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Priests: They're not just for good players anymore. (longish)
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Post by
Brokenhalo
I guess before I comment on this, I should mention my own priest bonafides. I had a level 80 disc priest main over a year ago. I knew my stuff and was pretty well-respected on my old realm. Raided Ulduar 25 frequently and was the go-to tank healer for my guild. We could always clear up to that guy where you get no normal mana regen, General something something. It's been a while. Anyway, yadda yadda yadda we were working on getting past him for a couple of weeks and then I got burnt out and shelved the game. These things happen.
Came back recently to find that all my in-game buddies had fled to parts unknown or had quit the game entirely, so I decided to roll...another priest. This time it was going to be on a different realm for a different faction.
Here are some tacit observations on what it's like to level a priest now:
1. Ridiculously easy. Between heirloom gear experience and stat boosts to changes in spirit to things like Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain, leveling has never been this easy. Most priest leveling guides should just be replaced with the words "Level in battlegrounds during holiday weekend. Are you still reading this? Why aren't you leveling in battlegrounds. There you go. Level in battlegrounds." I'd be lying if I said this was hard now. We can probably all agree that priest leveling has never been this easy, ever.
2. But where does that leave us? It used to be that leveling a priest was nearly tortuous, especially in that no-man's-land between level 10 and level 39 before your skills really start to come together. Most people would get a few levels in, conclude that it sucks, and would quit the whole enterprise, unwilling to see the experience out to its eventual, rewarding end. If you had a maximum level priest, it meant you had paid your dues and probably learned a great deal about the class along the way.
3. Now that that steep barrier to entry is gone, we're left with this litany of newer players who are all for some reason rolling a new priest, but haven't yet unlocked the subtleties involved with healing as disc or holy. They might not have healed before on any toon, ever. Or maybe they've healed before, but under different, simpler circumstances. Healing with a priest is not as simple as stacking Lifebloom and then just watching for spike damage. It's not as simple as chilling back somewhere in your plate armor and spamming one spell all day. It's just not simple. So not surprisingly, it is really, really easy to be a bad priest.
4. For some reason, I'm ALSO rolling another death knight, and he's been tanking regular wotlk instances. I don't know why I'm leveling and gearing *another* DK blood tank, either, but I am.
Anyway, I digress, here's what I see when I queue up for randoms in my DK tank: terrible, terrible priest healers. Left and right. More bad than good. Disc priests who aren't shielding and PoMing the tank before pulls. Who don't keep Renew on the tank at all times. Who don't dispel or cure. Who don't bother to stack grace and will fire off a half-assed Penance right as the tank drops dead. And you can't lend them friendly advice. You're just a dumb old DK, what do you know? *leaves random group in a huff*
This is the future. This is what 90 percent of priests are going to be like all the way through the release of the next expansion, when quirky things like "life grip" make them even more appealing to ye unwashed masses. In a few more months, priest healers will be stigmatized like a Hunter who raids with his pet on aggressive, like a level 58 Death Knight in Arathi Basin. Priests added to a raid are going to met with a collective eyeroll and increased scrutiny as the classes' newest adoptees blaze a bold trail of suck all the way to their first of many 10 and 25-man wipes.
Priests: They're not just for good players anymore!
Post by
91278
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Post by
243884
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420829
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Post by
karlusdavius
Dear brokenhalo,
your an idiot
warmest
regards
most of the wowhead community.
In all honesty, your doing heroics. not exactly LK HM now is it?
Post by
142776
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
DerrHans
I miss the "Longish" part..
All i can see is:
Bla
There will always be bad players, on each and every class.
Deal with it or stop playing the game is the advise i would give u.
Post by
Pachuca
terrible, terrible priest healers.... Who don't keep Renew on the tank at all times.
Here's a hint: most Discipline priests don't keep Renew on the tank. Renew is expensive, slow, and just low throughput for the GCD and mana cost. With a PW:S and/or Divine Aegis bubble on the tank, Renew ends up doing more overhealing than effective healing. Our true power is in our damage mitigation from shields, and fast Flash Heals with high chance to crit, resulting in more mitigation.
In the time it takes for a Renew to tick once, you can get off 2-3 Flash Heals which heal for more and have the ability to proc DA. In the 1 second GCD it takes to apply a Renew, you could have thrown a PoM or another PW:S, or a Flash Heal.
Throw a shield and PoM on the tank and he can sometimes last an entire group of mobs before the shield bursts. Tell me how a Renew is effective here.
Low healing-per-mana spent
Low healing-per-second
Ineffective when a PW:S or Divine Aegis is active
Inability to crit = no absorption = lame
That's my argument against Renew. The only time I use Renew is on LK-25 when we're moving in after the phase transitions and the tanks are taking insane amounts of damage and take barely any overhealing.
Post by
OscarDivine
You must play a
mage
.
Post by
318206
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Post by
517094
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Post by
Aldones
I don't foresee priests ever becoming a "noob" class, especially as healers. Sure people are terrible healers; especially while leveling. But can you blame them? They are in a learning process and most of the time are to stubborn/lazy to actually do research beforehand. They will fail and learn the hard way, but at least they learn...most of the time.
You also have to realize that the same type of "noob" that is drawn to a hunter will not be drawn to a priest, at least not to heal. Healing simply does not have the same play style, and most people I talk to are bored with it.
And what's up with "not bothering to stack Grace"? It's a passive buff on whoever you last healed with a direct heal. I personally don't even think it would be very useful until 80 because while leveling, you tend to have to heal everyone. The buff moves from one player to the next and ends up having virtually 0 effectiveness. Or did you not realize that 3.1 (I think it was that patch), Grace was redesigned to stack 3/6/9% on 1 target rather than 1/2/3% on any target.
Post by
Squishalot
Just checking, but isn't levelling in BGs and LFG more likely to teach you to heal and how to use the 'subtleties' of Holy and Disc heals, than solo quest grinding through the Badlands? :P
Post by
Badguy
The reason priest sucks at leveling is because it doesn't have the wand damage talents anymore.
Post by
Aldones
The reason priest sucks at leveling is because it doesn't have the wand damage talents anymore.
We haven't had that for a long, long time. Anyways, with heirloom gear, I wouldn't touch a wand anyways.
Post by
pelf
Oh man, I almost forgot about those talents. Mages had one too, I think.
Post by
Kciroj
Oh man, I almost forgot about those talents. Mages had one too, I think.
Yeh they did. Both were removed at the start of WotLK.
Oh and:
Hahaha
.
Post by
Brokenhalo
I didn't bother to read any of that, sorry. I just skimmed and saw that you like to use words like "terribad," figured you had accidentally logged on here instead of the standard WoW forums, and moved on to other posts.
You seem to feel really threatened by people who don't read or write at a sixth grade level. Thanks for providing us with information literally anyone would already have just by clicking on my name, though, and then making some strange, unfocused rant against players who have been around the block when it comes to this particular class.
If you thought I posted this to provide helpful tips to other Disc priests, I didn't. I'm sorry you've misconstrued the purpose of the post. The idea, in a nutshell is simply that "Priest players used to exhibit a higher level of competency on average than players of other classes" and I theorize that it's because the leveling process used to be more difficult--somebody had to really WANT to courageously wand their way through quests. If you yourself are a newer priest and want to learn the ropes, there are plenty of other helpful online resources you could consult. I'm not particularly interested in sharing what I know even as a seasoned veteran of the class, and I do apologize for that.
This might be the most unintentionally funny post I've read yet. Thanks!
You make some good points. There is definitely a learning curve when it comes to priest healing (as I pointed out, it's not nearly as simple as it is with other classes), and part of the process is knowing which spell to use and when. Since there are a lot of tools in that toolbox, and you'll probably have to use each and every one during a typical run, it only serves to add to the complexity.
As far as the Death Knight tanking side of things, yes I know my way around a blood tank. In fact, on lowbie content I go blood specifically to have more OH CRAP cooldowns available in case the healer is a little shoddy. You were actually supposed to conclude that it's the healing that is poor, since it's hard to draw any other conclusion when you run up against a disc priest that isn't even bubbling.
I take it back, I will share a little of what I know after all, because I think you would be receptive to it. You seem to speak in generalities that we can all agree on (i.e. the defining aspect of Disc healing is damage mitigation), but it's clear you haven't fully considered the purpose of Renew in the first place. The whole idea of having and *USING* your instant-cast HoT is to build yourself a buffer during challenging runs. You can be silenced, feared, or otherwise cc'ed. The tank can take unexpected damage or accidentally break LOS. You or your tank can be subjected to sudden lag or latency spikes. And if you're doing a highly technical fight that requires movement on your part, that tends to automatically reduce your instant-healing options considerably. Renew is not a tool for "primary healing" at all, and it's wrong to think of it like that. It's used as an insurance policy against the unexpected. And in this current raiding environment where mana is nearly inexhaustible, there is literally no reason not to use it. If you're contending that "most Disc priests" don't use it, then we're probably in agreement after all. "Most Disc priests" are probably not that good, or else have never been forced to stretch every last ounce of power out of their characters, and instead just heal instances they massively outgear anyway.
I hadn't considered that. It very much is like just getting thrown into the deep end when you've got a death knight, warrior, or rogue pounding on you and don't have the +resilience and +stamina PvP gear acquired yet to do much about it, at the lower PvP tiers. We've all had that funny experience of having 5 different alliance or horde players exhausting all their cooldowns beating on us, only to get all that health back in just one heal. But advancing a priest to that point can be a long, and as you point out, perhaps even instructive process.
Those wand talents were amazing back then, all things considered. Thanks for a trip down memory lane. :D
Post by
91278
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Post by
karlusdavius
Now, like I said, go back under your pebble.
Fix't
he don't deserve rock. (because i'm apparently funny!)
looks like the young guns are more knowledgable than us "old guys".
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