Why are you still even memming dots? Aside from NSF and Sunscorch our dots are useless. You can still use the debuffer dots for raids. There is no place to kite, and do you really have the spare 45mins it would take for our craptastic dots to kill a blue con in EoK? Exaggerated I know, but I don't think you have done the math on the economy of even loading those spells.
I only get to play a few weeks out of the year and it's usually a couple of expansions behind. I had a mix of dots, nukes and heals and it was extremely effective for many years up until the revamp.
I play all 3 priests and I have raided with all 3 also (mostly subbed in alts for a few events when a bunch of 1 class was missing). They are not the best geared but they are all fairly well AAd and I have played them all for many many years so I feel my opinion has value to the discussion. *Side note: I wish that they made all of the healer alliances the same, the variation between them are not significant enough to over come the range differences. Likelihood of serving get its purpose (AE healing and thus range of hitting the most people) vastly overpowers a small increase in potency, especially in an environment where a huge chunk of the potency is lost due to the full health /over healing aspect of playing a healer. Druids are definitely the weakest healer as far as pure healing output goes and have the fewest tools to overcome repeated spikes or emergency situations. All 3 have their own issues but since this is a druid thread and I actually agree quite strongly that unlinking the druid faster heals (even just current and last expansion rotating like cleric remedy used to be) would be a huge boon for the class. Druids are forced to use their mana efficient but slow casting vida if they are spending their full effort on healing. Clerics and shaman both have the option to cast spells other than light and mending respectively and maintain 100% single target healing time. Druids also end up doing a ton of target swapping if they are to use their alternate/combo use spells which is a separate issue that doesn't by definition bother me. Reality is that the purpose of fast heals is to smooth out spikes in a raid team, which is random by its nature. We've moved past being efficient and into bulk speed. It's not so bad in raids where the rest of the team has those faster heals. In a group it's very noticeable because it feels like a skipped heal. If I had my way.... The linked spells would be removed for all of the priests, and the recast halved or removed too. I would love to reclaim part of my spell bar for more situational spells and cures and nukes and and...make us more versatile so our flavor comes though something other than how well balanced our different heals lines compare to each other. Long version is yes, removing recast and linking spells would be a huge help that we could quantify if I had some more time than a lunch break at work to flesh it out. I think the community could come up with some fun and potent ways to make comparable healing options that are unique for each class.
I just don't see them making any modification at all to the Curavida line. It's been a staple across all three Priest classes for 20 expansions. They all get a 3.8s cast time no recast spot heal. At this point it is certainly a dated spell but it's such an entrenched spell line I doubt they would reduce the cast time on it from 3.8s to 3.0s which is really what it needs to be more viable in current content. If we are making this thread into an "all the things wrong with Druids" thread though... Here is my airing of greviances for spells: Cowl of Ro / Gaze of Ro - These spell lines have no purpose of continuing. They were rightly replaced by AA lines. Keep updating the AAs and you can axe these two spell lines. Beasts Beseching - Not enough content to use this on. The content that you can use it on is far too Magic resistant. Even with max charm AA and Glamour of Tunare debuff (-20 MR) the charm breaks every 10-15 seconds on blue cons. Give it a -100-150 MR Resist check or give us an AA Glamour of Tunare with -100-150 MR for use against animals. Charm was always something I enjoyed using in past expansions in the group game but now it's useless due to resistance rates on trash. Frostreave Breath - The 2.5s cast time on this will always piss me off. Either drop it to 0.5s to match the analogous spell (Skin to Vines) or increase it to 3.0s so that spell hastes function on it. Winter's Wildblaze - This spell hasn't scaled well. It in no way is worthy of the additional hate it generates. The damage component needs to be increasing and this should be our top DPS spell because it has so many draw backs (additional Hate and requiring two different Resist checks be met) Skin to Sumac - The body change is neat but it's more of a detriment than a bonus. It prevents its use on undead or constructs. Would be cool if the spell were split into the fire damage modifier component and the body change component. Let one land and not the other if there is a body change issue. Frostreave Aura - I will never understand why our fire Aura line ended and this one continued. In a group setting or even a raid setting, you're far more likely to debuff against fire than cold. Meaning this Resists quite a bit. Add a -100 CR check on the Nuke, swap it out for fire, or make our next Aura line proc two Nukes a fire and a cold. Cyclonic Roar - I never will understand why the class focused on Fire and Cold Nukes for 19 expansions suddenly gets its most powerful Nuke and it is magic based, a Resist we cannot debuff against making it very resistant in group content if you aren't getting a Tash or Malo on every mob. This really should've been a Chromatic check or something other than Magic. Or a -100 like our Horde line. Remote Moonflash - See issues with linked timer. At the very least this and Remote Sunblaze shouldn't be linked. Pearlescent Thornmaw - This spell is such a dumpster. There is no reason to ever cast it. Rework it to cast our Glistening Frost and Frostreave Breath spells together instead of our now useless DoT and some Snare that's worse than Entrap. Guard of the Reptile - Two things... first it bothers me that the other priest beneficial tank proc buffs have no stacking issues yet the Druid version cannot be cast on Paladins because they use preservation. Second it is annoying that this is a Heal and HoT combined. Merge them together into a single direct Heal. We aren't a HoT class dunno why they nerfed that in the first place since the original version was a raw Heal proc originally. Then they just decided to give that proc to clerics in their shining line because reasons. Adrenaline Barrage - Recast of 15s is too long, needs unlinked or reduced recast Revitalization - Recast of 12s is too long, needs unlinked or reduced recast Lunasalve - I agree 4.5s base cast time is too long, should drop down to something like 3.0-3.5 base. I don't understand how this is someone's most frequently cast Heal in a group though. On a raid or heavy AE named sure but a regular trash mob killing group I don't see why you would do that. I guess you're trying to actually get your 1200 AAs worth of the synergy line? Overwhelming Sunray / Pearlescent Moonbeam - Even with fixed mana costs these aren't really worth casting anymore. The empathy components are their only redeeming quality anymore and the DoTs don't last long enough, do enough damage or have enough empathy value to warrant spell slots in almost every scenario. They should either be extremely long DoTs (10min~) like a regular debuff, so that it can be thrown on a boss and cycled out. Obviously with increased mana cost. Or greatly increase the empathy value or the DoT damage on them.
