Hi Everyone,
To give you a little idea of what I mean with this thread I will start of with my own story (I'll keep it brief).
I play in a guild that have existed since before WoW launched, myself joined in Cataclysm and it is led by my wife. We are all at this point in some form IRL friends, and we know each other pretty closely, we are also vehemently against pugging and don't really look to grow. We have our 10-15 ppl team and we all have jobs and kids, well most of us so we raid Normal/Heroic and are content with that. We always collect our curve and go into hibernation unless someone is rerolling or similar until next tier. Most of us have played in competitive guilds at some point, either on the server or world level. Needless to say we are a bunch that are competitive amongst each other and being anywhere below first on the healing/damage meters means you're shit (in a joking way). We do a lot of the 5man challenging content (did the challenge mode's in MOP, WOD, pushing higher keys in Legion) and find it hell-of-a-good-time.
Legion started and I decided for the 3rd expansion to raid on my Priest as healer since we needed to fill the healing slot. I was excited for Holy and loved it, all the way to Ursoc Heroic.. I think it was at this point that the cracks started to show for me at least and I only grew more sour with each tiers release.
Now it might be interesting for you to know we have basically 2 healed the entire expansion, I think that is normal for our raid size, and we have had me as the raid healer and a Holy Paladin for the other slot which have worked "ok".
Personally I feel Holy Priest never got the identity the other specs/classes in the game got. They are left somewhere in a spot like jack of all trade, master of none and are out performed by Holy Paladins in every single regard, at some point in ToS I changed to my mage and let my wife take over with her resto druid because we knew it was more effective to have this combo than keep the priest.
So let me break down what I think about the priest class for Legion and if there aren't major changes going into BfA then I think it will stay on the shelf, maybe you can change my mind and get me to continue on my main.. In fact that is what I hope for
World Content
This isn't particularly related to playing Holy/Disc but as Shadow I suppose.
- Slow Kill rate on monsters compared to other classes.
- Pathetic AoE for clearing World Quests (Especially the Dino Quests).
- Not better at kiting, nuking, sustaining or soaking damage than any other class on their own.
Mythic+ and Raid
- Absolute misery in Halls of Valour on higher Key's (I hate this place with the one-shot monsters).
- Do not bring anything special to the group.
- Other classes have more or stronger cooldowns (or with shorter cd's).
- We don't have higher throughput.
- Can't cast on the run.
- Have no Major mobility or AOE mobility.
- AOE Healing is very strong IF people are stacked up which isn't always possible/ideal
Tl:dr I love my priest but I feel utterly penalised for playing it, at every turn of the game, and if it's the same in next expansion I think another class might be for me unless someone can change my mind