Let’s phrase this another way and see if it get’s the point across. Suppose the exact same player got together the exact same group and decided to run an M+ dungeon. The group successfully complete’s the dungeon while the player is running their Shaman and then decide to do it again only this time the person playing the Shaman will now play a Holy Priest. The end result is the group fails to complete the dungeon. Everything is the same, same players, same dungeon, same key level, the only difference is trading out a Rshammy for a Holy Priest. What is the issue?
Same players, same skill, same content, the only difference is the class. Yes this is a thing that happens. The reality is M+ is much easier right now for a Shaman compared to a Holy Priest and if you want to put numbers to it to make it easier to see. A priest needs a 100% skill level to complete the same content a Shaman might need 70%. This is a problem that needs to be addressed either in bringing the Shaman down, or the more healthy option, bringing the Holy Priest up.
Honestly I would be rather happy to see them go and see Holy get more options like Divine Hymn. The idea of Holy Priest utilizing various forms of chanting and hymns in the kit I felt was a great idea back when they first got Divine Hymn and Hymn of Hope. Sadly it was never expanded upon.
I have really good memories from back in the day pressing Circle of Healing. I always loved that button, but unfortunately for me at least, the spell has fallen pretty far. I similarly like Wild Growth on Druid even though the spell has a cast time which kind of sucks in my opinion.
For what it’s worth, Circle of Healing has a choice node underneath it with a passive called “Healing Chorus” so that’s kind of a chorus/hymn vibe? LOL.
I can understand, I have some good memories of it to, especially back when it was insta-cast with no CD. Hell the initial change to making PoH target the group of your target resulted in the time I most enjoyed holy. Being able to prep a PoH before big damage to hit 5 targets, most likely get crits that gave you SOL procs so you could flash heal someone, use CoH most likely getting another SoL proc for another Flash Heal, both of which reduced the cast time of your next PoH, just let you dump so much healing into so many of Ulduar’s raid damage mechanics you legit felt at times you could heal the entire raid…which was the problem but I digress.
Sadly though that is all rose tented glasses and nostalgia and I would rather lose nostalgia for a better future for the class than cling to it and let it stay in the sad sorry state it’s in now.
Tbh I don’t think our healing is bad, it’s just our utility.
We could use something like a Brez, Interrupt or make restitution + afterlife accesible in our talent trees or baseline.
I’m not even running the Disease talent because literally these dungeons have no diseases that are actually dangerous to the group. So basically my dispel only cleanse magic lmaooo.
Also not running MD so yea… pretty much our utility is non-existant besides PI and 5% extra hp
If the specs are balanced very close to each other, then yes, that can be true. But that rarely is ever the case.
I think the problem here is you just aren’t aware there are such statistics sites out there that do track key success rate sorted by specific specs, which I am only too happy to share:
https://bestkeystone.com/statistics/specs
And yes, holy is down there in the dumpster, week-to-week for the record. Just by not running holy priest and swapping to disc priest, you elevate your key’s success rate by more than 10%. Which is a staggering amount of difference.
Unfortunately that doesn’t explain why disc is the second best healer in M+, because aside from Barrier they don’t actually have better utility than holy.
Every healer’s hps is very close to each other - but it doesn’t paint the accurate picture that, for instance, holy priest needs to stand still 24/7 in order to have that hps, and they can only heal one target at a time for the most part.
Then you have disc, that just presses radiance, mind blast and penance and the whole group is full hp again.
That’s the double standards that annoys me when talking to them.
If they have problems with priest, it’s totally valid and relevant; but if someone else other than them have different problems with priest, well git gud and reroll to a different spec, priest isn’t for you.
Even when I’m not involved in the post at all and just reading it, I see attitudes like this and it’s frustrating. It’s sad because we all love Priest and obviously wish to see it improved. I’m just tired of the formula where someone makes a very valid complaint only to have people flood the replies with off-topic nonsense— or 1 line of credence to the complaint, along with an essay about why they’re actually wrong or need to “look at it another way”.
I want to reiterate I love reading tips and advice from people who know what they’re talking about because that kind of discussion is very productive. What I find unproductive is dismissiveness and evasiveness or sugarcoating reality. We definitely all experience the game differently from each other, but there simply just are objective truths for example the biggest and most obvious one being Priest’s utility gap on the whole in comparison to other classes.
I’m hearing more and more discussions about how higher Mythic+ keys are also causing a rift between players who play with pre-formed groups or guilds and players that play in PuGs. This is definitely a piece to the grand puzzle. Even Liquid Max recently tweeted about gilded crests being annoying to obtain as well as negative player reception to dungeon difficulty.
That will definitely drive home the idea that you “must play the meta”. But the fact of the matter is— aren’t people technically correct that taking a Resto Shaman over a Priest is going to yield better and easier results?
So, to me, from a Priest perspective, it seems that Priests first and foremost need a revamp. Many of us here on the forums have been hoping for one and begging for one for a long time now. “Making it work” should not be the bar set for Priest players.
Then, they need to work out the kinks with the new M+ system and decide what is and isn’t working out. We are obviously very early in the expansion, but I’d rather they be hard and fast with fixes rather than letting problems slowly burn and fester.
Probably because everyone is running the prayer of mending build instead of the Prayer of Healing build. Running +7’s without issue still. I do not feel like I’m having difficulty healing, whereas it was when I rand the POM build.
This isn’t true. Not only does disc provide barrier, it also.provides pain suppression
and better shields which can help squishier tanks when properly cycled with their CDs and significantly higher damage tied to a better AoE healing profile thanks to atonement.
This over all makes disc much easier between smoothing out tank damage and recovering from AoE.
All of that in addition to bringing the highest healer DPS in this game, which it absolutely should be by a large margin. This is likely the biggest reason disc is 2nd because the extra time saved by an extra 100-200k DPS over the course if an entire dungeon can be significant in timing keys.
Well first, yes, there’s several people in this thread AND other threads saying stuff like this unironically.
But also, I’m saying you can play it as an average player too.
Your average player on Shaman doesn’t even use cap totem or interrupts correctly anyway. I’ve played with enough shamans on my tank at a mid key level to know that half of them just SIT on wind shear. This idea that only the most talented players are progressing is wrong. I’m really not super good at this game. All it takes to progress is an attitude of being willing to learn. Seriously all anyone needs to go when they die is go “ok, what went wrong here?” and fix that the next time. It is SO RARE that there’s nothing you could have done. And it’s usually because someone got unlucky and ate 4 dashes at the same time, or something.
Not how I would analyze this stat. Especially at a 10key range. Otherwise we’d have to say Preservation isn’t a very good spec - but that’s obviously untrue. There are things that get in the way of progressing on it for a lot of people, the range being a primary one along with sharing utilities with Aug. That doesn’t make the spec bad or incapable at all.
Nobody has ever said this. I’ve actively encouraged people to play priest unless their goal is one that isn’t related to the spec. The only time I’ve said ‘roll shaman’ was someone who specifically was talking about progressing title content but didn’t want to do their own keys/only wanted to pug. That’s a wildly unlikely thing to do unless you’re playing meta.
Also am totally fine with people expressing concerns about priest. I just reply to things I disagree with - those things in general being the exact OPPOSITE of what you’re saying I am. I most often disagree with people saying the spec is just worthless.
But on this forum, it seems if I make a post that says “Here’s something priest actually REALLY sucks at and needs massive buffs” like harping on utility - it’s a super well liked post. Saying something like “I don’t think holy priest is hopeless right now, it’s clearing content and has the HPS to truck through and is popular in raid, so if you want to play it you absolutely can” is disliked and somehow “writing off concerns”? Like… there’s obviously nuance here. Both the idea that our HPS is fine and we’re able to heal through these challenges AND the idea that we need more utility particularly in a 5 man environment can be true.
I went back to reread what I said in this thread, and I seriously don’t know who you’re criticizing here. It’s been a pretty consistent “hey you can play holy priest right now, it works and you’ll be able to progress, but we lack utility. If you’re looking for absolute highest level keys and want to pug, sure play shaman. If you’re doing low level keys and struggling, you’ve probably got something else wrong other than class pick.”
I don’t know, maybe have a bit of introspection then? It really wasn’t that long ago when both you and Martyrofsand had that argument where he rightfully pointed out your penchant for contrarianism. I didn’t say much that time, but I fully agreed with his analysis of you.
This is far from the only time where you seemed to disagree for the sake of disagreeing.
Case-in-point when you had literally no evidence to support your rebuttal in the earlier part in your reply “not how I would analyze this stat”, you just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, you can’t seem to stand when reality and facts don’t line up with your narrative, and either cherrypick points out of context or find some contrived reason to double down on it.
I’d like for you to point out any posts I’ve made where I was telling people to play with better people. Also, it’s a bit of a Myth that higher IO = better players. I ran a key yesterday with a 2700 Boomie who didn’t barkskin nor bear form and died 8 times in a +11 CoT. 3 of those times were on the last boss and blew our key so we abandoned it. You can carry bad dps players in keys because of the lenient timers. Somebody doing 1.5mil can carry 2 people doing 1mil.
The failure rate on +10s and higher is very high. Tanks dying is the #1 key bricker atm and second after that is accumulating too many deaths over a key. Losing 2-3 minutes off a timer will brick your key most of the time.
In regards to telling people to play something else: yes, I say that because you get people on the forums who complain incessantly about not enjoying a class like it’s a sunken cost fallacy. You offer them advice and suggestions on how to play better and it goes over their head.
I’m almost done timing all +11s (still haven’t decided if I want to bother with +12s yet) so I’m speaking from a position where I’m giving advice from the hardest possible content that you can conceivably do as a Holy Priest. There’s people who are better players then me who are multi-season key holders and I look at them as guidance to improve my gameplay.
Almost every season I’ve played: Holy has been the underdog. It’s nothing new to me. I’ve seen Holy as its worst and best. People always compare it to x y z class without realizing x y z is overtuned or Blizzard went overboard with poisons/curses/etc. in one season. It’s bad dungeon design a lot of the time that instigates metas.
Now to the other statement…
I’ve leveled several classes during DF… Mage, Warlock, Evoker, Druid, and Paladin to max and after playing some of these in keys I just decided it wasn’t for me. It was a combination of not enjoying how they play and not having the time to play multiple characters simultaneously. I tend to focus on one character - i.e. this one - until I reach a point in the season where I just raid log because I can be doing 20+ keys a week sometimes.
If you don’t enjoy playing Holy, Disc, Shadow, etc. then don’t play it. There’s a lot of other classes ingame. If you want to be a FOTM reroller to the popular spec: nobody’s stopping you either.
I’ve finally dumped CoH from my M+ build because it was only 1-2% of my overall healing. The more secondary stats + gear you get, the more powerful the 4-piece Flash Heals becomes.
With 2 points freed I kind of just swing them around. Some dungeons I go 2 in Prismatic Echoes… others I take Censure + Enlightenment or Divine Hymn.
Definitely just feels like I’m adjusting my builds on a week by week basis now. I’m also already at the point where I’m about to just start raid logging after I do 8 dungeons for the week. Blizz kind of screwed the pooch where they annoyed the bottom and top players in M+.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that having Apotheosis and HW:S on the same node is just a kick in the shins we don’t need. Especially because they synergize super well. Additionally we need to be able to pick which Premonition to use in Oracle.
These aren’t tuned to be super strong CDs these are just our bread and butter spells we need to counter basic damage. Why are we constantly punished and made to dance like monkeys to use them?
A lot of “talents” at the bottom of the tree cost two points for seemingly no other reason than f you and “We have no better ideas to put here.” Talenting into any kind of triage for low health is nearly impossible and keep any kind of CD reduction for Holy Words. Costs of the bottom of the tree need to be adjusted and talents need to be moved/combined.
I actually think I would just roll Divine Image into our passive and replace with HW:S and keep Apotheosis where it is. Desperate Times, Resonant Words, and Crisis Management all need to be brought down to 1 pt. This way you can still get some CDR for Holy words, triage talents and only pick 2 tier.
This isn’t even touching how awful CoH and PoH are, I don’t even know how to fix that mess but if nothing else being able to pick Premonition of Piety as needed takes care of the issue for now.
Also we need to talk about how bad Divine Hymn is. Another spell I just can’t even and requires an additional pity talent and STILL isn’t useful for the Priest. In fact just delete that node and make it 50% stronger. Or have Gales of Song make it usable while moving or something. Even at 50% it’d heal a total of like 2 mil a person. I don’t think it’s gamebreaking for us to have a good AOE CD spell if our regular AoE spells are going to be trash. I would also gladly trade the +healing buff to make the spell a reason to bring a H Priest. Because right now we have…lol fort?
Oh. And minor gripe but bring back the sound effects for Hymn and PoM.