Healing Synergy

[Alexio]

My guild is about to start raiding in Cata this week, and as one of the three healers, I'm looking for advice on how we would be best setting up.

We have a Holy Priest (Shadow off spec), Resto Shammy (Ele) and a Resto Druid (Balance). When starting Raids, would you go with two healers or three? If two, which two pair up the best? DPS in off specs is fairly equal between the three of us.

[Zka]

3 healers. Healers are now pretty much equal, they barely have niches anymore.

[Dyra]

Agreed on 3 healers. In my (fairly limited) experience, the only 'raid' encounter where you only need 2 healers is Argaloth.

[Ynna]

Go with three. It is probably possible with just two, but three gives you a margin of error, which is needed while you are learning the fights.

[Thinktonk]

We run with 2 healers. Disc and holy.

[[-Spiritus-]]

I concur on a three healer set up. While two is doable on some fights, three is best, especially at entry level. If you must drop a healer due to a lack of rDPS, I would go with either the shaman or priest. You only need one of them tank healing for the 10% phys mitigation buff. Which one depends entirely on your raid.

[Skarrd]

Assuming zero overlap with the dps raid buffs, drop your resto shaman. 4% additional SP is a pretty big deal, and it covers 5% crit just like a moonkin as well as 5% haste like a spriest (regardless of spec, even).

Obviously if you have a demo lock or are melee heavy this is less relevant, but the SP buffs also help healing a bit.