I must disagree. There are many circumstances where I believe bubbling (debuffing) your whole team is much needed. Some examples would be before you engage in a team fight, you should bubble your team 5-7 seconds before engaging. This makes it so by the time the bubble is completely absorbed the debuff will be gone and you can re-apply when needed. Another example would be when your team is pushing it is a good idea to constantly keep bubbling because when you push as a team you 1) your team takes far less damage than in a standstill mid-fight 2) you can't afford to constantly stop and heal as you need to stay with the pack and apply the pressure. The same thing also apply's to if you're being pushed. Clearly if you are positioned correctly you can afford to stop and heal a couple of times without being picked off but mass bubbling keeps some pressure off your team.
Also, if you're with an FC, he/she should be bubbled at all times.
Lastly, pugs are much different than wargames or premades. The burst is rarely coordinated between a team and hard swaps aren't really a thing. The only time a person gets bursted is if their position is awful and people see this. Typically in a team fight there are 5ish dps to choose from. With rend being so OP and other classes having great dot damage due to elemental force, it's usually smart to have your dps bubbled.
Maybe this is easy for me to say because I've been playing priest for a while and I have a better idea of when I should debuff compared to when I shouldn't.
Although there are some priests that do debuff at the wrong time, the good majority of 'veteran' players/priests do debuff at the right time.
I'm mainly referencing the people who bubble pretty much out of the gates and literally bubble everyone every second they can.
I really don't like the idea of bubbling your entire team 5-7 seconds before combat because then at the very instant that burst is at its highest, you now have to rebuff your entire team while they're all taking this insane burst. It would make more sense to just save the bubbles for people taking this burst than realizing oh crap everyone's bubbles are gone, time to go down the raid frames lists of GCDs even if they aren't taking any damage besides DOT damage.
One thing priests need to consider is as long as there's a conscious shammy you can't leave bubbles dancing around as many of those bubbles are gone and your team is debuffed within the first few seconds of a mid fight. That leaves anywhere from 3 to as much as 7 seconds depending where multiple members of your team are debuffed without a bubble. If dasfizzla or Nicozy are on the other team, consider those bubbles debuffs, but as long as you save those bubbles for burst they're unlikely to purge them before a starsurge destroys the bubble anyways.
But in terms of the debuff damage... If you save bubbles for countering serious damage as opposed to countering debuff damage which is likely to be countered by some riptides, regrowths, healing surges or even dispelled anyways you'll see much less friendlies dying with debuff which is something I see multiple times every game. Also debuffs pretty much always last longer than a bubble so long as they are not dispelled. If a healer is standing back and out of range of dots, then he should be bubbled as that would provide nearly a full ambush absorb should a rogue choose poorly to open on a bubbled healer with full 100% bubble. It does work as a great deference when it comes to rogues opening on healers. However, if you bubble everyone 5-7 seconds before combat, you would now have to waste a GCD to protect them from ambushes while your front line are actually taking the bulk of burst that they will.
If I'm correct in going off the top of my head, Shadow Word: Pain lasts 18 seconds, Flame Shock lasts 30 seconds, Rend lasts 18 seconds, Moonfire lasts 20 seconds, and Power Word: Shield only lasts 15 seconds or absorbs between 1k damage to 2k depending on a bubble crit so that bubble is easily broken by a single attack on top of the dot damage that was already done. I'd rather save the bubble for when he is facing that attack than to lose out bubble points on debuffs.
I do agree that FC should always be bubbled.
Everything is extremely situational but 90% of priests on Horde side are just bubbling the world for the healing charts.
My entire point was that since these people do exist and they're very common, my ability to counter burst as a healer is completely gimped because there's no way to stop these people from bubbling everything. So, I'd rather just avoid the problem and log over to my shammy which has greater utility anyways. Although, I have been playing priest much longer than I have played Shammy.
Just my 2c
