Spiritual Guidance: Our top class concerns

Every Saturday (usually), Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!

Priest is, in all honesty, my favorite class to play. I couldn't quite explain why, except to say that I've tried other classes and none of them resonate with me on the same level that Priests do. However, the class isn't perfect -- I've got to say that there are some legitimate concerns about the classes' abilities. So today we're going to discuss the Priest's top class concerns.

Healing ability and group utility

With the debate over Mages (who have long argued that they should be the top DPS class because their class description on the official web page suggested they were the best damage dealers), I think Blizzard has made it reasonably clear (by altering Mage text) that they don't want any single class to be the "best" at anything. However, with Shadow Priests getting raid slots over healing Priests, you have to wonder what's wrong with Priest healing that leaves them unable to compete with the other classes.

And it's a common concern that a raid only needs one Priest. After all, once you have one priest, what does a second or third bring to a raid -- besides healing ability that can be matched by other classes? An extra Druid will bring an extra Innervate and an extra Rebirth. An extra Paladin will allow every raid member to have an additional blessing. An extra Shaman can provide additional totem buffs. But a single Priest can fully buff a raid with Fortitude and Divine Spirit -- a second one doesn't bring anything new to the table.

Two talent trees for one purpose

For healing talents, Paladins have their Holy tree, Druids and Shamans have their Restoration tree. But to get all of the good healing talents, Priests have to invest in two talent trees -- Holy and Discipline. The same types of talents in the other classes' one healing tree are spread out across two Priest talent trees, neither of which have a clear direction. To be a good healer, a Priest can't just throw 41 points in Holy or 41 points in Discipline -- but needs a bit scattered between both.

While I'll be the first to admit that Lightwell has its uses -- I'm not going to say it has them often, and certainly not often enough to warrant spending 31 talent points on it. Points in both the Holy and Discipline trees are necessary to be a good healer, and yet throwing all of your points into healing talents in either or both trees won't make you any better of a healer than someone who needs only spend 41 points in a single tree -- and it won't give you the unique abilities that will encourage your guild to bring you above another healing class.

Confused talent trees

Not only do Priests need more talent points to get all of the useful healing talents, but the healing trees available to them are confused, with no clear purpose. Discipline gives a Priest reduced threat; additional mana and mana management tools; improved/additional buffs; some survivability; and some improved damage talents. Holy gives a Priest more powerful heals; improved holy damage talents; some survivability; and two additional healing spells that most Priests feel are quite situational. Shadow is the only one of the trees which seems to have a clear and defined purpose: it's a straight-up DPS tree.

But take a look at the high-end talents for Discipline and Holy. Discipline seems to be mana management and survivability until you get to 31 points -- Power Infusion, an ability to improve the damage or healing output of yourself or others. And at 41 points, there's Pain Suppression, which reduces damage taken and the chance for your buffs to be dispelled for 8 seconds. PvP survivability, perhaps?

And in Holy... at 21 points, we have Spirit of Redemption, which requires you to die before it helps you at all. At 31 points we have Lightwell, which has its uses, but is far too situational to make most people want to spend 31 points on it. And at 41 points, we've got Circle of Healing, a ranged AoE heal. Also useful, but again situational -- especially when we already have an AoE healing available to us. I know some people do, but I'm not spending 41 talent points to acquire a new version of a skill I already have, only with more flexible targeting capabilities.

What does Blizzard want Discipline and Holy Priests to do? I'm not entirely sure, because the talents are all over the map.

Sprit, anyone?

Spirit is, supposedly, the most important stat for a Priest. Priests can get extra damage and healing based on their spirit and they receive skills to buff their spirit. But the stat leaves something to be desired... in fact, it leaves a lot to be desired.

A Priest regenerates mana from spirit while out of combat (read: when the Priest has not cast anything for 5 seconds or longer) every two seconds (or "tick") based on the following formula:

Spirit/4 + 12.5

So, for every 100 spirit, you'll regenerate 37.5 mana every two seconds while out of combat. But in a fight, which is when you need every scrap of mana you can get, spirit doesn't do much for you, even with the Meditation talent that allows you to regenerate a portion of your mana in combat, as well. So what's a Priest to do? Until Spirit is modified to be more useful, stack Intellect and +mana per 5 gear!

Survivability

Healers are always the first targets of the opposing faction in PvP, which is an issue for Priests, who wear lighter armor than any of the other healing classes. Oh, sure, Inner Fire gives us more armor (especially with the Improved Inner Fire talent), but with only 20 charges, that armor bonus is only there for a few seconds of combat with a Rogue.

Of course there's Pain Surpression and healing abilities to rely on -- but they're really only delaying the inevitable. And our ability to fear? With its long cooldown and ever-growing number of counters, it's becoming less helpful every day.

Now, is there hope for the class? Of course there is! While we do have some legitimate concerns about our abilities, there's nothing here that can't be fixed. Of course, Blizzard's recent handling of the class doesn't give me any warm fuzzy feelings: they continue to try to buff or fix Lightwell despite the fact that the entire concept of the spell makes it highly situational and the last official word from them on Priests was that they were fairly happy with our healing abilities. (Ouch!) But Blizzard has been known to change its mind on things before, and I won't try to predict what the future may hold for us.