Under Powered HealingFollow

This goes out to anyone that has another healing class, and can make a good comparison like I did. I'd be interested to know if you think we are underpowered, or if the class I tested is over-powered.

I healed Azjul Narub as a Balance druid and as a Shadow priest at around level 75 each. My druid has less spell power and has only low end raid gear, while my priest had full Tier 4 and more spell power and haste.
As a druid, I kept up very nicely, and there were no casualties or complaints. As a priest, everything was an effort, and people were dying, and I kept running out of mana. I stick with Flash/Greater Heal, Renew and Prayer of Healing as a rotation. Then, the druid rotation is pretty much stacking all my HOT and burst healing when needed, which is more spells than I would use as a priest.
My concern is that priest healing is either underpowered, or druids are over powered, as this situation strongly implies one or the other or both. Everyone in each group was a relative level to the instance, but I did not check gear, so I am sure it was not just a matter of the others being overpowered for the instance.
If any class in the game should be exceptional healers, it should be priests. I notice that druid burst healing is also better as far as HPS and mana efficiency. My suggestion would be to reduce the mana cost of priest healing, and I saw some mention of that from Ghostcrawler already.

Edited, Jan 16th 2009 4:11pm by sederix

Nothing else really needs to be said, except that nothing else needed to be said.

Your comparing a main specs lesser-role. You can't do that..

A shadow priests talents offer no, and when I say no I mean absolute 0 benefit to healing or holy spells. A boomkins talents offer quite a few boosts to it's healing spells. So with that alone a boomkin druids heals are going to be better than a shadow priest.

Saying things should change because of this is even dumber. So if I were to compare a fury warriors ability to tank a mob compared to a rogues, would it be smart of me to say that a warrior is OP because it can strap on a shield, switch to defensive stance and survive a lot longer than a rogue. I mean a rogue has great evasion tanking capabilities, he should get a buff because he can't survive as long as the fury warrior. Yeah, what you are doing is just as stupid as that.

Edit: You are comparing a DPS specs ability to heal to another DPS specs ability to heal and then saying that the Healing specs ability to heal is OP or underpowered because of it, that's retarded.


Edited, Jan 16th 2009 6:09pm by SynnTastic

WRONG, i say again...WRONG

Twisted Faith: increases spell power by 2-10% of your spirit and some other stuff.

i believe extra spell damage benefits healing or am i wrong...like you are.

If that role is an offspec role then yes it's stupid. At least for the sake of class balancing. Which is what you're arguing about.





Okay, Lloyd. But before I do realize that I didn't answer like a child. There wasn't anything immature about my response or nothing like name calling, you doody head.

My car doesn't have things like 4-wheel drive, high suspension, etc. It's not designed for off road. That doesn't mean I can't use it to go off road, it just means it's not very efficient. Same idea with shadow priests, they are not designed to be healers.

Now let's say you have a small pickup truck, like a f100 or s10. Maybe it has 4 wheel drive, but not great suspension, tires, etc. It too is not really designed for off road. It would be better than the car, but it too could get stuck in the mud or whatever.

Neither is designed for off road so why compare the two's off road abilities? Why try to balance those based on something they're not designed for? Why not just get a Humvee?

If you were to compare a shadow priest's dps to that of a dps druid it would be different. However even still there are so many things that can favor one over the other. That's what happens when the mechanics differ between classes. It doesn't mean you can't balance the two out in the overall big picture.

Also you're basing this on two different encounters. Group makeup is different. Different instance? Different bosses? What about your efficiency or lack of? Are you really using the most efficient and best heals available on your shadow priest? What about your druid? Maybe you're efficient with your druid heals but not knowledgeable enough with your priest's. I've seen two rogues with the same spec and about the same gear and they're on opposite ends of the damage meter spectrum in the exact same instance. If those two with the exact same abilities available could be like night and day then how am I suppose to take your comparison with even more differing factors?

And if you really want to look at the balance issues between priests and druids then you've overlooked an even bigger problem than offspec healing, priests can't tank.

Inner fire is not a shadow talent. Sorry try again.




You're suggesting class balance based on offspecced main roles. It's a bad way to do balancing.




Priest healing =/= shadow priests. Now you're blurring the line of what you were originally asking.



WTF? Specific models are designed to do specific things? Druids are designed to dps, tank and heal. Priests are designed to dps and heal. How did you confuse the model to be the healing ability and not the class? Healing is not the model in my analogy, dubmass. Healing is the ability which would be like the car's ability to off road. The class is the model.

And that would be for... simply being priests?



Druids obviously don't do it at the same time, but if you stick a FERAL druid into caster gear, his healing is just as bad as that of a shadow priest. Worse even, because he doesn't have tools like PoM, and doesn't have Dreamstate or Intensity to actually regenerate mana while trying to keep everybody alive. No Swiftmend, no Nature's Swiftness. Does a spriest have to live without Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, or anything like that? The essential tools for a priest come with the class, not the talents, and that's more than any other healing class could hope for.

Comparing classes by their off-spec abilities is just plain stupid, even more so if you expect one to come out better than the other.

At Level 71, Inner Fire also adds to spellpower which, in turn, leads to larger heals.
Although, for the sake of this thread, it is a moot point since a humvee and a VW both are nothing but rocks when they get stuck axle deep in the mud.

It's kind of the old comparing apples to oranges thing, I love apples, but am not too fond of oranges. It's a matter of personal preference.

I've always found it easier to heal on my (shadow) priest rather than (balance) druid, the class mechanics suit me better for priest than druid. It could just be that you are more suited to druid's style of healing than priest's.

Also, comparing two single encounters doesn't make for a very representative picture. One group may have a better geared (or skilled tank) who takes less damage and keeps the mobs off the dps (so less group healing). One group may have slower dps, or dps who stand in aoe or hit the wrong target. These are all things which can influence how easy it is to heal.

And don't forget different buffs from various classes. You might have had buffs favouring healing from one group (replenishment, judgement of wisdom, totem of wrath, etc) and not in the other.

Personally I think priest is a very capable healing class and it's the one I prefer to heal with (though I've not tried shaman yet).

Not really on topic but that's the intentional spelling. It's sort of an inside joke, like moran.