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It's a good idea but I doubt Bliz would implement it.
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First, some history:
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Before World of Warcraft was released, it was marketed as a MMORPG that would be playable solo. Blizzard trumpeted that you could jump on for 30 minutes, farm some easy mobs, and still get something accomplished. You wouldn't have to search for a group or fight through an instance every time you log on. For the most part, this has proven true. WoW was released as a very soloable MMORPG, and it remains so. Although you can't solo endgame instances, you can always solo a few minutes and "grind" your way toward useful consumables, valuable items, or priceless Reputation points. Better yet, every character class is capable of soloing. Even the Holy/Disc healbot has the ability to Pain and Smite down mobs. We might not kill as fast as a Hunter or Rogue, but at least we can kill.
It is only unfortunate that, as increasingly powerful endgame items are introduced, the class disparity in soloability grows without bound. A Rogue with a Perdy Blade can farm much faster than one wielding a Shanker. A Protection Warrior may not kill as fast as a rogue, but when he dual wields Thunderfury and Chromatically Tempered Sword, stuff dies. In contrast, a Priest wearing +700 to healing tosses the same old 400-damage Holy Smite that he did while wearing Devout. This accounts in part for the terrible phenomenon of "healer burnout" experienced by many guilds. A healer goes to raids, earns DKP, then wins epic +healing loot that is only useful to him in raids. When he gets off the bat at Stonard and starts soloing for his +50 INT buff, the Priest sees that he's still doing the same 400 damage with his Holy Smite. For all the mana, regen, and healing that he has, the Priest sees no sense of progression as long as he is alone. It is no wonder so many Priests never log on except for raids, leveling a harem of lv-60 alts instead.
However, this growing rift between healers and non-healers is not an insurmountable problem. Ultimately, the issue lies in itemization. High end healer gear contains vast quantities of +Healing, a stat which only helps when we are healing. For as much healing as is involved in soloing, we might as well collect "+73 I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty" as a stat. Meanwhile, "reduce enemy HP to 0 before your HP reaches 0" remains the ultimate strategy to win every fight, and the more DPS gear you've got, the faster that enemy HP ticks down. A DPSer feels the power of his epic gear in any situation, a luxury that healers are denied.
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As a solution to this, I propose that +Healing be eliminated as a stat on items. Instead, if you want to increase your healing power, you collect items with spell power in the correct school of magic. Priests and Paladins should collect "+ Holy Spells" to increase their healing, while Druids and Shamans collect "+ Nature Spells". Hypothetically, one point of "+ Holy Spells" might give +71% to Holy Smite, +100% to Flash Heal, and +233% to Greater Heal.
So whereas the Transcendence set currently gives +300 to Healing, which works out to +128 to Flash Heal and +300 to Greater Heal, it might have "+128 Holy Spells" instead. This would translate to +128 to Flash Heal, +298 to Greater Heal, and +91 to Holy Smite - similar numbers for healing, vastly improved for DPS.
Some might call this suggestion impractical, or merely wishful thinking. However, I believe that the history of World of Warcraft proves otherwise. The mechanics of "+ spell damage" items have changed several times during late Beta and Release. Before release day, we were promised that every class would have the ability to perform as a solo player. And on the day we put our hands on a World of Warcraft CD, we saw this promise fulfilled. Yet, as gear scales up in the dizzying spiral of new instances, the solo speed of healers is stuck in a rut. This simple change, the "elimination" of +healing, will renormalize a healer's ability to do DPS, so that it keeps pace with his ever-increasing ability to heal.
Forgive me for writing a novel, but this is a subject that I care about. Too many of my friends, healers in my guild, even myself, are burned out on healing. Is it too much to ask that our healing gear give us a slight increase in DPS as well?
Then stop getting +healing and get +shadow. It's not just priests, DPS warriors have the same issue. Might and warth are nice, but +defense is for tanking, not dps. WHile I do understand your plight, you can't have it both ways. Either ya take more +healing or you take +shadow (or whatever else increases priest dmg). It's either one or the other, not both.
I thought this thread was really going to suck when I read it, but I couldn't agree more. I'm a restoration druid, and I'm lucky in that I can put out a little more DPS than a holy/disc priest.
If you haven't played a healer, you probably aren't going to understand this. A DPS class gets to do DPS in raids and when they solo. Ever wonder why there are an abundance of rogues in every guild on every server? The role doesn't change between raiding and soloing. Yes, I know it does slightly, but not like a healer. Healers can't heal mobs to death. We do raids and we get gear to do more raids to get gear to do more raids. But that doesn't help at all in soloing or grinding or questing. And pvp isn't that great of an option unless you have a pvp group to play with. I stopped pvp because there are too many people busy honor farming or trying to be the hero that they don't protect the healer.
Healers have to have fun playing their class. It's fun for awhile, but when it comes down to it, you can't do as much on your own. That makes it harder to get gold and harder to gain reputation. Servers are always short on healing, people run around sending whispers to healers begging them to come places. It can easily get to the point where it's not fun anymore. I don't think some players realize the frustration that a healer can go face Hakkar and the Molten Core bosses, but I can barely down a 60 elite over in Tyr's Hand.
So what's the solution, get different gear? Well the problem there is that guilds gear up their mages and warlocks with +damage epics before their priests, and their rogues with the agi/str/sta leather before their druids.
Nice idea, then again there was holy resistances in the beta, and they were removed except for base holy resitances when it went live. Priests are the only class that have a zero-damage reduction from holy fire and smite when hitting a target, you can bet that if it was switched to +holy, people would be crying NERF very quickly. Yes I do know what you mean however, and I'm suffering from healer burnout, I have a 60 priest. I only run her on request now, I'm back to my mage and warlock for the most part.
This is a good idea for so many reasons. Too bad bliz doesn't read its own forums.
I originally rolled my priest with the idea of being a holy warrior, but was let down to find out there is really only one route for everything but instances. The holy tree damage just doesn't scale, and since it has no +dmg items, no one uses it. Every other class has options, and multiple builds. We get:
Two builds for Instances
One build for Leveling/PvP
Everyone I play with has a priest alt, not because they like playing priests, but because they want to help the guild/friends/get DKP for their main, etc. Every Preist I play with also has an alt - because they're bored. Its really cutting into my 'fuzzy snowflake' feeling to know that I picked as my favorite character a 'utility' class.
Cross your fingers that 1.10 will fix this, but I'm already considering what my 'main alt' will be.
They did fix this somewhat for druids at least. Except to get the gear you do have to spec into resto so you can be usefull enough in the raids till you can get your gear. They made the Genensis set and Unending life set, these two together would actually make a very powerful feral who could also heal. You feral/resto guys would love these sets. But alas, priest dont get gear that incorporate your +dmg and +healing together like the new feral/resto gear druids can get now. I feel for you, i hate being a healbot, but i have to bite the bullet in order to raid and get the gear i want so i can respec later back to feral.
To see how unlucky priests are, go check out these two sets for druids, and youll see what i mean.
Cry more noobs. Role playing games require roles. In raids every character is a utility character. Some classes use 2 buttons, others use 50. A priest is conveniently in the middle. Learn to play. Get an alt.
It seems to me that the original post is complaining that priests can't solo, and some of the subsequent posts are complaining that priests don't do anything but heal. I might be wrong, but it seems that way to me. As for the latter, I would have to agree with bloog's comment (although I don't agree with his methods). The priest's job is to heal. So...a warrior can be a tank w/ a shield, or a backup tank w/ a 2Her. So, a warlock can use fire or shadow. Priests heal. If you didn't know that when you signed up for the character, then you're not familiar with the idea of a priest. Your value lies in party play.
As for the second argument, that priests can't solo...I don't see this as a major problem. The only reason one solos is to get better equipment, mats, or stuff to sell on AH. The best priest equipment (for healing, which IS the job of a healer) is found in instances, where you don't have to kill the enemy to get his loot. Mats fall in much the same manner, and often times you can collect 2 or 3 people from your guild to go material farm. As for getting more items to sell on the AH, that's your prerogative. But if you're in an effective guild, anything you really need (not want) should be provided for you in a hasty manner. If you're really that into farming for stuff for the AH to become independently wealthy, then raids aren't your priority, and you can respec to shadow, and deal very efficient damage for soloing.
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