Best Healer for 10m

[Dakhath]

I'm looking to roll a healer to do a casual 10 man with some friends, but I must admit that I know next to nothing about the current state of healers. Any suggestions? I know Disc is almost always strong, but how are the others?

[Cairhiin]

Discipline Priest by far, but I guess all are more or less viable in 5.3. We heal with Holy Paladin, Resto Druid, and Resto Shaman.

[Glorious Leader]

Disc followed by monks and holy paladins. That's the comp we run with if we need to 3 heal.

[AvatarM]

5.3 = Disc Priest followed by Monks. Paly was the 2nd best, but with 5.3 nerfs, monks are better.
5.4 = At current PTR build, paly EF absorb nerf hit them pretty hard. Monks were OP cause 4T16, but it got nerfed. Resto Druids are pretty good with changes, meanly for 10 man, and glyph of efflorence is not even on PTR yeat. I would bet that Disc + Resto Druid will be really strong for 5.4.

10 man class balance is horrible atm. If you have a paladin tank and a disc priest, its like to raid with 11 players.The dmg output from disc and healing output from a paly tank really broke 10 man balance.

[Dakhath]

Thanks for the feedback all.

[Deleted]

Yeah Disc by miles atm, probably still in 5.4 considering they're not getting nerfed. Paladins are pretty strong atm, but they're getting hit hard by the nerfbat. Druids pretty weak atm but will be strong in 5.4.

[Alwayshealing]

YAY! Something I can really get into, healing! Ok so yes Disc is the top for almost all 10m normal modes fights then its usually a tie between Holy Pally and Monk. We run (myself) a Disc, then a HPally and have a WW that goes OS as MW Monk. I mean we 2 Heal the heroic fights thus far so he has been staying WW the past 2 weeks but still 5.4 is not too far off so we continue to have him building that healing set to enter the new content GL!

---------- Post added 2013-06-29 at 12:24 PM ----------

Druids are getting buffed though! I have been really working on mine lately just in case

[DarkAztaroth]

If you have difficulties and are in progression, shaman can help alot due to their mastery (Heals heal more when people low on health), yes they have a bit lower HPS in general, but their heals have more effect when it matters and they have a raidwide mana regend cooldown totem which can greatly help other healers. Also a good shaman paired with other good healers shouldn't run outta mana much, with just a moment of lightning bolts can regen quite a bit of mana.

Sadly, as the content becomes easier when you redo it, shaman loses a lot of it's advantages (Mastery not kicking in and mana totem not being need).

Poster right under me sounds like he had troubles with bad shammies, we do need to push lotsa buttons for different totems.
(still don't understand why that shaman wouldn't drop healing tide, its one of the best CD healing x-x anyways, shaman should pretty much rotate between ascendance and healing tide for large raid damage situations. Not forgetting to pop healing stream when using ascendance.)

[Alwayshealing]

Shaman are ok but it depends on the shaman tbh. You need to find a very skilled one. I have been helping a guild lately and their resto refuses to drop his Mana Tide, told me to use potions... > > and he only drops healing tide if they yell at him. He seems quite thick tbh and full of himself. But if you can find a Shaman that knows his class I mean even then.... We have a decent one in our guild and tried using him for our first heroic Jin kill he ended up(he is a 526 Resto OS) around 30k HPS and under the Prot Pally. I just suggest against a Resto unless they are above average.

[clevin]

The other reason to go priest is that you have two healing specs. Even if they, at some point in the future nerf Disc, Holy will still be viable (it's unlikely they'd leave priests with two weak specs). Aside from the 'best' argument, priest also gives you two playstyles so you can pick what you like best too.

That said, I leveled my druid this xpac (along with my hunter, but...) and it's been fine if a bit underpowered. Disc has most certainly outshone almost all specs because of two things - dps doing healing and absorbs. The former should be obvious - you can contribute HPS that's high and some DPS, usually at least 1/3 to 1/2 of a real DPS. Absorbs count first, so if a player has a shield and takes damage all of the damage mitigated by the shield counts as effective healing unlike actual heals where there's usually some overheal.

Reason not to go priest? If it was your main, it's a class that can only heal and do ranged caster DPS. Druid and pally offer more versatility in one class. If it's an alt and you use other toons to play the other roles you like, eh.

[Deleted]

i think, that disco priest is good

[Deleted]

Disc Priests>Everyone else atm.

Discs absorbs are still really strong, and when they Smite, they do a lot of damage. The low CD on Spirit Shell, Barrier and Pain Sup makes them very useful.

When it comes to picking a second healer though, I'd look at how the different healing classes work together. Holy Paladins (Paladins in general) bring a lot of utility such as all their Hand of Protection, Salvation, Sacrifice etc. So if you don't have a Paladin in your raid, that might be a good choice. All though the whole cheesing of mechanics with Hand of w/e shit won't be possible next Tier (as far as Blizz has said).


Resto Druids have some good utility in their Symbiosis. Put it on a Priest and they get Leap of Faith, which is good on a lot of encounters. Put in on a Shaman and they get running Tranq, which is rather OP. A Shaman however, will bring a lot of CD's. They work well, if you need more healing CD's.

The only class I can't say much about, is Monk. But I see that others recommend them. Personally I haven't thought that having a Monk would have gotten us kills faster at any point. In most cases I'd say that as long as you have a Disc Priest, you can more or less bring whatever as the second healer.

[zaneosak]

Shaman are ok but it depends on the shaman tbh. You need to find a very skilled one. I have been helping a guild lately and their resto refuses to drop his Mana Tide, told me to use potions... > > and he only drops healing tide if they yell at him. He seems quite thick tbh and full of himself. But if you can find a Shaman that knows his class I mean even then.... We have a decent one in our guild and tried using him for our first heroic Jin kill he ended up(he is a 526 Resto OS) around 30k HPS and under the Prot Pally. I just suggest against a Resto unless they are above average.

Being a 10man resto shaman I can say we are behind other healers generally but the case you are referring to has nothing to do with resto shaman and just a complete fucking downie. HTT and MTT is literally 1/2 the reasons to bring a resto shaman at all. Idiot it idiot.

[Daetur]

Absorbs are king right now, making Disc priest and Holy pally very, very strong choices.

One of the many problems with r shamans right now is that their mastery does not interact well with absorbs, giving them poor synergy with the top choice healers.

[Rucati]

We 2 heal almost everything as Disc Priest/RDruid, sometimes we 3 heal to learn the fight, but after the first kill we 2 heal almost everything. Both are incredibly strong choices, and RDruid looks nuts in 5.4, can't wait.

[Deleted]

5.3 = Disc Priest followed by Monks. Paly was the 2nd best, but with 5.3 nerfs, monks are better.
5.4 = At current PTR build, paly EF absorb nerf hit them pretty hard. Monks were OP cause 4T16, but it got nerfed. Resto Druids are pretty good with changes, meanly for 10 man, and glyph of efflorence is not even on PTR yeat. I would bet that Disc + Resto Druid will be really strong for 5.4.

10 man class balance is horrible atm. If you have a paladin tank and a disc priest, its like to raid with 11 players.The dmg output from disc and healing output from a paly tank really broke 10 man balance.

and on 25 you raid with 26.

[Sierra85]

and on 25 you raid with 26.

bit of an exploit

[Deleted]

Shaman are ok but it depends on the shaman tbh. You need to find a very skilled one. I have been helping a guild lately and their resto refuses to drop his Mana Tide, told me to use potions... > > and he only drops healing tide if they yell at him. He seems quite thick tbh and full of himself. But if you can find a Shaman that knows his class I mean even then.... We have a decent one in our guild and tried using him for our first heroic Jin kill he ended up(he is a 526 Resto OS) around 30k HPS and under the Prot Pally. I just suggest against a Resto unless they are above average.

Lol what? The top reason you bring shamans are for mana tides and healing tides. That mana tide should be popped on cooldown..

[Nzete]

Sure mistweaver monks bring high hps + some non-negligible dps. However, mistweaver hps is dependent on where renewing mists goes which is random. Uplifting the renewing mists takes chi (a lot of which comes from RNG generation from soothing mists). I started the expansion trying out the monk (beta seemed okay) to make the gear/tokens work better in our tens. I was back at my priest by the time that we got to H Blade Lord. Controlled absorbs >>> high hps randoms.

I two heal with a resto shaman. Sure our masteries don't play all that well together. However, when we get to the edge of what we can two heal, we end up healing about the same. Our swing heal is a ele/resto shaman. My priest is disc or holy as appropriate for the fight. In fights that take spread, moving aoe heals (H Jin-Rokh, N/H Tortos) or just high sustained throughput (Lei Shen - see P3) I go holy.

If you think you need 2 healers with significant damage, force the dps to dps more or stop three healing.

[Deleted]

Disc Priest >> Monk > Paladin > Druid > Holy Priest > Shaman

After Patch:
Disc Priest > Druid > Monk >> Holy Priest > Paladin > Shaman

Not 100% sure about where to put Holy Priests because why the hell would you use one when you can have a Disc Priest? Even when raiding 10man with 2 Heal Priests both should stay Disc. But i think its what i said +-1 Position.

-Disc Priests are #1 HPS on most fights while doing nearly all of the healing with Absorbs and by Dealing DMG... its just ridiculous. They also have very potent Healing/Raid CDs. Patch wont change much. Having a Disc Priest also makes a lot of Enragetimers a lot easier.
-Druids will be great after Patch and the perfect addition to a Disc Priest. While the Priest pushes his HPS through absorbs the Druid is just doing raw healing. After the Patch they also can dish out DPS.
-Monks are the perfect group-healer especially in 10man because they don't need their targets to stand together. Patch wont change much, they are still awesome but druids are a little bit better most likely.
-Paladins are the perfect Allroundhealer atm... after Patch they will still be, but all the nerfs could lead to them being useless if you don't need his support.
-Shamans are the worst healer in 10man period. Even after massive buffs they cannot compete with other healers because their mechanics are very 10man-unfriendly because several people have to stand together and thats rarely the case. Of course there are 1-3 fights every content where Shamans are good (for example Megaera or Ra-den) but even then they get outhealed by monks and priests