Priest Offers Too much vs Other 'healing class' Options

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Originally Posted by Mbaums

I'm really starting to think OP is intentionally trolling.
Requiring a priest gem, requiring no necro-gem, an unlock in an annoying spot in Gazluk for 60+, and cast times that can be interrupted are downsides. Not to mention the multiple skill requirements and the first unlock is in kur.


Even if he is serious-- the whole premise is flawed. Should all skills going to be equal? No. Is simply having an epic attack a bonus? No. Unless you believe mentalist is stronger fire or ice magic because of the epic attack. And the skill rez as a bonus is silly because the only other class with a rez, bard, has to get it on a drop. It's not an easy find.

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So you are ok with the fact that priest has:
1. Tons of healing
2. The most utility buffs for a support class
3. An epic attack (that can be paired with 1-2 more skills for good damage with all that heal/utility power)
4. A res
5. Amazing support mods (including power regen in combat)


It isn't the idea that all skills should be equal. All skills should be reasonably balanced. Where's the next best thing to priest that has all these things? Show me what it is in game. You can't find it because it doesn't exist.


Mentalism has 2 heals and wave healing. Armor healing is a neat idea but armor is a joke at this point in time so let us not even mention it. It has an epic attack but it doesn't remove statuses or prevent them (like priest).

Imagine someone building a mental pig instead of a priest pig. It would be a way crappier healing build.
Imagine someone making a bard/something healer instead of a priest healier. it would be a way crappier healing build.

Note: Both of these classes are still in a 'down' slump after having been nerfed in the past. Bard definitely deserved it btw as that single mod made their damage completely insane.




Fire/Ice are damage specs. (ok you can build ice as a 'support' but not a 'healing class' so let's keep the discussion apples to apples and leave oranges aside - as they do not have heal other group member abilities).

Your comparing normal skills with what is going to become a choice like druid and wolf unless I'm mistaken. At this time priest has limited downside but you don't know whats coming.
Priest is the newest class and this is the first pass at it, have you played that long? Many skills have changed dramatically over time.
Priest has the potential to do all those things yes but you only have 6 slots.

I've enjoyed my time with priest though it has been limited.

If it's as great as you say enjoy it while you can.

I think Priest is an excellent support skill, but for none of the reasons you've stated aside from the rez. Basically every reason you've given to why the skill is good is wrong or too vague to comment on.

First off, Priest does not strictly have the best healing in the game. Burst healing and healing on reaction are important and Priest needing to channel several of its healing abilities makes it less reliable as a healer unless if the priest is casting preemptively. Also several of its heals are very minor and need to be spammed to be effective, and therefore are only useful if the Priest focuses heavily on healing. The priest is not a good party healer, but they are excellent at healing a specific player.

Curing broken bones, give warmth, removing poison and passive power regen are not impressive support abilities, nor are they unique. You should not be playing this class for any of these reasons. Only the auto-life is worth noting out of the examples you gave.

Having an epic attack is not necessarily an advantage, as "Epic attack" is just a title. Just having an epic attack does not make the class better because epic attacks are not always worth using. For example, if you are playing in a group with a tank and you are using Mentalism's Agonize haphazardly, the tank will want to strangle you. Flamestrike is not a bad ability, but it requires heavy investment to do good damage, and it is not worth running in groups if you plan on playing heavy support. At best Flamestrike can be useful for soloing/leveling.

Priest used to have good damage and trash clearing ability, but this is no longer the case due to the nerfs to elemental buffs last patch. Additionally the fire magic mod for more indirect fire damage cannot be used with Priest/BC. Priest's damage is average at best at this point.

Priest DOES have some very excellent things to offer, but you haven't stated any of them aside from the rez. If you have a tank, the priest is the best support class to support them by far because they are amazing at supporting a single player. However, if you don't have a specific target to focus on, the priest isn't nearly as helpful because channeling time, the inability to even aim one of your heals, and lacking AoE support makes priest weak at playing healer whack-a-mole.

In an organized and well geared party, Priest would definitely be the support class of choice but not for the reasons you've given. If you're playing in an average/random party, then Priest should not be your first choice. BC offers much better support for most players and Druid is much better at being a healer/DPS hybrid. Pig is better at improving the survivability of your whole party and Mentalism's support is useful with little investment and therefore easy to splash into a build. In fact, I would argue Priest is the worst support class in a party that isn't well geared because it heavily relies on the strength of your party as well as heavily relying on mods itself to be useful.

Have you actually tried gearing it and playing it yourself? It's not nearly as great as you're making it out to be.

With a dedicated tank it's pretty nice, otherwise it's a very frustrating spec to play. Dedicated tank means both someone that can actually hold aggro and survive a few hits. The auto-resurrect is pretty good but since you can't cast it on yourself or even see when the buff is still active that's not as good as you think it is, either.

I'd actually say Unfetter is it's best ability. ( too bad you can't cast it on yourself while you are stunned, even though the description says it removes stun .. which it does, just can't use it on yourself for that purpose).

For solo play ( aka healing myself) I'd never ever pick priest. Every other support skill is better for healing your own self. It is decently good under the right set of circumstances, but falls behind other things if those circumstances aren't present, I'd actually call that pretty balanced.

Hello, I've played Bard/Ment and Bard/Priest both to 70/70 in solo and dungeons, so I feel like I should offer my input.

Is Priest in itself overpowered? Probably not, no. As mentioned, the healing is largely preemptively done due to the short channeling times the player has to experience for many of the healing powers. The support skills Priest offers are lackluster as well:

1) Poison damage is minuscule in the endgame and even for monsters that deal respectable poison damage (such as Manticores), most healing abilities can outheal the damage.

2) Fixing broken bones isn't the most important thing to do in the middle of combat since the debuff from a broken bone isn't the end of the world. Anyone with moss can set a bone during and after combat.

3) Give Warmth is only helpful if you're in two zones and usually only helpful when travelling through those zones or surveying in those zones.

4) Unfetter is nice, but is only single target. Dungeons like Gazluk Keep have enemies that do group stuns, so the benefit of having one person immune to CC effects for 15 seconds doesn't really offer much benefit when the rest of the team is incapacitated.

As well, the damage is lackluster, from my understanding. I've never really used the damage dealing skills apart from Corrupt Hate, but I might try out Fire Magic/Priest. Even the free revive Priest offers is just alright; one free rez to the first person that dies in a party is always nice, but it's usually not a gamechanger for a dungeon run. THAT role belongs to the 5-man rez Bard offers.

However, Bard/Priest is by far the most disgusting combination for pure support. With the right treasure effects, I can ensure a dungeon team never has to worry about power, health, or armor. The constant passive power and health regen Song of Resurgence offers offsets the downtime Priest casts take since casting does not cancel songs. With evasion and mitigation treasure effects, I can instantly heal the tank and offer them 70-80% evasion, handfuls of mitigation, and around 15-25% extra healing received from all sources. If somebody in the party dies, the Priest proactive rez will save them, and if the dungeon party is close to wiping, I can use the Bard rez to pretty much reverse the battle's outcome.

Priest excels in single-target heals, with the weakness being burst damage to the group. The only AoE healing Priest offers is Relentless Hope and Triage; RH offers decent instant group heals, and Triage only helps out one of the weakest allies in range after a short delay, so it's neither an instant heal or a true group heal. With Bard, a support skill dedicated to group protection, buffing, and healing, those weaknesses Priest suffers from goes away.

But I agree with you somewhat, I wouldn't be posting about how much Bard/Priest is godlike if I didn't want it to change. Perhaps changing Priest to become a fully proactive healing spec would be a good change? The rez is already a proactive ability, perhaps changing the entire skill list to be similar would offer something more balanced? Maybe a heal that offers a modest HoT after somebody is attacked, or maybe a heal that bounces between all party members after a few seconds? Perhaps an absorption shield that absorbs X amount of damage in an effort to prevent damage in the first place? I don't know if this would kill Priest or make it incredibly overpowered, but it's been a thought that's crossed my mind.

The same treatment could be applied to Mentalism, perhaps: Mentalism is the only skill that offers constant health, armor, and power regeneration to party members regardless of distance to the mentalist, so maybe the regeneration should be extended for an "overheal" effect? Mentalism definitely needs a little love no matter what; for parties that stick together, Bard is objectively better for regen over time, as the armor regen Mentalism offers is laughable and the health and power restored is worse than certain treasure effects Bard has.

tl;dr Priest is strong where it's meant to be played and lackluster where it isn't, but I feel the Bard/Priest combo is pretty damn strong and should be looked at. Other support classes should be looked at to see if they can be brought up to a respectable place (looking at you, Mentalism).

Side note, the Priest rez is quite weird and should be looked at. The effectiveness of the ability falls off dramatically if there's another Priest in your party, and you can store your rez once it's off cooldown ONLY if no one has died and used the buff they receive from the cast.

Double side note, I would assume Priest is great because it's one of the "curse"-type classes, the others being Lycan and Druid; while not exactly all curses per se, these 3 classes are not able to be reversed with any in-game means at this point. If you drink Lycan spit, you're forever cursed to be a Lycan. If you take the Druid vow, you're forever known as a Druid (I think). If you take the Priest oath, you're forever a Priest. These "curse" classes are usually meant to be a step above others because you have to dedicate to the permanence of them and have to deal with any consequences. Lycan players are forced to be in wolf form during the full moon, Druids need to respond to druid emergencies, and Priests are (supposed) to be dedicated to priest emergencies (that have not been implemented iirc).

I stand firmly behind my belief that priest+ another support class is better than 2x other support classes as you just end up with more.

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Originally Posted by ErDrick

t to be.

With a dedicated tank it's pretty nice, otherwise it's a very frustrating spec to play.

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Who would ever play a double support role without a tank? Double support is the kind of thing you take out of storage when you see the unarmed cow forming a group for GK.

As soon as you finish with that content you put that gear set away for next time.

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Originally Posted by Daimes

4) Unfetter is nice, but is only single target. Dungeons like Gazluk Keep have enemies that do group stuns, so the benefit of having one person immune to CC effects for 15 seconds doesn't really offer much benefit when the rest of the team is incapacitated.

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By saying this you're really missing the point of how a skill like this gets used. It allows the puller to ignore status effects and risk of death while bringing mobs back to the group.

You're right that nobody cares about poison but fixing broken bones (for free) is a huge added plus. Priest even took over the one thing BC had going for it in a support role. oops.

Warmth might not seem like a big deal but being able to just completely ignore the cold mechanic IS a big deal.

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Originally Posted by Daimes

The same treatment could be applied to Mentalism, perhaps: Mentalism is the only skill that offers constant health, armor, and power regeneration to party members regardless of distance to the mentalist, so maybe the regeneration should be extended for an "overheal" effect? Mentalism definitely needs a little love no matter what; for parties that stick together, Bard is objectively better for regen over time, as the armor regen Mentalism offers is laughable and the health and power restored is worse than certain treasure effects Bard has.

Other support classes should be looked at to see if they can be brought up to a respectable place (looking at you, Mentalism).

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That's kinda the point I was trying to make with this thread. Priest imho is a power creep as it does so many things. Where's the negative?

Anyone who ever played a bard in everquest might want to play mentalism as you can have 2 waves fully active all the time. But the trouble of doing that is immense as you would have to give so much attention to that task.

As you pointed out the wave healing overall with mentalism is pretty crap. I think mentalism would be 10x better if the waves were just "on" all the time for up to 2 skills and every x seconds you paid the cost for them (it would still use a slot but you wouldnt waste time activating it - why not have it be a 15 minute buff but you can only have 2 of the waves active at once).

Battle chemistry is not very good for healing support either as the golem is a pet - so that means overall it sucks. It casts spells based on the owners needs and there is no program condition for - if someone in the party is under 80% health. It's a shame for example fire balm isn't an aoe group wide (and pet wide) buff. Wow that would be so cool for Dark Chapel! But it isnt and the golem dies so fast there it is hardly even worth using.

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Originally Posted by Daimes

These "curse" classes are usually meant to be a step above others because you have to dedicate to the permanence of them and have to deal with any consequences. Lycan players are forced to be in wolf form during the full moon, Druids need to respond to druid emergencies, and Priests are (supposed) to be dedicated to priest emergencies (that have not been implemented iirc).

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Where does it ever say permanent choice classes get to be better than regular classes? Please show me. Each is basically an advanced class with a big benefit and a drawback (except for priest which has no negative... yet). In one sense they are just an advanced version of an advanced class.

I think it is a mistake to say class X is a permanent decision and therefore should be better. I think it's pretty clear with the lycan nerf that this is the wrong attitude to apply to permanent decision classes.

The druid emergency is pretty much a joke. You could have a quick afk (or log out to save buffs) and it will usually be over in 15-20 minutes. For that very small price (which stops mattering when you have nothing left to grind) you get extra storage, garden potions, self resurrect tokens, flight, cold resist bird form, and swim bird form.

If this is the model for some bonuses and some negatives you have to hope the class is on equal footing in terms of balance. Why? Because the drawback also ends up being a source of bonuses for the character. Wolf form follows this same pattern.

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Originally Posted by Golliathe

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I think you are overestimating Give Warmth and Remedy's treasure effect for mending bones. The location you can access the Priest trainer is directly across from Kur Mountain's inn, which conveniently sells winter protection gear that does the exact same thing Give Warmth does, without needing to learn Priest and train the skill to the point you use Give Warmth. It is an extremely niche skill that has very little impact on any rotation or environment. As I said, there are two environments that are freezing temperatures and the flat cold mitigation is virtually non-existent for actually trying to lower incoming damage with. It's why most players have a loadout slot featuring warm clothing instead of a loadout slot featuring Priest w/ Give Warmth.

Remedy's broken bone treatment takes up between 1 and 2 treasure slots on equipment, and even stacked together, will only total just over 50% chance to trigger successfully on a 15 second cooldown. If your argument is that using the ability is technically free, I'll concede that point, but as mentioned, dedicating time to Remedy is a waste of a skillslot and treasure effects. As well, Kur Mountains allows you to gather tundra lichen, which also allows you to mend broken bones for free and a 100% success rate without needing to meet the Priest criteria.

Even if you contend that Unfetter is good for pullers, it is entirely situational for that use. Most mobs only use CC for their rage attack, which players can see on the rage meter for any mob they target. Freshly spawned mobs have no rage, so Unfetter would normally be used right before the mob uses their rage attack, which would still only save one person in a group fight. The only reason it would help the puller is if another group (or your group) had died to mobs in a prior pull and the mob you were pulling had a full rage bar during the initial new pull. I would say a better use for Unfetter is preventing the healer from being stunned so they can heal the group while they're CC'd.

Battle Chemistry is rumored to be under a complete rework, and I have not had a lot of experience with the skill, so I won't comment on that.

Mentalism has always been weak compared to other support skills and will be until armor is changed to be more useful and the Armor Wave is, in turn, buffed heavily. In a world where my tanking spec can reach over 1,100 armor without buffs, 20 armor per 4 seconds means nothing to trying to tank damage. The other waves are outclassed not by Priest, but by Bard. With select treasure effects, Song of Resurgence can recover almost triple what the Health Wave can recover per second while also recovering 14 power per 4 seconds to everyone around the Bard. It's why I suggested either Priest or Mentalism get fundamentally changed from reactive healing to proactive healing. Even if one ends up doing less healing over time, the fundamental change of reacting to damage to preventing damage is viable enough to keep one of them handy.

To my knowledge, the devs have said that they intend the "curse" skills to be more powerful at the tradeoff of downsides. I agree that the downsides aren't exactly the worst, but it is also rumored that they will be worse as more content is released. A good example is that Druids might not be able to use Weather Witching when it comes out, and Lycans might not be able to become Vampires. I don't think there's any documentation on the forums of the devs saying "curse" skills will be better than other skills, and I might be incorrect. My apologies for making that claim.

I'm interested to hear peoples' thoughts on this -- I have my opinions but I'm not super-well versed in how the skills interact with each other, so figuring out how to balance the different support skills is tricky and something I intend to move kinda slowly on, tweaking iteratively. So I'm in a "gathering feedback" phase here.

I want to say though that Priest is not a "cursed" class and there are no realistic down sides to taking the priest oath besides some possible one-off events -- events which could happen to anyone in any class. ("Oh no, so and so is rounding up anyone with Unarmed skill over 100 for being a dangerous vigilante... you login in a prison!" Could happen to anyone any time with any skill. Maybe it happens to Priests a bit more often, but it doesn't affect your daily or even monthly play, so it's absolutely not something I'm going to balance around).

Druid IS a curse class, so to speak, but that doesn't mean it should be better at healing -- it should offer more diversity of builds to make it useful in more roles and combinations. It is also, on paper, supposed to have "the best debuff in the game", so I actually expect that in return it should be a tiny bit less potent at healing overall. Not saying that's where anything is, just telling you the eventual goal. The various goals are QUITE complicated and getting it all perfectly right is probably impossible. But we'll see what we can do.

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Please feel free to continue the discussion, BUT keep it civil and try to avoid hyperbole. I'm interested in your opinion about what's over/under-powered, but when there's people saying contradictory things, I have to take those opinions with a grain of salt anyway. The most important thing I want to know in cases like this is: what's the most fun thing? What aspect of each skill is inherently crazy fun? Maybe it's way over-the-top right now and needs a little toning down, but it needs to STAY somewhat over-the-top in order to stay fun. Are there things that are overpowered but not especially fun? Things that could be toned down to make room for other things?

Keep in mind that I have to offer 60+ different treasure mods and 12+ abilities for every skill, so no skill can be too focused on any one thing. I'm not talking about turning a skill into a one-trick pony, I'm talking about more subtle distinctions. Each skill is allowed a handful of intentionally-somewhat-overpowered abilities and treasure mods. So part of what I'm trying to figure out is: what parts of the skill need to be a bit OP to really shine, and what parts of the skill would still be serviceable and useful even if they aren't as powerful as they are now.

I'm not expecting people to give exact breakdowns by mods or abilities. The first thing to identify is: what is the really fun thing you can do with this skill? I want to avoid cutting the fun bits out of the game!

Of course, sometimes an ability is really only fun because it's crazily overpowered. In those cases, the fun may not be saveable, if the skill has a lot of other things going on. But let me make that decision.

So let me know what bits you think are fun, so I can do my best to keep those bits if possible. (This applies to individual skills and also to skill combinations!)

To me, the fun factor with Priest was in extreme healing situation, i.e. overpull, or respawn, in Gazluk Keep. For this, I don't think anything was OP except the fact you can have almost constantly a heal not on refresh (if you play it with another healing-oriented class, Psychology in my case). But I would hardly call that overpowered...

I did not have the opportunity to test single-tank healing, due to the rarity of pure tank builds when I played it. I suspect it would be pretty strong then, but I can't confirm.

Comparing healing in EQ1 and PG, my raid cleric in EQ was much more powerful, in my opinion. I'm comparing two toons with endgame gear and all the tricks available in their respective games.

What could be done to improve Priest:

• Add a buff on the priest that goes off when Tether Soul triggers. It's easy to miss the chat message in a middle of a fight.
• Allow players to see their own bars in the group window, so they can watch their own health and status, and not die because they are focusing on everyone except themselves.
• Free Triage from the requirement of being close to the target. This is true for many other abilities (ex: Animal Handling).
• Ability to heal without line-of-sight would change the game. I've never seen any comment related to this particular aspect of the game from devs, I have absolutely no idea if it's set in stone or an oversight...

Some context on my feedback below:
They are based on my experiences within the game & yours will be different, but just as valid, so please feel free to comment and challenge.
Where I do not mention a skill (e.g. staff, shield) it is because I have not used them recently in GK.

I have levelled 15 combat skills to maximum and have max. crafted & augmented c. 30 gold gear sets for them so my playing experience revolves around 56 to 60 mods.

My intention in the game is to solo as much group content as possible (just because I can :) ) by stretching the specification and gearing of each build (e.g. by using cheese, alcohol buffs, flower appreciation, etc,). This currently means soloing patrols in Gazluk Keep as reliably as possible.

I am not wanting to create the highest damage output build, but the most reliable and robust. My starting point is to use leather gear & work to control mob rage attacks and finish a fight in under 10 seconds.

A common theme to the above is that I always revert to using a damage skill supported by druid. Druid is so versatile & covers the whole requirement of damage, healing and crowd control. It is a jack of all trades, but is fairly awful as a primary skill (compared to many others).

'Best' GK soloing combos:
Spider /Druid (poison build) - Most effective combo found to date. Poison does high damage, fear and stun incapacitate the mob, druid AOE heals are cast & forget.

Ice Magic /(Druid or Psychology) - All work well as they have healing and crowd control abilities. Damage output is lower than other combos.

'Best' Grinding combos:
Fire /Battle Chemistry - Great for AOE grinding. Molten Veins has made it even easier. Set golem to cast only mana and heal spells and go 2-shot kill 3 or 4 mobs at a time (3 or 4 shots required for 5+ packs)

Archery /(Druid or Mentalism or Bard) - Extremely versatile as can be created as single target, AOE or DOT (depending on mods used). High damage output, great crowd control and ranged rather than melee. When combined with druid, Archery is the 'only' damage skill you need bother about :). Gets boring to use after a while as mobs tend to die before they can hit you. Can 2 or 3 shot-kill most mobs (excluding GK, Pask, manticores, etc.)

Most enjoyable combos:
Cow /(Druid or Unarmed) - 'Best' animations in the game. Makes a great tank. High survivability, healing and speed. Recent AOE gas attack has made it even more effective.

Spider /Necromancy - Five companions build makes this combo very effective, especially with the recent Shambling zombie changes. For solo use only. Pet AI is still poor and it can be a nightmare to use in some zones (E.g. evil side of Rahu town) due to pathing issues.

Lazy player combos:
Bard /Druid - Nearest thing to an 'immortal' build I have found. AOE damage song (with stuns and rage reduction) supported by druid heals. All you have to do is survive the incoming damage by out-healing it and play the songs.

Fire /Druid -Mod Molten Veins and Brambleskin, go to Wolf cave in Gazluk, cast these 2 spells (no others required), wait for the mobs to 3-shot kill themselves from them.

Most disappointing combos:
Ice Magic /Fire - Looks very good in theory, but takes too many spells to be cast before damage modifiers are applied. E.g. during GK group runs, you often get 3 or 4 spell casts off each before the mob is dead. This combo is often ready for the nuke cast at the moment the mob dies.

Highest nuke combo:
Priest /(Fire or Mentalism) - Can 1-shot kill the training dummies in Serbule, but then you have to wait for a long time whilst the cool downs expire. Very good damage combo, but lacking in crowd control abilities.

'Best' travel combos:
Deer /Psychology - Land - Sustainable /base out of combat movement rate of 28.5 (Without travel jewellery)
Priest /Mentalism - Air - Much slower than by land, but you can ignore any mobs coupled with the ability to ignore Gazluk cold debuff & unlimited flying time.

Currently used combos:
Spider /Druid - for soloing GK & mob pulling in GK (when grouped)
Priest /Mentalism - for gathering
Bard /Druid - for grouping
Archery /Druid - for general grinding