Shadowpriests, raid utility and Cataclysm

[Brokolice]

WoTLK came: "suprisingly", good SPs still find themselves stable raid spots in progress (xlate: racing) raid. Guilds were still recruiting good SPs left and right. But hey, when contents become farm contents (aka: who cares?), our dmg slowly went down in damage meter! (still, we kept our raid spots unless you were raiding with 3 or more SPs)

Interesting to see how easily you have forgotten the whole ToC situation. Or maybe your team mates were bad enough you didn't have to be benched (sorry, I tried to keep this as least offensive as possible). My guild had one SP for most of the ToC progression. And he was there for Misery and Misery only.

Cata: just wait and see, and adapt to it if need be.

Well, we almost adapted before 3.3. With my warlock.

[Sergentbeatstick]

This is in regard to Misery being removed.
Misery&Imp Faerie fire are a pain. I know there was a time where the hit cap was not reachable with a handful of pieces of gear, and I respect that, but that time is passed when pieces give 60/80/100 hit. Having two perfectly balanced gear sets is fun for a tier or two, but it becomes tedious having to hoard all these pieces and worry about who shows up.

This is an opinion from someone who has only had those buffs from spotty attendance players, but I think it is the direction Blizzard is going away from. It is only sad because they have hinted that bosses in the next expansion could have higher Miss/Dodge/Parry in each tier which would make those buffs not diminish in power each tier.

Keep your chin up, there is still much room for buffs to be spread out! Spell Crit and Spell Haste are good candidates. Also only two classes (sorry if I left any out Boomkin/Ret?) bring an all around haste buff. As someone mentioned earlier, but bears repeating, VE healing will likely not be over-healing if their model for healing hits the mark.

[Frmercury]

Oh, great, we're bringing up the, "Horrible heals with horrible mana costs that will run us dry of mana in seconds" ability. It's always such a great idea to have shadow priests come out and heal.

You know when a Shadow Priest is asked to come out and heal?

When nothing can possibly save the raid anyways, especially not a Shadow Priest running themselves dry of mana in no time flat on sub-par healing.

(I'm not hating on your points btw, just one that I disagree with in a way)

Yeah, I'm going to call you out on this one. Any Shadow Priest who doesn't keep heals bound in case of an emergency is pretty damned bad. Your goal as a member of any raid is to complete the encounter. Granted you will do that through DPS 98% of the time, but doing things like toss out a HoH for a healer, DH, Toss out a PoM / FH, etc. can mean the difference between a wipe and an earlier kill.

"I'm sorry Mr. Holy Pally I know you're the only thing keeping that tank from one shot, but I'm too busy doing DPS to HoH you." or "Nope, even though I have the mana I'm not going to be able to do any real damage I'm not going to drop out in the Frostmourne room to toss a PoM / Renew, I'd rather just let them die."

I will agree though that while we can do this from time to time, it shouldn't be counted as something we 'bring' to a raid really. Would you count that for Boomkins or EleShams?

WoTLK came: "suprisingly", good SPs still find themselves stable raid spots in progress (xlate: racing) raid. Guilds were still recruiting good SPs left and right. But hey, when contents become farm contents (aka: who cares?), our dmg slowly went down in damage meter! (still, we kept our raid spots unless you were raiding with 3 or more SPs)

I remember late Naxx until Late ToC... doesn't seem like you do though. That sucked.

If the Shadow priest had to save your raid.. you shouldn't have beaten that encounter anyways. There was an inherent problem with the rest of the raid somewhere. If it gets to the point a Shadow Priest has to heal your raid, something has gone horribly wrong..

All six seconds during which you do nothing? Meh. Dispersion has always had niche use. I can't call niche use utility, when you don't see that on most raids. All I have to do to prove my point there is point at all the unavoidable aoe that completely ignores Dispersion in some encounters.

No, and yes. You should beat an encounter (hell beating an encounter after is MORE of an accomplishment) because a Shadow Priest dropped out and healed.

One the reasons I'm pretty passionate about this point is that my spot heals (especially in 10 mans) have made the difference between wiping and success. I've seen it happen.

Dispersion saves raids too. Don't kid yourself. I wouldn't trade Dispersion for every caster buff / debuff out there. Big Bangs to Vile Spirits I save lives / raids by being effing invincible for 6 seconds. While not a raid buff / debuff, it's still amazing.

[Strykie]

If you dont bring a Disc priest and a Holy priest to a 25 man raid, you will NOT get far.
There will be 1 maybe 2 fights in a 10 boss instance that requires you to dispel.
VE is only useful on the priest.
AoE is just as good from a mage or lock.
Ret Paladins are always brought to raids for Blessings/Divsac/Auramastery/Hands.

Why bring a shadow priest?

[gaymer77]

They said that they would make Cure Disease unuseable in Shadowform, but they didn't mention defensive/offensive Dispels or Fear Ward.

Upcoming Cataclysm Dispel Mechanics

Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.

In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.

• Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
• All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
• Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
• Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
• Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
• Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
• When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

Edited to find the exact post with the dispell changes for Cataclysm.

[Purple]

Yeah, I'm going to call you out on this one. Any Shadow Priest who doesn't keep heals bound in case of an emergency is pretty damned bad. Your goal as a member of any raid is to complete the encounter. Granted you will do that through DPS 98% of the time, but doing things like toss out a HoH for a healer, DH, Toss out a PoM / FH, etc. can mean the difference between a wipe and an earlier kill.

You're a Shadow Priest. Your job is to provide the things that a Shadow Priests provides, not that any disc or holy priest can provide better. If you are being asked to pop out and heal, at any time, something has gone horribly wrong in your raid. That's not utility. That's making up for someone else screwing up.

"I'm sorry Mr. Holy Pally I know you're the only thing keeping that tank from one shot, but I'm too busy doing DPS to HoH you." or "Nope, even though I have the mana I'm not going to be able to do any real damage I'm not going to drop out in the Frostmourne room to toss a PoM / Renew, I'd rather just let them die."

Again, why isn't one of your other healers covering this? If they aren't, then they're dead. Something has gone wrong. Your people messed up. If they're falling back on the Shadow Priest to heal their raid is falling apart.

I will agree though that while we can do this from time to time, it shouldn't be counted as something we 'bring' to a raid really. Would you count that for Boomkins or EleShams?

No. I'd put them both in the exact same boat as us. The Ele Shaman at least doesn't have to deal with form switching and the mana cost. Even then, I still maintain that if your raid is falling back on one of these specs to heal, something has gone wrong. If you survive it because your Shadow Priest popped out, it's little more than luck. This is especially a bad thing if your Shadow Priest saved the raid on a Gear Check encounter.

No, and yes. You should beat an encounter (hell beating an encounter after is MORE of an accomplishment) because a Shadow Priest dropped out and healed.

Again, why is your raid asking you to drop out and heal? No raid I've been in has ever done this unless someone isn't doing their job or outright can't do their job. It means something has gone wrong or it means someone needs a kick in the butt, and it's not the Shadow Priest.

One the reasons I'm pretty passionate about this point is that my spot heals (especially in 10 mans) have made the difference between wiping and success. I've seen it happen.

Again, why are you spot healing? No. Let me rephrase, why are you being 'asked to spot heal'? If your raid was up to snuff this wouldn't be happening. If people were doing their part correctly, this wouldn't be happening. No guild raid I've been in has had me spot heal them on any encounter, and they haven't needed it. The only raids I've ever been in that have done something remotely like this were pug raids with some random moron in the middle of the encounter screaming for one of the hybrids to stop DPS and heal. Usually when they're doing this it was because something was going wrong. People may have been standing in the fire, people may have not had the gear, people may have been neglectful in their rotations and so on and so forth. None of these things come down to asking the hybrid, of any sort, to come out and heal as the answer to them.

They come out as an inherent problem in the raid that needs fixed.

Dispersion saves raids too. Don't kid yourself. I wouldn't trade Dispersion for every caster buff / debuff out there. Big Bangs to Vile Spirits I save lives / raids by being effing invincible for 6 seconds. While not a raid buff / debuff, it's still amazing.

It's a useful thing for you and for your mana pool, it keeps you alive - this is the only way it serves your raid. This is not raid utility - Replenishment is raid utility. And if you've done any amount of raiding you know that there's plenty of damage Blizzard have lovingly put in that will COMPLETELY ignore Dispersion.

[Rammus]

Why bring a shadow priest?

You got to trust in "bring the player not the class" saying. Replenishment will be
a strong buff once more bliz will design encounter's based on the fact that the
group will have this buff. Other than that its really a "player" issue, even
from wrath we've seen that "bring the player not the class" is getting real,
the only class that couldn't be missed was the shaman which i suppose
is gonna change with mages having lust.

I see your concern since the spots are going to be limited to 10, but yet
i doubt you'll face any issues.

[Abandon]

You're a Shadow Priest. Your job is to provide the things that a Shadow Priests provides, not that any disc or holy priest can provide better. If you are being asked to pop out and heal, at any time, something has gone horribly wrong in your raid. That's not utility. That's making up for someone else screwing up.

In that case there should be no Hybrid Tax. And something doesn't have to go horribly wrong, all it takes is a second or two of lag at the wrong time and someone can get one-shot.

Again, why isn't one of your other healers covering this? If they aren't, then they're dead. Something has gone wrong. Your people messed up. If they're falling back on the Shadow Priest to heal their raid is falling apart.

The other healers would probably be healing. If a DPS stops doing DPS on the boss for a few seconds, generally people won't die. If a healer stops healing to channel Hymn of Hope for example, then people do.

No. I'd put them both in the exact same boat as us. The Ele Shaman at least doesn't have to deal with form switching and the mana cost. Even then, I still maintain that if your raid is falling back on one of these specs to heal, something has gone wrong. If you survive it because your Shadow Priest popped out, it's little more than luck. This is especially a bad thing if your Shadow Priest saved the raid on a Gear Check encounter.

You can't assume that everyone is going to do everything perfectly all the time. If that were true, Rebirth, Soulstones, ect would all be useless, since they are not needed if people don't die. Healthstones could be ignored because your healers should have it covered, and Body and Soul would be a wasted talent because people shouldn't need help moving. But they are all used, and all useful, and they have all saved raids.

Again, why is your raid asking you to drop out and heal? No raid I've been in has ever done this unless someone isn't doing their job or outright can't do their job. It means something has gone wrong or it means someone needs a kick in the butt, and it's not the Shadow Priest.

You have never been on a progress raid? Not everyone does everything perfect the first time, or every time after that.

Again, why are you spot healing? No. Let me rephrase, why are you being 'asked to spot heal'? If your raid was up to snuff this wouldn't be happening. If people were doing their part correctly, this wouldn't be happening. No guild raid I've been in has had me spot heal them on any encounter, and they haven't needed it. The only raids I've ever been in that have done something remotely like this were pug raids with some random moron in the middle of the encounter screaming for one of the hybrids to stop DPS and heal. Usually when they're doing this it was because something was going wrong. People may have been standing in the fire, people may have not had the gear, people may have been neglectful in their rotations and so on and so forth. None of these things come down to asking the hybrid, of any sort, to come out and heal as the answer to them.

One of our Shamans in 10man Firefighter was spot-healing people on the other side of the room when they got Conflag-thing in the first phase. It meant the other healer could take care of the rest of the raid and the tank healer could worry about nothing else apart from the tank. That's just off the top of my head, but completely refusing to use half of your skills because "It's not my job" means you could wipe instead of killing a boss.

They come out as an inherent problem in the raid that needs fixed.

It's a useful thing for you and for your mana pool, it keeps you alive - this is the only way it serves your raid. This is not raid utility - Replenishment is raid utility. And if you've done any amount of raiding you know that there's plenty of damage Blizzard have lovingly put in that will COMPLETELY ignore Dispersion.

And plenty that does not. There have already been several examples given. Utility doesn't just mean you bring a buff. Utility means you do someting that is useful, outside of your specs label of DPS, Healer or Tank.

[Kaesebrezen]

And plenty that does not. There have already been several examples given. Utility doesn't just mean you bring a buff. Utility means you do someting that is useful, outside of your specs label of DPS, Healer or Tank.

Then let's change the thread title to Raid Buffs/Debuffs. Utility is situational, buffs are not.

So let's keep raids out and look at another part of the game: Soloing and Random Dungeons.
Damage is balanced around buffs being present, so while soloing (and with bad luck to an lesser extent in randoms) will be lacking.
Moonkins buff themselves with 6% Crit, 6% Stats (=Spellpower) and 8% Magic Dmg Taken.
Elemental shamans buffs themselves with Spellhaste, Spellcrit and 10% Spellpower.
Arcane mages have 3% Damage, while Frost and Fire got 5% Spellcrit debuff (1 still is > 0)
Warlocks all bring Magic damage taken, while affliction bring 5% spellcrit and demonolgy bring 10% spellpower


And again for the buffs brought by the least specs(look my link posted before): Spellhaste (2/3) (3 if enhancer places it), Spellpower (2), Spellcrit Buff (2)
So expect...
... Spellpower to be given to an additional spec. It's to powerful to be only available by 2 specs.
... Spellhaste to be given to a 2nd class, it's the only buff that's unique to one class.
... Spellcrit to be given to an additonal spec too.

[Strykie]

"Bring the player not the class"
1. Means that all raid buffs are surely covered.
2. Bring the more skilled/geared player.... UNLESS THE RAID BUFFS ARENT COVERED.

So maybe a perfect raid isnt needed for normal bosses on normal mode.
GOOD LUCK killing HARD bosses without 100% raid buffs, Shamans not show up tonight? No WoA, no Hero, no chance.

Give mages their speed increase wannabe hero and give shadow priests heroism, they actually need it to be competitive in Arena and it wont hurt in PvE.

[Vanderbolt]

PW:Fort, Sprot, Dispel & Mass dispel, healing reduction, remove disease, Fear Ward, possible movement impairing depending on how glyphs work out, off-healing, on-healing through VE, replenishment in whatever form it takes in cataclysm, the ability to make raids look good, ability to eat massive damage.

Don't underestimate the group healing though. In a world where everyone lives at half HP, this is going to be major.

But no matter how you look at it - raidbuffs are covered by the first 6 people joining the raid. Everyone else just fill the spots. The ones getting those spots will be people who have the ability to not stand in fire.

If GC were to give spriests bloodlust tomorrow, it's not like it would give you a spot. They already have a mage and a shaman doing that.

Fort costs way too much mana for a SP to be using and it's no where near as good as a Disc and will take their debuff if used with a Disc in a raid making for a pretty mad Disc. Also it'll cost you DPS if you use it.

Sprot I'll give you even though it's shared with Pallies.

Dispel will be removed from SPs, it's a healing Priest only thing now.

Mass Dispel is a unique utility.

Healing reduction will be shared for like 4 other classes, not really a unique thing and probably not very useful in PvE.

Fear Ward

Dispel disease SPs will have

VE is a unique one

Replenishment also shared

Compare this though with other Hybrid casters like Boomkins and Eles and the SPs will fall short in terms of useful utilities by a lot.


Would you rather give:

Fort, Replenishment, Shadow Prot, Fear Ward, VE, Mass Dispel, PW:S, 25% MS

or

MoTW, Thorns, Battle rez, 13% sp increase (think it's going to get nerfed down to 8% in cata), 6% crit, innervate, faerie fire, 50% (or was it 70%?) speed boost to group

[Purple]

In that case there should be no Hybrid Tax. And something doesn't have to go horribly wrong, all it takes is a second or two of lag at the wrong time and someone can get one-shot.

I've been playing WoW for years in raids. If this happens, we start over. No questions asked, we just plain reset everything.

The other healers would probably be healing. If a DPS stops doing DPS on the boss for a few seconds, generally people won't die. If a healer stops healing to channel Hymn of Hope for example, then people do.

What sort of healers is your raid bringing? My guild brings healers to heal. Did you really just claim that your healers couldn't be bothered to stop healing to heal? How does your guild assign healers? Really. Mine assigns them to specific groups and one to the tank. If health is dropping and the healer isn't healing or can't keep up, there's a deeper problem.

Again, why are your raid healers unable to heal? Is it their gear? Is it the gear of the people around them? Are the healers just not managing their mana and heals properly? Are people standing in the fire? Any of a million things could be going on, but in my Guild and Raid experience the healers we assign can cover everyone they are supposed to if the gear and skill of the players in the raid is where it should be.

You can't assume that everyone is going to do everything perfectly all the time. If that were true, Rebirth, Soulstones, ect would all be useless, since they are not needed if people don't die. Healthstones could be ignored because your healers should have it covered, and Body and Soul would be a wasted talent because people shouldn't need help moving. But they are all used, and all useful, and they have all saved raids.

You don't need perfection to do your job well in the raid. If your Shadow Priest has to heal you, then everyone else that can heal is dead. If your shadow priest has to spot heal you then gear or skill or healers or tanks or dps or someone isn't doing their job because good healers in good gear healing good tanks in good gear or good dps in good gear shouldn't have a problem. I've been raiding in this same guild for a good two years now, if we struggle on a boss and can just barely manage past it: They Won't Go Past it. They'll reset it. And we'll do it again. And again. And Again. And again. Until we get it right.

You have never been on a progress raid? Not everyone does everything perfect the first time, or every time after that.

I've been on tons of raids. If we're struggling on an encounter, we reset that encounter and we go again. My guild has absolutely no interest in seeing a raid rewarded for just barely making it past a boss. We either get it right, and everyone does their job, or we will literally reset it until we drop or until we can't reset it anymore.

One of our Shamans in 10man Firefighter was spot-healing people on the other side of the room when they got Conflag-thing in the first phase. It meant the other healer could take care of the rest of the raid and the tank healer could worry about nothing else apart from the tank. That's just off the top of my head, but completely refusing to use half of your skills because "It's not my job" means you could wipe instead of killing a boss.

Your healers should have been able to cover that all on their own. Ours can. They could handle it even when they weren't over geared. Why can't yours?

I'll admit we took a few tries our first times through, but we didn't have people come out and spot heal. We did what I described above. Struggling through isn't acceptable. Everyone is given a job and everyone does that job or we fail. Asking someone else to fill in for a part you should be able to handle yourself is utter nonsense.

And plenty that does not. There have already been several examples given. Utility doesn't just mean you bring a buff. Utility means you do someting that is useful, outside of your specs label of DPS, Healer or Tank.

Then call it a buff because most of the things some of the people in this thread have covered under utility are so insanely situation that it's ridiculous.

Shadow Priests bring two pieces that are important, they bring VE and they bring Replenishment. VE has questionable effect on a raid.

Most everything else we can bring someone else can bring, within our own class, and they'll do a better job either because of their mana pool their regen or because talents just make their version better. The rest like the healing debuff others bring as well and the healing debuff is a primarily PvP deal, not very useful in PvE.

Make the argument all your want but if a Shadow Priest is coming out to heal, then something is wrong. It's either wrong because people are dead, wrong because people aren't doing their part, wrong because people are messing up their part, wrong because the gear from someone or another person is lacking and so on and so forth. Asking the Shadow Priest to heal at any point is a last ditch effort to save a dying raid or to support a weak and struggling raid even if they're not dying.

[gaymer77]

Fort costs way too much mana for a SP to be using and it's no where near as good as a Disc and will take their debuff if used with a Disc in a raid making for a pretty mad Disc. Also it'll cost you DPS if you use it.

You're an idiot. Any priest in the game will have the improved fort at 80 (which the talent is being removed in Cata incase you failed to see that). Not to mention what priest doesn't glyph the minor glyph for fort which reduces the mana cost by 1/2? I believe you are trying to talk about Power Word: Shield (the priest bubble) which a disc priest would have a stronger one than a shadow priest. Either way, you've proven yourself rather ignorant.

Sprot I'll give you even though it's shared with Pallies.

Yes the amount of resistance is shared with what a pally would provide but if the pally dies or goes out of range you will lose the aura.

Dispel will be removed from SPs, it's a healing Priest only thing now.

WRONG! WRONG! AND MORE WRONG!!! All priests will remain having all of their current dispells. The only thing changing is that cure disease will now drop shadow form.

Dispel disease SPs will have

See above comment

Compare this though with other Hybrid casters like Boomkins and Eles and the SPs will fall short in terms of useful utilities by a lot.

This I couldn't agree with you more. Other hybrids bring more utility than we do.

[Abandon]

Purple, I was going to reply to your post in more detail, but there's just no point.

According to you, Soulstones, Healthstones, Rebirth and Ankhs are all useless because your guild instantly wipes if anything at all in a raid goes wrong. Following your logic, if you need to use any of them, then someone isn't doing their job right. You keep repeating over and over that if you ever don't kill a boss perfectly, you intentionally wipe the raid, reset it and go back and do the fight perfectly.

Guess what? Not everyone does this. In fact, most guilds don't intentionally kill themselves over and over to get more practice on a boss.

So believe and post whatever you want, I'm not going to waste the time trying to convince you, but try and remember that they don't balance the class around what you and your guild do.

edit: Just out of interest, I would assume if you are doing a progress raid and your Main Tank disconnected, you would intentionally wipe, right? You might want to look at Paragon's Lich King video where the Main Tank disconnects at the start. But I'm sure the guild which got the world first heroic Lich King 25man kill knows less about raiding than you do.

[Qualia]

Interesting to see how easily you have forgotten the whole ToC situation. Or maybe your team mates were bad enough you didn't have to be benched (sorry, I tried to keep this as least offensive as possible).

I remember late Naxx until Late ToC... doesn't seem like you do though. That sucked.

Uhh... I was trying to be polite, but I guess you wouldn't be able to notice it without me using bolded characters, so here it is(sorry, I tried to make it as least offensive as possible):

"suprisingly", good SPs still find themselves stable raid spots in progress (xlate: racing) raid. Guilds were still recruiting good SPs left and right. But hey, when contents become farm contents (aka: who cares?)

Okay, read my sentences again, I added the bold <3 Hope it can explain why your raiding experiences was so different from mine.

Sure, there are always a chance that it's because of my teammates as Brokolice said:

Or maybe your team mates were bad enough you didn't have to be benched (sorry, I tried to keep this as least offensive as possible)

It makes sense now. I was wondering why do we are only among top 70 US, damn those nubie teammates. BRB hitting them in the heads. If they did their job properly (and if our ping isn't 500+ms) we would have overtaken Ensidia by now... uh wait, Ensidia also used 2-3 SPs in Ulduar / ToC. Hmm, maybe they are an exception <go off to check WoL>, oh wait, other good guilds were using SP(s) as well...ugghh, guess it was because of our skill and latency then /sigh Damn you for raising my hope =(

[Danner]

Out of my initial list of spriest utility, the only real argument so far has been that divine spirit is going away. That is a very valid point, I forgot about that part. Whoops?

But since we are moving into cataclysm territory, allow me to add Life Grip! to the list. So we're still at the same number. It's not really about numbers game though. It's about being useful. And I claim that a good spriest is useful!

--

As a DPSer, you need to be able to be in the top5 at least once in a while. Late end wotlk achieved this. It was very very horrible in early wotlk, and the official "we think spriests are fine" comments grew rather ridiculous when spriests all over were quitting in disgust. My guild still don't have a spriest after that round. They just don't exist anymore on my server, and the ones who do exist are usually holypriests being pushed out of healing roles in favor of more paladins. Most of them suck at it.

--

In the raid buff departments, priests are strong; we currently bring three raidwide buffs, but it is going down to 2 in cataclysm. This is still equal or better than all other classes except the shammies, but I guess it depends on how you look at it. Sure, you may not have a buff that is exclusive to your specc, so that raids everywhere have no choice but to bring you to raid no matter how much you suck - but that is really the point. People saying that since every priest brings PW:Fort and every paladin also brings sprot, then those buffs shouldn't be counted - please stop. Now. Seriously. Specc-exclusive buffs are going away one way or another. Bring the player. Buffs are only there to provide synergy. If your complaint is that you are useless because some other priest already brought all the buffs - why not aiming to become that first priest who gets the invite? Then all the other priests are useless.

Since my server is low on spriests, and our boomkins are relatively unreliable, there are times where we don't really have the hit bonus available. I've been forced to respecc shadow a few times just to provide the buff. I suck as shadow, and I don't even have dps gear. Only doing only 4.5k DPS on lich king, and still maintaining a spot because you provide a vital buff is very very very very wrong. We had to park a damned good hunter who easily does double of that outside the instance that night. Still, bringing me was worth it. I do not approve of that at all. It just felt horrible, doing less dps than the tank, facerolling around and having virtual no clue of what buttons to click - and still get a spot. I'm actually glad this situation is going away in cataclysm.

--

In terms of utility, spriests are strong. Utility is useful abilities that makes the fight easier, increasing the room for mistakes. The moment your guild never does any mistakes, most utility is useless. Totally useless, like Combat Ress, soulstone, healthstones and so on. Nobody ever use those after all.

In cataclysm, every shadowpriest can dispel just as good as a holypriest. Sure, you may drop shadowform if you touch remove disease, but that shouldn't prevent you from using it in the slightest. And even if the discpriest does it better, I don't see any holypriest out there saying that dispelling is beneath them citing this as a reason. And neither should you. Playing well is all about taking advantage of all your abilities. That includes the healing. That include Mind Soothe, dammit, though I would really like to know how!

I really dislike boomkins, eleshammies, shadowpriests or retripaladins who haven't even hotkey'ed their healing spells. Anyone (except me) can do 10k dps. But being able to pull that Hymn or well-timed GHeal is really what separates a good player from a great player. I love the retripaladin in our guild that actively uses Lay on Hands. That's the mark of a good player really.

And then there is all the small stuff. Really, all classes have the small abilities. Priests have a few major ones too. Replenishment in particular is wildly requested, and while quite a few specs have it, it's often to the point where we have to force a hunter to provide it if we're short of retardins. It does happen, surprisingly enough.

If you are actively trying to convince anyone that spriests do not have any raid utility, you are in very very deep waters. If you are trying to convince anyone that shadowpriests have no utility if they...

- don't use healing buttons because that's not your job
- don't think VE is worth mentioning because it's only overhealing anyway
- don't think replenishment is worth mentioning because at least 3 other people are already bringing it
- don't use cure disease, dispel, mass dispel and fear ward because no fight obviously ever need them
- won't use life grip because you are in a guild that never fails
- don't think that movement reduction are useful and never even considered that glyph
- don't use interrupts or fade because it's a dps loss
- don't cast buffs because the discpriest already do that

... then maybe you are just bad?

--

It's quite okay to ask for more utility. I wouldn't mind spreading out spellcrit a bit for instance.

But don't come saying you got none. That's patently untrue.

[Kaesebrezen]

- don't use healing buttons because that's not your job
- don't think VE is worth mentioning because it's only overhealing anyway
- don't think replenishment is worth mentioning because at least 3 other people are already bringing it
- don't use cure disease, dispel, mass dispel and fear ward because no fight obviously ever need them
- won't use life grip because you are in a guild that never fails
- don't think that movement reduction are useful and never even considered that glyph
- don't use interrupts or fade because it's a dps loss
- don't cast buffs because the discpriest already do that

- It indeed isn't our job, the only heal button i press is divine hymn in emergency situations
- It will probably overheal less in Cataclysm, but with doubled healthpools and no doubled dps it will have a even less noticeable effect
- Replenishment will be nerfed hard, that was stated over and over again
- Fearward sucks compared to Tremor Totem, so bring more shamans for more totems.
- Indeed, failing Voidzones and stand in fire is near impossible. Those are the widest used mechanics in the whole game, you should not fail them, because you train them in nearly every encounter. I may drop shadowform for emergencies, but i won't drop it to correct someone's idiocy.
- Movement reduction and what glyph?
- what interrupts do shadowpriests have in PvE?
- They indeed do, why rebuff and waste candles?

In the raid buff departments, priests are strong; we currently bring three raidwide buffs, but it is going down to 2 in cataclysm. This is still equal or better than all other classes except the shammies

Read this thread and after that my post on the 1st page. Then try saying this again. I'm pretty sure you can't.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...02232337&sid=1

It's quite okay to ask for more utility. I wouldn't mind spreading out spellcrit a bit for instance.

First of all, there is a difference between utility and Raidbuffs.
We lost 2 of our Raidbuffs and got no replacement for them.
But i'm pretty sure we will get one or two of either Spellpower, Spellcrit or the Shaman exclusive Spellhaste.
If you do not count Enhancement Shamans, then these are brought by 2 specs.

[Kelesti]

For what it's worth, I am quite surprised that no one brought up Judgement of Wisdom as a potential candidate. That, to me, is as class exclusive as Wrath of Air. I'd take that over Moonkin Aura/Elemental Oath.

Also, for two classes providing the -3%hit debuff, I'd like to point out that NO spec uses that in a raid environment. I smell another possible candidate.

[Malania]

Given SP's DPS ultility is not a high priority. SP in my guild tends to be top of DPS charts with around 13-14K on LK

[redrage]

You're a Shadow Priest. Your job is to provide the things that a Shadow Priests provides, not that any disc or holy priest can provide better. If you are being asked to pop out and heal, at any time, something has gone horribly wrong in your raid. That's not utility. That's making up for someone else screwing up.

Again, why isn't one of your other healers covering this? If they aren't, then they're dead. Something has gone wrong. Your people messed up. If they're falling back on the Shadow Priest to heal their raid is falling apart.

while i agree some one f'ed up and prolly should have failed the encounter... having a dpser send out heals while another healer is doing something else (brezing or something) is handy. A raid shouldn't have to rely on this, it is just a bonus and has saved wipes many of times. I would in no way call this a utility ability but is helpful.

In ICC it seems to be more beneficial to just keep dpsing especially with the ICC buff active But in naxx for people who coudln't do the dance it was extremely handy.