I would like to start off by mentioning that I am just getting my Undead Priest near level 70 and I have thoroughly enjoyed playing the healer role in groups.  I have not placed a single talent point in shadow, as DPS does not interest me in the least.

What I'd like to see is some constructive feedback from people regarding an issue I have noticed with the Holy Priest class, barring in mind that I am still an active healer and by no means intend for this post to be a rant.

Priests are in need of an overhaul by Blizzard, not because they are under or overpowered, but because the priorities are wrong when compared to other classes.  I have discussed this issue in depth with many an end game Priest, Paladin, and Druid and come to the same conclusion:

After BC, Priests become less and less likely to fill the main healer role in groups, raids and other encounters.  Being that I am certain that Blizzard intended Priests to be first and foremost; healers I find this a strange revelation once you get to end game with such a class.  We are taken down a notch by Holy Paladins (whom can spam flash of light continuously with little to no mana effect) and Druids (who have stronger heal over times and are also more versatile in groups, as well as an in-combat ressurection spell.)  To me, I can personally understand why Druids have a stronger Heal over Time spell, as they are a class that revolves around regrowth and renewal, however Paladins being superior simply ticks me off and this is why:

A Paladin, draped in Plate Armor and wielding wicked weapons to me should indicate a Warrior type class.  Being that they are holy, I can understand small healing abilities as well as the exorcism/turn undead stuff that they have now.  However, I cannot comprehend why they would be more mana efficient at healing than Priests.  Think back to Warcraft 2 and 3, did you create Paladin's to keep your troops alive?  Or did you create them to send waves of strong cool-looking dudes on horses to slaughter those nasty evil things?  Personally, I have yet to be passed up for a Paladin, but I have also yet to do the end game raids like Karazhan and Serpent Shrine which I am already told I will have a hard time finding a group if I am not Shadow spec.  As well, if I am going to be that much of a detriment to the group if I am a Holy Priest, then I will not feel right having my guild take me through it again and again to get those epic pieces that every kid dreams about.

What I would like to see for Priests, as I am sure that Blizzard would prefer to buff Priests than nerf Paladins to squelch the whiners, is quite simply a huge boost in mana efficiency for Flash Heal.  A few utility spells are also necessary, ways to protect yourself and drop threat on top of Fade and PW:S, or even something as simple as a "Holy" form to contrast the (in my opinion) stupid addition of the Shadow tree.  I am hoping 2.4 makes some viable improvements to Priest, but judging by the patch notes on the PTR it does not seem like much of a buff will be coming our way (just yet) this time.  Again, I love healing for groups, I find it the single most rewarding position out of all of them in the group as the group's success lies heavily on your shoulders and attention span... I've already re-rolled from Protection Warrior because of the stupidity in trying to find a good healer... I would hate to have to re-roll Paladin to actually be able to heal in some of the more challenging dungeons that Blizzard has created for us.


Ceb
Level 67 Holy Priest

well my most active char is a 70 holy pally and I think that's a lil wrong. True, we are mor mana efficient than the preist, but we lack the versatility of heals that a preist gets. A preist can HoT, do a large mana efficient heal, emergency heal with a bubble and spam flash heal, buff the tanks armor through inspiration, and if u get IDS has buffs almost as good as a pallys. They can heal overall better than a pally, but don't do as well if the tank messes up and they get aggro for obvious reasons. Preists r easily better in heroics and both r needed in raids for their buffs. The paladins heals r generally slow andmana efficient. When things go wrong in ur group as a pally its hard to stabilize ur group if ur the only healer(instances). So each healing class has its place and purpose and all are needed.

I have just dinged to 70 priest too and i was holy all the way ,  i have no idea of why ppl say that shadow ll lvl up faster as i was holy all the way and lvled for 6 weeks , i havent been in much instances until 58 where i started runing ramps / BF like 2 times a day each if not more , i was needed all the way . Even now being a 70 priest i get invited constantly to groups for everything , ofc i can go to Ubog and have an easy one or i can go to SL and have some job to do , i personally hate healing pallies cus of 1 thing , imagine what a great DPS / tank can pally become? i saw a 70 pally tanking 7 elites at a time in blood furnace in peninsula , i also saw myself healing my party like mad agains nazran or w/e his name is ( the last boss in ramparts ) and succeeding and getting all the credit as lol priests r way better at healing then pallies .

Pally 70 can become brilliant melee tank or dps , why not make it then? why make some hly pally that ll get pwned by any classes?

Holy priest is ez to lvl btw too , smite was my main key ,

paladins r not bad healers at all, they r very mana efficient and excellent raid healers. They r just not as good as a preist main healing a 5 man.

There's been a lot of complaints about how priests got screwed over in BC.  I'll certainly agree that up until Meditation was buffed, Priests were WAY under powered for raids, but they were STILL the optimal healing class for 5-mans.  What you have to remember is that all of the other classes excel at one thing... Pallies at single-target healing, Druids at HOTs, Shamans at multi-target healing, but Priests are pretty good at ALL of these things.  A priest who can effectively manage his OO5SR time can MT heal as effectively as a Paladin or Druid.  In a 5-man, Prayer of Healing is WAY more powerful than Chain Heal.

A Paladin doesn't have an effective way to multi-target heal, so if things go wrong in a 5-man, where a Shaman or Priest could keep you alive, the Paladin will be a wipe.  A Druid has hots, but again, their emergency heals have cool downs and they cannot effectively heal burst damage the way a Priest or Paladin can.  A Shaman can single target heal pretty well with Earth Shield and Inspiration, but they don't have the mana efficiency to keep up steady single-target HPS.

Now, raids are a bit different because you can specifically stack healers for the type of healing you need, and theoretically you can get all of the benefit of a Holy Priest in a raid with a single IDS priest (who can do both Fort and IDS) but, again, you lose the enormous amount of versatility that a priest offers.  In a raid, between PoM, PoH, CoH, and BH, a priest can effectively raid heal as well, if not better, than a Shaman in many circumstances (for instance, CoH is actually superior to Chain Heal for Void Reaver).  A Priest still makes a great Main Tank healer because with good cast/cancel technique, he can throw out as much HPS as a Paladin for just about as long, but also adds Inspiration, PoM, and renew.  Essentially, a Priest can effectively fill any healing role, so we are also vital in being able to replace a fallen healer.

That all said, I am the IDS priest for my guild, meaning I don't have Empowered Healing maxed and I don't have Circle of Healing either.  Still, I almost always top the healing charts for my guild in raids, and I almost never have mana issues even with the fact that I rarely use mana pots.  I can compete with a resto Shaman on Trash by stacking Haste gear, and using lots of renews, flash heals, binding heals, and cast/canceling GHs on the tanks.  I can effectively heal on bosses by stacking plus heal and regen.

On top of this, come 2.4, Spirit is getting a MASSIVE buff (refer to my spirit changes thread in 2.4 for details), which means I could even potentially either up rank my spells and increase my healing, or maintain my current ranks and move the mana battery to a DPS class.  Either way, we'll either be the top healers once again, or maintain our healing awesomeness while effectively buffing the caster DPS.

Well Stated...

I have a priest (not quite 70) a 70 holy pally, and a 70 resto druid. I disagree with the statement that priests should be the best healers, or the most wanted healers. A pally only really has 2 rolls to play, tanking and holy. Dps is not an option, as raids seem to hate them. Tanking: they might be tanking a bit in kara, MAYBE in gruuls and all those t4 raids, but they dont really have a place in ssc/tk/hyjal/BT (with the occasional pally tank, who knows?)So that just leaves holy, thats it. So your saying a pally should only be 2nd class in a raid? If priests suddenly became the ace healer, pallys would be an off-class that the raid would bring one along just for buffs. Even if holy priests arn't the main healer (usually) in raids, they still go along and theres generally around 2 (i dont know what guilds prefer really). At least shadow priests always have a good spot in raids, so thats technically two rolls you could play, primarily though your going to be shadow, but if you want to raid, and your shadow, you going to raid. So pallys only have one good roll in raids, and you stated in your post that you want the priest, along with the well-accepted shadow priest, to be a better raid healer? somehow priests having 2 great raid specs and pallys having 0 ticks me off, next time when you post something like this, maybe you should know about the class your posting against before you start thinking you deserve more.

First off, Pally Tanks may have little use in SSC and TK, but they're damn well nearly required for trash in Hyjal.  A single Ret Paladin is also not useless because you get the benefits of having an extra pally (another Blessing and additional BOPs), but they also offer buffs and utility (like other Paladins can usually judge once and forget it, so they can focus on healing).

I'm also of the mind that the buff to Spirit in patch 2.4 was specifically meant to address the apparent overpoweredness of Shadow Priests.  Up to this point, it's nice to have possibly two shadow priests because you want to have one for the healers, and one for your top casters to maximize DPS.  After 2.4, the need for priests to have a shadow priest drops significantly, and the value of a Holy Priest rises significantly.  Thus, IMO, the optimal priest distribution for a raid is 1 IDS (ABSOLUTE MUST, the buff is WAY too good to give up), 1 CoH (not absolutely necessary, but very nice and adds an enormous amount of utility), and 1 SP (for casters in DPS intensive fights, for healers in healing intensive fights).

I think this was specifically done because it makes Holy Priests the ultimate utility healer, as they have great relative mana efficiency (use more mana than Paladins, but regen a lot more too), they can MT heal effectively (what they lack in spamability compared to Druids and Paladins they make up for with Inspiration, PoM, Renew, etc.), and they can raid heal effectively (CoH and PoM are more effective in some circumstances than a Shaman's CH).

FWIW, I'm not even a CoH priest, I'm IDS (which means 8% less healing on FH, GH, and BH as well), and I almost always top the healing charts, usually by a non-insignificant margin.

Bottom line, a Paladin CANNOT replace a Priest and a Priest can only kinda/sorta fill in for a Paladin, and in some cases they just can't.  Sometimes you need lots of quick heals, Paladins can do this usually for 8-10 minutes, maybe longer. Meanwhile, a Priest CAN do it for short spurts, but they need recovery time.

Believe you me, even as the top healer in my raid, I know I can't replace a Holy Paladin in certain cases, and I'd often much rather have a so-so geared Paladin than a well geared Priest if it means we'd have less than two Holy Paladins if we didn't take him.

And, FWIW, my ideal healing set-up is 2 Holy Paladins, 2 Holy Priests (1 IDS, 1 CoH), 1 Resto Druid, 1 Resto Shaman as the base.  Sometimes you can get by with that, but usually you need a 7th.  So, grab a Paladin if you don't have a third Paladin as either Prot or Ret to get at least 3 Blessings.  Grab a Druid if you have at least three Paladins in the raid and you need either more MT healing or you don't need raid healing and you're somewhat short on Druids and think you may need the Innervate and/or Battle Res.  Grab a Shaman if you need more raid healing.  Grab another priest only if he's well geared and the other classes aren't available, or the need for utility is very high.