Bliizard's Opinion on Priests?

#0 - Jan. 20, 2009, 3:35 p.m.

From alot of what I've been reading it seems the developers are of the Opinion that Holy Priests are fine. They bring up stats such as "Holy is one of the most played specs" and opinions that Priests have cool spells along with the fact that priests can do anything other healers can. However if you just take a look at this or the priest forum it's clear that we need fixing.
According to the Blizzard website "Priests are the masters of healing " and "Comments: The most sought after class for any group ".
Is this really the case though.
As many have said , our single target healing is inferior to a paladin's , our hot renew doesn't begin to match up to a Druids's and with the CoH nerf Shamans are easily the best Raid Healer.
What are we supposed to do in raids now. Spam flash heal even though it sucks compared to pally's flash of light?
The reason I and alot of others rolled a priest is because we loved the variety that comes with playing one. To have so many different tools to use to heal your target and your raid. Now we really don't have that many that are viable.

I really hope the devs aren't just thinking that this is some small problem that they can fix eventually or with a couple small changes. We need a serious overhaul and it's time Priests get some love and some attention.

If you make encounters with a ton of raid damage and our best spell is CoH then of course we are going to spam it. Alot of time I do feel like I am just mindlessly spamming CoH and it isn't that much fun. I'm not against the nerf but I would like to see our other spells given a serious look at.

You've said Ulduar is going to be difficult. I welcome the challenge but I also hope you all with give us the fix we really need to enjoy playing this game again.

Ghostcrawler

#3 - Jan. 20, 2009, 4:50 p.m.

I think there are two issues here that often get twisted together.

1) Can Holy heal effectively enough that they will be attractive additions to a raid with the CoH-nerf? We think this is the case.

2) Is Holy a fun spec to play? This is much more subjective of course. There are players who are perfectly happy with their Holy priest. However there have also been some recent posts by players who don't like the priest tools or aren't happy with the priest role. While we are never going to please everyone, we do feel it is worth trying to understand these concerns to see if there is anything we can do.

Using the old class descriptions to attempt to lawyer us into making changes is not a compelling argument. No brief text description is going to adequately convey to you what it is going to be like to heal a 25-player raid of an Arena team with a max-level priest. If you are unsure how to use a particular class or what they typically do in groups, the best way to get a handle on that, IMO, is just to read a lot of forum posts (and not just the official ones here).

Ghostcrawler

#22 - Jan. 20, 2009, 5:24 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I think the question you are still avoiding here GC is will they be attractive additions over another shammy/paladin? I think most raids have one or 2 druids who will always get an invite and don't really need more resto druids than that. The problem is, priest are the LAST choice as a healer. While you might not see that as a problem, many of us who enjoy raiding and rolled our toons to raid find this a VERY large problem.

I'm not avoiding it. I just disagree. We don't think that raids are or will use Holy priests as the healers of last resort. You cannot guarantee a raid spot because you are so indispensible, but our design is that nobody can. Currently we see priests, shamans, druids and paladins all getting spots in raids and we don't think the CoH nerf is going to stop this. If it does, we will take steps to buff priests in other ways, but I honestly don't foresee it happening.