[WoW] The shadow priest problem

[Gieve]

I've about fucking had it with the dam priest class. Our guild is about to fall apart, as over the weekend we had another drama fest involving priest specs. The priests in my guild have this wierd ass pact where they worked it out between themselves as to who has to heal and who went shadow. I try not to get involved as long as we have enough healing for raids, and so far it's been sketchy but not too big a problem.

Well, it all fell apart. Two priests threatened to leave, the rest wont raid. All the drama caused caused us to cancel our sat night raid. I'm fucking at my wits end.

What needs to happen? I have no clue really. Shadow spec right now is just too dam good. It's powerful, good in pvp and you can farm with it. Holy is good for 1 thing only: raids. I originally thought about bliz making respecs cheap so people could just switch, but I'm wary of this idea as they want to take DPS loot, and I've got mages and warlocks eyeballing that situation. Can't wait for that shitfest to start.

It's got to the point where I'm very suspecious of priest recruits, as they usually recruit as healer, then join some crusade to go shadow later. Not that there's a lot of healers looking for a guild, but I would so so so so so so so much rather take a paladin these days. Now that we're moving into 25 man stuff I think I'll really have to put my foot down, and I'm worried as it's already hard to find healers if push comes to shove and people leave. Thank fucking god horde got pallies. We'd be up shit creek without them.

We've only 2 druids and they both heal. I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 feral specced driuds, but I can see a similar situation cropping up with them too. There just happens to be more people playing priests.

Anyone else running into this problem?

[Arbitrary]

Every healer has a secret master plan to switch their spec.

I'm implementing mine as soon as I get a Lightning Capacitor.

[Mishima]

send one of those meanie head shadow priests my way (preferably the most geared/active)

thanks

[findar]

get some paladins. shit else they can do but heal.

[Antarius]

Prot pallies unite!

[penn]

I'm not sure what your point is, but I'll bite on the whole 'problem'.

Shadow priests are excellent in PvE and situationally good in PvP. I say situationally because 28/33/0 priests are absolutely amazing in not only 5v5, but also in 2v2 and 3v3. They can be in almost any group. Where the shadow priest can be decent in the right group setup for 2v2 and 3v3 and not so great in 5v5. I suppose you have a point on the farming, but I guess thats the price they pay. Personally, I know I would rather be disc/holy so I could be an arena healer/mana burn whore. Also I've played both and switched to shadow because our guild didn't have priests that wanted to go shadow. I don't have the best gear, but I'm sitting close to 1100 damage.

I think most guilds have trouble finding good shadow priests that can be active because of how pointless gear is for shadow priests. The best gear is always the highest damage gear for the most part, even if its a blue(bracers of havok).

penn

[Zehn - Vhex]

The real shame is that healing as a priest is more fun then healing as any other class to be honest.

Anyways...tell some of your hunters/rogues to reroll as paladins and shamen. In the long run it'll be better for your guild then getting your shadow priests to go holy.

[Believe]

Recruit Priests that enjoy healing?

My wife has been Disc/Holy forever and she solos/farms just fine.

[Ronne]

Recruit people who aren't emo cuntbags in general?

[tad10]

What problem? Shadow priests are cool.

[Biggyto]

Originally Posted by Ronne

Recruit people who aren't emo cuntbags in general?

Sounds about right. People who want to raid but wont make sacrifices for progression are lol.

(Ps. you can farm as holy)

[penn]

I don't think he's complaining that you can't farm. I think its the usual "my class cant do x as good as y class" where x is anything they don't do as well as y class/spec.

[Moontayle]

When my wife applied to another guild (ours pretty much died), they flat out asked her if she was Holy just so her application would be considered. They were happy as pigs in shit when she replied that she had always been Holy and had no intentions of switching.

My wife can go upwards of 10 minutes without needing to stop killing things, depending on what types of mobs she's farming so farming isn't a problem. It's getting past the boredom inherent and I think everyone deals with that.

[Believe]

I've always thought that if you are recruited because you are ______ spec, you should be required to be that spec. You were needed because we were recruiting your class of that spec, change your spec and you may not be needed anymore.

I think your guild leader needs to lay down the law. You will most likely lose some members, but it's better than losing the whole guild because of some BS.

[Jedite]

Originally Posted by penn

I don't think he's complaining that you can't farm. I think its the usual "my class cant do x as good as y class" where x is anything they don't do as well as y class/spec.

This is the exact same problem since the conception of Raiding in MMOs, just a slight different flavor to it. Class X is more viable than Class Y, therefore u either play Class X or get the fuck out.

This is also a pretty harsh problem for raiding guilds in WoW, since you can pretty much change your "class" by spending some cash(although it can get painful later on). Eventhough you might recruit a priest, in the end you might be recruiting a Nuker disguised as a priest.


Maybe the viriety of Specs is the problem, and the ability to change them as you will with little or no harm to your character. I think a much harsher Respec option should be in order, to avoid having to recruit a Healdin only to learn later he respecd to a RetAdin. But since Spec points are pretty much given by level instead of earned otherwise, this might not fit into the general mechanics of the game.

Not to mention that the whole respecing can give way to some MAJOR Retardation. Sometimes giving the players less options is MORE, because you can better control the enviroment, at the same time giving more stuff to that particular Class instead of having to deal with 20+ classes(hey EQ2 your in this boat too)