Holy paladins opinion

[Calabrese]

Resto druids are great for raid healing, and tossing Hot's around while Holy Paladins are generally better at healing tanks, so I guess it depends what you would rather do, raid or tanking healing.

[bigjenk]

Beacon the main TANK and heal the off TANK?

There is quite a bit of actual finesse that is pulled off at high level holy pallie play it is just bads and people who have no idea that think it is just beacon one tank and heal another spam.

[Tuccoyote265]

Damo, I had been playing a Holy Pally for 4 years, and i.m.h.o. there is nothing more boring than spamming heals on a tank.

Cataclysm is said to change that up a bit, making Paladins a more useful raid healer... but primarily their niche shall remain MT healing in general. You need to ask yourself what kind of healing position would you find most fun? try out both classes till 20 then do some bg healing to see what I mean.

If you are spamming heals on a tank, then you have no idea how to play this class!!! While in the past you may have only spammed the tank, you shouldn't be doing that now. In fact in all current content, there are very few fights when you are casting even 50% of your heals on one of the tanks. In 25-man ICC the tank healing assist casts more direct heals/HoTs on the tanks than the Holy Paly. Our class is currently designed around the concept of "beacon the tank so that you can worry about keeping the raid alive".

And apparently you're not paying close attention to the healing changes in Cata, where the current thinking of Blizz is that tank healing will be by committee instead of having a dedicated tank healer. In fact in Cata, it's entirely possible that we will no longer be the best of the healing classes at tank healing (see BoL nerf, removal of SS, addition of AoE heals+AoE bubbles).

And to your last statement, trying a healing class to 20 will not give you taste of the differences between the 2 classes. Neither class will have access to any of the signature features of the class by 20 (For Paly - BoL=60, SS=80, HS=50, FoL1=worthless, JotP=55, DP=71, not enough haste to actually matter to a Paly and you will have exactly as much intellect as every other healer and caster DPS; For Druid - Tree Form=53, Wild Growth=60, Swiftmend=40, Innervate=40, Tranquilty=30, Nourish=80, Lifebloom=64, Living Seed=38, Rejuv at 20 is pretty weak, although Regrowth at 20 is pretty powerful). Also, Paly healing in a BG is absolutely nothing like Paly healing anywhere else. In a BG, you BoL/SS yourself and then FoL/HS everyone else, moving your BoL/SS to other people if they are being targeted and you aren't. Also, you are expected to assist in stuns and your JoL needs to be on the currently targeted enemy everytime it's off CD and it does a significant amount of overall healing. Also, it's a different spec, you use different glyphs and a different seal. How in the world would any of that tell you anything about Paly healing? (I don't play a druid, so I have little direct info about the differences in BGs, but you rarely see druids in Tree form in BGs, so there are obviously some differences).