WoW - Oh crap, all the priests are quitting

Games
#1

So after only one Blizzard post in the priest forum between October 4 and today, we’re up to 22 posts just today. Healing-spec priests are pretty miffed by the patch changes (including me, with +600 healing I am healing better as 40/11/0 than I did as 14/37/0, Holy is mostly a waste now).

I had IRL reasons that kept me out, but my guild’s BWL raid never happened last night due to lack of healers. One of our priests ran Ony this week as a 0/0/0 spec because he can’t find a spec he likes. I ran a couple instances, and t is amazing how much more tedious curing/dispelling are now, and I know at least two of our four high attendance priests are sitting out MC tonight.

Here’s my favorite summary so far, though I disagree about the +healing nerf. With the 14/37 build, I took an 80% increase in mana usage for my most common heal, but the maxiumum amount of my top-end heals only got boosted about 15%:

With over 120 days played on my main priest, full 9/9 Faith, Atiesh Staff, 5/5 Oracle, plenty of BG experience, and 6 straight KT kills, I believe I can speak as an expert on my class…Tseric please read:

First, Even with all the absolute best gear the class has to offer, I get steamrolled in Battlegrounds. Priests have absolutely no survivability in them. All DPS classes with gear equivalent to what I earned 2 years ago can kill me with little problem, and I cannot heal someone to death. Yes, I know I have to have my friends nearby to help kill them before they kill me, but it doesnt play out that way. Any single DPSer from the other side who wants me dead will often make me dead. I cannot keep myself alive, with any spec I choose. This is my primary concern for my class, we are basically dead on sight.

Second…we are NOT the best healers in the game anymore. A full T3 Paladin or Druid heals better than us and with fewer mana issues. Paladins never have to drain mana potions since they have amazingly low cost healing spells. Druids get to innervate themselves, and have healing touch crits well over 6000. Priests cannot hit numbers that high with max rank Greater Heal, even factoring in the cast time coefficient. We compare healing done meters on Patchwerk every kill, and it is always two paladins leading the charts, and they do not have to drink mana potions like crazy to accomplish this.

Third. Our Talents. The main problem with our talents is that healers require TWO trees to get what the others healers always get in one tree. Priests absolutely require meditation (15% mana regen while casting). We require it. thats 14 points into Discipline no matter how you slice it. We do not have the luxury of even trying out our 41-point talent…ever…because Meditation is in the wrong tree. Additionally, our DPS talents for smite are spread out over two trees. we cannot, mathematically, get the dps increases, that other healers always get in a single tree. Imagine if all the feral dps talents were in two seperate trees… Then of course are our new talents. they are lackluster. Circle of Healing (the quick fix replacement to Circle of Renewal I assume) is just simply weak. We have some incredibly lackluster spells in the holy tree (Circle of Healing, Lightwell, Holy Nova). Even with the best gear, as I have, these spells are pathetically weak with the coefficients the designers have given them.

Fourth. I agree actually, with the nerf to Decursive and downranking. I think Decursive is a crutch for weaker players, and I have no problem playing without it. I am a very skilled curer (since I cannot actually Decurse, I cure Diseases and Magics). for downranking, I fully understand their rationelle for this nerf. I personally could cast Heal 2 all day long without going out of mana. I like this change since it still allows flexibility in the highest ranks, but we cannot cast the lowest ranks mana-free.

Fifth. DPS. Priests cannot farm. We cannot kill anything wsithout help if we’re full healer spec. We arent asking to be mages or rogues. We are simply requesting that we be able to do basic functions of the game without having to respec. The severe lack of damage capability of this class in Holy or Discipline makes playing my priest outside of groups prohibitively painful. Again, I’m not asking to be a mage or rogue in sheer dps capability, but I do want to be able to have half their damage ability. As it stands, I am looking at less than one fifth of their damage. So for every spell a mage casts, I need to cast 5. This is…mathematically…very depressing.

Loerna -Forlorn Legacy- (Windrunner)

#2

Meh, you’ll find the same sorts of whining in nearly every class (excluding hunters and warlocks at the moment, and to a lesser extent druids). I certainly have my share of gripes about my main class (mage).

As for the PvP thing… I dunno. Raiding and PvP are such entirely different skillsets (player-wise), especially for healers, that I don’t put a whole lot of credence into this guy’s complaining on that end. I sure have a hell of a lot harder time killing priests than I do most other classes (warlocks excluded, for obvious reasons).

#3

It’s funny that the priest compares DPSing with other classes, without mentioning that Rogues have almost the same problems with their good DPS skills being scattered all over. Except for Rogues, it’s in three trees.

#4

The priest’s post is mostly inaccurate and is exaggerating the situation.

I have a 58 priest, 60 druid, 60 shaman, and access to my brother’s 60 paladin. They all can heal just as well (except shaman, but 2.0 helped a lot) as the other. They have different flavours to their healing and priest flavour just happens to be boring.

Holy/Disc DPS is just fine. Shadow DPS is great. No rogue can do even 2 times the DPS of well geared priest in a 15-30 second fight.

#5

Personally, I don’t bother to PvP with my healbot, so that’s all a non-issue to me. The loss in sustained healing ability is really bothersome, and the loss of Decursive just means even more staring at health bars.

Meanwhile, all my other classes got a boost. I respecced my hunter to Beast Mastery, and my Warlock to Demonology, and they are lots of uber fun. I tried not healing my hunter’s pet (a Bloodaxe Worg), and I was able to chain-kill six elites in Tyr’s Hand before my pet died. I don’t even have Scattershot to interrupt the heals. With a Felguard, the killing never stops for my warlock, it is nice to have a useful endgame pet, and Improved Drain Soul is a sweet mana boost. My shadow priest - not much change damage-wise, which is fine since she kicked ass already, and VT seems to at least equal Meditation for mana regen. I stayed 2/0/49 with my mage, and damage is a bit higher (Frost Bolt hits for more, Cone of Cold for less) but she does get the Elemental now.

#6

This problem (though I’m hesitant to call it that) is present when you compare any of the classes with narrow rolls to hybrids. To a large extent it’s just a design limitation of giving each class three talent trees. You can’t give druids three different trees focused on melee damage, because then they have no healing talents. I mean yeah, I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that druids get Seal Fate for two talent points, but whatever, it’s not like the class doesn’t have other limitations.

RE: OP. I think a lot of the problems priests (and other classes) are experiencing right now are due to the fact that level 70 mechanics were essentially shoehorned into the level 60 game. I expect a lot of this stuff will go away once the expansion is out and people get to 70.

Also, the idea that all the priests would quit is so patently absurd I probably shouldn’t dignify it with a response (not to pick on Tanker, I don’t think you literally believe that.) If the WoW priest forums were to be believed, all the priests quit like 18 months ago. It’s just the normal QQing, amplified by the new patch. But even beyond that, people will continue rolling priests. Why? Because they like getting groups.

#7

Woo hoo! Priest shortage! Time to fill an open slot in a guild that has BWL on farm status and afk my way to free epix!

#8

The guy starts out by complaining about 1v1 PvP, so I would say no, he’s not an expert. My main class is a warrior, so when someone complains to me about 1v1 survivability, I just laugh. This aspect will probably never be balanced. Surprise, you’re a healer, so people will attack you. I hope you were sitting down.

Then he goes on to complain that other classes can take some of his workload, follows up by mentioning a talent he uses as a crutch, adds to the list another complaint about having to work to purge someone, then polishes it off with this bit of melodrama:

Priests cannot farm. We cannot kill anything wsithout help if we’re full healer spec.

Bitch, please. I think the only thing he has going in this argument is purging. And even then, this issue is not unique to priests.

So what’s his beef, then? His favorite heals cost more mana. He doesn’t do as much DPS, but he’s using a spec that even he says is inefficient.

Every time I read one of these posts, I thank God Almighty that I’m not one of the WoW talent designers. What a debacle.

#9

Priests are fine until they hit 60, which is when equipment becomes the substitute for leveling. There is always a split in opinion on the state of the class between the post-60 raiding priests and the sub-60 leveling priests. As the other classes gear up, the gap becomes larger. Despite being one corner of the “trinity,” post-patch I’m getting out-healed by similarly equipped druids & paladins, but I don’t get any of the benefits of a hybrid class. Compared to our epic peers, we now suck at DPS and at healing.

#10

Priests cannot farm. We cannot kill anything wsithout help if we’re full healer spec.

Pfft thats why we start a rogue alt. What is this guy fucking retarded?

You dont see me farming shit in my Teir 2 armor on my priest.

#11

Eh, I don’t think it should be required to level farming alts, though that is an obvious practical solution plenty of people resort to.

I can kill stuff on my holy priest. It takes a long time if I don’t want to drink between fights, though. If I just smite-spam I can nuke things down pretty fast, but that becomes expensive unless I can mooch water off a mage.

#12

While I don’t see the DPS situation changing much I would at least hope they would alleviate things for healing since if they’re underperforming too much consistently then people will stop taking priests and start taking healadins who can at least take a beating.

#13

Err… perhaps I’m missing something, but if there’s no use in going holy to improve healing, then, err… don’t? Go shadow/disc and improve your viability outside of healing, and let gear and spell choice fill in the void for healing.

What you’re complaining about seems akin to the druids who pop in and out and bitch because feral and balance are getting substantial help and resto isn’t. No shit! That’s because if resto was any stronger than it already is, everyone would be forced to be full resto yet again. Seems like they’re trying to avoid that with priests. As long as your tanks are staying upright is there any particular reason why priests really need to be substantially better than druids/paladins at healing? I’d think being unable to do so (while still healing enough to keep people alive and raids going) would be a godsend, enabling priests to branch out into the other trees and do something when they’re not raiding.

It’s not like we’re going to quit inviting priests on raids just because druids do single target healing better. (Hell, I’d argue that druids or paladins ought to do single target healing better, since we can do fuck-all for group healing, and a shadow priest puts any moonkin/ret pally to shame.)

#14

Priests have PoH, but is it used often, or supposed to be? I find it extremely situational and the majority of my healing is single target too. What I like about priests is the reactive element with shield/flashheal (contra the slower druid heals) – though pallies and Shammies have some of that reactive power too I suppose. I always feel more capable healing with my priest than my druid, though it’s partly because he is also better geared.

I don’t know how it goes in the raid scene. Are there battles where preists have to spam PoH or something?

#15

Priests used to use it on Vael, before they made Holy Nova threat-free. It’s useful if you’re dedicated to healing a melee DPS group (and you’re in the same group with them, of course.) You also used to be able to use it to heal through 10 man Strat groups while really paying attention, as it was the only button you really needed to push, so that was ok I guess. And of course it’s just randomly useful the odd time and again. I’d say it’s largely inessential, though.

#16

Meh, I sympathize as a resto druid with him but for his “I think Decursive is a crutch for weaker players, and I have no problem playing without it. I am a very skilled curer (since I cannot actually Decurse, I cure Diseases and Magics).” attitude he can go fuck himself.

Also, mouselock, resto does have its problems. Its tree is bloated all to hell. One benefit though is that it just might be raid viable/tolerable to go balance/resto instead of straight resto and be a good single target healer with some decent dps capability for raid/non raid playing. Of course, I find being a “hot bot” tree odious and far more boring/gimped than a standard heal bot.

#17

Errr… inessential perhaps. Very useful if you have a good group who knows what they’re doing. The heal per mana of something like PoH is far better than any other heal, talented or not, if there’s decent damage distribution. In raids that happens with AE crap. In groups that happens if you have a good group that understands their limits and aggro and that it’s okay for a rogue, hunter, and even mage or priest to tank so long as they know what they’re doing and there’s a net benefit. In really good groups there often is.

Conversely, it gets a lot of use if your group is super-crappy too. It’s just not used so much if your group is run of the mill and does the whole “only the tank should ever have aggro at any time” thing that’s ultra-safe but super-boring.

#18

It’s just not used so much if your group is run of the mill and does the whole “only the tank should ever have aggro at any time” thing that’s ultra-safe but super-boring.

Hmm, I thought that’s what “good groups” were. Yeah, I can keep a mage alive at a high mana cost if he pulls agro a lot, but I’d prefer not to. Less margin for error, less mana to spare if adds come along, etc. I’m always more comfortable healing a group where the tank has most of the agro, and when I tank I try to keep as much of it as I can. I guess I’m a noob, though.

I suppose the better-geared groups are, the less patient they are with standard tanking and just want to nuke through everything as fast as possible (kinda like the 45 minute strat), in which case I can see PoH being more useful.

#19

Not by my definition.

I suppose the better-geared groups are, the less patient they are with standard tanking and just want to nuke through everything as fast as possible (kinda like the 45 minute strat), in which case I can see PoH being more useful.

Yeah, if two monsters are going to kill you unless they’re only hitting the tank, then of course there’s no room for the mage to tank. If, however, you can kill 5 at once while taking the mana it would take a priest to heal you through 3 if you did single target tanking, then it’s a lot better to spread the damage around. A good example of this would be something like the 45 minute Strath run for the tier 0.5 armor quests, where your main concern is getting through there alive, not necessarily in a 100% controlled and safe manner.

Let damage accumulate on folks within reason, spend 2x the mana cost of a GH to heal everyone for 0.75x what a GH would heal, and you’re ahead overall. If the damage accumulated because people were morons it doesn’t help. If the damage accumulated because you killed 6 mobs in the time it would take a single tank strategy to kill 4, though, then you’re doing well overall.

I know when I raid our top priest uses tons of group heals. I think it’s left up to paladins/druids to ensure that people who are disproportionately getting hammered don’t get too low, while the priest focuses on keeping everyone chugging along with lots of group healing. The ability to heal 5 people at once without triggering 5 global cooldowns plus 5 cast times is a lot more useful than folks here are making it out to be. Sometimes your difficulty in keeping up with healing isn’t mana, but simply how quickly you can get around to person X.

#20

So the excuse for a bad healing tree is not to use it? I mean, sure, that’s a common sense approach to building a char like that, but that’s no reason not to bitch that you don’t have a useful healing-focused spec tree as a healer.