Before I get really going on my rant, I need to remind anyone visiting why I write this blog. This is a place for me to record my thoughts and opinions on things, so I can make sure I get them recoded.
Today’s topic is a bit of reflecting on how I feel about blizzard’s latest comments on priest healing, and on priests in general.  Never mind let me be honest with myself, this is a rant. Its me crying.
I am man enough to admit that some of it is simply gut reaction, and comes from the fact that stupid healing meters exist in the game. I am competitive. So while I logically know it does not matter who is on top if the raid lives and the boss dies, I still don’t like seeing myself below others in the healing done and HPS lists.  And to be even more honest I could live with that if I then did not go read a priest Q & A and have them tell me that priests are powerful and strong.
So every so often, particularly after patches that nerf me, I have to just vent. Then I can go back to the game and face challenges with a bit more logic.
Priest Q and A
So apparently bliz thought priest group healing was to good, and of course I am going to disagree. Alas to late now.  Reading the last Priest Q and A did not make me feel better. They say:
“In World of Warcraft, the priest isn’t a stronger healer than the other classes, but does have unmatched versatility. At its core the priest has two unique talent trees for healing, while the others only have one. Furthermore, the priest has strong heal-over-time spells (HoTs), direct heals, and area-of-effect (AoE) heals. So where the power of the priest comes in is how you use your entire repertoire of healing tools together to overcome a situation, rather than focusing on one aspect.
Players sometimes call this the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none role, but we don’t really view it that way.  The priest has a big toolbox. That makes you versatile, but at the cost (in player skill) of knowing how to match the right spell for the right job. The trade-off of the healing priest isn’t in trading power for versatility, but in having narrow niches for spells but a lot of spells.”
*Sigh*
Let me take a minute to QQ a bit.
“..the priest isn’t a stronger healer than the other classes…”
I completely agree, I believe we were weaker healers to both druids and pallys before the patch and I don’t really see it changing after the patch.  Honestly In most cases I don’t care that much, but it chaffs me to see bliz stating our weakness as a strength.
“but does have unmatched versatility”
Hmm. Druids have hots, aoe, direct heals, battle rez, out of battle rez, a nice buff, decurse, root, and two other highly valued specs. I am not saying priests are not versatile, but I would certainly not say they are unmatched.
“strong heal-over-time spells (HoTs)”
Seriously Bliz?
I might be completely off base but to me Renew is pretty terrible, unless completely specced and glyphed and then only if it gets most of its ticks off.  I think its a good spell, but Strong is not the word I would use, particularly when the druid non-upgraded rejuv is better. (imo)
I would have loved to see the spell changed so it healed every 2 seconds over 14 seconds, with the glyph halving the duration and doubling the healing per tick.    It would still heal less and cost more than druid Rejuv, but its healing would come in faster intervals.  With a change something like that I would then be able to say we have a “strong hots”.
But don’t worry priests you have other strong points.
“Strong … direct heals”
Sure, but so do other classes. And in some ways I might even say that other classes have stronger direct heals. But priests should not worry because we also have strong hots and AOEs.
“strong … area-of-effect (AoE) heals”
We did. Pre-patch I believe we had the stongest stet of direct AoE healing out of the healing classes. This was our niche. Its what gave me something to lean on.  Not geared for as much haste as I would like, my PoH without 3 stacks of serendipity was a bit slow. Of course mixed in with CoH, PoM, BH and Flash I was able to feel as though was able to keep my raid alive.
“Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none role, but we don’t really view it that way.”
Well to bad Bliz. You can view it that way, but it does not change the fact that we are “master of none”; unless you need to Mind Control someone.
“The trade-off of the healing priest isn’t in trading power for versatility, but in having narrow niches for spells but a lot of spells.”
*facepalm* So they truly believe that priests are just as good as everyone else in the three main aspects of healing. They believe that we are ok because we have a lot of spells. You can only cast 1 spell at a time. I don’t care if have FH, GH, BH, Renew, CoH, PoH, PoM, lightwell, if there is another class that can do just as well when having half as many spells.
There is power in simplicity. It might not be as much fun, but in terms of power I believe simple is better. If nothing is gained by the versatility (and the loss of power to justify such versatility) then don’t go on and on about how great being versatile is.
Lightwell QQ
Thought first I need to once again talk about lightwell. Lets start with this quote:
“The basic root of the problem is that most dps classes seem unwilling to have to take the time or spatial awareness to make use of the Lightwell, even if it provides great healing.”
Well geesh, thanks Bliz. We have been telling you that for years, at least you admit it and call the DPS out in a post that most of them wont read.
Here is an idea: FIX IT.
I am not kidding. Stop worrying about our PoH hps and focus on actually fixing a something that has been broken since the beginning. Yes you have tried adjusting it duration, charges, and healing power, but you completely FAIL at fixing the problem.
Now even thought you stated the problem above its clear to me based on your inaction to fix it, that you need it spelled out for you.
In raiding, where lightwell should be used most, each person has a role. They are concerned first and foremost with succeed in that role. In case you forgot the roles are:
- Tanking: Taking the brunt of damage on themselves and not the others
- DPS: DOING damage to the enemy.
- Healing: Healing everyone in the raid.
People have been taught by the way the game has worked in almost every case. That if you focus solely on your role the raid wins. Making a priest have to ask DPS to be responsible for healing themselves in order for the priest to be effective is (again imo) terrible design.
Ok, its not terrible, I mean people should be able to be more flexible but the game does not encourage that and only a holy priest requires that particular sort of action.
At a bare minimum, can you please make it work like a soulwell; where clicking on it gives you something, in this case a HoT, but does not make you target it. Though I would rather see it changed completely and maybe even renamed.
I think a spell that calls for a beam of healing light for a duration would be nice. Stand in the beam and get healed. Each tick over the duration (I would say ~9 second, 3 sec ticks 1-2 min cooldown) the beam heals for X / divided by the number of people in the beam. So if you cast in on the Tank alone each tick would be big, maybe FH big, but if you cast it on 5 dps each tick is more like a renew. Cap the number of targets to 5, and make it smart healing the most hurt first)
Sure you would have to mess around with the numbers a bit the potential healing power might have to be lower than the current spell since it would be maximized more often. But it would be a fun spell , and help holy priests be the AoE healers.
Finally GH QQ
Ok my last bit of crying is for GH. I want to like this spell, really I do. At one point I tried to use it more, but it is just too slow. I need it to be faster 3 serendipity stacks fast, which means I am casting FH at about three times as many time as GH. Believe me this is better than it was before serendipity, but it only encourages me to cast GH after three other spells and often times I need that Serendipity to cast PoH.
Now I have not done the math but my gut (which I know is not logic) tells me that if GH was a 2.5 base cast time (2 after talents) that Holy priests everywhere would actually start using it.
Done with QQ
Ok for now I am done crying. Whew. I feel better.
Now I need to remind myself that I have fun playing a priest and I enjoy having different types of spells to use.
What I don’t enjoy is being told that while our spells are not more powerful (or even as powerful in some cases) that simply because we have a lot of them we are powerful (and in some cases too powerful).
*shrug*
4 responses to “My Priest QQ”
As the old saying goes, “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
I’m familiar with a lot of your arguments because I played a Druid and my friend plays a Priest. He was always jealous of my abilities, and I thought he was being silly.
For example, you complain about Greater Healing, but you do realize that this is better than the primary direct healing spell Druids have, right? Healing Touch takes the same time to slow cast (3 seconds), costs more mana (33% base vs. 32% base), and does less healing. The comparable ranks also come at later levels compared to Greater Healing. (Yeah, this is before talents, etc., so we could argue about this endlessly. Just saying that everything isn’t what it seems to be.)
Or take AoE healing. Are you seriously saying that the Druid’s single, channeled, heal-over-time AoE spell with a 15 minute cooldown (or 5 minutes if you spec into it) is the same as the (multiple!) Priest options? Really?
Not to say everything is fine and dandy; I’m not playing WoW right now mostly because of the atrocious ways that Feral Druids were “balanced” (and because my better half prefers LotRO instead of WoW). The Druid equivalent of Flash Heal, Nourish that comes only at level 80, seems pretty obviously better. Paladins had their infinite mana system. Shamans don’t even have to aim all that well to heal a bunch of people. But, each class as its strengths and weaknesses. Each class gets buffed or nerfed in the great Wheel of Fortune that is game patches. It’s just really easy to think the grass is greener on the other side when you don’t have to mow it.
Actually in those to specific cases I was not directly comparing to the druid versions.
For direct healing I was thinking more of the Pally Holy Light vs Priest GH.
As for AoE direct heals, I actually believe this is and should be the holy priest strength. Yet bliz keeps making us weaker and weaker at it.
I always saw it as druids have HoTs, pallys single target direct heals, priest AoE direct heals, and well shammy a bit of all three.
My crying came less out of reality and more out of reading bliz trying to convince me that due simply to the fact that priests have lots of healing spells made us strong. So strong in fact that they have had to nerf our AoE heals.
Also I know druids have had to deal with some nerfs, and I was not crying because I wanted other classes made weaker.
As a matter of fact, I agreed that CoH was to strong and while I think 6 sec cooldown was about 1 sec too long, something had to change. The Prayer of Healing nerf, I am having a harder time swallowing, but I am sure I will survive.
When I calm down and logically try and think of things, I don’t cry much. 🙂 I just have had a bad case of “The grass is greener on the other side” in the last week, and reading the Q&A this morning was a back breaker. It was as though bliz had no clue as to what I believe are priest “problems”
I have been asking for Lightwell and GH “fixes” for a long time. And while serendipity helped, ever so slightly, the GH problem I still think it needs help. When there are multiple healers in the raid it becomes a real challenge to cast a GH (and I suspect for druids a HT) that does not overheal.
What I would love to see:
* A real Lightwell fix.
* Something done to GH to make it more useful. Right now I find its slow speed and vast overheal potential really hurt it. Maybe a talent that allows over healing from the priest to create a shield that lasts for a few seconds and absorbs up to the amount of the overheal.
I feel much better now, and there should be no more QQ until we face General Vezax again this week, and I get jealous of the pally healer and his mana usage *wink*
Ah, fair ’nuff. As I said, I had to listen to my Priest friend bitch about how Druids were “so much better” at healing that my kneejerk reaction kicked in. 😉
I think the theory that “each healer heals with a different type of heal” is a bunch of bull, though. Healing with HOTs isn’t really all that effective in small group situations. Ever had a druid as the primary healer in 5-person content? It hurts if things go even slightly off plan.
In the end, I suspect the “Priests are strong because they have variety even if we nerf their AoE healing” is code for, “AoE healing was fucking up our encounter design. Learn to use other abilities, Priests.” Again, the great Wheel of Fortune continues to turn….