As you well know, it boils down to Holy Paladins vs other healers. Priests have a few things (like PI and mass dispel) but think about it. Holy Paladins still do more healing AND damage despite the nerfs and can heal and dps with NO MANA. They also have a stun AND an interrupt. Furthermore, they have a brez AND can immune themselves and others. Plus they are incredibly tanky. Priest healers do not compare AT ALL when it comes to everything added up or even in a lot of these on a one by one basis. Honestly, people can disagree all they like. Those are the facts. Priest heals simply do not compare. Period. Honestly, I think just the immunities plus the brez put them in a class by themselves. But then kick in very strong single target heals, and what do you get? PLUS great damage?! It is a no brainer for anyone with a key most affixes. That unless you like hiking your chances of bricking your key a few notches, which deep down we all want!! Ha ha!
Hence, if you need priest utility (which this change will nerf, ie the mind soothe nerf you mention) then you are best off getting it from someone who does not displace the almighty Holy Paladin.
Other healers are keeping up in HPS/DPS with Paladin now. Everyone’s in the 50-60k overall range, and HPS has never really been a problem for anyone. Even very high tyran keys generally only take ~90-95k overall. The hardest fights requiring like 220k? Which everyone CAN do.
The reason Pally is so good is that its immensely tanky and has very good control utility.
Oh, you are probably correct but I dunno. I only looked at a few top healers with data from two days ago, both disc and holy paladin, and saw some healing parses were way higher on the Holy Paladin. For example, i saw a 106k HPS parse from a Holy Paladin on a high Uldaman key and on a LOWER key for the Disc priest (but still a high key) I saw 94k. I did not really research it seriously, as I could not find good data to be honest–I also gave up after a bit as for some reason my browser is very very slow these days–almost like my computer is ill but the problem has persisted even after a complete reinstall of Windows–this despite my computer being very very fast–overkill there as I am silly and built a very powerful computer a couple years ago–enjoying doing silly things. In summary, I have been unable to find any good HPS and DPS data but Holy Paladin is still the top healer in high keys in terms of points according to logs. And raider io shows the top SIXTY or SEVENTY or so healers as ALL Holy Paladins–and this despite the nerfs. I highly doubt that is because of utility being best for Holy Paladins–which it very cleary is. Holy Paladin healing is still extremely strong, I think largely owing to how potent Holy Shock/Glimmer is if used well.
Priest healers are moving up in popularity now since the changes. We’re the 2nd most popular healer on keys +25 and higher now and also the only other healer logging in +30s.
It’s still going to be a 4-5:1 ratio of H-pals to Priests (it’s the same ratio of Priest healers to everyone else ironically), but I’m expecting that ratio to decrease as the season progresses. Also, one thing to note is that if people pushed 3300+ IO on their characters they aren’t just going to reroll mid-season to something else.
I think we’re going to be the next sleeper healer for S3.
Possibly. This happened last expansion where people were sleeping on Holy Priest and then it blew up FOTM for 2 seasons.
What’s going to matter the most is what they do with 10.2 because they promised talent updates for Disc (could include Holy as well) and could even change around Priest utility in general.
H-pals will very likely get major nerfs in 10.2 and the rerollers will drop it and jump on whatever is the next FOTM class.
Overall I didn’t realize the state of healers was this bad though. Prevokers are literally one of the least represented healers ingame when they were the most popular last season.
I don’t see Shadow Priest going away unless they majorly nerf our utility. Also, they just need to make an actual melee friendly season for once. It’s just so cancer for them.
Bear Tanks were FOTM in S2 of SL just like they are now and then they got nerfed. VDHs are the second best tank after them and Prot Palys are mid if anything.
Personally I would like to see it go back to how it was in DF S1 where you literally just played with whatever comp fit together. There was no meta comp.
If disc / holy becomes the meta healer shadow sinks like a stone, everything they bring is redundant and you can’t even make use of the second PI because you have an aug.
You can but it’s hugely diminished value, especially because then you’re not lining things up and half the pack is typically dead after the first 20 seconds or so.
I read somewhere that augment evoker will be rolled into a dps class going forward, and that Blizzard is dropping the support class as it was deemed bad for Wow. I dunno if what I read is true or not though tbh.