Things you wish you knew before rolling Priest

[Purpleisbetter]

Well if u become competent with discipline, wich since recent boosts became pretty strong, your raid leader will love you so much to the point you could question him about his homosexuality.

I mean, just imagine if every minute u could say "CRAP! HUGE DAMAGE INCOMING! j/k, spirit shell trolololol..."

Also discipline is the most unique healer along with monks healing you and your raid mates by kicking your faces.

[Adinora]

Holy Priests have the largest healing toolbox out of all the healers and have the 'right' answer to every situation. Get Disc as your dual spec and you can cheese certain boss encounters.

Don't ever play a Resto Druid, they're only for hardcore masochists.

I can't really come up with anything that I dislike about Priests. Mana management is really tight, but that's where skill comes in I guess.

Why is disc always the downtrodden, black sheep of the healing family? Disc has a fantastic arsenal as well.

Both specs have their strengths and weaknesses, and disc is not for everyone. Neither is holy. It's a matter of preference and, with a bit of experimentation and research, you'll be able to make the clear choice for your playstyle.

@OP: my only regret as a disc priest specifically is, as stated by a few other posters, we get bashed around so much with the nerf/buff bat that you don't know whether you're coming or going most of the time. I can't even begin to get excited about our recent buff because, if history serves my memory right, we will get nerfed back to oblivion at any given time.

I guess I'm also regretting that disc priests, as I stated above, always get slammed with negativity. As soon as the devs throw us a bone with a buff, there is outrage from all other healers because suddenly we're showing up on worldoflogs. It's not something I understand, personally.

[Deleted]

With Holy you have to put up with Chakra and always being slightly underpowered. Oh and Blizzard have been known to completly drop support when they cant be arsed to put enough bosses in a raid.

[Fenixdown]

Honestly, I'm confused as to why people think that you need to be both healing specs as a priest in order to be a good raid priest. At least in 10-mans, relaly all you need is a great partner who can counterbalance your weaknesses and who you can do the same for them and your raid is golden.

In heroic modes, I could probably see it as more of a necessity, but for run-of-the-mill raiding through normal modes (or even LFR), there's no necessity to have to swap between the two. Holy can put out numbers and keep the raid alive on fights such as Elegon and Garalon provided you know how to manage your cooldowns and your mana efficiency.

[HPLathus]

With Holy you have to put up with Chakra and always being slightly underpowered. Oh and Blizzard have been known to completly drop support when they cant be arsed to put enough bosses in a raid.

I don't understand what you are tying to say, there is nothing wrong with chakra...

As to not having enough bosses in a raid, uh.. there were 16 bosses released within the first month of MoP.... IDK what you are talking about.

+ 2 world bosses..

[Deleted]

I don't understand what you are tying to say, there is nothing wrong with chakra...

As to not having enough bosses in a raid, uh.. there were 16 bosses released within the first month of MoP.... IDK what you are talking about.

+ 2 world bosses..

Chakra is another loop for holy to jump through but being in the correct one only boosts you to what every other healer gets for free but being in the wrong one nerfs you. If it made you OP for a limited time but forced you time it or something it would be good but as it stands its pretty limiting.

You may have lots of bosses now but whos to say the next raid patch wont be 4.2 part 2?

[Bonkbonk100]

Having fun AoE/Cleave spells like the mage. AoEing as Shadow Priest is dull.

[nevermore]

To be honest I can see the devs changing a few things about Priests, maybe in a future expansion IDK:

* Removing Chakra (or changing it drastically): They removed permanent Tree of Life form from Druids because it essentially was a "lose a lot of abilities without gaining ANYTHING at all" spell, yet in the very same patch they introduced Chakra which does the exact same thing. It's a lovely idea but due to obvious balancing issues it cannot be what it should be.

* Changing PoH to a smart heal: Whether you love it or hate it, group heals are so TBC. It should've been changed two expansions ago. Obviously Disc Priests need to be compensated since pretty much their entire validity depends on PoH being group-based.

* Removing/changing Spirit Shell: The devs shot themselves in the foot with this spell sooo much. The very moment it was announced people already knew that it would either be really OP or really bad depending on the numbers, since it's such a niche spell. And guess what happened: it can trivialise certain boss abilities like no other healer can (OP) or it's just "meh" on other fights (mainly due to PoH's anachronistic design). Oh well.

BTW, can anyone tell me the logic behind Grace? I don't get it. Why is it still here?

What I said in my first post still stands though, Priests are awesome. Every class/spec has its flaws, and these were my pet peeves.

[Adinora]

* Removing/changing Spirit Shell: The devs shot themselves in the foot with this spell sooo much. The very moment it was announced people already knew that it would either be really OP or really bad depending on the numbers, since it's such a niche spell. And guess what happened: it can trivialise certain boss abilities like no other healer can (OP) or it's just "meh" on other fights (mainly due to PoH's anachronistic design). Oh well.

BTW, can anyone tell me the logic behind Grace? I don't get it. Why is it still here?

Nooooo leave spirit shell alone! Actually I thought it was pretty cool in beta when it was just another shield that healed if it expired. It needed work, of course, but I didn't expect them to change it completely.

And with regards to Grace, what do you have against increasing all healing by up to 30%? On more than one target?

[Danner]

Grace is really down to the same thing as Chakra.

Sure, you get +30% healing. That's awesome.
But you're not allowed to be 30% better than the other healers out there. If you are, you are massively OP and no other healer than disc should be brought to the raids! For the sake of not having to retire the other 5 healing specs out there, that's not gonna happen.

So essentially, this buff allows you to heal on par with other healers. Meaning your base level single target healing need to be 30% weaker than the "par" for this to even out.

Grace is then not a bonus. It's a limiter. You're healing on par with it, and not healing on par without it. The main question is then how fast your can build Grace, and whether it is a problem to do so reliably. Grace is a limiter when it is a problem to do so. Grace means nothing if it is not a problem to do so. Essentially, Grace allows you to be less efficient at single target healing when you don't have it.

Grace is less obnoxious than chakra though. It's not like you have to chose between Grace or Divine Aegis. Doesn't mean I have to approve of it, but it is easier to tolerate for that reason. Ultimately, most specs to pull out special stops like Grace to be "on par". Shammies for instance use Deep Healing to go up to "par". The question is whether you have to give up something to use it properly. Shammies at least don't.

[fishing4corpses]

I don't regret rolling my priest. I love her and I'm glad I dropped my hunter at level 50 for a shadow priest. I don't heal hardly ever, though I have a disc spec, it's mainly used for lulz.

[BobAwesome]

Hey OP, I've been looking to try Rift, what would be the closest thing to a Shadow Priest?

[Deleted]

Kinda feel the same as Fenix..

If only i would have known how awesome Healing Priests are, i wouldnt have started as rogue to abandon it due to not being fun @ lvl 63 or so (now lvl 67 and still no fun). Wouldnt have rolled a mage till lvl 55 to become a DK and main it to find out that tanking raids is pretty boring to eventually switching back to me mage on which i had a great time and thinking of never changing mains ever again.

Till i lvl'd a priest with the energizer spec to eventually maining her till this day and having 3 other healers @ 90 (and 4th underway) i keep having the most fun on my priest.

We get to wear cloth and we have cool looking sets and we are being awesome in shadowform (who care bout matching colours as long the shapes are awesome)
2 heal spec both being fun and awesome to play DPS spec.

We got many tools to heal with, we are the jack of all trades heal class with tool the other healers would be jealous off.
We have Cascade <3 awesome spell that even refreshes renew

I have found my class that ill play till WoW dies, the others classes are only there to fill up the world a bit imo.

[l33t]

Priest is definitely the most interesting healing class in WoW. Raiding my Holy baby for six years - and it still rocks!
Of course, there are some downsides. The whole Chakra concept is one great fail. Mana regen is the worst compared to other healer classes (there were a reason Holy got increased passive spirit regen back in TBC/Wrath, really even with it priest's regen was awful). And there is a very strange developers' attitude towards Priests every new addon is out - Priest is always underbuffed at the start. As for me, I don't like the Absorb-style healing, in my opinion, it should not be called "healing" at all. Healing is a process of curing wounded, absorbing prevents wounds. Since we now call absorbs a "healing", every time Rogue uses his Feint before massive AoE, the amount of lowered damage on him also should count as "healing", as well as almost every other personal save skill on any class that lowers/absorbs incoming damage.
But, on the other side - our new Lightwell is fantastic, Cascade is fantastic (and even more fantastic with +10% chakra buff, lol), Echo of Light is a sweet overheal generator, and being able to use PI in Holy was my biggest dream all these years.

[nevermore]

being able to use PI in Holy was my biggest dream all these years.

Mine too! And then I decided to give Divine Insight a try and I was puking rainbows for like an hour.

[Crianthia]

- Beware of rogues, dks, warriors, hunters, paladins, some monks, sporebats, furious critters and small gusts of wind. They all murder you brutally.

Quote of the day right there. Made me giggle. (One except was end of tbc/wrath disc spec good times.