The Bishop: No longer needed?

In my opinion, Bishops could be seen as useful or not useful depending on the situation and depending on what they are being used for.

Honestly, Bishops' heal can and can not be useful in bosses.
I remember I was buying a zhelm on my level 58 assassin and i had a bishop in my party. The bishop healed great and I used minimal HP pots until the third body came around.
The thing is, the usefulness of a bishop really depends on how reliable he/she is. It is really up the player whether or not they trust the bishop to be able to heal. I have been in plenty of parties where the priest/bishop is really quite bad at healing and therefore quite useless to the party. I have, however, been in parties where the bishop is incredibly useful, as i described above. It is all about preference.

Now that pirates are out and there are a substantial number of buccaneers around, I feel that only one or 2 bishops are really necessary. In bosses, the bishops can just switch out of parties for ressurection, and then the buccaneer can use time leap on both so you can get a good 4 ressurections out of that. So that is not a problem. Anyone who dies more than that is not worth the ressurections.

The only things that bishops provide for parties are dispel, bless, and holy symbol.

-Dispel is useful for zakum and such, but not absolutely necessary. All cure pots.
-Bless is also useful for some warriors, but not really all that much. Plus the new archer pots in NLC help.
-Holy Symbol. Very useful. There is nothing that can really substitute that.

In conclusion, I think that bishops are useful, but only one or two are enough. And it also helps to get very reliable bishops. Not just random ones.