Game-Changing New Powers

[Falomin]

2. I freaking BLOW at soloing. Only spec worse in my opinion is a full prot warrior, but they will scale much better with gear than I. I can't tell you how much gold I spent on water leveling to 70. I did make the mistake of rolling a BE hunter though. Everything they say about hunters is true -- EZ mode, overpowered... it's like a completely different game. It makes me sick to think about it.

3. PoM feels overpowered to me even in PvE. Seems like most fights (for example in Shadow Lab) I am torn between two things -- DPS, or entertaining myself by watching my PoM bounce from tank to offtank an back while everyone's health bars are full. And it's aggro free for me. Mana efficiency be damned (I have no talents for it) it's still aggro free, so I can spam it at the beginning of those big pulls without fear.

4. I am weak in PvP. I haven't done much since TBC, but the problems that plague holy priests have only gotten worse, not better. My shield and inner fire are actually worse, and my fear is as ineffective as always. Now my opponent just has way more health to worry about. My only hope is that my opponents are stupid and try to kill someone else first. Still waiting for that to happen... I'm very disappointed in the PoM for this reason, I was looking forward to being useful.

5. In raiding... well I can only speculate, but I think a resto druid will be a better healer than me. I'll hold my own. As Horde I can take comfort in my role as dispel bot until we get more paladins at least...

Juat a few things:

In regards to point 2:

YES! I hear about these hunters and mages farming for stuff and I am envious, I am 23/ 38 and I refuse to farm for stuff with my holy priest, it is awful and it is tedious. All of the healers in my guild have a DPS alt, it is the only way we stay sane.

Point 3:

In the trash pulls PoM can be overpowered with two tanks yes, but in the boss fights it definitely is not, at least in my experience, very good spell, not overpowered in boss fights.

Point 4:

Battlegrounds are rough, I die so many times. Once the horde realizes that I'm healing I'm number one target. Feral druids, rogues, warriors crush me. And my fear is useless and my PW Shield is pathetic.

The best part for me is when I'm dead since I then get 10 free seconds healing with Spirit of Redemption.

Point 5:

I have never been out healed by a druid in a raid. I don't know if I am just lucky or good (I prefer to think good) but I was under geared and still kept the main tank alive better than a very good druid healer in several raids that I ran with him. I don't think we need to get scared yet.

[Tuftears]

So are druids the only healer class who feel they are any good, though they still have the rez issue.

Eh... Personally I accept that I have limitations as a healer and try to do better with the tools I do have. That's always been the druid strategy, we have relatively few tools for any given role, so we have to make the best of them.

I hate mob AOE attacks, 'cause my best option is either Tranquility (10-minute cooldown) or throw lifebloom and hope that people can stay alive until the bloom goes off (7 seconds).

On the other paw, I shine when damage is either predictable (healing touch) or intermittent and limited to about 1-2k (lifebloom and/or rejuvenation). Lifebloom is in particular extremely efficient, and very fast to cast on several people - 220 mana for 2k healing (after +healing), and an instant-cast? Yes! Rejuvenation for a similiar amount, costing 470 mana but giving dodge? Yes! And both can be cast on the move.

Why PoMending is better than Lifebloom: LB goes off in 7 seconds, PoM goes off right away, only when it's needed.

Why priests are better than druids: PW:S and PoM anticipate damage for you, and you can fade mobs off onto the tank instead of having to go bear, plus you have a great fast heal that's not horribly mana-inefficient like Regrowth.

IMO, priest > druid > paladin for healing.

[Kevin]

Been a bit slow in my responses. Glad to see the good discussion. My question was serious the answers are serious. I had seen a lot of healing classes not being happy. I have much more intimate knowledge of paladins, druids, and shaman than I do of priests. I wanted a better understanding of the issues.

So, what I'm getting from this is that priests do still feel they are dominant healers in the 5 man instances. But that they still are lacking in PvP (they have been for awhile) and that the newer heroic five mans and raid instances expose the flaws they have even more. I can certainly understand that.

I also understand the pain of soloing. While my holy priest can in fact kill faster than my holy paladin grinding in terms of total mobs killed per X amount of time, it is much more painful and expensive on the priest. The holy paladin has no DPS. My DPS went up by about 50% when I respec'd protection for some testing I did for soloing with a paladin on my L60 pally. My survivability also increased, losing the healing power solo didn't matter for a paladin. A holy paladin gets significant boosts to healing too, but they are costly. But soloing with a holy priest (and my biggest priest is only L42 so I'm only imagining things getting worse) while faster was still more annoying. Drinking more than any other class, issues with tagging mobs, issues with runners (I leveled my paladin before the range on judgements and before the hammer of wrath, runners were an issue, even with judgement of justice because of the timing of things). I actually am not sure I could solo with a priest that didn't have spirit tap, it's that bad. I've been shadow on him for a bit now, but I'm not a shadow priest kind of guy but to get him leveled it's been much less painful even though it's not a play style I like. I feel it's easier to solo as a prot warrior by far and I think bandages are cheaper than beverage in the long run by far. Replenishable on the fly too.

As to priest damage, while yes I vor_lord is one of the holy priests I've seen do some very nice damage (again at the expense of a lot of drinking) he isn't the only one. My enhancement shaman duo's with a holy/disc priest, and I've seen other priests go to town. Without the big down time penalty it is not sustainable in any fashion, but if you can keep it up it's impressive. This of course as mentioned doesn't really help in most practical situations. I'm not sure what might happen with the scaling issues. All healing classes need to get 2 sets of gear, at least. I've seen that there is at least end game DPS gear for priests so they may still be able to keep up but again that downtime penalty is very unfun to swallow. It's somewhat akin to some of the crap with locks and soul shards in the past (especially lock PvP before you could get shards in PvP). As mentioned I'm not sure I could play any spec priest solo without spirit tap, I hate the downtime factor that much and holy priests drink more than mages and they can't make their own water either.

Anyway I'm getting off track. I've got another question. Is there another way to help solve the glass healer issues? The 9K hits are going to one shot a priest or a druid since the druid won't have time to go bear under something like that. A paladin as mentioned should mitigate enough to live. I'm not sure on the shaman a hit that big on a cloth wearer might still be big enough against mail + shield as well. So that's somewhat OK. It's expected encounter design and I don't think it's just leathal to priests. PoM had no effect on this either as best as I can tell you would be dead anyway.

But that wasn't the point that Bolty was trying to make. The point was just general survivability. Against 3 mobs that are only hitting for 1.5K on the priest you aren't insta dead but you are in major trouble. Fade might save you, but doubtful. Scream may be an option but you better be certain of yourself. The druid can go bear at the expense of not being able to heal other than the HoTs that are out there already, they can potentially rejuv/swiftmend or even do an NS heal as well, all likely just to by time to go bear as they shift out of tree NS heal, then bear But they do have options. The paladin can probably laugh at it and with generating less heal aggro to begin with likely won't have to deal with it in the first place:). The shaman may or may not have a shield on at the start but can put one on and potientially move the earth shield to themselves. They might be able to even buy time with a stoneclaw or earth elemental, even possibly an earthbind and get enough distance. They aren't taking as much damage but they have no way to stop the stutter (neither does the priest as the shield absorbs one hit). They can get an instant earth shield on themselves or do an NS heal to help though.

OK so PoM was the answer to that. You can keep putting it up when the fade didn't work. But as I've seen in this and other threads the PvE issues that I just used are the issue. PvP everything I just mentioned may prevent any healer (save the paladin who can bubble) from healing team mates but it could keep them alive long enough for their team mates to do something about it, even if the assist train kills them. A few more seconds matters in PvP. And thanks to these discussions I'm seeing just how clever it was. It put the priest in similar situations to other healers. But they still had the disadvantage of being the softest.

So what about fixing the scaling of inner fire. The 20 hit limit, the fact it can be dispelled, the fact that using a GCD to put it back up could be a bad idea seem a pretty good balance to it already. Let it buff the armor more. That might be enough to help with some of the insta kills but I'm not positive.

I debate on shield. It doesn't scale for crap and that is making it less and less useful. Of course I'm not a fan of the paladin bubble either. I'd almost rather see it scale much better but do something like preventing stutter from damage while it lasts (that is a nice benefit) but make it more more like a mana shield or something. It takes 70% (or whatever) of the damage and you still take 30% of the damage, when it runs out of health it drops off, you still have weakened soul. And yeah for all I care you can do something similar to the pally bubble. I actually enjoy playing paladins and even I think the bubble is just out of whack. But the shield would have to scale better than it does since your taking away some of the "oh crap" reactionary benefit.

Doesn't fix it all. I think a weaker insta cast self heal that is a talent might not be a bad idea to help out either.

Of course none of what I just thought about will happen.

OK I understand a lot better the griping about PoM now. I see much better how it really did help things for the priest in several situations. The issue with the spamming though seems to be that because it will jump and heal others it wasn't just making the priest harder to kill in PvP it was doing a lot of healing of others as well. Thinking more about it, since I understand things a bit better now, I'm not sure how big a deal that really is. The other things that druids, shaman and paladins can bring to PvP healing needed some kind of balance to them. But considering that some of the changes I mulled over to "replace" PoM are fairly sweeping, PoM really does look like it was a pretty clever way to fix it in one package. Taking it away, OK, I see the kick in the teeth syndrome reasoning.


Not sure I had a point in the post other than to say, thanks for clearing up my questions and then just posting other stuff for potential discussion.