I have this e-friend — known him since way back, maybe 6 or 7 games ago. He has a saying, “You can really tell a lot about a game by how it treats the clerics.” I’ve come to realize over the years, this is dead-on gospel.
Which brings us to Warcraft, that I may start referring to as Warcrash — because me and this game, our love affair is fast coming to an end.
I volunteered to take one of the mandated priest positions in my WoW guild, well, mostly because everyone else already called rogue or shaman so the guildleader was screaming that he needed more priests. We do have one warrior in the guild, apparently that class really sucks.
I’ve also found that if I’m not a cleric/doctor/priest, I spend a good deal of my game time complaining about how stupid the clerics/doctors/priests are. If I’m the cleric, then I know we have the best. Ya, I have ego issues.
By way of a disclaimer, I’m only level mid-teens, so maybe this shit gets better later on … as in, I’ll have some relevance in game, or maybe I can solo quests before they’re several levels beneath me, or my quest rewards might benefit MY class. But damn, I’m starting to doubt.
The short list:
Cloth wearer – gee, ya think the aggro magnet healer might need a little help with defense? Or, how about a few quests rewards that a priest would really benefit from? Can I at least wear leather like my competition, druid/shaman? NOOOOOOOOOOO.
Crapass buffs – can I buff my mana stats like the other robed classes at least? How about a health point buff, since I’m sure to get a beat down from a multi-mob pull? No. Good news, though! I can buff the hell out of my AC, which is nice, because I’m tanking mobs in a dress.
No mob movement management (root/snare) – Since my nukes SUCK, can I at least root while my pling-pling nukes cast? Or control the add mobs so I can heal myself? Anything? (no)
Ok heals … which is good, because as a cloth-wearing, bleh nuker, I really need them. And when I say ok heals, I mean cleric heals should be rocking the house, they should be Goddamn! now we got something here!! type heals. Potions really shouldn’t be superior to priest heals. But that’s just me. I like common sense.
If AFKGamer had a staff, I’d make the staff research the upper-level priest abilities and do a chart comparing and contrasting with the druid and shaman, so we all could be better informed. Since there is no staff, and I think we can all agree that I’m not going to do extensive research, all we have is my very anecdotal impressions, which can be summed up thusly: Why oh why didn’t I make a shaman?