Priest Offers Too much vs Other 'healing class' Options

[Golliathe]

I think it's a mistake to think its the priest primary job to rez. With rez being tied to first aid, its everyones job. And I still think priest is not OP because it can't do everything at once.

If I didn't make the argument clear: you won't make a priest that is a great healer with great utility and do lots of damage at the same time. But you can pretty easily do 2/3 at the same time if you want.

All things being equal imagine two classes. One of them can fly and the other can't? Which one is better?

I do understand your argument that priest makes the other options seem lame.

Priest has so many options while most of the other healing classes don't. Having a no component battle rez is better than not. Having the ability to remove all statuses is better than being able to remove or prevent few (or none - such as the case of mentalism).

The strengths of BC is also in the buffs (and wide damage types), which really have been ignored in this thread. Skin make a huge difference. Before priest, the common healer setup was psych/mentalism. But the content was actually tuned easier. Group size shrank from like... 9? and elite mobs did not lock. People would zerg druid events, manticores and labs.

That is an excellent point with BC that you have some cool and unusual damage types but I will remind you bard is very much in the same boat (nature/poison/ice vs sonic/trauma). Funny enough both classes can do a meh support healer and build for aoe damage (the meh part being compared to a full dedicated healer).

Golem healing sucks compared to bard song healing (both of which are on the automatic side of things). Skin is super great vs low tier content to cast on noobs as you can make a lvl 10-30 character immune to most mobs in certain zones; you can also use skin as a tanky character to be damage immune to mobs under level 55 or so. Likewise skin is super great if you are already crazy tanky as an unarmed cow or medium tanky with shield and something else vs equal level content.

Skin is however crap if you are not already stacking flat mitigation out the ying yang. A well geared dps character in GK is probably sitting on close to 600 armor (shield allowance depending). The correct buff for dps types is extra heart as you get ~90 health, a ridiculously small heal, and extra power (theres even a mod for more extra power).

Priest being added was to be greeted with tweaking content that requires a tank. The idea was, there were to few tanks to make things hard, and once priest happens a switch will be flipped and stuff will be harder. I don't feel like finding the post but it was said by Citan, and i don't know if that 'switch' was crits or not. Around the time priest dropped AoE damage no longer scaled and probably 2 months after crits were added.

Crits have been talked to death but they make the game less fun instead of more. I feel like he dropped the ball on this one as rage attacks were already kinda like a critical and could have been built as a critical (not that they necessarily one shot you because /sigh) mechanic that the players could actively prevent with good skill management.

The skillset that I think should get attention to become more support-y should be bard/horn. I think it's the easiest to balance because it requires hands, and honestly I want the bard class to move away from the 'get hit do more' play style it currently has, which is a bit solo friendly for a group class.

BC also requires hands to cast heals/attacks (it's funny how they are so very closely related). Bard may be suffering from the 'recently nerfed' syndrome. But oh man was it broken before the aoe nerf!

I would agree that bard support as a whole is lacking (if priest is the measuring stick of 100% working).

Suggestion:

What if we changed the hand mod for bard (again)? What if while playing your healing song you get +healing for people in your group being attacked but only got +damage when you get attacked? If necessary you could shift the damage song mod on hands over to the chest so they do the same thing (thematically).

This would massively compensate for bard having very limited directed healing.