I recently made a fury and got him to level 40. I did so as I heard they were the best dps priest and good for solo and questing. I have been reading the forums and see they are closer to the bottom of those abilities with inquisitor leading the pack. So I was wondering how large of a split there is between the two classes for solo and dps. Is one more desired in groups and guilds?
Furies are definately not 'the bottom of the pack' when it comes to dps potential. The two classes play hugely differently though. Inquisitor is a melee power-house with (relatively) slow casting reactives. Fury gets most of their dps from their spells and has fast casting HoTs (heals over time). I've seen both classes do a class A job of healing and dps (at the same time) and I've seen others with the same classes who couldn't heal or dps their way out of a wet paper sack. The most important thing to being 'good' at your toon, reguardless of your class, is to learn their strengths and weaknesses and how to get the most out of the former whle allowing for the later.
Would it be a safe bet that if I keep going with the fury and find it isn't a good fit that betraying to warden would put me equal to an inquisitor?
The warden and inquisitor play differently, but they're both melee and have a good solid dps potential and nice melee group buffage. That being said, like above.. I've seen wardens who couldn't heal or dps as well... the player behind the toon makes all the difference.
Any healer class can be good, it all depends on the player behind the char. You will hear some complain that class A is stronger or better than class B, though from what I have seen it is that there are few that are actually willing to take the time to learn their class and play it to the best of the classes ability. I'd say stick to the fury and see what you think, I myself can't play caster type classes well, so I prefer the melee healers.
I have to agree with the folks who posted above, player skill is more of a factor than the class itself. As Mermut stated, Fury and Inquisitor play differently and you gotta find what you are best at doing: pure melee, or (how i play my Fury) a melee/spellcaster hybrid. On single targets I would say that Inquisitors have the potential edge, as they have more combat arts and reactive damage spells and get more melee buffs from AA. In a situation where you are completely surrounded by mobs, the Fury wins hands down, and this is where Furies are at their finest. No other healer gets the AoE damage potential of a well specced Fury, and I've seen a few that can almost keep up with top dps classes. Both Inquis and Fury are great in their own ways, it's up to you to figure out which one you prefer and why.
Theoretically any druid (healer/dpser) would be able to out parse any cleric or shaman (healer/buffer and healer debuffer respectively). Now have the developers lived up to the basic premise of main differences bewteen the priest classes, I don't believe so. You would have to have one equally skilled and geared player of each class doing nothing but dpsing to compare their parses on the exact same mob solo, in a group, and in a raid with the only diference between the raid and group being the healer being tested to find out for sure. I don't know that you can find that many people who play those classes let alone from other classes who would be willing to perform those test and the dev's would have to give them equal gear too which would be more work for them.
I don't think you're talking about the current game... not since the changes that began in Velious. If anything, I think the classes are all closer than ever to being exactly what the character creation screen describes them as being. One of the major objectives of the rebalance was to make all classes within an archetype capable of doing an equivelant job. Some classes just perform some job functions more easily than others. But everyone can serve their primary purpose and now hybrid classes have enough ability to fully serve their secondary purposes as well. I've seen the "test" you describe performed. The group I run with is consistent in player skill and gear and we have a variety of toons among us to mix and match for groups. We've put every* healer to the test (*except the Templar... lol the folks who do play them stick to heavy heal specs and none of us who experiment with toons have done one yet) and they are all powerful in their own rights. Every* max level healer in 160 gear or better should be able to do 100K dps and 20K hps (in a group where their class is effective); everything after that is gravy. How much gravy you get is more up to the player than the class. The purpose of the different kinds of healers is to suit the different kinds of groups and different kinds of play-styles. They can all be a dps healer, the only question is melee or caster.
I play both a 95 fury and a 95 inq, and both are very viable as healers and do decent dps. I find my inq is a lot easier to do single target dps with, but as was stated his spells are a lot slower casting. The fury does more AOE dps and seems to react faster to changes due to faster cast times. Both are excellent when it comes to curing. In the end its simply a player preference issue.
is it possible to offset the inqs low aoe with gear that has aoe chance on it? It would seem that an inquisitor with enough aor and ability speed cast would be formidable. Is this not possible?
Look into reforging your gear (has to be legendary or mastercrafted, not treasured), this is an AoD expansion feature. I've got about 77% melee AE and it helps tremendously along with my 611% multiattack.
