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Holy Priests in 3.3 ... Like TBC, Only Worse
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Post by
387103
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Grimbard
Three things have always bugged me about holy priests: PoM, lightwell, and circle of healing. And don’t get me started on shadow priests and SW:D - I haven’t played all classes, but can anyone let me know if there are any other classes that have spells that cause
them
to take damage?
Anyway, back to the 3 irritating things about holy priests. First, I think the mechanics of PoM are just stupid. Let’s get this straight – you cast the spell on someone, it heals them after they take damage, after which it just bounces to someone else. At this point, you hope that the person that it has randomly bounced to takes some damage, so it can heal them and bounce again to some other person. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it kind of ironic that one of our main healing spells requires people to take damage for it to work properly…
In any case, the way PoM should work is as follows: you cast it on someone and it heals them for X amount, then it
stays
on them until someone within a certain distance takes damage. It then bounces to that person, heals them, and again waits until someone else in the same area to take damage, after which it bounces, heals and so on. Kind of like a chain heal but with a pause after each bounce. To me, the current mechanics of PoM make me think that it was the result of a programming error that Blizzard was too lazy to fix.
Second, lightwell. Are there any lightwell users out there? (I thought not...) Other than as a joke, Lightwell is useless in a high-end raid. The irritating thing is that Blizzard has actually programmed a decent version of what lightwell should be – the lightwells used by the trash mobs in Trial of the Champion. The lightwells in ToCh don’t wait for someone to right-click on them; rather, they spit out heals to the trash mobs every 1-2 seconds until you target the lightwell and kill it. This is what lightwell should do – on a 2-3 minute cooldown, a lightwell should spit out a flash heal every few seconds to party/raid members who have taken damage. 10 heals total. This would finally make people think about speccing for lightwell...
Third, circle of healing. It’s not like it does a huge amount of healing anyway, so why the 6-second cooldown? If Blizzard wanted to stop priests from spamming 20 circles of healing in a row, they should have simply increased the mana cost of the spell.
Anyway, I plan to call Blizzard first thing this morning and let them know my viewpoints as discussed here. I’m sure that they’ll act immediately on my suggestions, and I wouldn’t doubt that a job offer might be in the works, as well. Grimbard - Director of Priest Development - definitely has a nice ring to it.
(And all sarcasm aside, I generally like the priest class – my main is a priest and I’ve played all 3 specs. Right now, at least for holy (I haven’t played shadow in several months), I just don’t think that there is an appropriate reward (other than the fun factor) for learning how to play what is probably the most complicated healing spec in the game. IMO, raid healing as a holy priest is more difficult than raid healing as a shaman or druid – you have more spells and cooldowns that you have to keep track of, plus your overall squishyness means that you have to be more aware of your surroundings. I think that this higher level of difficulty should be rewarded and that at similar gear/skill levels a holy priest should be at least equal to a shaman/druid on the healing meters).
Post by
Meggie
PoM was spammable shortly into TBC. One would cast PoM instead of Flash Heal. Then it got changed. Earth Shield is spammable. Living Seed effectively is spammed. But PoM is not (and PW:S is not).
CoH was spammable shortly in patch 2.0, what did blow away any and just any other healer class.
Post by
Pachuca
After playing a priest for 3 years, PoM is still one of my favourite spells and is perfect the way it is.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it kind of ironic that one of our main healing spells requires people to take damage for it to work properly…
If people weren't taking damage, there wouldn't be the need for a healer in the first place.
I must say, though, that it's sad seeing the Holy Priests in my guild trailing so far behind all the other healers in terms of effective healing done. On last week's Lich King attempts, we had one of our Holy Priests — who was dead last in healing done — spec Disc to shield-spam groups 3/4/5, while I concentrated on the main tank and the resto shamans handled melee. Suddenly the holy-turned-disco priest was tied for first in effective healing done (according to the WoL parse, not Recount) and our raid healers were breathing a collective sigh of relief once healing through Infest became trivial. Effective health of our tanks became greater because I didn't have to take my attention away from them to shield-spam the raid, so they were surviving longer. It was our first time using 2 discipline priests and we were left wondering why we didn't do it sooner.
It's kind of a shame where Holy priests are right now, but hopefully they get fixed soon. I miss seeing Holy at the top of the healing meters.
Not that it's all about the healing meters, or who does the most, I just like to see that we're squeezing as much juice as we can out of our lemons.
Post by
MegaVolt
In any case, the way PoM should work is as follows: you cast it on someone and it heals them for X amount, then it
stays
on them until someone within a certain distance takes damage. It then bounces to that person, heals them, and again waits until someone else in the same area to take damage, after which it bounces, heals and so on.
So you basically want to turn it into an AoE Earth Shield?
The lightwells in ToCh don’t wait for someone to right-click on them; rather, they spit out heals to the trash mobs every 1-2 seconds until you target the lightwell and kill it. This is what lightwell should do – on a 2-3 minute cooldown, a lightwell should spit out a flash heal every few seconds to party/raid members who have taken damage. 10 heals total. This would finally make people think about speccing for lightwell...
So you want to turn it into a Healing Stream Totem without group restrictions and with a
huge
healing output? I'm getting the feeling you should have rolled a Shaman ...
Third, circle of healing. It’s not like it does a huge amount of healing anyway, so why the 6-second cooldown? If Blizzard wanted to stop priests from spamming 20 circles of healing in a row, they should have simply increased the mana cost of the spell.
Because it was spammable and it was OP. It's perfectly fine the way it is. If you want a spammable AoE smart heal you might really be a lot better off with a Shaman and their CH.
Everything you suggested would make Priests ridiculously OP.
Post by
Grimbard
Everything you suggested would make Priests ridiculously OP.
There are two separate issues here - first, the mechanics of some of the main spells/abilities that priests have access to, and second, the power of those spells/abilities.
For example, lightwell. The mechanics of the spell make it such that nobody wants to spec for it. It has lots of power behind it, but absolutely horrible mechanics. Changing it to something that spits out heals would improve the mechanics considerably, making it something that priests might actually include in their specs.
Obviously there would have to be some balance. Should it be able to spit out heals with the power of a flash heal? Probably not. But in this case, that's just a detail to be worked out later. Changing the mechanics of the spell is the most important thing (as it is the thing that is stopping people from using it). The power of the heals spit out later can be worked out later, with balance in mind.
Re: PoM. My issue is not that the spell is broken. It's not. It's more the fact that the mechanics of the spell are illogical that irritates me. Often in 5-man heroics (almost never in raids, because usually everyone is taking some sort of AoE damage) the PoM will just bounce to someone who then doesn't take any damage. Other people might be taking damage, but the PoM just sits there, doing nothing. To me, that's illogical. The fact that many priests resort to casting SW:D to keep PoM bouncing if it lands on themselves is proof that the mechanics of the spell needs to be rethought. Let's see - you cast a spell that causes you to take damage so that your healing spell will bounce to someone who may be at full health and not be in any danger of taking more damage. Sign me up!
Re: Circle of Healing. If you made the mana cost high enough that 5 casts of Circle of Healing would burn through half of your mana pool, you would give priests more flexibilty to spam when required, but limit them in how long they could spam. That was the point I was trying to make - that the spammability of the spell should be constrained through mana costs, not though a cooldown. I wasn't arguing that the spell should be spammable for an entire fight - of course that would be OP.
Anyway, the general point of this entire thread is that priests are underpowered compared to the other raid healers for end-game content. Assuming that people agree that this is a problem, the three main ways to fix this imbalance are to 1) increase the power of the various spells/abilties we have, 2) change the mechanics of some of our spells/abilities, and 3) give our gear better bonuses. I've tossed out some ideas that relate to 1) and 2).
What ideas do you have, so we can criticize yours?
Post by
387103
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
174266
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
387103
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Meggie
Holy priest is the spirit oriented healer without Rejuv. It will not ever be special anymore. Unless..
No mana but an energy bar: Priest healing like rogue dps. 30% auto heal, 70% abilities
No mana but a rune system with divine power: Priest healing deathknight style. Every ability a trump.
And add some alignment restrictions, like cannot group with warlocks, cannot group with paladins. Takes 2 raid slots, whatever.
But that's just wild thoughts and a major overhaul. Still really I'd like to see a healer without a mana bar system.
Post by
TalonX
Re: Circle of Healing. If you made the mana cost high enough that 5 casts of Circle of Healing would burn through half of your mana pool, you would give priests more flexibilty to spam when required, but limit them in how long they could spam. That was the point I was trying to make - that the spammability of the spell should be constrained through mana costs, not though a cooldown. I wasn't arguing that the spell should be spammable for an entire fight - of course that would be OP.
If they made it spamable no matter what the cost it would be like just like back in tBC and early Naxx days were all holy priest did was spam that button, even if you would run outta mana in 30 seconds you'd punch that button, gem nothing but regen so you could hit that 1 button some more, and honestly it was pretty boring I would just put someone on auto follow and just tap 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 and top the healing meters all night long.
and personally PoM was designed for AoE healing so the fact that it only really shines when you need to have AoE healing seems pretty logical to me.
Post by
174266
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MegaVolt
PoM scales insanely well. 5 jumps with a base coefficient of 80% makes an instant cast spell have an effective 400% coefficient. It's one of the best scaling spells in the game - and it also gets the full benefit of crit (as opposed to Druid HoTs for example).
Post by
179128
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
174266
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
TalonX
Circle of Healing
-Allow CoH to heal
raidwide
and increase the range but keep the number of players healed the same (smart heal that heals the lowest HP within range)
it already heals raidwide.
Post by
karlusdavius
he meant outside your party. so it would hit 5 targets raid wide like CoH does.
Post by
karlusdavius
he meant outside your party. so it would hit 5 targets raid wide like CoH does.
Post by
Sinespe
he meant outside your party. so it would hit 5 targets raid wide like CoH does.
He said CoH, not PoH.
Post by
179128
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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