Priest Explanation - 8 reasons

#0 - Jan. 15, 2009, 3:58 a.m.

Ghostcrawler made a very nice post requesting players explain specifically why so many Priests are upset, sans the rhetoric/caps locks/hostility. So here it is. If I seem hostile at any point, it's entirely because of the drawbacks of text-based communication.. I'm just trying to get my points across.

1. The large toolbox.

My Druid has:
Healing Touch
Regrowth
Rejuvenation
Lifebloom
Wild Growth
Tranquility
Swiftmend
Nature's Swiftness
Nourish

My Priest has:
Greater Heal
Flash Heal
Prayer of Mending
Prayer of Healing
Binding Heal
Renew
Circle of Healing
Holy Nova
PW: Shield

Does that really look much different? Sure, you can include situational spells like Mass Dispel, but then we can also toss in Rebirth Druid-side. Abolish Disease? Abolish Poison. Dispel? Remove Curse. Hymn of Hope? Innervate.

It's only when you include things like Lightwell and Guardian spirit, spells players might not even get since they have to choose between two healing trees (I went with +15% int on my Priest like many players do.. arguably much better than LW/GS), that Priests end up with a larger toolbox. Even then, it's a difference of one, maybe two situational spells.

Just take a look at the number of spells and count (instead of sticking with preconceptions of who has what).. that's all I'm saying. Is there really a huge toolbox on the Priest side, or is that just a mindset that's leftover from years past?

Of course classes can't be identical or equal, but there does need to be equal reason to take them.

2. Priests got worse with the expansion.

I'm not saying that on the class level. I mean that, on an individual basis, each Priest was worse when they logged on to their characters after the 3.0 patch. Spirit was nerfed and downranking was gone - the two staples of Priest mana management, and they all lost their racial special abilities (not saying it didn't need to be done). They were less capable of healing than they had been the night before.

This was the same time as Retadins were two-shotting everything, Warriors were swinging around massive weapons with Titan's Grip, Warlocks were turning into Illidan, Boomkins were running around with Starfall, Hunters were taming massive dinosaurs + burning dogs, Shaman were running around with Spirit Wolves + insta-casting LB's or Riptide, and Mages were looking at across-the-board buffs.

Isn't discouragement the natural reaction in that situation?

3. The stop-casting dance and similar mechanics.

Druids naturally spend time outside of the 5SR by virtue of how HoT-based healing works. Paladins and Shaman don't rely too much on spirit regen for their mana management. That leaves Priests as the only class that has to stop healing to be able to keep healing.

Sounds counterproductive when it's said like that, doesn't it? Another way of saying it: Priests have to try and find time to stand still and do nothing during the fight so they don't end up doing nothing near the end of the fight.

Likewise with needing players to get low on health before allowing heals to finish. I can't tell you how hard it is to avoid tossing a HoT on a player on my Druid when I'm paired with a Priest doing the stop-casting dance. It just doesn't feel natural.

Think of it this way.. the DPS equivalent of this would be letting an NPC heal themselves to make sure your mana inefficient damage spell wasn't mostly overkill. The other classes keep players topped off (similar to killing said NPC), while Priests allow them to take damage so their inefficient heals aren't overheal/wasted mana.

Ghostcrawler

#202 - Jan. 22, 2009, 5:52 p.m.

This is a good thread. (Caveat: it doesn't mean other threads that don't have a blue post are not good threads).

For sake of brevity, I'm going to address just one of these points for now.

Q u o t e:
4. The same old story... the same old song and dance, my friend.

Priests were casting Greater Heal, Flash Heal, Renew, Prayer of Healing, and PW:Shield 4 years ago. They've been casting ProM the past two.

When I say we want healers to have rotations, that doesn't necessarily mean you always press 112311231123 forever and install cooldown timers so that you don't go insane. Some dps classes are closer to that, but dps classes in general don't have to be as reactive to situations as do healers, so they can handle it.

What I am really getting at are things like Swiftmend and Riptide. Swiftmend is a very fun spell -- IMO one of the best ones in the game. But you can't spam Swiftmend. In fact, you have to be pretty smart about when you set it up and when you use it. And yes it has a cooldown. Riptide has a similar mechanic where you want to X when Y happens and you can come up with a lot of other examples. Riptide is fun. Swiftmend is fun. Greater Heal... eh, it does the job. But it's not a particularly fun button to use.

Disc gets this vibe with some of their shield mechanics, Grace and Penance. I do think that Holy could use a lot more of it though. The main "interesting thing" that happens with Holy is Holy Concentration and its Improved version. That's not bad, but we're not sure it's enough. I don't think we would actually use this specific example, but imagine a talent that sped up Greater Heal's cast time when you cast enough Flash Heals. Now you have a reason to "weave." You have a mechanic that rewards you (but doesn't require you) to switch from one thing to another. Another idea (off the top of my head) is that CoH healed more on targets with Renew on them (this steals too much from the Resto playbooks IMO). These don't necessarily have to be random procs or cooldowns, though sometimes these systems end up using those specific mechanics.

This is the kind of thing we'd like to do to Holy.

Ghostcrawler

#308 - Jan. 23, 2009, 4:04 a.m.

Disc is a really strong spec in PvP and PvE. We talked about it a lot today, and we are convinced that if healing meters showed absorbs and damage negated that Disc would be up there with everyone else. It's just hard to really get a handle on how much damage you are preventing.

I asked everyone around the table if they would feel comfortable having a Disc priest on main tank duty even with no paladin. Every one of them said yes.

(I know the tree still has some bugs and a couple of awkward areas in the tree. I was reacting more to the thought that having Holy and Disc as separate healing trees was doomed to failure.)