Spiritual Guidance: I guess we're perfect
by Matt Low 
Sep 28th 2009 at 5:00PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. With no major changes to Priests in 3.2.2, is this an indication that we're fine the way we are?
The only thing priests have left to look forward to at this point is patch 3.3. The recent 3.2.2 patch didn't do much for us other than a fun bug involving Power Word: Shield, along with other bug fixes.
Shadow priests got a slight bump up in this patch. Healing priests didn't have much to look forward to. This leads me to conclude that from a developer perspective we are okay the way we are. I am hard pressed to find anything really wrong for healing priests. I'm going to hold judgment on shadow priests though since I don't know enough to comment. I'll wait a while before asking around with other shadow priests to get their thoughts.
Now healing wise, gone are the days where we'd be able to generate enormous amounts of healing throughput. We can't compete from a heals-per-second perspective. Here's a snapshot of the WoW Meter Online healing scoreboard for an idea.
The scoreboard shows all healing output. It doesn't matter if it's effective or overheals. Paladins basically rock this. It's also very encounter dependant. The fights used to compare this are Anub'arak on both normal and heroic modes. Note that paladins predominantly make up the entire leaderboard.
Props to the one lone resto druid by the way.
The one above is a shot of the effective healing scoreboard. Again, this is on Anub'arak normal and heroic. druids are going to have an easier time
On a side note, isn't it puzzling how resto druids rock the normal Anub'arak modes but are overshadowed by paladins on hard mode?
If I were to hypothesize, I'd say since the damage on hard mode is much more significant than the incoming damage on normal, there's more to heal. Druid HoT spells take time to kick in, but paladins are able to drop huge heal bombs quicker which override whatever druid spells are active on the raid.
Again, Anub'arak is just used as an example here. There are different results depending on which encounters you examine.
In any case, I digress.
What's missing here? Where are the priests? There's resto druids, many holy paladins and that one lone resto shaman.
Are you offended? Or hurt? Or dismayed? Maybe a little disappointed?
There's no priests. But that shouldn't bother you. The reason for it is because the variety of spells we have at our disposal is our strength no matter if you are holy or discipline. We can fill in whatever gap the raid or guild needs. We had our time at the top of the healing meters throughout Sunwell. That's not the role of the priest anymore.
We're not excelling like the two classes above on healing. That's fair enough. But we're also not lagging significantly behind either. The strong advantages of playing healing priests cannot be adequately explained with any meters at all. Meters will always tell part of the story but not the whole story.
Look on the bright side. We don't have to completely regem our gear or re-enchant our items because we have to shoot to maximize some specific stat. We don't have to learn new healing styles or how to work in certain spells. No news is good news. There's nothing we need to really learn. It feels like after every patch is deployed, there's some ability or stat change that changes how a certain class needs to be played. I'll use retribution paladins as an example. I had to learn to weave in Crusader Strike more often due to the shortened cooldown. That might be easy for some of you, but it takes practice for me since I've played nothing but healers most of the time.
Let's just accept the fact that healing priests aren't broken. Nothing radical had to be introduced. Nothing had to be significantly changed.
Although it's not likely we're going to see changes in the upcoming patch 3.3, what would be on your wishlist?
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries! Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Sanguinefrozenboy Sep 28th 2009 5:14PM
I think the loyal shadow priests are still waiting for the buff that gets them where they should be or at least waiting for something to break the usual monotony.
I know I am.
Hoho Sep 29th 2009 2:39AM
Next tank spot that opens up in guild will go to my alt tankadin. I'm quite sure shadow won't get fixed before Cataclysm and I don't want to have my priest be that guy who gets carried through IC while he brings nothing useful to the raid and also does mediocre DPS.
I don't consider my DPS particularly bad but when 6.1k DPS on single target gives me #14 spot and ~20% behind leaders already at current gear level with several people much lower geared than me being ahead me it doesn't feel particularly good and things are going worse with every piece of gear that gets given out.
lughna Sep 29th 2009 3:07AM
Well I've found playing my spriest rather situational and in some instances in PUG's or guild runs I can out do the pure dps classes. We just have to remember that we shouldn't expect to be beating hunters or locks. if you want that kind of dps re-roll imo.
Eisengel Sep 30th 2009 9:41PM
Honestly I'm not sure that Blizz knows what they want to do with SPriests, or really even cares. At one point it was just the one-off leveling spec for the de-facto healers in the olden days, but after Shadowform and the itemization hiccup in FSW from BC it seems SPriests have now been relabeled 'legitmate DPS spec'... but they still have horrible scaling across the board (way too high at entry, way too low at endgame), are getting clobbered by stat homogenization (haste & spirit = crap), have lost their unique utility (whether it was a good idea or not, its gone), have trouble in all stages of PvP, and have a punishing rotation that basically requires addons and split-second tunnel vision timing in order to still be massively outperformed by FoK-spamming Rogues. I really don't think Blizz is going to give this mode of play the attention it requires as a single underrepresented tree of a single underrepresented class... which is why I think SPriest needs to become its own class.
If you look at the lore and gameplay, SPriests are very, very different from healing Priests, and for a long time Priests who run Holy and Disc have wanted their own DPS tree and SPriests have wanted.. well... a REAL tree... with procs, distinct skills, fun synergistic effects, and multiple paths of emphasis. If Shadow is removed from the Priest tree and becomes a Holy DPS tree with a few PvP talents, I think a lot of Holy/Disc Priests would be happy, and if Shadow Priests got the attention that they really need to fix the problems they've had since, well, nearly forever, and a few interesting modes of play, I know I'd be really happy with that. The trees could be pure damage, a more PvP-oriented absorbing and redirecting damage tree, and a tree of sympathetic voodoo-like (Troll Voodoo Priest/Shadow Hunter pls!) magic where you damage yourself or redirect damage to 'heal' others (essentially give your life to others, and then rebuild yourself).
I think that splitting SPriest off into its own class will make both Shadow Priests and Holy/Disc Priests a lot better, and will give both classes a sorely needed boost and close review... it also gives Blizz a whole tree of possibilities to work with for reorganization and beefing up of Holy (which really needs something... the old magic is gone, Druids and Paladins are meter crushers, Shamen are utility-tastic and have good healing chops... Priests feel bland... if they're going to be the Jack of all Trades, at least let them corner the market on awesome procs/effects or something..), and Shadow needs some massive reworking, the kind of reworking/rebalancing that could definitely fill 2 trees full of Shadow-tastic talents.
Sanguinefrozenboy Oct 1st 2009 1:08AM
You had me until 'I think SPriest needs to become its own class.'
Spriests wouldn't be spriests without the priest part. Then they'd just be some weird floating shadowy thing that would be even less fun to play. I imagine Dispersion and we all know how useful that is!
Iratio Sep 28th 2009 5:15PM
Dwarf racial: Spirit boost = human spirit
serbeus Sep 28th 2009 5:16PM
just a few ideas
Maybe fix the Light Well so it works like the one in ToC or introduce PW: Barrier, the PW: Shield for the raid, i forget what name they had for it, maybe that was it. It would be cool to throw down a bubble like the dk's anti-magic zone except it would be a anit-damage zone that priest could throw out.
Tridus Sep 28th 2009 5:17PM
Par for the course. Priest HPS is pretty bad right now. Blizzard is content to leave it that way. Disc's single target HPS is pathetic whenever Penance is on cooldown, and they were originally meant to be tank healers. But hey, raid shield spam works, so they're content to leave it alone.
I've pretty much given up on seeing meaningful Priest changes in Wrath. The term "gap filler" from 3.0 is exactly what they want the class to be, and they've succeeded at it.
Sean Sep 28th 2009 6:03PM
I don't know if its me, but first of all I've seen equally geared holy priests in my guild compete with druids on meters, I'm talking in the 4-5k HPS range. Second, holy priests are usually far lower on overheal, compared to palladin and druid. That means something, its effective healing for mana consumption, its heals that aren't being wasted.
Maxpowr Sep 28th 2009 6:54PM
Sean is spot on. My HPS in raids is usually #2 (behind a better geared resto druid). I can hold +6500HPS for about 7 mins (with a properly timed heroism and constant damage).
I pretty much refer to priests as the "saving grace" class. You try rolling into HToC faction champs w/o a priest and you will get nowhere. Between the mass dispel, abolish disease, Guardian Spirit/ Pain supression, fear ward, fear and shields (with body and soul in some cases); we have ALOT more "save your butt" abilities than any of the other healing class.
Diogenes Sep 29th 2009 2:31AM
LoL. Priest effective output trails only druids. Compare cooldowns to get an idea.
Druids spam wildgrowth and rejuv. In tier 8 and above, each rejuv heals for 17-18k total and wildgrowth heals 6 people for about 4k each (24k). So you have 5 rejuvs between 1 wild growth. Thats about 19k hps theoretical since druids are at the gcd cap once they get up to steam and start spamming wild growth and rejuv constantly and assuming the damage is slow and steady and noone else snipes them. In reality their cap is around 8k hps as shown by Iron Council hard mode which is the perfect fight for them.
Priests highest HPS spells are circle of healing and prayer of healing. Prayer of mending is also way up there if it porcs.
Prayer healing takes about 2 secs and heals 5 people for 7k with the glyph so 35k total healing making prayer of healing have an hps of about 17.5k. Circle of healing heals 6 people for about 3k. 18k total healing that is instant. Holy priests are not at the gcd in general at tier 8, so this is maybe 14k hps. Prayer of Mending heals for as much as a flash of light (5k) and jumps 5 times for 5k each time so 25k total healing. That is 25 hps if between pom's cooldown it jumps each time.
So if all a priest did was spam prayer of mending, circle of healing, and prayer of healing, they have something around 17-19k hps. This is ideal, it is never the case that POM bounces the max time each time you use it or that poh and coh heal for exaclty the max amount.
Also for disc priests, bubbles are 8k hp at tier 8 and penance is the same hps as holy light at around 10k hps. Assuming all a priest does is use penance and bubble the raid, he/she has around 8.5k hps. That being said, almost all of that is effective healing as noone can snipe a bubble and penance is almost always used reactively to heal very quickly.
For a paladin they are spamming holy shock, fol, and holy light constantly on the raid and having that healing doubled on the tank.
Holy Light has about 10k hps at tier 8 and is doubled by beacon.
As you can see all the top healing classes have insanely high theoretical ouptut but whether or not this output comes to fruition depends on the pattern of damage involved.
Druids are better at slow and steady, priests better at spieky raid damage, and paladins better at large bursty damage on a few raid targets at a time.
As for Shamanas, their theoretical ouptut is nowhere near that of the other classes but they are more able to constantly spam their smart aoe heal as a way of making up for it thus achieving some parity in terms of effective healing as their heals are smarter.
Paladins are topping the meters because the pattern of damage on anub favors their style of healing. If the hardest fight in the game was Iron Council (in terms of damage taken) druids would dominate and if the hardest fight in the game was Lord Jaraxxus then priests would dominate. And so on and so on. It is incorrect to say priests don't have competitive hps because they certainly do. I beat our druid on Lord jaraxxus for example. If I waste mana and heal incorrectly by sniping his heals I can also beat the crap out of him on twins just by spamming poh, I would beat the crap out of him by sniping his heals but people would probably die as there wouldn't be enough burst single-target healing on those raid members who get hit by orbs.
Good healing is about keeping people alive not meters. I could care less what wowmeters say.
Tridus Sep 29th 2009 6:23AM
Well lets see. First of all, overheal doesn't matter at all unless you're going OOM. When that isn't happening (and it happens rarely), overheal is just extra healing that wasn't needed. It's not a bad thing.
@Diogenes - Penance is on an 8 second cooldown and hits half as many targets as Holy Light, not counting the other 5 targets HL splashes to. One Paladin's tank healing is equivalent to TWO Disc Priests due to the little detail of Beacon. You can make any spell look amazing compared to another if you just ignore half of what it does, right? Actually tank healing (which is Blizzard's stated goal for spec) doesn't let you shield spam since there aren't 15 tanks. It's nowhere near as effective as a Holy Paladin.
Prayer of Mending only does that HPS on select fights where there is damage ticking raid wide every second. On any other fight it may not bounce enough, or it may bounce to the wrong target and sit there for the cooldown, making the actual HPS much lower.
Prayer of Healing doesn't have a 2 second cooldown unless you're running with a whole lot more haste then most Priests do. The first one should be fast due to Serendpity, if you try to cast more after that the HPS comes way down.
And if meters and HPS don't matter, why did you insert a whole bunch of Shaman QQ about that exact subject in your reply? Oh well. Maybe what you meant was "it doesn't matter unless its some *other* class having the problem."
Diogenes Sep 29th 2009 10:43AM
@Diogenes - "Penance is on an 8 second cooldown and hits half as many targets as Holy Light, not counting the other 5 targets HL splashes to."
The HL aoe effect is nice but not enough for most patterns of aoe damage. Its just a nice way to help out the melee nearby. In a big burst situation (ala Ignis), you need a REAL aoe healing spell like wild growth, chain heal, or prayer of healing.
"One Paladin's tank healing is equivalent to TWO Disc Priests due to the little detail of Beacon. You can make any spell look amazing compared to another if you just ignore half of what it does, right?"
And you ignore a priest's ability to AOE heal in both specs which paladins cannot do effectively as well as the very powerful versatility of Power Word: Shield in many encounters. An 8k hp increase in effective health is liefsaving in many situations. I have saved so many groups in VOA on emalon because I knew the DPS would not switch to target the enraged add near the end of the fight. I prebubbled as many people as I could and when the add blew up, the 15 people I was able to prebubble + me all lived with about 3k health remaining while the rest of the group died. That being said the paladin healer still killed me on the fight by beaconing the mt and healing the OT but it doesn't matter how much he was topping the meters; there is no way a holy paladin could've saved the whole raid in that matter.
Which brings me back to my original point: meters aren't the end-all-be-all of healing.
"Actually tank healing (which is Blizzard's stated goal for spec) doesn't let you shield spam since there aren't 15 tanks. It's nowhere near as effective as a Holy Paladin."
No crap, I already noted this. Each spec has its own unique strengths. That being said, any class well-played in the current version of the game can easily outdo another class thats supposedly superior in the role if the player sucks. So many paladins are bad and stack spellpower and crit instead of INT because they don't realize they need about 30k base mana to be able to spam HL effectively and many don't balance their spells properly to get the fol hot up and to keep up their haste through judgements.
"Bring the player not the class" is more true now than its ever been in WOW (even though blizzard still hasn't perfected it quite yet).
"Prayer of Mending only does that HPS on select fights where there is damage ticking raid wide every second. On any other fight it may not bounce enough, or it may bounce to the wrong target and sit there for the cooldown, making the actual HPS much lower."
I noted this in my post. Normally you will have pom bounce more than once given how much damage occurs in h toc. On Northrend beasts it normally bounces between all the melee and when I reapply it, it's been used up.
"Prayer of Healing doesn't have a 2 second cooldown unless you're running with a whole lot more haste then most Priests do. The first one should be fast due to Serendpity, if you try to cast more after that the HPS comes way down."
I run with 20%+ haste and about 15% unbuffed crit in my holy gear. In my disc gear its about 15% haste and 20% crit (I would have less haste but currently my offset incorporates many holy pieces). With borrow time up, my prayer of healing takes 1.8 seconds to cast. With 3 serendipity stacks it takes about 1.5 seconds to cast for me in my gear level. On average, its probably a little bit more than 2 seconds but prayer of healing is still insane hps.
"And if meters and HPS don't matter, why did you insert a whole bunch of Shaman QQ about that exact subject in your reply? Oh well. Maybe what you meant was "it doesn't matter unless its some *other* class having the problem."
LOL. Shaman healing was definitely not balanced before 3.2 with chain heal almost never jumping and thus a shaman's output severely crippled with regards to any other class. Now, chain heal actually jumps completely most times and also the fact that totems can be placed in one cooldown and that water shield is no longer consumed by crits means that 1/5th of my global cooldowns spent refreshing spells that have nothing to do with my healing output are replaced with actual heals. Right now, shaman healing is very well balanced if the theoretical output is a bit less than the other classes. Chain heal's versatility, spammability, and "smartness" ensure that.
Again healing meters only matter to an extent. A good healer understands the tradeoff between the tools in his toolbox and adjusts accordingly even if it means not topping meters. Good healing is about keeping people alive NOT topping meters. That lack of understanding about good healing is the one of the things that separates good guilds from the chaff.
Diogenes Sep 29th 2009 11:15AM
@Tidus
After reading all of your other posts its clear to me you have no idea about how to play a disc priest well and just like to whine about how paladins are "better" than you. A lot of your assumptions are in fact wrong and I doubt you use disc cooldowns like power infusion or painsuppression well either. Your posts about addons are completely wrong and your healing style is probably flash heal spam and complaining about how holy light is better.
Read the disc healing compendium and get back to us when you understand the game better before you saying something completely ignorant like how disc priests are worthless compared to paladins.
Every top guild runs with a discipline priest each raid. Their niche and output is unrivaled on many fights.
Marita Sep 28th 2009 5:19PM
All I want are smaller cooldowns for some abilities, like hymn of hope.
But overall, I think we're ok.
As the main healer of a small guild my job is very interesting and challenging as a priest, but when I look the problems other healers have in some situations, I think we are in a good balance.
ziggler Sep 28th 2009 7:25PM
im just a recent healer (priest) (had mage/rogue/lock at 80 for some time), and i notice that shamans seem to have more troubles then we priests have, can count by the fingers of one hand (of someone who only has one finger) the amount of time a shaman wasnt assigned for "well, just heal the raid".
Marita Sep 28th 2009 8:09PM
yeah, the shaman healer in my guild always complains about that, he says that he is a bad healer with good gear :)
don't know if it is too much whinning for his part, or if it is a real difference in healing styles
ziggler Sep 28th 2009 9:41PM
one more thing... dunno if its just my guild, but, priest healers are always the most wanted (and not just for the buffs)... maybe its just an imprint from the vanilla and tbc, but, everybody in my guild prefers to have a priest over any other healer, we know a priest (and disc, omg, as an arcane mage, how i love the discs!) isnt just the guy that heals the tank, its also the guy that buffs the mages, dispels everything, shields in the last moment... maybe its just my guild, but, a priest bring an array of habilities that no other class can
Cthulu Sep 28th 2009 5:20PM
This is the worst fight to use to compare overall healing as the phase 2 debuff counts towards overall healing output. A paladan that healed himself would effectively skew the meters. Also wowmeters does not actually credit shields properly as a discipline priest shielding penetrating cold they shields are 100% consumed and usually tops the meters till phase 2.
So please look at which fight you are using to compare and the source of the comparing. Not arguing that paladins lead HPS but effective healing on certain fights (twins) a paladin cant' compare to the other classes. Rolling Hots is always going to reach a higher hps than burst healing on raid wide damage steadily incoming.
After last weeks spiritual guidance I am beginning to see these articles are getting very little thought and attention. I would hope some of the editors would review the content.
Nadia Sep 29th 2009 8:59AM
Also missing from this article is mention of damage mitigated from dispell and cure disease.
Additionally, mention of glyphed versions of Shield and Penance are also absent.