl Priests around. It's a basic fact that one doesn't like people one is dependend on.
This shows in behavior prior and after invitation to a party as a priest.
First people will try to woe you into their group ("Pleeaasee, we have a complete group, just lacking a priest. Come on, it will be great"), then you are often supposed to STFU and heal. We don't like this and will get grumpy then (in the best case; in the worst case we simply hearth out of the instance).

Dependence upon priests is an issue. Warriors' monopoly upon tanking isn't as big a deal as there are half a dozen warriors to every priest AND druid (87% of all statistics are made up on the spot). Plus, one good warrior's all a raid really needs. You do need at least two priests/druids for something like UBRS (or a ton of paladins, but that becomes more trouble than we're worth).

In the defense of the current "priest hate" out there- I've had alot of priests set conditions upon their attendance, usually demands for particular items or tradeskill drops. And then it becomes either take the asshole and his terms or wait three hours , let the group break, and start all over.

Or priests who have hearthed out/DC after losing a roll or not having what they wanted drop. Doesn't happen often, but I've seen it several times.

2.) Warriors have a complete different rythm of play then priests. While priests loose Mana during battle which they have to regenerate afterwards, warriors gain rage, which they quickly loose after combat.
Now when one pull has been successfully mastered, there arises a conflict of interest. The warrior wants to engage as quickly as possible into the next pull to put the rage he has accumulated into use, while the caster classes want some seconds to regenerate mana, before advancing further.

Interesting take. Hah, last night we had a mage who kept pulling because the warriors and rogues decided mid-raid that we needed a twenty minute break between their pulls.

3.) Priests are most often positioned at the back of the group, which allows them to quite literally have a wider viewing angle on the things that are happening around the group. So this is why it comes that priests are the first ones to see potential adds, that may join the fight (and often targeting the priest then), before the guys in the front notice them. That may give the impression priests are prone to panic unneccasary, while in fact they see things from their position, that others may overlook.[quote]

Priests are the only cloth class I've ever had trouble pulling a monster off. Primarily because they're the only cloth class I've ever seen run in oldschool Everquest "I've got aggro!!!!11 ehlpz!!!!11" circles. :D

Alright, there was that one mage- but she kept dropping ae's on the single monster chasing her, so I have no clue what she was doing.


[quote]4.) Non healing classes often cannot judge how difficult a certain encounter was for the priest. They usally come out from the pull fine and healthy and think that this was a piece of cake and one could take greater risks not realizing that the priest was burning through his mana (no non caster reads mana bars, no one, empirically proven) and was having coronaries timing his heals, to keep everyone alive. When a priest then says something about better being cautious, people do not understand why. Everything went great so far, didn't it?

Bah, we can't ease up or you'd all get soft.

EDIT: Tags are fubar, sorry if it's unreadable.