Are people currently playing priests just bad?

[KaPe]

In which GC replied
"Priests got a lot of raiding use this week. Why do you feel ineffective?"

Great.
Just bare-faced ignore the problem.

We are not getting buffed any time soon.

Well, technically he isn't incorrect - it's not like people were going to bench their Priests before actually raiding. Except beta testers, probably. So it's kinda "people are playing their chosen class in the first week of expansion, clearly everything is fine". Of course, this also means they'll wait few weeks at least before noticing that something is wrong and Priests are at bottom.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and we'll starting outhealing everyone after getting few more epics due to insanely broken scaling or something.

As with any expansion that boasts major changes, the fact that the game has been out for just over two weeks is more of the reason for low dps than any skill or lack thereof.

I can see Discs *maybe* not adjusting properly (since they actually got some new things), but Holy didn't really get any major changes. If anything, it got buffed with new Lightwell, and level 90 talents. It's rather hard to say that other classes - and Monks, specifically - adjusted to their changes perfectly, while Priests just suck.

[mookspal]

Shaman should be higher. They aren't doing it right.

Agreed. Shamans are amazing right now.

[Crashdummy]

The thing that worries me is the complete dominance of monk healers in 25 mans.

[Sinn]

The thing is they balanced the thing on beta based on people wearing mostly pvp epics. Things could get better the more we get stuffed. Wait and see is probably what we should be doing right now.

Also, there is probably a nerf incoming for monks.

[AstroleonShadowflower]

Ah, to add to my previous comment, GC tweeting again about Priest problems, only to say-

"Output isn't a great way to evaluate healing. Overhealing, hot sniping, whoever heals the tanks just having stronger HPS..."

I'm fucking terrified.
We're going to stay like this, arn't we?

[mookspal]

Right now it seems like its all about pally, druid, monks. I would say priests arent just awful, its just those classes are just that much better right now. Our guild just had our last hold out healing priest switch to his druid, the other 2 had already rafed up monks.

What about Shamans? They are pretty amazing right now also.

---------- Post added 2012-10-05 at 01:41 PM ----------

Knowing Blizzard they will probably nerf us.

Blizzard " we feel like DA is doing to much so we nerf'd it"

[nobodysbaby]

Ah, to add to my previous comment, GC tweeting again about Priest problems, only to say-

"Output isn't a great way to evaluate healing. Overhealing, hot sniping, whoever heals the tanks just having stronger HPS..."

I'm fucking terrified.
We're going to stay like this, arn't we?

If you check logs Hpriests have VERY low overhealing. I maxed out 54k hps at Feng and ranked in the top with 17% overhealing, using all manapower I have and gemming/enchanting spirit, yet being outhealed by other classes by a lot. Now.... That is a terribly ignorant answer. Exactly what awsome invisible tools does he talk about here??

There are no sniping yet, there are idle time cause I am to afraid to go oom, while the other healers keep the spot+tank-healing going... Does he really think we can afford to try and snipe heals? There is minimal overheal and what exactly does he mean by HoT sniping??

[Cynique]

Are there bad priests out there? Certainly yes. Sadly, that doesn't change the fact that comparing top priests with top shamans or monks will lead to simple conclusion that priest healing numbers are lacking. Like it's been already said, there are differences in matters of 10k of HPS in comparable circumstances.

Just so you just don't call me bad, I've ranked as 2nd best discipline priests on Feng, 9th best discipline priest on Guard, 8th best holy priest on Spirit Kings and sadly only 70th discipline priest on Gara'jal since I was focusing on dpsing the boss with smites due to low raid dmg. (http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/47010/)

I'm personally raiding with 10man guild - we've had to resort to 2man healing fights (except Feng where we had offhealing discipline priest) as we miss our 3rd healer due to personal issues. Before raid, I managed to get 4 epics and full 463 gear with spirit on everything but off-hand (there is none with spirit from HCs), sitting on 7.7k spirit with Price of Progress and Ichorious Blood trinkets, both focused on maximum regen. I gemmed spirit wherever I could basically.

My healing partner, restoration shammy with around 3k spirit less and 6 less ilvl was able to outheal my on every single fight so far - and trust me wehn I say that I'm playing to me full. I'm running disc/holy spec, constantly trying new combinations of talents (I'm now certain about best options on first 4 bosses). Yet, my healing partner with inferior gear is able to outheal me on all of Guard, Gara'jal and even on Kings (if he only didn't die minute before we killed the boss) - what's most funny is that on Guard, my 43k HPS was enough to grant me 9th position in rankings, whereas his 47k only put him on 151th spot.

I agree that healing isn't only about numbers - there are utilities that priest can bring into the raid which are very unique, we are very versatile class, but feeling like "jack of all trades, master of none" is bad. On contrary, I believe discipline can still shine on fights like Feng with proper Spirit Shell usage (it's sadly sucks on most other fights right now).

In my opinion, to put priest in right place without overbuffing, Blizzard should:
- give 5% passive haste back to holy,
- put small healing HoT on discipline's PoH so it doesn't suck when DA isn't absorbed (5%-7% of total healing is enough, or just make part of unused expiring Divine Aegis f from PoH transform into HoT on target)
- increase mastery healing for holy on PoH by like 30%
- make binding heal more mana-efficient option so Holy can get their Serendipity if playing wise and using BH
- make it so that haste from Borrowed Time and Power Infusion actually affects swing timer of Shadowfiend/Mindbender so people can get more mana and healing out of their class if they are clever about it.
- also, putting Solace to at least 0,85% mana seems like necessity right now

[DailyBB]

Hi, Dailybreeze of <unholy Trinity>- burning blade here. We downed Elegon last night on 25m and after healing 5/6 as holy I think we're in an ok place. I was competitive with other healers in terms of HPS and overhealing. I ran about 8k spirit for Elegon and didn't have much mana issues as long as i used shadowfiend/hymn of hope/potions correctly. I even did about 20k dps from solace spam.

I feel like priests are made to be burst aoe healers in a raid setting. Blizz gave us a great toolkit to dps/regen/triage heal during low damage output and the tools for healing when strong aoe damage is happening(Cacade or halo/PoH/CoH/DH)

All the healers seem competitive atm when played correctly and efficiently. I dont think we need a "buff" but I do think that Mistweavers need a nerf. (just look at the top parses for healing on ANY fight) Hopefully blizz can realize that soon.

[Washuwa]

yeah holy priest is really good atm, i managed to heal first 3 25 bosses of MV with 4000 spirit, and doing more than 40k hps, solace is an amazing tool to gain mana, and i was low in spirit because my main spec is shadow and due to big queues on the server we had to change some dps to heals, i did rank on the 3 fights, disc is really bad i can say, unless u need raid cds or tank cd's yo should play holy, dont attach to a spec, if u having troubles with disc go holy, like mages, they playing frost, and frost is def not a pve spec 95% of the imes..

[ODDLAWL]

I did 5/6 25m as Holy and managed to rank top 40 in 3 fights, with Elegon being my best rank. After I got the hang of Elegon it wasn't that much of a mana struggle, although some fights really did hurt mana wise, you can still manage to squeeze through fine. I was heavily dependent on Solace and I was watching my Sfiend cooldown like a hawk. I think people are just seeing themselves compared to Monks, which is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that even if we don't get any buffs whatsoever, when people start gearing up it'll be like this never happened. I fully agree with Daily because I was never "at the bottom of the charts" on attempts or kills, other healers weren't outhealing me something fierce; it was competitive.

I haven't played Disc but I haven't heard that many good things about.

P.S: Cascade is freaking amazing!

[Havoc12]

Odd comments from people and as usual rubbish from GC.

Holy is fine, they don't need a buff. Palas, shamans need a small nerf (not druids), monks need a big nerf.

Discipline needs very few things. I posted them in detail elsewhere.

[KaPe]

yeah holy priest is really good atm, i managed to heal first 3 25 bosses of MV with 4000 spirit, and doing more than 40k hps, solace is an amazing tool to gain mana, and i was low in spirit because my main spec is shadow and due to big queues on the server we had to change some dps to heals, i did rank on the 3 fights, disc is really bad i can say, unless u need raid cds or tank cd's yo should play holy, dont attach to a spec, if u having troubles with disc go holy, like mages, they playing frost, and frost is def not a pve spec 95% of the imes..

Maybe I'm skeptical, but I don't see how doing the same thing Shamans did back in Cataclysm counts as "pretty good". Solace depends on encounters having periods of low healer activity - or other players picking up your slack and healing while you regen. With 4000 spirit, you must have used it *a lot*, which makes me believe that other healers had to work harder because of you. Even when the damage is low, you can cast 'efficient heals' to keep the tank up or something. It's pretty much the same thing that's the problem with HoH - you're effectively out of the fight for X seconds.

Now, perhaps I'm wrong, I vastly overestimate Spirit and you're just that good, but... Perhaps if this was Elegon - where there are indeed periods of zero healing and extra damage can be pretty useful. But first three bosses?

[Maioren]

Priests' mana regen is total bulls** atm. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ye ye ye all healers have mana issues... except monks, resto druids, hpalas and rshamans.

Very good priests will look like average healers. Average priests will look like terribad priests.

^ I couldn't have said it better.

[ramennoodleking]

Holy priest's problem is solely from a mana regen perspective. Our output is fine.

*NOTE* This is spoken from a 10-man perspective.

[Mazi]

Holy priest's problem is solely from a mana regen perspective. Our output is fine.

*NOTE* This is spoken from a 10-man perspective.

omnomnom DMC + (sadly) spine trinket <- I think that's part of the problem... we're also having to sacrifice int/spellpower for regen because we are getting less per point of spirit than other healers. I have far less spellpower than the other healers in my guild but I have to stack up the spirit where I can

[NoHealsForYou]

We are bottom at the moment. I dont care much. I two healed spirit kings and Garajal with no problem so I am happy when things die. I am disc. Just get over it, at the moment we will not be topping metters. Did it with iLVL like 455.

Firstly, it's 10man. Secondly, it's normal mode.

There is no 'getting over it'. Priests, at least in 25man raiding, are terribly weak compared to other classes, just simply not enough throughput and whilst this is fine in normal mode since 'no one dies, so all healers did their job' where raiding is quite simple, wait until heroics. That's when guilds start thinking about whether to take that mistweaver monk who dishes out 80k hps upwards or take the holy/disc priest who can top at around 50k hps. I doubt hymn of hope is going to save us...

[Itssansbrah]

Priest healers are currently ranked the worst and are usually taken last in most raid comps as far as I'm aware my guild told me just to drop my healer off spec and keep two shadow specs due to how underwhelming priest heals are at the moment. It sucks hopefully healer priests will see a buff soon.

[Ellumina]

I have 88 lvl priest myself and to tell the truth i was healing as discipline at mogu palace, and we wipe at the final boss 8 times, then i changed to holy we beat him up in single fight without any members dying and on the first try, so he is my imperession of priest nowdays: they sack on the playstyle because people are used to easy runs down very fast, and people stand in aoe and do not avoid traps and this drains mana even faster.

The first "boss" at mogu palace took me to 10% of mana so it is hard on disc nowdays.

Disc suck hard nowdays, if you want to play a healer you need to go holy nowdays since disc suck balls.

I actually prefer Disc in 5mans personally. A lot of downtime / miminal outgoing damage where you can just Atonement heal and Solace. I find myself doing ~20k DPS on boss fights as Disc, which is very enjoyable to me, while I don't enjoy Holy as much (again, strictly in a 5man dungeon setting, and this is easily just personal preference).

My numbers on WoL are depressing to say the least. Some might say numbers don't matter or we have such awesome utility, but it does matter and the utility doesn't even seem worth it at this cost. Significantly low numbers just informs me someone else is picking up the weight that I'm slacking. And I can't help but slack due to a broken spec. It's a wonderful feeling when you heal a fight as hard as you can, pouring all your heart and mana into healing, and come out doing a consistent 22k HPS, less than what I was doing in DS / FL gear at level 85.

[iggyMG]

Most top guilds have their logs hidden. Most top guilds had their priests re roll monk.

I would consider myself a pretty good player. I rerolled priest FROM PALADIN, because I wanted a change for this next expansion. I will say that priest healing is a lot more intensive on mana (i'm playing holy) but i'm doing some very good numbers in terms of output compared to other healers in my raid. I'm not raiding with retards, the players in my guild are quite skilled.

I guess the point i'm making here is that I think all the QQ about priests is overrated. I understand at the beginning of the expansion people aren't used to the mana shortages that healers have (especially holy priests), but I think with time people will adapt to this. It was the same thing at the beginning of Cataclysm with all healers. Everyone was QQ'ing because raiding was "too hard, blizzard nerf plz i'm gonna quit the game".

If anyone can give their input on this please do so. Also, its not like i bought a bunch of BoE epics either, i'm in just heroic blues, and i'm even missing a few enchants because i leveled up at the last minute.