Dear Druids / Shamans,
For the last month I have played a Holy Paladin. And while I find this an excellent healer, I cannot help desiring to play something else within the healer spectrum. I'd like to have more spread / aoe healing and I'm looking for some real tools to give answer to emergency situations in dungeons. My Paladin ofcourse comes with it's own cooldowns, but I still cannot help feeling they're not quite what I'm looking for when comparing them with HTT or Tranq.
I nailed it down to Resto Shaman and Resto Druid. I have a Shaman at 110 and a Druid at 106. Over the last few weeks I've done a lot of comparing, a lot of reading, and sadly, reading a lot of biased posts. I've got my own pros and cons, but I cannot quite find the information to cut down to a decision. So I decided to write everything down, post it in both class forums and hopefully find other opinions that can help me make a decision.
About me:
I've played WoW since 2005, but only up until 2 months ago I decided I wanted to learn how to heal. I have never healer before, at all. And I like it a lot. I managed to complete M+6 on my Holy Paladin and healing felt very satisfying. I'm currently in a guild that's at 2/7M EN, but sadly I'm not on the raidteam due to lack of healers. I'll be mainly joining the alt HC raids and doing Mythic+. Hopefully in the near future a healer spot opens up, my officers are aware of my desires to heal and will keep it in mind.
Resto Druid:
I adore the extreme mobile gameplay this spec and class brings. I also think the talents and the artifact are really well done. Everything feels very "tuned" and complete". As if Blizzard payed a lot of attention to this class. When checking statistics on Mythic raids and dungeons, it's Resto Druid all over the place. From the worst brackets of percentiles, this spec doesn't seem to deal with a lot of issues and errors. Somehow it feels this class cannot go wrong and that this spec will always be in a proper position, not only this expansion, but future expansions as well.
My main concerns are mana issues I've been reading up on often, and dealing with spike damage. It's definitely these 2 points I would like to see more opinions about.
Resto Shaman:
It's funny. On paper I personally would rate Resto Shaman the absolute best M+ healer there is. Mastery written for it and tools to supplement it to a point a Resto Shaman in M+ would be borderline OP. When I look up statistics, specifically on M+, I see something completely opposite, and I wonder why that is. I really don't understand it.
I also feel as if the talents and artifact of the Resto Shaman are not as carefully tuned / fluent as with the Resto Druid. A concern is the rapid decline of Shaman healing when content gets put on farm.
Here's my personal shortlist:
Shaman: Awesome on paper, great offspecs, worrying statistics and somewhat mixed opinions. Reactive healing a + for now. Depressing class hall.
Druid: Great talents and artifact. Feels as a FOTM choice, can't seem to go wrong with ever. Worrying mana issues. Spike dmg? Is HoT/pro-active healing really that different or hard?
I most certainly are not looking for a "play this spec" answer, note to moderator, but definitely answers to my concerns, general advice that I might have missed, and would love to hear from people who perhaps play both specs. All in all, I think either choice is a good choice, I just want to make sure I've considered everything when making that choice.
Thanks in advance, cannot wait to read replies!