Relmstein on healers

Relmstein has a well thought-out series of three posts on his blog about the disadvantages of playing a healer. And I agree with him that playing a class which is "first to be blamed, last to be praised", perceived as being bad in soloing, and often just considered to be a healbot has its negative sides.

Having said that, in World of Warcraft playing a priest is not as bad as lets say playing a cleric in Everquest. Shadow priests are soloing quite well, and even with a discipline / holy hybrid build you can be both an excellent healer for groups, and solo very well, provided you get yourself a good wand. Priests *do* have problems fighting several mobs at once. But fighting a single mob, even several levels above you is usually not a problem. Might take some time, but generally your ability to absorb and heal damage is greater than the ability of the mob to deal damage, and sooner or later you win.

But the reason why I play a priest is what I call "social engineering". I play the class *because* few people do, and because the class is so much needed in groups and raids. The disadvantages of less good soloing, and being just a support class instead of being heroic, are balanced by the advantages of being able to get invites into groups and guilds much easier. My priests got into guilds which would never have invited me if I had played lets say a hunter.

Blizzard hasn't announced the new spells and talents for the priest class in the Burning Crusade expansion yet. But I am a bit afraid that priests will get some more great spells and talents for healing, and very little useful stuff for soloing. Even if there are some new nice shadow talents, changing your build to shadow is just something you do for leveling up to 70, at which point your guild will more or less require from you that you go back to a healing spec. Most guilds allow a maximum of one shadow priest in a raid, all other priests need to be discipline / holy. While the abilities Relmstein proposes are not very realistic, it would be better if priests got a bit more and better damage dealing capabilities in the discipline and holy trees, and wouldn't be relegated to being pure healbots.