We talking about serious healing.. why priest??

Post by 151885

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Aedalas

lol, owned

Post by Kelesti

Pallys are way more efficient at single target healing, thats not just an opinion, its a fact. Druids have a lot more hots, and thus better at keeping tank up through periods where healers are silenced / unable to heal, for instance. Shamans are in most situations superior in group / raid healing, due to the nature / incredible scaling of chain heal. Priests are the only healers that can do all of these things at once, but they dont excel in either one area. Thus being an "average 2nd" in all situations.

"Jack-of-all-trades, Master-of-none"
And just for my two cents, unless your druid is specced Dreamstate for whatever reason, a Priest is the only class who can make 100% full use of Spirit Regen (going entire bosses without potions and still getting in the top 2-3, just from cheating the five second rule for example).

Post by Discover

Wulf! Don't even bother replying to the above. If I see you in this thread again I swear I'm kicking you from the guild. I talked to you in-game about this. The only reason you're still with us is because you haven't mentioned the guild. Stick to what you know. Affliciton Locks and Tankadins. You're good at those. Lightwulf (his priest for the rest of you) is 50. We took you with us on our fun run of MC. You think that being level 50 and healing level 70s in MC is an accomplishment. NEWS FLASH! Our RESTO SHAMMY was keeping us up.

if kub posts again, I'll kick him from the guild and do my best to blackball him on our server. I can't stand players like that and neither can he normally. Why he held so tenaciously on this I'll never know.

Keep it in your guild please. There is no reason to make this kind of information public. That is why Blizzard implemented the whisper system.

Post by Aedalas

Or better yet, Wowhead should just implement a whole forum for this sort of thing, you have to admit it is at least entertaining :)

Post by 151885

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by 126756

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Sareth256

so WHY WHY WHY play a priest?

I'll tell U. Maybe I'm not a great healer, but I always do my job properly. And if everyone told himself that priest isnt worth playing, how would U get our bless PW: Fortitude?...that's +103 stam if U have the talent. that's 1000+ hp for everybody.

and every class has its pros and cons. everyone prefers this to that. just play what U like and enjoy the game.

@ kubwulf - looks like U really have great teachers, and I personally aggre with what U have written. That's my opinion, and I let others to have theirs...:)

Post by Kelesti

Post by Sareth256

how would U get our bless PW: Fortitude?...that's +103 stam if U have the talent. that's 1000+ hp for everybody I hate to bear "anti-priest" attitude, but you only need one priest for that buff in any raid, and hell it can be a Shadow Priest, not even a healer.

expected that...to sum it up, why priest?, cos priest is universal. priest has every type of healing spell from HoT to AoE...so in my opinion he is useful as a healer. and if U dont like priests, just dont play them...

Post by Eliel

ok we all know the 4 healing classes,

there are plate healers, paladins.
there are mail healers, shamans.
leather healers, druids.
and of course cloth healers, priest.

each class has healing items of their armour type, and the heals more or less are equal. (they heal for roughly the same amount only exceptions are druids cause they use mainly OT heals)

but when it comes to pve, you want your healer NOT to die halfway through the battle so honestly why have a healer that wears cloth?
to add on to that shaman healers can reincarnate and paladins can put up a bubble.

besides if it is the cloth items that give more healing paladins, shamans, druids can also wear cloth items.. why play a priest?

then we talk about dropping threat. yes priests have fade. but in a raid, would the healer actually out threat the tank? if he does the tank has failed!

then we talk about mana management. priests have shadow fiend and meditation. but just take a good look at mana costs of heals. priest heals cost the most mana and paladins cost the least. besides that shamans have mana spring water shield mana tide, paladins have a talent that returns mana when heal crits. so why priest?

then we talk about healing weapons. only problem to this is, paladins cannot hold staves. but honestly, this is the most important of my post, WHY DO ALL HEALING STAVES SUCK SO BAD?

assuming http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30908 is the best healing stave. (in fact i cant find another better then this, unless you are comparing spirit, it drops of hyjal)

kara healing mace + kara healing shield is already compareable to it.

so WHY WHY WHY play a priest?

If a serious raid boss turns around and whacks ANY healer, odds are they're dead. If a healer is tanking a mob, the pull was screwed up, there's no good reason for them to tank mobs.

You really contradicted yourself about threat. If the tanks can hold threat, there's no reason to fade. If there's no reason to fade, dropping threat is not an issue, thus shouldn't be mentioned.

As for mana regen, I know our best raiding Holy Priest has around 270 mp/5 UNBUFFED (4/5 Hyjal 4/9 BT). With Spirit buff, kings, wisdom, MotW this just gets much bigger. With that, Shadowfiend and the occassional mana pot, you're in a nice place mana-wise. Paladins can spam FoL forever, but if all your Paladin does is spam FoL, then either your tanks are overgeared or you have too many healers in the instance. Also, Mana Spring is a Totem, Priests can get benefit from it.

I don't get your rant about weapons at all. You think 1h and shield/offhand is better than a 2h, then fine. 2h gives more stam/int/spirit, 1h/offhand you'll generally get a bit more healing. Depends on what you need. There's no reason why you can't keep both sets around for various encounters, and since all healers can use 1h and offhand (which you seem to prefer), why the hell are you ranting about weapons, when weapons are irrelevant to who is the better healer?

Not to mention Priests have more emergency buttons and more options than ANY other healing class, and they're a hell of a lot more interesting to play than a Paladin healer (Playing a raid Paladin healer, even though I was never allowed to just spam FoL mindlessly, was so ridiculously boring that it almost put me off healing forever). Thankfully while leveling a Shadow Priest I healed a couple of instances, and found out how enjoyable it could be on a different character.

I'm not saying Priests are better, nor will I say they're worse, and I'm only defending them because you're attacking them. However, they have a lot of upsides, and in a raid you need a variety of healers to get through encounters, each playing different roles. Priests are NEEDED for T5/T6 content, and while no class is really needed for T4, they are definately useful. Also, go look up about the Priest that solo-healed ZA, and try and say that's not impressive.

Post by 24087

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Post by Ztrange

Priest brandishing T6 armor reporting in. I can see how pre-T6 raiders doesn't really see the value of having a CoH priest in their raid considering before BT/MH their usage is pretty limited.

That last sentence is true if your raid leader doesn't see the value of a CoH priest. Circle of healing is a group based AoE heal as many (all, I hope) of you know. If you can optimize your raid strategy for the group based heals in a fight that deals alot of raid damage, you will most certainly benefit from having a CoH priest (Even though your druids will whine about him stealing their innervates)

Fights where you can bunch up people with their groups and where there's alot of raid damage will ALWAYS benefit from a CoH priest.

Players who have cleared BT and MH will just shake their head and sigh at alot of posts in this thread I'm sure. Shamans and priests both show their true raid healing potential in BT and MH where the raid damage is immense to say the least. A prime example is Illidan phase 2 (Other really good examples includes (but aren't limited to) Najentus, Winterchill, Bloodboil, etc) where Illidan has thrown his warglaives and flown up in the air. While your dps is hammering away at the flames of azzinoth Illidan is doing alot of raid damage. In this phase you're bunched up in a tight area and a good strategy to cope with this situation is to split up in 3-4 groups (depending on your preference really). If you limit the raid damage to hit one group at a time (pretty possible), I am willing to bet there's no class that can outheal a CoH priest that knows what he/she is doing. And it should not come as a surprise that a good raid healer in this phase can outheal the healing listed from Illidans "Draw Soul".

Shamans with their strong chain healing ability is very good at raid healing those fights where you just can't structure your raid into damage taking groups, because their chain heal isn't limited to groups.

Now what in the hell does a priest do when not specced CoH or shadow? Improved divine spirit of course! This doesn't mean you're bringing the priest along just for his ability to add that extra dps to your raid, it means he's a more than qualified single target healer as well. I'd like to argue that priests and druids are the most flexible healing classes in WoW, while I'd rather have shamans healing raid and paladins healing single target than assigning them to other healing. Druids with their hots can heal single target as well as multi target very well, if you're a druid reading this and exclaiming "IMPOSSIBLE!", I do suggest you L2P as harsh as it might seem. I've played with several good raid healing druids. Not that they'd be better than a shaman or priest in any given situation, if there was an absolute best healer for all situations we wouldn't have this topic. Priests has both a hot and direct heals, and also the excellent prayer of mending. Keeping a renew up will most certainly help since it heals when you're busy casting your greater heal, and together with prayer of mending it helps taking the edge off of those hard hits your tank will most probably take before you can top him off with your greater heal.

Now why oh why do priests wear cloth? Well, to be honest, why does it matter? The only situations I found that my cloth was keeping me from healing is trash in SSC, mostly because I pulled aggro from the tanks with CoH and had only myself to blame (there are other healers in the raid after all, you don't HAVE to top the healing done meter, even though it's fun). And it's very much possible to take healing aggro from the tank, probably only on trash pulls with alot of raid damage though, doesn't have anything to do with your tanks performance.

To finish off I'd like to sum it up for those of you who sighed at the sight of the wall of text and muttered tl;dr:
- Priests are flexible, can manage both single target healing and raid healing, excelling at the latter with help from a good raid leader
- Cloth is not a problem, you might have to put on some stam gear for some fights when starting out, but later on it's really not a problem
- OMG IMBA BUFFS

Cheers

Post by 102059

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Maradin

To add to th3if's comments.

When you're looking for your raid makeup, you don't simply look at the "best" healers. You look at the configuration for that boss, and seek to buff your groups where possible. Assuming that seven healers are required, I'd take 3 shamans (plus 2 enhancement to ensure every group is set), one paladin, 2 priests and a druid.

When you're in Karazhan, it makes very little difference what healers you take (though I've known a resto druid or priest solo heal it, whereas a paladin struggles)

However, in later raids (really, MH and up... but it holds in SSC and TK to some extent too), the roles of healers change:

Paladin: he can pull off about 1k healing per second, if he's pretty good. He's got a blessing (and I'd recommend all raids run with 3 blessings, but would fill the other spots with a prot and ret paladin). Some top end guilds log their paladins in, buff the group with five blessings, then log back onto their mains... thats how low their healing output is. Having said that, they're excellent for single target stuff.

Resto druid: shocking in MH and BT. You can't give them a job on their own, because they don't have the reactions that are needed to heal up burst damage. However, they're great at supporting other healers and making everyone's job easier, which is why you take them.

Resto shaman: excellent stackability. The totems and bloodlust/heroism is why you take them to raids - not that they are the best healers! They are good at healing multiple targets when you have crazy aoe damage that hits a small number of people in the raid. They're also excellent for multiple tanks being hit on the same target. Maximum hps is about 1,800, but on most fights they won't hit this.

Holy priest: no real stackability, but because there is so much damage that hits the entire raid at once in MH and BT, priests are absolutely essential. Their circle of healing is the single best healing spell in the game, and two good priests should be able to keep the raid alive indefinitely. Maximum HPS is about 2,400, and they should be looking for well above 1k hps on every fight.

In general, it's a toss-up between resto shamans and priest for the "best" healer in end-game content. Priest is more versatile and can output more healing, but shaman has the buffs for the raid. That's why you take both. Paladins are ONLY about buffs for the raid, and blessing of kings is worth a spot on its own... and druids are about supporting the other healers.

Post by airtonix

I am a holy priest, a draenei CoH one.

Some things I notice :

at 1965 bonus heals and 214mp5 :

rank1 Heal can be spammed over and over and over and bascially my mp5 will recover the cost.
prayer of mending, adds threat to the target
Overhealing does not draw threat, only the actual health healed adds to threat.
Threat is divided amongst mobs in the fight.
Healing small amounts of health to maxHp is a good way to reduce incoming threat on your table, so keep your tank topped up

Some things about shadowpriests :

not a pure dps class, but faces still melt. :)
all their damage returns health and mana.
they increase shadow dmg of the group/raid
they have some fairly high armour with shadowform and innerfire, infact there is cases of shadowpriests tanking! epic gear and only in non heroics I think: check out shadowpriest.com.

I love shamans for a few reasons :

They reduce the healing i need to do,
There mana totems give me mana, effectivly increasing my mp5
They increase dps of the group/raid, thereby reducing total healing time required
They can res,self res

Things i like about a warlock :

DPS
healthstones
soulstones
succibi
seed of corruption.

A druid, priest & a resto shaman make quite an effective healing group.

And last of all, when a skilled and prepared players takes it upon themselves to learn their class, then you can really see where the strengths and weaknesses stand.

Many times I switched shadow from holy and did heroics, only to wish i was healing becuase the healer was :

lazy
inept
used the wrong heals at the wrong time
bubbled the tank

And so to conclude, at roughly 1900+heals and 215mp5 :

I rarely go oom,
tank rarely goes below 80% health
group members rarely die

Rarely, becuase in those cases it's the threat monkeys that die.

We talking about serious healing.. why priest??

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