How's my driving... ee, healing?

[DiGG]

Main always been my priest, loves playing both spec, healing always more chalenging... but now I'm conflicted about the OPness of priest heals versus resto druid.

My (holy) priest has 3xT10 + 264 dps shoulders (icc25 trash drop) + 264 T10 dps chest + the usual trinkets and rest of gear. My druid has 2xT10 + 2xT9 + some 251s and 264s (VOA drops). My mana regen is MUCH higher on my druid, but I got +400 spell power on the priest. When I go into ICC and heal, it feels much easier to heal with the druid, and when I check Recount and some WOL my HPS is usually around 4k with the druid and around 2.7 with the priest... and the mana regen deficit seems to really kill me.

Am I to gem all the way into mp5 or what? Are resto druid OP atm? Oh and yes I'm still not entirely geared I know, main spec on priest is shadow so I've been working on the side on the healing set, also my druid is one of my main alts so...

[Callypso]

Short answer: Yes, druids are OP in ICC atm.


Longer answer: With it's many aura-fights and multi-tank bosses ICC is pretty much designed for druid and paladin healing, similar to how Ulduar was a healing priest's heaven.

A druid in decent gear can fairly easily keep up 15 stacks of rejuvenation rolling in a 25m raid. Assuming there is enough damage going around for all that healing to be somewhat effective (which there is on most bosses, especially on hc) there is simply NO WAY you will be able to do the same amount of healing with your priest as you can with your druid.

Does that mean you're completely useless? Not at all. While our druid healers are spamming their way to the top of meters blanketing the raid in hots, I use my bursthealing to make sure that no one dies in the process. Even tho massive rejuv / WG spam looks great on the meters, those hots aren't likely to save anyone from a double ghost explosion on Lady D, Mallable goo on Putri, link damage on BQL or other similar 'spike damage' effects.

As a holy priest you play pretty much the only healing class ingame atm that has to watch that blue bar that says 'mana' while doing your job. That means you can't go into spam-mode as easily as your druid, and even if you do, your druid will most likely still outheal your priest.

Meanwhile, you are sharpening your skills as a healer and learning to play the game like it's intended, and you'll be ready for cataclysm. The druids on the other hand will have to start all over again in Cata when they find out mana isn't infinite after all. (If blizzard keeps their promises)

[DiGG]

Ok then... thanks for the answer, eventhough I'm a bit sad priests aren't the shit in ICC. I do admit on any heroics priests are great... maybe in Ruby Sanctum we'll have a better go at it than ICC.

[dubbz]

I was having the same problem on my shaman. I just COULDN'T keep up with a good druid in heals. I was pulling my own weight, don't get me wrong, but my 5.9k gs resto druid friend that knows how to heal was topping me on nearly every fight.

[Vook]

HPS is just as bad as GS, imo. I'd rather look at how much was healed, rather than how fast it was healed.

That said, Disc will beat out Trees easily on Sindragosa/BQL/Festergut, seeing as they have 0 overheal with bubbles, and can also keep PoM rolling while shields are out.

But really, you shouldn't be worrying about who heals how much. In my mind, as long as nobody dies from lack of healing, the healers are doing fine. You should only worry if your healing is VERY low, compared to the other healers.

[CaseyTheRetard]

That said, Disc will beat out Trees easily on Sindragosa/BQL/Festergut, seeing as they have 0 overheal with bubbles, and can also keep PoM rolling while shields are out.

If your Disc is topping your trees on those fights, it's only because you are using too many healers and PW:S is the best at heal sniping.

[G l o w y r m]

Well, comparing the HPS of a Druid to a Priest doesn't work due to the healing styles.

Holy Priests are BURST AoE healers, meaning their HPS spikes up and then tapers down and then spikes up... etc.

Druids are CONSISTENT over time healers. Their HoTs are constantly firing off on many people at the same time, so HPS is going to be high.

This is just 1 reason why HPS is not a good way to measure how well someone is healing, and how useful they are to a raid (at least cross class/spec).

Priests are extremely valuable for ICC hardmodes, both Holy and Discipline, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

There are fights that Druids will do better on (something like BQL), and then there are fights where Priests will do better on (Lich King), and then there are fights where they can both do really well (Marrowgar). This has a lot to do with the player also, I think Priests have a few more spells in their kit to use than Druids (which I can't wait for them to fix in Cataclysm!).

As for your mana problem, I don't think you should be having any mana problems as a Priest. Between 'fiend, hymn and a pot used at the right times, you really shouldn't be having mana issues unless there's no replenishment in your group or something.

Link to your armory would help more than that vague description.

[Samurai]

Holy Priests are the Arcane Mage of the healing world.

If we have mana we can make it disappear faster then any other healer ;D

[Elysia]

That said, Disc will beat out Trees easily on Sindragosa/BQL/Festergut, seeing as they have 0 overheal with bubbles, and can also keep PoM rolling while shields are out.

Was going to say... what? Both of our raiding trees are always ahead of our Disc priest on all 3 of these fights. Maybe at this point into ICC he's just being lazy, but we've pretty much always beaten him out on aura fights.

[Vurrin]

Sort of offtopic for the discussion is about Holy Priests and their mana regen issues, but Disc Priests can limit druid throughput on aura fights while making their own numbers seem impressive
.
Too lazy to find WoL for all the fights since I've been offdpsing a lot lately but I can top meters in most aura fights np.
HPP w/ 2 druids http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/q...?s=9154&e=9551
HBQL ( had to go back about a month for the last time I actually healed this fight due to achievement whoring) http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8...=10092&e=10385
HFestergut http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/q...?s=8517&e=8757

Sindragosa Heroics a lot more RNG so I won't top the meters with unchained and I'm usually have to cover for paladins with unchained and overheal on the tanks.
Anyway I don't think "zomg disc tops the meters" makes me a good healer... all it really means is I have low overheal and can block HoT ticks like a pro, on fights where I'm topping meters I am probably contributing the least to keeping people from dying spike RNG dmg since I make them essentially immune to an instant 12-14k heal for 15 seconds by casting a shield that gets eaten by aura dmg.

[Auraye]

Why do people say that shields block HoT ticks? They don't. The best 10 man healing combo I've been in is me as disc, and a resto druid. He raped the charts. I concentrated on tanks, but when someone in the raid got low, I'd toss a shield and get back to what I was doing. The shield would simply stabilize the person. The shield would act as a buffer to stop additional incoming damage to avoid death, and also buy time for the druid to cast a hot, and allow it to tick them back to full health with no stress.

So again, how is shielding sniping heals? It just stops incoming damage, and when glyphed, heals for about 2k damage. BE MY GUEST to heal the person back to full.

Druids have loved healing by this method because it's less stress on the both of us, and we're both doing what we do best.

[Atty]

Why do people say that shields block HoT ticks? They don't. The best 10 man healing combo I've been in is me as disc, and a resto druid. He raped the charts. I concentrated on tanks, but when someone in the raid got low, I'd toss a shield and get back to what I was doing. The shield would simply stabilize the person. The shield would act as a buffer to stop additional incoming damage to avoid death, and also buy time for the druid to cast a hot, and allow it to tick them back to full health with no stress.

So again, how is shielding sniping heals? It just stops incoming damage, and when glyphed, heals for about 2k damage. BE MY GUEST to heal the person back to full.

Druids have loved healing by this method because it's less stress on the both of us, and we're both doing what we do best.

Kinda doesn't surprise me how little you've killed in ICC10.

[Surfd]

Was going to say... what? Both of our raiding trees are always ahead of our Disc priest on all 3 of these fights. Maybe at this point into ICC he's just being lazy, but we've pretty much always beaten him out on aura fights.

Are you using any kind of mod that tracks absorbs, and includes that in the healing done numbers? A competent Bubble Happy Disc Priest should have more total "healing" (counting heals + absorbs) then pretty much anyone else in a constant damage fight like Sind or Festergut.

[Liliathan]

Don't care about meters. I love priests. I've had priest since the day 1. Now we got 3 viable specs that we can use: two different kind of healing specs and one dps spec. Priests all the way.

[CaseyTheRetard]

So again, how is shielding sniping heals? It just stops incoming damage, and when glyphed, heals for about 2k damage. BE MY GUEST to heal the person back to full.

I'm a huge fan of Disc - we have one in every raid, it was me in T9 and early T10. No one is saying that shielding in general is sniping heals. The issue is that when there is an excess of healing in the raid - say 7 healers on Saurfang, as an egregious example - that people are basically "competing" to heal the incoming damage. Your position on a meter is based on how well you can exploit the abilities of your spec to get heals on the damaged folks faster than other healers. This is the process we call sniping. Yes, everyone who heals understands how this works and that meters tell you basically nothing useful.

If someone takes 10k damage, a paladin who hits them with HL gets credit on the meter over a druid who throws Rejuve on them. Better yet, a Disc who bubbles them before the damage comes is healing the damage before it even happens. In that sense, PW:S is the best ability of any class for sniping meters.

Pre-shielding isn't a bad thing in any way, it's a healing tool like any other. The problem is uneducated raiders who do normal mode ICC with 6 to 8 overgeared healers and the enormous ICC buff and say that Disc is clearly the best healing spec in the entire game because it's really high on a meter. The amount of damage taken on a given fight stays pretty much static over time, but the ability of the healers to pump raw healing increases with gear and the ICC buff. Disc is well oriented to grabbing a larger piece of the pie when placed in competition with other specs who have to wait for damage to actually happen in order to heal it

But yeah, what Lil said - priests are awesome.

[Gestopft]

Druids are ridiculous. My Shaman is much more geared than my druid, but there are things that are so much easier to heal on my druid than on my shaman. I can keep rejuv on everybody, keep WG up the whole time, swiftmend if need be, and its like nobody ever takes damage.

[Waterwings]

roll disc and rofllol druids on most fight (except for sindra/bq..:P)