Can clerics please regain the title of top healers?

Discussion in 'Priests' started by Kialya, Oct 22, 2019.

  1. Pano Augur

    So does DI and the heal from it is only 82k unfocused, 100k focused and it has less healing impact than Alliance yet, we keep it up.

    Any time DI fires, half of our clerics stop healing to cast it. The impact is way bigger than any alliance cast every 5 minutes on a tank by a single cleric.
    Kels likes this.
  2. Clarisa Augur

    Of course clerics have to interrupt healing briefly to cast buffs and other useful spells and abilities, but those are things only we can cast. A shaman can't cast DI, PR, Ward, DB, DG, or Merciful Shield to name just a few. They can, however, cast an alliance that is almost as good as ours healing-wise and except in a few cases will end up landing on most of the raid unless the healers are a mile away from the tank or hiding behind a wall. It's true that one cleric devoted to casting alliance might not be a huge interruption to tank healing, but compared to all the stuff we can cast that shamans can't, a cleric casting alliance is a waste.

    I would also argue that in the situations DI actually fires that it has more impact healing-wise than alliance ever will because DI fires when the tank is low on health and the large, instant heal might end up saving his life. The average heal from an alliance proc is 7000 or so hp, which is unlikely to save anyone. The parse, of course, considers the alliance healing more beneficial because it heals for more numerically but healing 54 people for 7000 hp (378000 healing each time combined) is not as significant as healing a single tank taking the most damage of anyone in the raid once for 150000 when he is below 10 percent health.

    For alliance healing to become significant in life or death situations, all 10 or so priests in the raid would need to be casting on 10 different targets at around the same time, which would still only give each target it lands on around 70000 healing or so, the average amount a single splash lands for (and which a squall exceeds when counting all three waves it lands for). In those situations, you can certainly count on clerics in tank groups to be healing their tanks, but what about the other priests? If a huge aoe lands or wild ramp is flying around, is a druid or shaman going to cast a heal on a tank the clerics aren't healing (because casting a heal on a tank that clerics are healing would be a waste for alliance proc purposes), or are they going to heal their own groups or the raid directly? I don't doubt that a raid team can still make use of alliance if they are willing to coordinate their healing so priests are casting on different tanks at all times but given how busy most raids are, it just isn't practical and priests would be better off using their actual group/aoe healing spells more and just getting whatever they end up getting from alliance (which ultimately is only going to be good for garbage time, heal-you-a-millisecond-before-a-shaman-would-have-healed-you-anyway-with-squall healing).
    Gundolin likes this.
  3. Pano Augur

    I believe you are wrong on this. I have seen many tanks die due to specifically DI as they get low HP and you suddenly have multiple clerics stop healing and tank dies. It's not an uncommon situation for us. It's also why I stopped casting DI as much.

    Also, cleric alliance on events like Bled is a thousand times better than shaman alliance could ever be. It would actually make a difference, unlike shaman alliance who is 100% useless on this event. It'd actually help keep melee dps up, unlike shaman alliance. So saying cleric alliance is a waste is wrong. The mechanic of cleric alliance being different has its perks over shaman.
  4. Clarisa Augur

    That's more of a skill/awareness issue than anything. It happens less in heal teams that are micro-managed and where clerics are assigned specific duties (like DI casting), but in ours it's dependent on feel and being able to predict accurately what other clerics will do (and adjusting quickly when they don't). Maintaining DI on tanks is important, though, because it provides a heal at a time when not many other cleric heals will land (unless the clerics have incredible reaction time and are able to somehow account for situations where lag will prevent us from casting a low-health heal in time).


    The problem is, even if the alliance rain heal procs land on more targets with cleric alliance vs shaman, the actual healing it does is relatively minor and it can only do more if every priest in the raid buys into the idea of maximizing it and casts heals on different tanks to ensure that it procs as much as possible. That's because heals on just the MT is going to result in one heal leading to a proc and multiple heals going to waste due to the activation limit. That limit really hurt alliance healing to the point that it really isn't as good as most people think it is (despite what the parse indicates because as mentioned, a minor heal that lands on everyone is going to seem more significant than a large heal that lands on a single target because of the disproportionate numerical difference).

    I'll admit that in situations where the shaman alliance procs won't land on anyone at all (and the parse backs it up) it's fine to have one cleric maintaining it, but I don't think it will be a huge loss if it doesn't, either, just because the healing itself is still really weak and unless it's the only source of aoe healing available just isn't worth worrying too much about.
  5. kingragnork New Member

    That is definitely something that requires tactical input of when to recast. For me, I use ward if it is up to mitigate the loss of a heal by recasting DI. Furthermore, I will also wait until I have some emergency mechanic available to me should I need it, like arbiters, burst, a heal clicky, etc. It really is worth recasting and I have no doubt you are capable of finding tactful ways to recast it without sacrificing someone's life in the process.
    Metanis likes this.
  6. Metanis Bad Company

    Yes to this! I still keep 17th up on my spell bar and fingers know the "alt + 0" keystroke to mash it immediately as DI is landing on the tank. Or as you mentioned there are other tools like Darb, Burst, Beacon, etc to fill in an emergency heal to compensate for the DI cast! IMHO there are very few times that a cleric can't squeeze in a DI on someone tanking.
  7. Patchin New Member

    I don't understand why multiple clerics would be casting DI at the same time on any toon. I would think it would be easy to assign who was going to cast DI on whom.

    Personally, I'd assign one cleric only to keep DI mem'd, unless some event dictates that multiple tanks/other necessary toons may lose it at same time, and if that's the case, then assign which cleric will cast on whom.

    Multiple clerics casting DI on a single toon at the same time is super easily prevented, and if your heal team is so poor that this is an issue, I'd have to guess other aspects of healing are pretty bad too...

    Such as keeping Promised, guardian, shining, etc up/assigned to specific healers...

    Celestial Regen TB/MGB rotation, to keep CR up on the raid the whole fight...

    Alliance coordination/recast, and whether to use shaman or cleric alliance for which fight...

    Rebuffing quickly, and assigned rebuffers for each buff (same issue as DI buff, should never have multiple buffers casting same buff on a single toon, huge waste)...

    It's just too easy to coordinate these things, and the class leader of each class should be doing so.

    And to the OP... I can assure you, clerics are still far and away the best single target healers in the game. Shaman get the numbers raiding, because their AE heals are awesome and many cleric heals parse as if they're from the tank, but clerics still have far more tools and better single target heals than shaman. All good raid leaders know this, I assure you.

    In many situations, Promised Interposition by itself heals more than most shaman can single target heal spamming reckless, and you only have to cast that once every 20s ish.
  8. Patchin New Member

    However, if all you care about is the parse... If you want to top the MT heal parse, that's super easy... Just spam Remedy > Remedy > Remedy, and always keep your heals boosted.

    Depending on length of fight, start with Spire, when it drops, click channeling the divine, when it drops, click celestial rapidity, when it drops, click healing frenzy, when it drops, click flurry of life. Spire should be repopping fairly quickly after flurry's gone. Re-use as they pop.

    If a fight is shorter, can overlap them.

    Win MT heal parse, no problem.

    Clerics are never going to win the overall heal parse though, we just don't have the AE heals to compete with shaman.
    Danaleigh likes this.
  9. Mediik Augur

    i’m quite happy to see alliance heals go away. Give that healing power directly to healers. I’m never a fan of the indirect healing approach.

    Most clerics will be heavily weighted towards remedy casts. If that was a zerker\rogue whatever, the devs would make changes. I challenge devs to look at healing and come up with some alternatives for remedy. I think it’s time that fast heals took a back seat.
    Pano and Petalonyx like this.
  10. Mehdisin Mahn Augur

    yeah, cuz why should priest classes get any type of alliance spell like every other class! F those guys!
  11. Szilent Augur

    That does exist for melee, it's autoattack. Chain Remedies is "autoattack" for clerics. Just a steady stream of healing going out, can keep it up all day. There's bunches of more dynamic & powerful abilities - the best ones don't interrupt the "autoattack" heal stream much (dissident, splash, ward, stuns-that-also-heal are all fast casting), or they replace it with benefits (inters & contras)
  12. Mediik Augur

    Auto attack for clerics is auto attack..

    Comparing how clerics do their most efficient healing to melee auto attack is insulting. If memory serves, there is no auto heal where I can push no buttons and just do a base amount of healing. That would be a valid comparison. When melee hit buttons to do more dps and all that dps is just zero because the mob has taken its maximum damage that round. Then we can compare dps to healing.. otherwise.. it doesn’t make sense.
  13. Cadira Augur

    Let's let this thread die in peace.
  14. Metanis Bad Company


    Good thing I didn't hold my breath!
    Tallie likes this.
  15. Annastasya Augur

    That's not how cleric-ing works. That's not how any of this works.
    Kialya, Cadira and Szilent like this.
  16. Thraine Augur

    i mean we are all clerics, thread dies /bump (rez)
    Metanis likes this.