Quote:GC - Priests are only 4 Backup...

#0 - Jan. 9, 2009, 3:39 p.m.

Priests are backup healers... If the other ones aren't around....

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14132918154&pageNo=4&sid=1#79

Q u o t e:
You can shift from fight to fight depending on the specifics of the encounter and the needs of the raid. If you are in a group where raid attendance is not always 100%, a priest is a wondeful thing to have. You can tank heal when the paladins don't log or hot when the druids don't log.

Now clearly Ghostcrawler was talking about how versatile a Priest is, and how they can fill any role in a raid. However no one can really deny that a priest does not hot as well as a druid and he does not Tank heal as well as a Paladin.

This thread is about a priests role in a raid...

At the beginning of the Burning Crusade if you wanted to be a Holy Priest you were laughed at. "Go spec shadow if you want to raid". The Priest community persisted and 6 months later in Patch 2.1 priests finally had a place in raids with Circle of Healing. From Tier 5 content and on, Raid damage was incredibly high and while not as good at healing the raid as a Shaman the Priest was more versatile at doing everything in the raid. As content got harder Blizzard had to find ways to challenge the healers. With Black Temple and Sunwell, Priests suddenly found an amazing place in raids due to consistent group wide raid damage. While still not as desired as Shaman for the incredible benefit that more than one brought to a raid, Priests were still in demand for their raw ability to heal.

Priests were a powerful force through nearly all of burning crusade because of one spell. By 2.3.0 Circle of healing was the best raid healing spell in the game IF THE PARTY BEING HEALED BY IT TOOK CONSISTENT OR EQUAL DAMAGE. For situations were sporadic and inconsistent damage was hitting the raid, the shaman still remained the superior raid healer (Think of Bloodboil vs. Teron Gorefiend). Priests could not one button spam Circle of Healing because doing so was ineffective in many situations. No one complained about Priests spamming Circle of healing because Priests had to rotate other spells into their rotation or risk massive amounts of overheal.

Priests were the raid healer for all of the Burning crusade from T5 content and above. But the utility we brought was no where near as desired as the Shaman (The only thing that has changed between now and then was that Shaman Lost stackable Bloodlust and many of their totems became raidwide)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14132918154&pageNo=4&sid=1#79

Q u o t e:
If that type of role doesn't appeal to you, I can understand. There seem to be a lot of priests (on these forums) who just don't like priests and want them to be something else.

The problem is that Priests enjoyed our role as being the raid healer. We brought Gimmick utility in the form of mass dispel, and only 1 priest was needed for our buffs (which the shadow priests at the time could do since they were required for healing intensive encounters). Shaman brought the real utility (And they still do). We aren't asking for stupid easy 1 button smashing, but prior to CoH becoming a Smart Heal, Priests WERE NOT 1 button smashers. But with a cooldown, Circle of healing just heals for a very ineffective amount and without any other tool to heal more than one target at a time, priests will no longer be able to effectively raid heal.

So please understand that the nerfs you are making to the priest class that if not made without a counter balance to the way we heal the raid will leave most priests feeling as if they have no purpose in raids.

For those of you who are wondering why priests keep making posts like these, Loveth on < Summit > Really nailed our problem on the head. I really recommend reading this post on Page 9 At the Top
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14287259645&sid=1&pageNo=9#160

Ghostcrawler

#9 - Jan. 9, 2009, 4:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
You can shift from fight to fight depending on the specifics of the encounter and the needs of the raid. If you are in a group where raid attendance is not always 100%, a priest is a wondeful thing to have. YOU CAN TANK heal when the paladins don't log or hot when the druids don't log.

Look! GC said priest can tank! I'm confrused.

Ghostcrawler

#69 - Jan. 9, 2009, 5:52 p.m.

Honestly, I think you are focusing too much on the role of the priest, or even what you think we think of the role of the priest is. I think players do that a lot for all classes, but it also can freak them out because they are trying to reconcile these mushy philosophical ideas with the reality of numbers and buttons.

Don't ask the chef "What are you trying to accomplish with this meal?" See if you enjoy the food. If it's too salty or the desert plate is empty, bring that up.

Focus on the priest's tools. Focus on the situations where you can't be effective. Don't, IMO, focus on whether or not the spells we gave you satisfy what we intend for them to to do.

One of the best things I got out of all of the CoH nerfing discussion was players pointing out where they thought Renew (maybe it needs to benefit from more talents), Binding Heal (maybe it's too expensive) or PoH (fill in the blank) might be falling short. That's good stuff.

If you enjoy your priest, keep playing your priest. If you don't like their spells, maybe try out a different healing class. I'm sorry for those players who only played a priest because they loved Circle of Healing and won't anymore, but that's going to happen if you fall in love too much with one spell and not the whole package.

Ghostcrawler

#297 - Jan. 12, 2009, 10:43 p.m.

Q u o t e:
But honestly he has given us the reason: priests are well rounded and thus not as powerful as the others.

Hmmm. I'm not sure I would have chosen those words.

We designed the priest to have lots of different tools. That in and of itself can be very powerful. You can fill lots of different roles in a group and switch from role to role very easily. While some tools (Renew and Flash Heal for example) are very reminiscent of spells from other classes, other tools (Prayer of Mending and Guardian Spirit) really have no direct equivalent.

I think the "not as powerful" clause gets invoked sometimes because if priests were better at hots than druids etc. then people start to wonder why they should ever bring the other classes. I realize you can turn that argument around, but still the flexibility needs to count for something. We do not view priests as weakened versions of the other classes either in the way we design them or in practice.

All that said, I do hear a lot of priests saying that they want to be really good at something and I do hear a lot of priests saying they want more tools that are more interesting and not just equivalent versions of other classes' spells. We get this message loud and clear. It's certainly something we will keep in mind as we sit down to work on the priest for 3.1 and beyond.