Will groups accept Holy Priests as healers in heroics?

[Nite92]

5 bosses in a very short and easy dungeon thus 5 easy badges.

Hmm, I disagree a bit. Yes it is easy and fast, but you also need rep/items from other dungeons. Paired with the daily hc, I think that there will be alot of variety.

[kranur]

Hmm, Retail and Classic are full of people that find it fun to optimize and be as fast and efficient as possible.
Why do you think that there will be no such people in TBC?

There will be people who will try to optimize but not in general, no. What do you mean by full of optimizations in classic? On my server at least, aside from the occasional "1 shaman for windfury" I haven't really seen any groups looking for specific classes, just the generic, tank/heal/dps of any class or at most range/melee (except for the case where they already had too many of one class)

Edit: Looked over some of the pug groups that happened last week and I saw a pretty even spread of classes in the raids, like 8 warriors (including tanks), 4 locks, 5 mages, 6 rogues despite them having 16 warrior sign-ups

Are you talking about the 5 super try hard guilds or where is this full optimization coming from? My guild has been running with enhancement shaman and shadow priest since the release of naxx.

[Roxyfoxy]

People that optimize heroic dungeon group setup, do it with guildies, not in pickup groups.

Pugs will just be happy to have a tank or healer so they can actually run hc's

And shaman is pretty strong in all their 3 specs, so not like you will have a resto shaman in every group, ele and enhance bring more powerfull buffs to the group. So you should have no issue finding groups as a priest.

[shise]

When you say min/max, do you mean class stacking? Sorry - I see the two as slightly different and may have disagreed when we’re saying the same thing.

I think Hunters/Warlocks will be more prevalent, but you wouldn’t stack them in every available slot (which is where I was going) and I think we agree there.

Min/max being optimizing raid comp and gear to pull the most out of that comp, and I don’t think that mentality is going anywhere.

Yeah, I guess that could potential mean something else from expansion to expansion. Min max, to my eyes, would include stacking shamans for group totems, for example. Or a couple of shadow priests (although more rare but doable if you have a few locks and mages on your DPS chart, which is not that rare!)

I do agree that some min max will happen, but I think that it will be the least percentage of players going hat way. End of the day people will just chill a bit more than in retail.. well, maybe I get surprised.

Funny enough, I plan to min max pvp x)

[Moozart]

So with the optimization meta, will alliance groups accept priest as healers? Or will they stick to shamans (due to bloodlust)?

I want to play a priest but I'm afraid that I will not get accepted into groups or raids because everyone will want a shaman and their raids/pugs will be shaman only or at least 3-4 resto shamans, 1 pala, 1 priest 1 drood

If you make your own group it wont be an issue.

[RobertoLarcos]

If you make your own group it wont be an issue.

I know, sadly I don't have the time to run my own guild

I'm afraid that later down the road most guilds will be runing 2-3 rshamans, 1 priest, 1 drood, 1 pala and it will be rly difficult to get a spot

[Ogarash]

So with the optimization meta, will alliance groups accept priest as healers? Or will they stick to shamans (due to bloodlust)?

I want to play a priest but I'm afraid that I will not get accepted into groups or raids because everyone will want a shaman and their raids/pugs will be shaman only or at least 3-4 resto shamans, 1 pala, 1 priest 1 drood

Holy priests are good. You do not need BL in heroic dungeons

[T-34]

There will be people who will try to optimize but not in general, no.
Are you talking about the 5 super try hard guilds or where is this full optimization coming from? My guild has been running with enhancement shaman and shadow priest since the release of naxx.

I just read your original post as there won't be people who will optimize at all
I do agree that the majority doesn't "min/max" in Classic, just as the majority doesn't "min/max" in Retail.

[Mendzia]

Do not worry about that.
All healers in TBC are viable.

[unbound]

Ran a raid guild back in BC. I never had a problem running anything with specific types of healers. In fact, one of things I loved about BC is that each class was more unique than they are today, so you might have to approach things a bit differently depending on comp.

For raids as well as heroic dungeons, this remained true. I usually ran my Shaman as elemental (sometimes I ran him as resto), but did all of the content on a hunter (survival) with no issues and I was only 1 of 2 shamans in the guild (alliance). I regularly ran groups in raids and dungeons with the "wrong" comp and succeeded quite well.

Anyone who refuses to take you (assuming you understand what you are doing as a healer) is a person and/or guild to avoid.

[kranur]

I just read your original post as there won't be people who will optimize at all
I do agree that the majority doesn't "min/max" in Classic, just as the majority doesn't "min/max" in Retail.

Ah, poor wording on my side I guess haha. But yeah, min maxing pugs won't really be viable, like spending 30 extra minutes to create a perfect group just to finish the instance 10 minutes faster will quickly put people off.

[durenas]

No, they can't stealth. All groups will be Guardian Druids, Restoration Druids and a mix between Feral Druids and Rogues. No other specs will be wanted for Heroic, as it brings the pace down. If you're thinking about rolling any class outside of these two you'd likely see no playtime in heroics in TBC.

You're kidding, right? That's ridiculous and not at all what will happen.

[Gratlim]

Holy priests are good. You do not need BL in heroic dungeons

Do you need BL? Nope
Is it better to have BL? Yes

By Classic minmaxing mindset that means you want shamans and anything else will be better than nothing but not really sought after.

Remember we did not -need- mages for dungeons? No, but we were stacking them as much as possible.
We did not need world buff to clear MC / BWL? No, but even in p6 we still don't raid MC / BWL without it.
Etc etc.

Ps: i hate that mindset but that is my experience from Classic. Even while leveling in phase one as a feral cat i had issues finding groups for dungeon runs. It was either "meleecleave / spellcleave or gtfo". Tbh i do not expect TBCC to be much better than that.

[Woobels]

You're kidding, right? That's ridiculous and not at all what will happen.

Yes he's obviously kidding.

[RobertoLarcos]

Thank you all for your calming answers, I will avoid quoting but I'm glad to read your comments

[Ogarash]

Do you need BL? Nope
Is it better to have BL? Yes

By Classic minmaxing mindset that means you want shamans and anything else will be better than nothing but not really sought after.

Remember we did not -need- mages for dungeons? No, but we were stacking them as much as possible.
We did not need world buff to clear MC / BWL? No, but even in p6 we still don't raid MC / BWL without it.
Etc etc.

Ps: i hate that mindset but that is my experience from Classic. Even while leveling in phase one as a feral cat i had issues finding groups for dungeon runs. It was either "meleecleave / spellcleave or gtfo". Tbh i do not expect TBCC to be much better than that.

True enough. But alot ALOT of Shaman will go elemental or enhance so there will be plenty of non healer BL to go around

[Kralljin]

By Classic minmaxing mindset that means you want shamans and anything else will be better than nothing but not really sought after.

The difference is that for some pug group, not everyone will min/max and spend 10min+ to find a Resto so they can shave off a few seconds on 1-2 bossfights.
If people are looking for a Resto Shaman in a 5man group, it's generally because they're a melee cleave without Enhance, but then Resto Shaman brings a lot more than just BL, Windfury is an insane dps increase for melees.

When we're talking about something like a ~20% dps increase for all three Melees in your party, it changes the equation by a lot.

It was either "meleecleave / spellcleave or gtfo".

Most Spellcleave / Meleecleave weren't your usual dungeon group, as their intention was clear a dungeon multiple times for efficient xp rates.

Putting aside that the Spell / Melee cleave Meta fit the Classic endgame perfectly.
Warriors are toptier at endgame => You need a lot of Warriors for Melee Cleave.
Mages are the best caster => You need a lot of mages for Spell cleave.
Hybrids dps sucks => Spell / Melee cleave still needs healers.

The difference in TBC is that more specs that are perfectly viable and competitive in the raiding Meta but do not necessarily fit into a toptier dungeon groups, hence people are still going to play those specs and will somehow do dungeons.
Not every Shaman will be Resto, nor will every Druid.

[Frolk]

No, they can't stealth. All groups will be Guardian Druids, Restoration Druids and a mix between Feral Druids and Rogues. No other specs will be wanted for Heroic, as it brings the pace down. If you're thinking about rolling any class outside of these two you'd likely see no playtime in heroics in TBC.

"If u dont play a fury warrior, u wont get to raid in classic"

This is how stupid ur statement is, its only the tiny turbo nerd sweat lords who does this, and they wont be doing HCs for too long anyway.

Storm in a tea cup

[Azadina]

I'd be more than happy to have holy priest running heroics with me, but don't suck priests! My eyes are on you way more than they're on the other healers, as my main on retail for many, many years is holy. Do not bring shame to the family

[ShinyInfidel]

and they wont be doing HCs for too long anyway.

Badge runs are a thing. Badges are a limited source you want to be stacked on. If you don't have 300+ badges laying around for certain patches you'll be grilled and stapled as a casual petty dawg you are.