Monday, March 17, 2008

Priest Envy


Cloth cloth cloth cloth cloth.

Why?

/cry

Okay, after that nonsensical opening, let me just say this: I think priests have the easiest time getting gear pre-25 man. As the quintessential "healing class" it seems there is more healing cloth under the Outland sky than plate, mail and leather combined. And they sure seem to get geared up faster than us dr00ds, shams and pallies. Take, for instance, a little priest we'll call D.

D is a great healer, and a discipline priest (last I checked, anyway). She has been 70 for maybe 3 months? Four? She is 200 +healing ahead of me. I don't begrudge her this, no matter what people may think, and I believe it's awesome she can gear up so fast. It causes me to make growly noises, though, as I look through my gear and hers. Warcrafter puts my "e-peen" score higher than hers, yet, my gear doesn't seem to reflect that. Self-buffed, she is at 1700 healing exactly, with more mp5 than I.

I'm not QQing about her being better than me. I'm self-confident(ish) as a healer that I can do a relatively good job with my own healing. What I'm wondering is if I should drop my herbalism so I can dump all my dwindling epic flight fund into a mooncloth robe set just to catch up to the cloth curve. This would be kind of...drastic, and I don't want to do it. The long-term rewards promise to even out, but my impatience and my uncertainty of my guild getting anywhere "longterm" in the near future make me itch to improve myself now.

Of course, there is the difference in healing styles. Priests cover for the spikes and chunks, we soften the blows. Maybe this means we need less +healing in the beginning (this makes little sense to me, but I'll roll with it). I won't pretend to know what paladins need other than crit, and I won't even begin to fathom what shamans are into (other than totems). I see so many healers toting cloth. Pallies and shamans are laughed at for it, and druids kind of duck under the radar. I personally have no personal problems with wearing cloth gear. However, I do have problems with taking cloth gear from our priests, who can only wear cloth, while I can deck myself out in leathers.

Odd conundrum, but it's there.

At least leather is sexy.

*pout*

9 comments:

Chris said...

Pallies and shamans generally don't roll with cloth (and leather) items and are laughed at for using it because cloth usually has spirit in it, and shamans and pallies don't use spirit, so there are wasted stats in the item. Mail and plate are much more similar, as they contain little or no spirit and focus more on mp5(mail and sometimes plate) and crit (plate). A holy paladin won't get as much ridicule for wearing mail than cloth or leather for this reason.

Anonymous said...

Last night in my first Kara run ever, we saw A LOT of cloth gear. x.X

Anonymous said...

No need for tailoring, take Leatherworking, get the Windhawk Set FTW! I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. One of those nights in Kara nothing but healing leather will drop, and who'll be laughing then? :)

Chris said...

The other raid resto druid, because she has everything she needs (save for the big bad cloak) from kara.

Bell said...

@chris - they're laughed at, but sometimes it's the only choice.

@ambi - yeah, that happens. What's worse is when you have no spec'd dps casters and everything goes to offspecs.

@pummra - picking up leatherworking would be just as expensive, and maybe moreso, than picking up tailoring. I refuse to drop my alchemy as I have put a lot of time and hardwork into getting as many recipes as I have, and have discovered a lot of rare flasks. And what Chris is saying is true; the only things I still need from Kara are t4 helm, a healing cape and a mace.

Ratshag said...

I sez don't loot yer epic flight fund - high speed farming and getting to the dailies easier, so is a good investment. I also sez if ya can use the gear for to heal yer teammates, then ya gots a right to roll for it.

Pallies wearing cloth, though, is to be laughed at.

Chris said...

Cloth/leather for a pally/shaman is never the only choice, because cloth/leather has a completely different role than plate/mail. I can understand rolling with cloth or leather if you're just starting to build up a healing set, but really, a paladin or a shaman should not be seen in cloth or leather. while raiding past kara.

Anonymous said...

We have a name for leather-wearing Pallies.

We call them gimpadins...

On the whole, I'm committed to wearing leather whenever I can. I'm doing pretty nicely out of Kara leather drops, and swap out cloth piece that this "being sensible" thing forces me to take, as soon as an equivalent or better leather piece turns up.

I'm a druid, not a tree in priest drag...

Anonymous said...

I know this is an old post, but I marched over here from B3 for some Resto reading.

I know that healing has also changed with the newest patch. However, I do have input.

Before the patch, I had the lowest +healing in the guild of three healers: priest, pally and myself. However, according to about five or six damage/healing meters, I was on top heals constantly. Not because the other two weren't doing their job, but because I was "softening the blows" as it were.

Druids, while viable for main healing, are made (in the 25-man raid sense) for overall heals. Throwing hots on the party when Mag does his thang; tossing an extra hot on the tank while the main-healers are working on the mage-tank on HKM in Gruul.

I think we're more durable overall for raid healing, rather than single-target healing (though that has changed slightly with the patch as well). And trust me. Those HOTs add up!