I hear a lot of talk about priests being the best WSG healer, and no doubt their dispels are very powerful. But you can’t dispel if you are dead, and as someone who has played all alliance healers, I find the survivability of priest healers to be very low on servers where you get trained by Might of Menethil warriors and shamans with spellpower flasks.
In fact, when I see a priest healer teammate of mine is being focused, I often can’t even get a heal off before they are blown up. It’s not very much fun to play for that reason, imo. A paladin has plate and multiple immunities, and resto druids can escape damage with travel form, shifting, nature’s grasp, etc.
I even see the experienced and geared priests in ally premades getting blown up. No wonder not many people seem to want to be a healer priest in ally bgs.
Era is different because it is set in p6 and people have this gear and weight to flask up. I think the best and most natural state of pvp is in p4 of a launched server.
Priest survivability needs its teammates screening for them. In fact almost every class functions at its best when supported by its team or 1-2 more players. That’s just how it is. You know you have a good team if they are anchoring for you by engaging the enemy before they can charge you
That’s kinda paladins niche. That and its blessings/heals. They cannot offensively dispel. Druids are not great at just standing around healing the team and are better off running flags or ninja nodes
Like rogue is about the only different case that is unique to its singular class role and that’s it. You need to be good enough to do your job alone most of the time
priest has too much power for either side not to play them, they are mandatory, you just have to position yourself in such a way that their warrior risks himself getting to you, on horde it’s kind of easier because alliance warriors are intimidated by shamans but you don’t have the paladin support in return
Priest survivability is almost always a downward spiral from day 1 to the end of the server because pw:s flat numbers are good but the scaling isn’t, it might be that era is too advanced and priests just can’t survive
Allies seem to have some good priests, but not as many. Horde per capita of PVP population have more skilled priests.. likely because of the lack of paladins. Shamans are only scarry if your team has no mages or locks.. If you do have at least 1 mage per shaman the shaman don’t get to play and may as well not Q if the mages know how to handle them.. Most mages however don’t know to push the flame blast then the counterspell button in that sequence to interrupt a shaman preventing anything he does from happening for 10 sec. Mostly because PVE is too easy in wow, always has been, always will be and basically requires no effort in CC or interrupts comparably.
Worse are the idiots who use kick bots and just kick anything automatically killing the power of counterspell.
No one will admit it but horde completely dominate ERA Bgs. I just got out of another 6 ally v 10 horde. Yesterday I went 3 WSG wins to 19 losses. The wins were early in the day when some gamer alliance play. The later in the night it gets, the more impossible it becomes.
If you’re trying to play healer priest on ally you’re going to have a bad time. That’s why I mostly just dps. Hitting Lorm with 42 yard smites is fun.
Oh and there’s also horde players queuing 2 accounts who will take a ally spot just to grief / force a queue pop then do nothing. Meanwhile you could just make a horde healing priest and never have to fight the endless elemental shamans lol.
I feel like the only times I queue on my shaman it is vs geared intelligent mages and locks. The geared warriors with paladin heals are rough, but once grounding is gone the buff wizards wreck things.
With lots of consumes, nearly bis gear, and trinket popped, I sometimes crit as hard as the xdrains of the world. Imo a beefy lock that is well played more than makes up for alliance not having shamans.
In team fights, I think paladins healing/cleansing/freedoming warriors is the best win condition. This is why I generally don’t participate in wsg weekend. Alliance normally has the better death ball.
With that said, the only two wsgs I have done this weekend, both as feral, the alliance had no paladins and got 3 capped.
On my horde AND ally toons, I always blow up a priest, because they are just too strong not to. Even an undergeared priest can pump heals and double dispel stops even poly/fear/stun coverage.
Paladins can’t heal as much or dispel as much but a pally+priest is hard to lock down, whereas getting a lockdown on a priest+shaman is a lot easier. IMO of course.
Agree with all you said. The 7 vs. 10 bgs are a big threat to Era pvp, since eventually Allies will just stop queueing. As if we don’t have enough trouble 10 vs. 10.
Don’t get trained then. Seriously. Don’t put yourself in that position. PW:Shield like a madman and dispell like a madman.
Also, consider playing shadow priest. You sacrifice healing, but can still dish out plenty of support with dispells and shields. Your survivability goes through the roof though.
Yeah, I normally try to be an Era pvp fanboy, but this was NOT a good WSG weekend for the health of our small pvp community. Shout out to the few horde like Bignasty who have the guts to queue their ally alts on weekends like this instead of just farming easy kills. People know who the players are who have geared toons on both Ally and Horde, and if you spend all weekend farming casual allies in games that start 7 v. 10 then you’re just showing you don’t have the confidence in your abilities to face a challenge and don’t care about the health of pvp in our server. You know who you are.
So does alliance premade Friday/Saturday and horde on Sunday/Monday? For months now ab and wsg have felt unplayable as a horde solo queuer when I try to play on Fridays. My work rotation had me busy friday and Saturday this weekend so I have no idea how it was.
I am incredibly unlucky and so if I want geard wizards near by I have to Q with AJ or Xdrain.. otherwise I get mages in greens who cry about shamans when they straight up hard counter shamans..
cast fire blast on the shaman; if his grounding totem was up it is gone now, if not he ate a bunch of damage. Instantly after fireblast cast counterspell and land it as a real kick so the lock out is 10 seconds.
The shaman is now a lump that cant cast lightning or eath shock. 10 sec is a very long time in PvP.
Mage hard counters shaman 1v1, so does destro lock or any lock using a fel hunter who uses manual pet kick instead of auto petkick.