[Hebollus Wall of Whine and Sorrow]

Introduction

World of Warcraft: I have (had) a male troll priest with more than 100 days /played. I have participated in countless raids, killing Onyxia and completely cleared out Molten Core, Zul’Gurub and Blackwing Lair. I have full Tier1 and Tier2 sets, Benediction, and a bunch of other epics.

The comments on this page are based on the game as it was before the 1.10 content patch, not that it makes much of a difference though.

2006:04:02: This morning at 6AM my gametime will run out, and I am not renewing it, ever. Respect goes to the healers that will continue to play.

Priests VS Other Classes (back)

1. Armor Availability, Cloth (back)

Healers don't really care what class their armor is, as they're not tanking or (should) take melee damage, this results in competition on non-class items that are cloth... by three classes. In my guild druids wants +healing cloth and shamans want mp5s cloth, but this is one-sided. Priests cannot use any of the awesome piece of leather +healing armor, or any mail for that sake. This results in more competition on cloth items than on leather and mail items, while nowadays there are as many druids and shamans as priests in the raid. Is this one-sided competition fair? Does priests have ANY items that are exclusively usable by them (without being class restricted)? I think not.

2. Graphical Spell Feedback (back)

Why is it fun to cast a spell? Why is it fun to use your melee ability? It's because they give you a graphical and audible feedback, they result in something happening in the game.
The problem with this is that the Priests spells are really subtile and traceless. The spells are cast without anything flying through the air, with the single exception of Mindflay, which is a shadow talent.
It's not just the graphics that are way more noticable but also the sound when it lands, why do priest healing spells have to be so unnoticable, so we don't get ganked in PvP?

3. Instant Damage Spell (back)

Putting talented skills aside: Melee classes have instant attacks, the hunter has instant ranged attacks, the mage has instant nukes and aoe, the warlock has an instant nuke that heals them as well, shamans have several instant shocks, druids have an instant nuke, priests have... no instant nuke. In addition druids and shamans can spec for Nature's Swiftness to make most of their spells instant. Why does EVERY other class get the instant damage fun out of the box, and priests does not?

4. Offensive Defense (back)

Most classes have their abilities to control their fight, or to escape. What differs that from healing is that offensive classes have offensive defenses, meaning they debuff the opponent, or disable it. With healing, we only buff ourself, and we don't get away from our opponents at all, while they put all kinds of debuffs on us.

Healer Classes VS Damage Classes (back)

5. Scaling with Gear: Healing Spells VS Damage Spells (back)

It is a known fact that if an item has only +healing it has a higher bonus, almost double the amount, but even so, healing spells scale much worse than damage spells. Lets look at a few examples.

Frost Bolt: (429+463)/2/(3.0/3.5) = 521 +damage to double it’s effect.

Shadow Bolt: (455+507)/2/(3.0/3.5) = 562 +damage to double it’s effect.

Flash Heal: (812+958)/2/(1.5/3.5) = 2065 +healing to double it’s effect.

Now, you might blame this extreme difference on the casting time of Flash Heal, but lets take a look at Greater Heal.

Greater Heal: (2396+2674)/2/(3.5/3.5) = 2535 +healing to double it’s effect.

Ops, it's even worse. How is a healer supposed to keep up with the scaling of damage, when the difference is this enormous?

6. Scaling with Talents: Healing spells VS Damage Spells (back)

Damage casters (including shadow priests) can enjoy the boosted scaling talents provide. Their bonus to damage is calculated like this: ( [Base Spell]+[Gear Bonus] )*[Talent Bonus], this means their talents scales with their gear.
For a healer the talent bonus is calculated like this: [Base Spell]*[Talent Bonus]+[Gear Bonus], if you look carefully you'll notice that the talent bonus is added before the gear bonus. This results in the talent bonus being less and less worth the more bonus you have from your gear, making the talent scale backwards.

7. Social Exclusion (back)

Three out of eight classes are healers, what do people mostly talk about? Their crit records, max sustained DpS, their soloing capabilites, how they one/two-shotted this and that class, how much crit chance, AP, burst DpS they have. This is all that's important and interesting to meassure. If I can heal for 1000 or 1300 with my flash heal is not interesting, because it doesn't mean I can solo anything faster, get big fat numbers on my screen, or anything.

8. UI Made for Damage Dealers (back)

This is about Blizzard's default UI, without any addons. As a damage dealer you can see what damage you do over your targets heads, if it's PvE you can also toggle so you can see your targets healthbar over their heads. This enables you to focus your attention on what's going on in the game world, and not stare on a part of your UI.
As for healers. you cannot see your heals pop up over your targets, you cannot toggle friendly healthbars over your groupmembers heads, so you are forced to stare at your interface to be able to play.

9. Soloing Capabilities (back)

Popular experiments during your spare time (outside raids) is what you can solo with your new gear. As a healing speced priest with full tier2 armor set and various other epics I do the same DpS as a naked level 60 priest without any talent points used. Even protection warriors scale at least a little in damage from their gear, and they also take way less damage. A priest can merely heal for a bit longer.

Caster Classes VS Melee Classes (back)

10. UI Made for Melee Classes (back)

This is about Blizzard's default UI, without any addons. As a melee class you can see (varying) your chance to crit, your attack power, new weapon damage, new DpS, your damage mitigation, chance to parry, chance to dodge, chance to block. As a caster class you can only see comments on what your stats do, but no numbers, and for defense we have resistances... which again are only described, there are no numbers. In addition, resistances are shown for melee as well. Why can't casters see their chance to crit with spells, their chance to hit with spells, their total +damage, +healing, +spell damage.

11. Scaling of Survivability (back)

Priests survivability does not increase with gear, except for the stat stamina. Because our survival abilities don’t scale with gear, and our healing spells are easily interrupted/disabled.

Personal Gripes (back)

12. Gear Appearance (back)

Personal: For me as a male troll and a priest the only gear that significantly show on me is three parts. Robe, Shoulders and Staff. Bracers, gloves (priest set gloves goes under the robe), belt (so thin it's hardly visible), leggings and boots (trolls are barefoot, and the feet are the only visible part of your legs) are all covered by your robe. You might think our head piece makes a difference? Too bad I'm a priest, and all priest set gear is cardboard that goes into your neck, it really looks horrible. At least the "Hide Helm" option is favorable for trolls. Same is the case with the capes, on trolls they are offset from our backs so much it looks like a stiff piece of paper, so "Hide Cloak" is also an option I thank Blizzard for. All these factors combined meant that I walked around for periods of months looking the same, even if I got gear upgrades.

General: When casting our weapon is either hanging at our waist, or on our back. If we have a neat offhand, it will be invisible unless we melee... which is pretty rare when it comes to caster classes. This kind of proves that a caster weapon is nothing else but another piece of static gear with stats, nothing we use in combat.