Priests in WotLK, forgotten?

Q u o t e:
But if I take a look at the talent tree for priests it just sucks monkey balls... wth is up with the shadow talents? blizz was bored after buffing all the other classes first and then throwing the priest class aside? Seems so

I know some Priests that are very happy with the changes in WotLK, but since this is a reply to you: Serawyn, can you tell me some of the specific things that you like and don't like about the Shadow talents in Wrath of the Lich King Beta?

Q u o t e:
I would have loved to see something said from blues in this forum about the downranking nerf. It's a huge change that affects the healing style a lot of priests have been using since release.

Well, we can only say what we've already said. That is, if there are issues after this change, we will look at them and if need be provide new spells or revamp old ones (such as, purely for example, Heal) to replace what was achieved by a lower rank Greater Heal. The Beta is not yet finished, and our development team is still reviewing the impact of changes made. If you've got some feedback on your experience of healing after the downranking change on the Beta, we invite you to post up your feedback in the Priest EU English Beta forum.

Q u o t e:
Seems like you (the CMs) are very reluctant to give useful feedback to healers, it's annoying. I dont know about other healing classes, but I know priests have based their healing on efficient use of downranked heals. How can the CMs pass by this huge change without proper feedback in the priest class forum is something I cannot understand.

Unfortunately the Community team can only pass on either our own personal thoughts, or comments made by the development team. The idea that we have a whole load of information that we're just choosing not to share with you is a fallacy. When we have information, we do post it.

Q u o t e:
I wondered why the reasonable constructive proposals and analysis of the problems of our class always ignored?

Have you seen it?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9023667426&sid=2003

I think, no, because no blue answer in that topic yet.

I think you are misinterpreting a lack of a blue reply to mean the feedback isn't read or appreciated. That's an understandable assumption, but incorrect. Whilst dealing with reports, keyloggers and other tasks, yes the Community Team does read the forums but no we do not reply to most topics. I don't think anyone would really appreciate if we just spammed "Nice feedback, thanks for that :-)" all over the place: it would soon come to mean nothing much at all. Despite that though, I do when I can.

Q u o t e:
Hmm, regarding the blue answers in this thread, the mentality seems to be "go try it in the beta and then give us feedback". I'm sorry, but 99%+ of the playerbase can't do that. But we still care about our class, and we have a lot of experience playing said class.

What's problematic with the holy priest spec and the current phase of beta testing, is that holy priests play very different for solo play, 5-man parties and raids. So no players in the beta knows how the new holy priest plays in raids, as there are only 5-mans available to them. While there's little or no point in downranking heals in 5-man groups (as most ppl won't go oom) and CoH isn't used all that much either, as ppl are usually too much spread out. This changes entirely in a raid setting.

From my experience in raids, I usually end up keeping renew(s) up, bouncing a PoM and either spam-healing Gheal rank 2 or max rank Gheal with cancel-heal on tanks. Or raid healing with CoH, quick single target heals where needed and possibly shielding ppl in fights with big bursts og when tanks are about to go bye-bye. The most important tool I have is CoH, I can instant-heal a lot of raid members, and I need to spam this a few times to get ppl above x% hp so they can take the random-targeted y amount of damage some boss does. As my guild is casual and doing hyjal atm, what comes to mind is fights like VR on melee, Solarian, Hex Lord, bird boss in ZA, lynx on melee, D&D done by Rage in MH, Carrion Swarm from Anatharion (spelling?).

Point being, 2/3 of most raiding priests ways of healing are getting changed around and either nerfed or rendered impossible (downrank-spamming). Beta testers can't give feedback on this, as they're not raiding yet. Yes some of us holy priests are concerned

Well there will be raid beta testing in the Beta, but don't forget the upcoming PTR will allow even more testing prior to changes being made live. I do 25 and 10 man raids myself and believe me I know full well what the changes will mean for a Holy Priest. But until players are able to test them in a raid environment, then it really is only theorycraft; which is of course still valuable and often very accurate.

You can still spam CoH... Beta's cooldown for this spell was removed some time ago. On behalf of Holy Priests I know well, my personal concern only really lies with the removal of Greater Heal's lower ranks. I'm hopeful that either encounters will be changed to prevent this being a necessity, or that we may see changes to something like Heal to make it more appealing. But though we've announced possible retroactive instance or gear changes -- or spell adjustments or additions, we haven't mentioned anything specific or confirmed as yet for the Holy Priest.