Fav healer? Your preferred healer

[Hethor]

I play a druid healer, so i would say Druid for AoE damage, and Paladins for Tanks/Melee damage.

[Hethor]

] Druids and Paladins are not as OP as people say, giant numbers in Recount do not mean shit.

It does if you're ahead of someone by 50% I've played with some pretty good priests but almost 90% of them never touch half of my healing done.

[Worshaka]

Holy: CoH, PoH, PoM, Renew, FH, GH (seldom if ever), PW:S (w/ B&S only), Binding Heal (rarely)
Disc: PW:S, Penance, FH, PoM, PoH (rarely), GH (rarely, some builds), Renew (seldom if ever), Binding Heal (rarely)

So let's see...common spells? Holy: 5, Disc: 4 (5 in some builds).

Yeah, that sounds like about half all right. :

Garbage...

Holy uses the entire toolbox if played correctly, that is FH, GH, PoM, PoH, CoH, Renew, Binding & PW:S... 8 spells. The only one i'd be inclined to remove is PW:S if there is a Disc Priest present, otherwise you still use it. That's not to say it's a priority but it can still be used as a temp HP spell for known incomming spikes. Binding heal is one of the most under utilised spells there is, if you seldom use this then you're not using the toolbox properly. Gheal should still be used, particularly timed to land after predictable known spikes, a hasted GHeal is one of the best reactionary spells you can cast that doesn't invoke some sort of CD.


Disc is PW:S > Penance > FH... rinse repeat. I'll also say that binding heal is a good substitue for FH and disc can use binding just as effectively as holy can. The only time you will ever deviate from this is in very specific situational encounters. Hasted PoH is nice, granted but your job isn't to raid heal, your druids and holy priests will do that... just because you can do it doesnt make it an effecient use of your GCD nor does it help in terms of the healing team you are raiding with. If you PoH you will basically snipe the heals of your raid healers. Instead you're better off to PW:S spam up to the point of the raid damage or consistently through the encounter (assumign raid damage is simply consistent), helping out with PoH is generally a waste of effeciency. Renew is bad, Gheal is bad, PoM most of the time is also bad because when compared to FH its ineffecient, however it can have more applications than PoH does.

Holy consistent toolbox is 7-8 spells... disc is lucky to use 4 consistently... that is losing half the toolbox. Now the next point is Holy actually plays a form of mana conservation game... disc completely disregards mana, there is hardly any point to even having your mana displayed on the screen. You cast spells irrespective of your current mana and irrespective of your targets health. Lastly 90% of your heals will be on 1 target or perhaps a combination of 2 targets... thats what you're concerned with.

Holy on the other hand has to conserve its mana, that means thinking about selecting the most appropriate spell for the occasion. Holy has to target numerous raid members and not only that it has to make decisions based on logistics, ie. which target will allow my CoH to hit 6 targets. Which group can utilise the PoH the most. Holy has serendipity and SoL procs to watch and interweave, we dont follow a set spell selection like Disc does.

There are soooo many facets to Holy that make it more difficult to play but more enjoyable for the same reason. You could seriously blindfold yourself as disc assuming u had the person you were healing targeted and simply press, 1 (PW:S), 2 (Penance), 3 (FH), 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3, 3, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3 etc. That might not do the absolute optimal job but it would clear instances. The gap between playing the spec like a baby (ie what i describe above) and playing it skillfully is very small. The gap between playing Holy like a baby and playign it skillfully is extremely wide.

Its similar to Ret Pally dps... you could create a cast random macro for Pally dps that just did enough damage to clear content, and the gap between that and the truely skillfull players isn't much. Same premise and this is why the more skilled players or the players who want a bit more thought in their play will tell you disc is boring. The people who dont like to think or equate god mode to fun will say disc is fun.

[harky]

You're making two false assumptions. First that Holy uses those 8 spells with any regularity, which good Holy Priests don't do and second that Disc Priests only use three (maybe 4) spells.

On the first half of that, of the 8 you listed two are used very, very rarely by any normal raiding build. Most builds don't have talents to increase GH healing or decrease it's cast time. Why? They don't cast it. PW:S except for B&S is a waste of a GCD. It's a utility spell with B&S and a waste of time otherwise. That drops you to 6. If you want to include Binding Heal, that's fine, we'll call it 6.

As far as Disc, congratulations on not understanding what Disc does anymore. PoM in particular is pretty much used on cooldown by Disc. Ever wonder why a lot of Disc Priests use the PoH glyph? Because they cast it. PW:S, FH, Penance, PoM, PoH. If a Disc Priest foolishly isn't using PoH we're back down to 4. If you want to call BH a FH alternative we're up to 5 again.

6 vs 5. 1 more spell. Do you really want to go out on a limb and say GH and PW:S are popular enough as Holy to be called regular cast spells? If so we can add in that some Disc builds, due to haste being hard to avoid are now using GH in tank rotations (PW:S>Penance>GH>PoM>FH rotations). We'll also add on that since Renew has higher healing per execute than FH that Renew is in fact used by Disc on tanks when aiming to stabilize a tank. So if you want to push Holy to using 8 that means we've also now added 2 spells to Disc with GH and Renew. We're now at 8 vs 7. Of course as stated PoH actually is used... hey look... 8 vs 8. Holy gets CoH and Disc gets Penance. Clearly we lose half our toolbox by switching. :

[Izenhart]

Priest Druid

[Xylinia]

Fav healer? Bleh hate healers.

Preferred healer? Disc Priest.

[kilssii]

I think priest is best, because priests can fill all the healer roles + no matter what spec you have a great cooldown for the tank.
But for 25 raids they all are needed / it's good to have all of 'em.

[Melonberry]

Please for the love of god don't make over reaching broad statements of stupidity such as this one. The healer is only as good as the person that plays it regardless of its class, and there are plenty of times that all have their strengths and weaknesses.

It's not incorrect to say that though.

Why bring a holy priest? A tree can heal more, faster, and for longer. B&S that important? Naw. So they are better replaced by a tree.

Why bring a shaman? Do you have bloodlust in your raid? If yes, please pass this spot to another healer. I'd compare them to another healer, but chain heal doesn't have a comparison. It's also not very good, yet it's their best spell. Every other heal is worse than the counterpart of some other healer, and chain heal is dwarfed by the other smart heals.

And sure, a good holypriest/shaman is going to be better than a braindead druid/pally/disc, but given equal skill, the druid/pally/disc are always better and more useful. They are just flat out better at their jobs. There is no need to argue, because there is no argument. The pally will always be the best tank healer, the tree will always be the best raid healer.

[kilssii]

trees aren't really that good spot healers, because their healing takes few seconds to start building.
Trees are best raid healers when all of the raid takes stable damage, shamans chain healing is better when parts of the raid takes spiky damage.

[Psyjin]

It's not incorrect to say that though.

Why bring a holy priest? A tree can heal more, faster, and for longer. B&S that important? Naw. So they are better replaced by a tree.

Why bring a shaman? Do you have bloodlust in your raid? If yes, please pass this spot to another healer. I'd compare them to another healer, but chain heal doesn't have a comparison. It's also not very good, yet it's their best spell. Every other heal is worse than the counterpart of some other healer, and chain heal is dwarfed by the other smart heals.

And sure, a good holypriest/shaman is going to be better than a braindead druid/pally/disc, but given equal skill, the druid/pally/disc are always better and more useful. They are just flat out better at their jobs. There is no need to argue, because there is no argument. The pally will always be the best tank healer, the tree will always be the best raid healer.

LOOOOOOL

So then Mr Shammy hater, a Pally will always be a better tank healer than a Shammy eh? As a main tank (and a former resto shaman) I'd like to take this opportunity to point out how wrong you are. I take it you haven't heard of the talent Ancestral Healing? I'll give you a run down; After a shaman crits a Healing wave on a main tank for not a lot less than a Pally's holy light would do, that main tank then has 10% more physical mitigation for 15 seconds. Added to that is the fact that the heal will more than likely whack Earthliving on there, the main tank should always have earth shield up on them (which is taken off the shammy and given to the tank on recount as it's seen as self healing for all you recount worshipping noobs out there), lesser healing is almost as mana efficient as flash of light and if your main tank is doing fine, giving your melee some love with chain heal. I'd say the above gives you some pretty damn good MT healing. Nearly forgot riptide, got it going spare? Whack it on the MT as the crits from that proc ancestral healing too. Giving almost 100% uptime on 10% more physical mitigation, oh wait, stoneskin totem, jesus, that tank is going to take a hell of a lot less damage and have just as, if not more, effective healing with a resto shaman close by and focused on him/her.

[smuggles908]

Resto druids and shamans. Restro druids preffered for 5mans

[Frozendream]

I am very fond of Disc Priests <3

[Deathcold]

Paladin for tank healing, disc or tree for raid healing (and they can tank heal better than a paladin can raid heal for the most part)

The other healers are worthless.

Dont listen to this guy... disc priest good for raid heals?? lol

[Xiangu]

I would love holy priests to be the favourite/prefered healers.. personally I can heal as good with my holy priest as with my resto druid - the only difference being mana/heal throughput but the truth is everybody will invite the druid while many won't invite the priest.. a pity really.. been playing holy priests since vanilla :*(

[Azyoulike]

So then Mr Shammy hater, a Pally will always be a better tank healer than a Shammy eh?

Erm yes, that's true and one doesn't have to be a shammy hater to believe it, I've never seen anybody with any sense claim that shaman are superior tank healers than pallies.

As a main tank (and a former resto shaman) I'd like to take this opportunity to point out how wrong you are. I take it you haven't heard of the talent Ancestral Healing?

Ancestral healing is nice - as is the priest version, Inspiration, however paladin single target healing is much more than 10% better than either priest or shaman and not all damage is physical so it's only relevant if you're considering a 2nd healer on the tank.
Even then I'd choose Pally/Disc > Pally/Pally> Pally/Shammy = Pally/Druid > Pally/holy.

I'd agree shaman are better tank healers than holy priests, but then that's not what you're claiming.

After a shaman crits a Healing wave on a main tank for not a lot less than a Pally's holy light would do, that main tank then has 10% more physical mitigation for 15 seconds

Holy light hit's harder than healing wave, indeed many shaman don't even pick up the talents for HW. It hits faster than HW, yes even than tidal wave hasted HW- because the pally has JotP and Light's Grace. Moreover you can only cast a tidal wave hasted twice before needing to either riptide or CH to renew the buff. Finally HL can be spammed longer than HW, let us accept the inevitable - HL is superior to HW.

the main tank should always have earth shield up on them (which is taken off the shammy and given to the tank on recount as it's seen as self healing for all you recount worshipping noobs out there)

No it's not, no more than it's given to the tank on parses - such as this one http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat...571#healingout from a random top resto shaman, where it was 7% of the shaman's healing.

This was true back in TBC when ProM and Earth shield both generated healing as self-heal and gave threat to the tank. It's not true for over a year though, but hey - way to call people noobs when you're wrong.

Anyway it's a nice little spell, and well worth getting your raid healing shaman to throw on the tank. But it doesn't make the shaman a tank healer.

lesser healing is almost as mana efficient as flash of light and if your main tank is doing fine, giving your melee some love with chain heal.

Which simply isn't relevant because neither is widely used in tank healing these days. If you can keep a tank alive through an encounter with LHW or FoL then you've overgeared the instance.

I'd say the above gives you some pretty damn good MT healing.

You would be wrong.

stoneskin totem, jesus, that tank is going to take a hell of a lot less damage and have just as, if not more, effective healing with a resto shaman close by and focused on him/her.

You realize that a pally brings the exact same buff right? I believe the scrabbling sound in the background is that of straws being clutched at.

In summation - shaman are not better (or even equal) tank healers to paladins, this would make them the best tank healer in the game. And in fact the guy who said that all their spells but CH have a pally equivalent that's better is exaggerating, but not by very much. Many shaman spells do suffer from this problem.

[Skiball]

So, you would say Paladin as well? I have one just thought they got nerfed into the ground? My Pally and Shaman both are 80...I will try the paladin for a couple days and see what I think of healing with him.

Yes, its a Paladin, the glutton for punishment of the nerf bat. That being said Ret is still Blizz's red headed bastard step child (since the beginning), holy is still doing well despite the nerfs.

If I had to roll another class to heal besides a paladin, it would be a disc priest or resto druid. Always feel comfortable when one of them are healing me when I am tanking.

[Brokn Buttrfly]

I'd love to hear your reasoning on how losing half your toolbox and pressing heal buttons without thought makes it more exciting?

Holy uses a far wider range of spells, requires some thought in terms of mana management, requires a greater diversity in terms of healing targets... Disc is quite powerful but its not an exciting spec to play, you spam three spells for 99% of the time and 2 of those spells are used on mid to long cds, so you effectively become a FH spammer that throws in the occasional penance or PW:S.

I really find this sort of view quite bizzare... I still maintain that most people think disc priests are fun or exciting because it limits their ability to have to think, they don't have to manage their mana, everything contradictory to why healing is actually fun.

I'm fairly new to this forum as you can see by my 1 post, generally stick to EJ and it's comments like these that make me stay there. You apparently do not know much about priests, how to manage your mana, gem, enchant or glyph if you think the 2nd comment is true.

My main is a Disc/Holy priest. I have to use both specs because my guild has an excess amount of Healadins and 2 solid and reliable Disc priests. Being the Disc that doesn't PVP I opted for Holy 2nd spec for more healing diversity. All that aside I can honestly say after healing all Wrath content as both specs it's no harder to manage your mana and still perform well as holy compared to disc. If you're a retard and do nothing but spam your highest cost spells and don't time CD's correctly yeah you have to be careful with mana. If you l2p your toon it isn't an issue.

First comment show again your ignorance about the class you seem to think you know so much about. Disc has 2 CD's they use regularly, Penance and PoM. Neither being on CD as long as they are is an issue. PoM, if that was any shorter you would clip your own spell. Pen got nerfed because PvPers are amazingly good at QQing, and Blizz seems to cater to all things PVP. It didn't gimp the class, just forced Disc priests to rework their tank healing. It did nothing to disc raid healing. Disc priests aren't "FH spammer that throws in the occasional penance or PW:S" unless they are bad. PW:S is the #1 casted spell for any good disc priests I've ever seen. Disc priests who try to spam FH and occasionally use PW:S are bad at their class. If you want to spam FH and occasionally PW:S people roll a Healadin because that's effectively what you're doing, just not doing it as well as they do. Disc's that do that are more then likely the kind of people that constantly watch the healing meters and try to justify their poor performance on being a mitigation healer without actually mitigating much damage. Meters are a wonderful thing if you know how to use them and I encourage all raid leaders and healing officers to figure out how to effectively use them.

I've read you troll too many times and sorry this time I really had to comment. I also apologize to the original poster for getting so off topic. To answer the original question I would say play whatever toon you enjoy the most. All healing classes are viable at the moment. It's really just a matter of what roll you want to perform in your raids.

[Tocsin]

Man, never expected this many replies to my simple question.
It started out as a simple question so I didn't grab a healer that nobody would want/need. I remembered in the past some places "Required" a certain healer just to make it through the content. That was such a turn off. Anyhow, having fun playing again. I still enjoy my Shaman more than the Paladin healing 5man stuff. Going to give the priest a go for a bit.

Thanks guys. All I was looking for was if a healer would be passed on for a heroic 5man over another or not. If your a tank who do you like rolling with and so on.
Meters dont matter to me as long as I have fun playing the class and I keep everyone alive. Well cept for the retard dps...Gotta let them die now and then.

[Moxal]

I play both a priest (holy/disc) and a resto shaman.

Since the OP is referring to heroics, I would say that any of the four healers can heal any heroic like a champ. Lesser gearerd pallies may have difficulty with H ToC (at least in my experience playing dps on my priest) but all four healers do fine in heroics.

Given the choice of a healer for heroics, I would choose based on reputation and my experiences with that player rather than class.

That's just me, however.

[Azyoulike]

Man, never expected this many replies to my simple question.

Heh - this question always results in religious wars. Fortunately priests are quite good at them - another area where shaman fail - after all how many animists do you know in real life