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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe role of today's Priest
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 15th 2009 at 9:00AM
The issue that came up is that a number of Priests think Blizzard is down on them, they're subpar, the devs don't care, blah blah blah. Ghostcrawler is of the opinion that Priests are actually pretty great (not said in those words) and I gotta be honest, I agree with him on that. On all things? No. On that? Yes. Priests are very, very capable Healers. But capability is not actually the issue at all! It's an issue much harder to pinpoint.
Priests, when you look at their spells as a whole product and don't get hung up on any one ability in particular, work great. It's a well rounded class, and operates very well on its own. Holy Priests are great healers, and there's really no situation where they're completely helpless. I am not sure what the phrase "healing dynamo" means exactly, but for some reason that pops into my head when I think of Holy Priests, so it's probably a good thing.
The fact that Holy Priests are so well-rounded means that in situations where only one Healer is needed (such as 5-man groups), Priests are fantastic. They have all of the tools required to excel in that format. There's not really a single boss that can give them a lot of trouble. All of the Healing classes have the tools required to get them through 5-man dungeons and Heroics, but Paladins, Shaman and Druids all have encounters that really trip them up. Priests rarely have this problem. 5-mans are kind of their playground. They utterly dominate.
Problems start coming up when you increase the number of characters in play. Things start shifting from who has the most tools to "Who will heal the tank?" and "Who will heal the DPS?" In bigger raids. You stop looking for versatility and start looking for who's the best at what job.
Priests have Renew, but they're not the Healer you look for when you want HoTs for your 25-man. Priests are strong single target healers, but Paladins are the best in that role. Priests carved their niche in the raid healing department with Circle of Healing, right alongside Resto Shaman. Despite that, I think we all need to admit that Circle of Healing was pretty cheesy and something had to change with it, like is happening in patch 3.0.8.
This leaves Priests in the role of, "The guy that handles everything else." That's pretty lame, and to try and explain why that's lame, let's paint a picture. Let's imagine you're sitting at the dinner table at Christmas, and your relatives are all over and digging into the ham. It's family bonding time, and Grandma is asking questions as usual. Ugh. Grandma looks over at your cousin, "So what is it you do again?"
He gets this great big grin on his face and says, "I'm a Healer. I'm the guy that rolls HoTs."
She asks your brother the same question, naturally. He says, "I'm a Healer, too. I'm the guy that keeps the Tanks up."
Grandma casts her gaze upon you. Moment of truth. "What about you, dear?" she asks.
You mumble under your breath, "Yeah. I heal too."
"Oh! The whole family, wonderful! What do you heal?" she presses the subject, much to your irritation.
"Well, I... guess you could say I heal a little bit of everything, heh heh."
"Ah," she says, and goes no further. There's a brief, awkward silence. It only lasts a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity.
It's broken by your mother's voice, and you're warmed by her smile. She speaks with a kind, and caring tone. "He's very good at what he does, you know."
"Mhm," Grandma replies, "I'm sure."
And it's all downhill from there. That is the Priest's Christmas dinner. It's a blow to the ego.
So... Priests are sort of in limbo as far as nichedom goes. This doesn't mean they're not wanted in raids, not a chance. They're still a great, great option for 10-man raids, and they're still fantastic Healers in 25-man raids. The issue is that you fill your niche roles first, and plug in the Priest(s) second. Well, assuming you're building a raid from scratch and not just taking your guild somewhere. That's a different situation.
Again, this is a problem more or less exclusive to 25-man raids. 5s and 10s aren't at all an issue.
So, let's pretend we all agree that the Circle of Healing nerf was called for. Even if you don't think so, let's play along for a moment. What can be done to give Priests that raid niche they need? There are a lot of possibilities, but let's stay simple.
Prayer of Healing could become a cross-party smart heal, for one. If you tuned the numbers to neither overshadow nor be overshadowed by Chain Heal, it could even play out to be a pretty decent rotation when combined with the new Circle of Healing on AOE heavy fights. Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Repeat. It's not an ideal playstyle, but mashing two buttons is infinitely more fun than mashing one like before.
The more complicated solution is to find a new niche for the class. Jack of all Trades is the name of the game right now, and the 'master of none' bit comes with that territory. All of the current trades already have their masters, so if you don't want to start unneeded competition, start another trade. Discipline is the closest we get to that, and Discipline has come a really long way in Wrath of the Lich King, but in practice it's not really going to work out.
The emphasis on the shields still encroaches on the 'single target healing' niche, because you're not just slinging shields. Your single target healing is supported by your shields, and not vice versa. If that were the case, it would be a pretty new way of Healing, but it isn't and I don't know if that's possible while keeping a game like World of Warcraft balanced. If absorption was that powerful, PvP would be absurd and it might cause issues with other healers. It would take a whole lot of fine tuning, but really, what doesn't in WoW?
Another alternative would be to take the 'utility healer' thing and run with it. Take concepts like Power Infusion and build upon them. Make Priests the Healer class that empowers their allies in very direct, active ways. Give them the ability to empower one of your DPS enough to justify bringing a Healer that doesn't match the raw healing power of the other Healers. If you can boost a Mage's DPS by 25% (I pulled that number out of my rear) by pairing them up with a Priest, you're suddenly going to have people begging and pleading for you to bring a Priest on your raid. Using the Hymns concept to experiment with this would be interesting, I think. Multiple high-strength cooldowns, but they share a cooldown. You empower a caster, or another healer, or... you get the picture. Make it a choice. This also givees Priests something with a limited stackability factor, which is needed.
Is that large of a shift possible for the class? Maybe, but probably not something you'd see in a patch one day. It's all just a pipedream. My goal in all of this is just to fuel a little conversation on the topic. Those are things that I think would help the issue of Priests having no niche. I might think my ideas are awesome, but that doesn't mean it would fix the problem, and the problem may not even be a problem in practice, just in theory. We'll see what happens, won't we? What are your thoughts?
Again, let me make it clear that I don't think Priests are a bad class. They're pretty awesome. They've always been awesome, and they always will be awesome. They perform well in raids, and they make raids go smoother than they would've been without one. My only goal here was to try and explain why Priests might feel down on themselves.
Psst, Ghostcrawler, if you use any of these, you know how to get in touch. Wink wink, nudge nudge!
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 9)
Stephen Jan 15th 2009 11:56PM
I think FireStar's point is valid. Chain Heal is a class defining skill for Shaman. Raids will never stop trying to min/max. Good guild or bad guild, everyone is trying to figure out how to make their raid better. I'm sure FireStar would be able to MT heal, but I'm sure the raid leader is thinking it makes more sense to put a pally in there since they can't deliver the group heals. It doesn't even matter how easy the content is.
Because the priest class is slightly weaker in many of these "toolbox" spells, and we don't deliver in the niche the raid leader is looking for, we easily become the filler when another class is unavailable. That's no fun. We want to be the powerhouse.
I'm great at keeping an MT alive, but when you look on the meters, it doesn't look like much. My abilities can mitigate 300k in damage over the course of a fight, but how does the tank know this for sure. It's not as sexy to the tank as seeing a bunch of big green 15,000 heals pop up over their head during a boss fight. Or seeing themselves brought back from the brink by a giant heal.
The better we are geared, the less the paladins want to tank with a disc priest. My shields & mitigation effects along with their higher defense means they are constantly mana starved during the fight. They can hold aggro just fine, but they can't push any buttons. Now they rather go retribution so they can use seal of blood and keep us healing them to get their mana back.
Corazu Jan 15th 2009 9:50AM
I would like to see something like that, and I think the Discipline tree is the perfect tree to mold that too, giving the slight ability to the baseline and still keeping holy for priests that want to keep the current game.
Essentially turning the Discipline priest into a sort of bard that heals. I like the idea.
Tridus Jan 15th 2009 9:52AM
The CoH nerf is the wrong way to do what is needed. CoH needs to be dealt with. A 6 second cooldown doesn't solve the problem, it eviscerates the spell. That's a 75% throughput nerf over those 6 seconds!
Nobody EVER uses CoH once. It doesn't hit hard enough. You use it multiple times to bring up a raid from AoE damage. The way it works after patch is you use it once, then Flash Heal (single target) everybody else.
The quip now is "Priests can AoE heal just as well as Shaman, for twice the mana." Given that we no longer have a raid AoE heal that's spammable, it's entirely true.
What they should have done is reduced the targets CoH hit, that'd be a major throughput nerf without crippling the thing that actually made the spell work at all (spammability).
Then, GC admits he doesn't actually understand the problem and thinks that Priests are fine. So nothing will change.
mensrea Jan 15th 2009 10:09AM
You're one of about a dozen people who actually understands why this nerf is such a terrible idea.
CoH may have been overpowered, but this is about the worst possible way to "fix" it.
Of course, let's be honest about the problem the devs are really trying to fix: the other healers' bruised epeens from not being top of the healing meters in the AoE crazy BC raids. This nerf ought to fix that problem just fine.
Mindreaver Jan 15th 2009 9:55AM
Bah, and now we can have the argument here again.
Here is what is driving a lot of this:
1) Our talents and spells don't work well together, haven't for a while really. It isn't like druids with Swiftmend/HoTs/ToL/Nurish/Wild Growth that all flow together nicely. It isn't like Pallies with Holy shock speeding up Holy Light or the Sacred Shield that makes Flash better. It isn't like the riptide-CH or LHW-LHW flow. None of my spells feel like they should work together. Flash does nothing for anything, and GH does nothing for anything (neither does renew, penance, PoM (my personal favorite spell), PoH, etc. The only exception is the haste buff from PW: S and you have to go so far down in the tree for it (not to mention the double cooldown on the spell), that it isn't real synergy. I just want something, anything, that will make us feel like our spells fit. Like if PoM would refresh the duration of renew, or if a GH would make my next flash heal faster.
2) CoH was a crutch, we all knew it. We don't want it as a smart heal, it was even overpowered as a group only. We all know that. But it was the only thing keeping our class unique/interesting. You take it away, and people freak out. I for one, don't mind seeing it go. It overstayed it's welcome. But it was overshadowing and overcompensating for abilities/class synergy that was completely lacking.
3) Our Divine Hymn is the worse spell in the game right now. Worse then almost EVERY OTHER SPELL WE HAVE. This spell that is supposed to be on the same tier as Mirror Image, Hex, Warlock self-port, Sacred Shield, Nourish, Freezing Arrow, Army of the Dead, Fan of Knives, etc. A lot of people don't know, but that crazy "AoE sap" breaks if ANY ONE of the things you sapped gets hit. Oh, and when it breaks, makes them all harder to kill. How can I use this in ANY context.
There are more issues with priests, but those are the three biggest. There is the issue of not needing more than one in a raid. But that is small, compared to our spells needing some coherent message.
vocenoctum Jan 15th 2009 9:57AM
Also, while I'm on it, I wish priests got better armor. Innerfire is okay, but is the only of the armor spells that actually degrades with hits. Demon/ Fel armor, Frost, Mark of the wild...
Meanwhile, paladins have more escapes, half-threat heals, and wear plate.
Jess Q. Jan 15th 2009 10:49AM
I have an 80 warlock and I'm leveling my first priest right now (shadow). She's 37. So far, I have to disagree about Inner Fire not being as good as Fel Armor. I don't even notice the armor bonus on FA. The only time I can tell I didn't refresh it is if my health isn't regenerating very fast. I don't mind recasting Inner Fire though, I just wish it used less mana to refresh it. (I also wish the glyph that gives you 40 charges on your IF would make it last twice as long, too, but oh well.)
Also, PW:S is amaaaaazing. Does it get nerfed in the later levels or something? As a warlock I would *kill* to have that, especially in PVP. (Yes, I can sac my VW but then I'm up shit creek without a paddle since I respecced to aff and can't quickly summon him back.)
Vocenoctum Jan 15th 2009 2:56PM
My main is a lock, my priest is at 74. Fel Armor... doesn't give armor... :)
I notice my fel armor isn't on when I notice my DoT's aren't killing. Demon Skin/ armor is the armor one and isn't a huge deal to me.
Inner Fire gets a big boost in usefulness at (er) 71 (I think) when it adds SpellPower also. But it's the only Armor that decreases when being hit.
PW:Shield is one of those powers that is sort of staged, it'll be real good when you get a new rank, then by the end of that rank it's falling pretty quick. It was a staple of my rotation early on, but now it's more of an escape than an opener.
I don't really have a problem with my solo-ability as a holy priest, can't handle multiples as well as warrior or warlock can, but it's okay. It just seems odd to use a different mechanic for the armor spell, while everyone else gets one that isn't even dispellable anymore.
(Also, it's not hard to spec Aff and still get FelDom and MasterSummoner, it may not be the best raid-spec or whatever, but I usually solo with my lock.)
Azhariel Jan 15th 2009 9:59AM
Once in Arathi, it tooks three guys to down one Discipline Priest. Damn those impenetrable shields!
That's a problem I see with various classes, they ARE doing pretty well in PvP, but they need to be buffed for PvE.. But by doing so, they also are buffed for PvP, and become OP. *cough cough arcanemages *cough cough*
Melchior Jan 15th 2009 10:06AM
I notice in the blog nowhere does it say that priest are capable dps...
Alex Ziebart Jan 15th 2009 10:08AM
It's about Healing. Not DPS.
Mindreaver Jan 15th 2009 10:10AM
Did you see where it said "Healing Forums"?
Nobody is disputing that. But do you like your healer shortage? Because I can respec.
Tuck Jan 15th 2009 10:10AM
Soooo, basically the author wants priests to be bards?
No thanks.
I have played a pally healer and a druid healer - they get boring very fast in PVE. It's spam FoL, Holy Shock every now and then; or, stack hots, wild growth/ns/swiftmend every now and then. /yawn.
Priest healing is a lot more fun because you do a lot more different things. Which skill you use as a priest is a much more situational thing. Managing the timing on your cds, bubbling at the right moment, when to use what aoe heal, etc.
If you want a bard, make a new class that's a bard. Or make druids bards - makes more sense lore wise. Priests are the only healing class that requires any sort of thinking, keep em close to the way they are.
Moketronics Jan 15th 2009 10:14AM
I've been playing Discipline since after 3.0 and really enjoying it. It's tougher to play effectively then holy was, but I can do some really great healing and damage mitigation.
I have yet to run with a pali that made me think I didn't fill the role of MT healer effectively in comparison.
Running with 5 similarly geared healers (2 holy priests, a paladin, a shaman and a druid) patchwerk's healing meter is close to even and I ended up pretty much tied for 2nd on the healing meter for that fight - thats not including the damage mitigation I kept up during the fight.
That being said, meters are intersting - but theres plenty of healers out there that can put out some crazy HPS as long as the situation fits their play style but can't make the crucial decisions that will prevent a wipe or keep a certain person up.
In Holy you can sit there right now and spam CoH and look like a superstar. Discipline you've gotta work for it but I honestly believe that I bring both effective healing and great utility to a 25 man raid. (I can also do an awesome job in 5's and 10's.)
Come next patch, you're going to have to mix up your rotation. By managing the various procs you get out of talents in the holy tree theres all sorts of great opportunities for free casts and going OO5SR.
As a discipline priest I would LOVE to know where the "not really going to work out" comment came from. Over here its working out just fine.
(Actually, I am going to gripe that having stacked lots of int and crit and some mp5 in mostly 213+ gear I can't seem to go OOM - I've gotta stack some more haste or something to use mana up faster, maybe move some talents out of mana related things.)
Treason Jan 15th 2009 10:46AM
Healing meters are retarded. Stop looking at them.
They say more about latency among the different healers than anything else, then secondly something about healing assignment.
Moketronics Jan 15th 2009 1:15PM
yeah - exactly.
Thats why I brought up patchwerk - given the healing assigments its an interesting gauge where all the healers have to single target heal (basically). My point is that in this situation discipline stacks up quite well.
But I follow that part noting that it usually just shows how someone did given the situation (assignments/latency/strengths of spec/play style). It doesn't say whether someone was really doing "good" healing.
Kirke Jan 15th 2009 2:05PM
Exactly! Disc priest are great tank healers now if speccd correctly and the player nows how to rotate their spells effectively. Used correctly a healing Disc spec can be an awesome tank healer and never go oom.
shiplore Jan 15th 2009 10:13AM
I'm sorry but I rolled my priest to be the *best* healer take that for what its' worth, back before I knew anything, they shouldn't suddenly become the "best buffer" let Pallies do that.
That's the crux of the problem Priests are concieved of as healers, sure they have a dps tree, but it was (originally focused on dps/utility) discipline was always a bit of a mess, but seemed focused on PVP.
I think it comes down to the Holy Priest and the class in general was sold as the Best Healer i mean in the desciptions they could have called the class Healer -- and 99% of the people that rolled one rolled one to be a healer, Pallies, Shaman and Druids have alot of transistional people, people that rolled the class for it's hybrid nature, or interesting mechanics.
I don't really remember seeing Pally healers before BC, and few Shamans. I get the need for "more healers" and why they were made raid worthy, but they killed holy priests role as best healer.
From the description of the classes:
Pally: paladins bolster their allies with holy auras and blessing to protect their friends from harm and enhance their powers
Shaman:
They are a versatile class that can wade into battle, restoring their allies while hurling elemental bolts of lightning at their enemies.
Druid:
Druids are the keepers of the world and masters of nature with a diverse array of abilities. They are powerful healers, capable of curing poisons and raising fallen comrades in the thick of battle.
Priest:
Priests are the masters of healing and preservation, restoring their wounded allies, shielding them in battle, and even resurrecting their fallen comrades.
If you read this and picked a class you are going to be upset, that that pallys and shaman out heal you.
Charlie Jan 15th 2009 10:17AM
"I don't really remember seeing Pally healers before BC, and few Shamans. I get the need for "more healers" and why they were made raid worthy, but they killed holy priests role as best healer."
Zomg, you had shamans and pallies both on the same faction before BC? Haxorz!!1!!
But seriously. How did you not see any other healer than priests? The only thing that druids, pallies, and priests did was heal (only played ally, cant speak for shams). There was no shadow priests in raids. There was no bear tank or prot pally. Druids, Pallies and Priests healed in raids. Period. (This was mostly due to the fact that the only gear that dropped for them in raids was healing gear, but thats besides the point).
Nosscire Jan 15th 2009 10:11AM
The thing I want to see most right now is Prayer of Healing to be a smart multi group heal.
It would help out a bit on HPriests now very nerfed abilities to aoe heal, which could be needed. It would also help Disc infinatly as they right now are the worst AOE healers, and still not the best single target healers.
I think they could just make the change right of the bat, no buffs or nerfs to the spell itself. It heals for a reasonable amount to a reasonable cost.