WoW Stratics IRC Chat

[Bolty]

Confirms they followed the "addition by subtraction" line of thought: nerf the two biggest reasons healing priests weren't being brought.

Eh, yes and no.

Shadow Priests are just too useful for sheer utility, despite the nerfs. Ok, so they won't rock the damagemeters now, but the incredible utility of mana and health regen combined with Silence (when applicable) makes them worth having. Along with the fort buffs, of course, if no Holy Priest is present. I read so many posts in forums about how this group did such-and-such raid encounter without any real mana issues (e.g. Ilhoof, possibly Karazhan's most mana-intensive fight) and only find out later that they had a Shadow Priest along. Having a Shadow Priest turns a chain-mana-pot-chugging, double-innervate fight into a no-potion, no-innervate fight.

You're still missing two gigantic reasons why Paladins are still preferred. Paladins are stackable. The buffs and utility they provide stacks, such that having 2 or 3 healing Paladins along is always better than 2 or 3 healing Priests. Blessings rule. Of course you want one Priest for Fort and Divine Spirit, and any raiding Holy Priest worth 2 cents will have Divine Spirit. But why would you want more than one, considering players of equal skill level, when a second Paladin brings another Blessing to the table? That's Kings AND Salvation for your DPS'ers, Kings AND Wisdom for your healers, etc. It's similar to why Hunters are getting the shaft now; there's just little reason to bring them other than Misdirection. Priests have great group heals! But...how often do they get used in a raid, in such a way that they're considered critical? Netherspite, perhaps. Especially when Prayer of Mending from two Priests actually get in the way of each other and cancel each other out...

There's still this big perception out there, especially amongst non-healing-character players, that Priests are the golden children of raid healing. This is based on 5-man healing experiences where Priests do rule, yes. It just doesn't carry into raiding as well. Do you want Priests? Yes. Do you want 3 Priests or 1 Priest and 2 Paladins? Assuming equal skill level, you're nuts if you want 3 Priests. Of course, since "equal skill level" never really exists, that comparison just doesn't come into play in Real Life.

Okay, Paladins will have to drink mana potions now because they can't heal forever. They'll get to experience my nights in Kara where I down 10+ potions a session. Priests didn't want Paladins to get nerfed, we wanted to get buffed.

The other big issue is that Priests are made of glass. We die. Easily. You know it, you've seen how much I get creamed despite heavily favoring Stamina on my gear unlike Mooncloth-geared Priests. Nightbane is the most obvious example, but there are scores more.

Of course all this applies to raiding only. 5-mans is a different story. Except...that in heroics, if I pull healing aggro on something, I can take 2 hits tops. Fighting Kargoth last night gave me the heebie jeebies because, being cloth, an unlucky string of Blade Dance on me and I'm dead. If he can (and did) erase a Warlock from full health to zero in one Blade Dance, despite said Warlock hiding in a corner at max distance, having a Paladin doing the healing ceases that worry.

I could get into the PvP issues of how little survivability we have, but meh. The armor nerf plays a role in that too, along with an ever-increasing list of ways to counter fear - our only escape ability.

And of course we have the worst 31 and 41 point talents in our primary tree out there, which has also been beaten to death. Priest aficionados can tell you about how we have never, in WoW's history, had a must-get end-Holy talent. The theories abound, with the most popular being that Blizzard can't figure out a 31 or 41 point talent that doesn't "break WoW" in that it would just about require you to have a Holy Priest around. But yet they design tanking such that Warriors have that luxury.

I realize I'm viewing the world through my Priest-centric glasses and that I'm QQ'ing. But the fact still remains that I'm nerfed from pre-TBC days and I know it. And Priests know it. And Blizzard's response is to buff Circle of Healing by 25 heal and reduce the mana cost of Binding Heal. Oh boy.

If Blizzard came out and said "look, we felt you guys were too powerful pre-TBC," I guess I'd be okay with it. But it just seems like they don't understand. I'd hope the recent posts from Armory-mined talent selection data shows them just how few Holy Priests actually spec deep in their "primary" tree...and I say "primary" in jest because healing Priests have never had a primary tree. We've always been a fairly even split between Discipline and Holy, unlike every other healing class that goes deep into one tree.

Priests need some whiz-bang utility or a heal that's more than a gimmick (Lightwell, Circle of Healing). I don't think it can be done without breaking PvP. One great summary of the overall problem I read once is that Priests have too much *default* utility. Out of the box, we get:

Hot: Renew
Big Heal: Greater Heal
Fast Heal: Flash Heal
Instant Save or Pre-Buff: Power Word: Shield
Utility Heal: Prayer of Mending
Group Heal: Prayer of Healing
Utility Heal: Binding Heal

What more could you add to that which doesn't completely break balance? Nothing that I can think of. So Blizzard adds, via Holy talents:

Holy Nova: instant cast, heals some and does damage without causing threat, but costs way too much mana
Lightwell: portable bandage bucket, but if the player takes any damage at all it cancels the effect
Circle of Healing: ranged group heal, castable on other groups, but all players must be ridiculously close to each other, and once again group heals just aren't that useful in raids compared to direct heals

All of these are highly, highly situational gimmicks that a large majority (shown via Armory datamining) of healing Priests don't bother picking up - since we're forced to, due to highly useful healing/utility talents existing in the Discipline tree!

Prayer of Mending should have been the Holy 41-point talent, not Circle of Healing. Not that I'd want Blizzard to do that, since they seem dead-set on forcing Priests to choose between raid utility (Divine Spirit, Improved Divine Spirit) and 41 points in Holy. Which is also incredibly frustrating. Why are no other healing classes forced to make such a choice?

-Bolty