Garrosh 10 HC Druid or Shaman HEAL?

[Deleted]

Hello,

as stated in the title, I have the question if there are significant differences between a resto-druid and a resto-shaman for Garrosh hc on 10-man difficulty.

I will help out a guild on Garrosh hc, the second healer is a very good holy-paladin.

I have both mentioned classes ready and equipped and as far as I can say, I am quite good in playing either and both are fun.

Both my chars have an average itemlevel of 574, the main difference is: the druid has 4 tier-set pieces, the shaman has none. Is this already a major flaw for the shaman?

Can you help me choose which character i should use? Since I have not tried Garrosh hc yet, I am not familiar with advantages or disadvantages in this fight for those classes.

Thank you!
(Please don't flame for my bad english. Thanks.)

Glaedric

[Zambal]

Have they done any progression on garrosh before? What is the rest of the group classes?

As a shaman you bring alot of cds and healing on garrosh is all about burst dmg so alot of cd make it allt easier.

As a druid you can do some nice dps in T1 so if the group struggles there you can help alot. On ther other hand your shaman got one interrupt and a aoe stun to help out with...

All in all I would take the shaman if skill and gear is the same.

[Deleted]

Yes, they have done some progression, but I think it always ended shortly before the end of P2.

The rest of the group, if I recall correctly, is: DK and paladin tanks, elemental-shaman, shadowpriest, warlock, hunter, frost-dk and... umm. I think a enhancement shaman.

Regarding the shaman setbonuses for healers: are they that good? I could not try the 4 set bonus, so I always think I am missing something extremely good. Is it "mandatory" or do you think I could do the fight without the set?

Thanks you and regards, Glaedric

[Thunderbox]

2 set is meh, 4 set sucks. Missing tier bonuses on the Shaman will not matter.

[Deleted]

Regarding the shaman setbonuses for healers: are they that good? I could not try the 4 set bonus, so I always think I am missing something extremely good. Is it "mandatory" or do you think I could do the fight without the set?

2 set is ok but not amazing (just some extra automatic absorbs on the tank), 4 set isn't worth using, so you're not missing anything on the shaman.

I'd say the determining factor for garrosh would be what you can utilise better, some more burst dps in p1 from druid or an extra interrupt/aoe stun from shaman. Healing should barely matter in either case.

Druid can also easily kite the Iron Star in P4, but don't think you shuould try that if you're just starting out on the boss.

[Deleted]

Okay, thank you for the answers! Really helpful!

Best regards, Glaedric

[Mini]

If you are personally better at one or the other, you should probably pick that. If you're equally good at both:

Looking at that comp, I would guess you're going to have some Intermission 1 issues due to lack of aoe interrupt/stun. So that makes me lean toward shaman just for that. Intermission 1 is the hardest part of the fight and is routinely what drives our spec/comp decisions. Really any two healers can heal the fight.

Good luck!

[Dracodraco]

Shaman. No doubt. Stormlash to help the dps, AOE stun for intermission, shittons of CDS to combat whirls... There's nothing a druid does that a shaman can't do.

[Tehterokkar]

Shaman is better for Burst healing and CDs, which is all the healing you do on Garrosh.

Druid is the absolute worst healer for Garrosh because all damage happens in 5-8 second periods every 45 seconds and HoTs can't heal that, at least effectively.

[Dracodraco]

Shaman is better for Burst healing and CDs, which is all the healing you do on Garrosh.

Druid is the absolute worst healer for Garrosh because all damage happens in 5-8 second periods every 45 seconds and HoTs can't heal that, at least effectively.

Eh, not really. WG hits over 8 seconds, rejuvs can be sped up, and mushroom bursts on every whirl. I'd say mistweavers double uplift is weaker than a druids bursting toolkit, but they have dps instead =P.

[Gardiff]

Hm its a tough question. I would say go with what you are comfortable with. If you were 1 healing it, the shaman is hands down the better choice.

But, because you are 2 healing it, you don't need the plethora of cooldowns to survive whirls / transition / empowered whirls. But, a shaman / paladin together might have issues if you get more than 1 or 2 empowered whirls since they are going to be largely throwing single target bombs on the raid (unless if you have someone kiting the adds and are running as a group for the emp whirls). On a druid, however, they are largely unaffected by the empowered whirls. Don't overlook a SotF WG + 6-7 rejuvs for an empowered whirl.

If you want an easier time for everything but the empowered whirls, stick with the shaman. But if you have a good # of raid cooldowns available for the empowered whirls, then I would stick with the shaman since it won't matter. If you are lacking hybrids etc, you might want the druid since even though the rest of the fight might be a bit harder (though again, it won't really matter since it pretty much is a 1.5 man healer fight anyway), but the empowered whirls become easier.

[Seriss]

But, a shaman / paladin together might have issues....

Not really. I'm mostly healing Garrosh together with a Disc priest, but when our Paladin wants to heal the encounter, I notice no difference whatsoever and just do what I always do. It's not like a paladin would be a worse co-healer to a shaman on Garrosh than a Disc.

[meteo]

It doesn't really matter which you pick. 10man can be solo healed quite easily (just assign at least 1 raid cooldown for every whirl and/or make them use personals).

Because healing output doesn't really matter it's more the utility which counts: Stormlash and Bonushp vs Roar
Shaman gives you a little bit more DPS and a better buffer against burst while the roar might be useful depending on the tactics (for example my guild uses it in T1 right at the start).


the bigger question would be why they are bringing in a 2nd healer when it's so easy to do with one and it makes it even easier due to the higher DPS. 1/2 Tanks + 1 Heal is superior as it will cut progress time down as you can skip a lot of things.

[Deleted]

Hm its a tough question. I would say go with what you are comfortable with. If you were 1 healing it, the shaman is hands down the better choice.

But, because you are 2 healing it, you don't need the plethora of cooldowns to survive whirls / transition / empowered whirls. But, a shaman / paladin together might have issues if you get more than 1 or 2 empowered whirls since they are going to be largely throwing single target bombs on the raid (unless if you have someone kiting the adds and are running as a group for the emp whirls). On a druid, however, they are largely unaffected by the empowered whirls. Don't overlook a SotF WG + 6-7 rejuvs for an empowered whirl.

If you want an easier time for everything but the empowered whirls, stick with the shaman. But if you have a good # of raid cooldowns available for the empowered whirls, then I would stick with the shaman since it won't matter. If you are lacking hybrids etc, you might want the druid since even though the rest of the fight might be a bit harder (though again, it won't really matter since it pretty much is a 1.5 man healer fight anyway), but the empowered whirls become easier.

Sry but if a shaman has problems with the empowered whirl then that is an extremely bad shaman... the whirls have something like 40 sec cd but you can only get three of them consecutively if you fuck up the first intermisson or have really and i mean really really bad dps in p2 or p3 ( a group with good dps which has killed the boss several times will only get one empowered whirl the whole fight). Four in a row doesn't happen. Even then you can just swg+ascendance+em the first which will allow you to do a large amount of healing, healing tide on the second which basically heals the whirl on its own and then em on the third again. If you want to take ancestral swiftness instead you can use it for a chainheal in the 1.+3. whirl when you have to move out of your void.
You can also get ancestral guidance for a third cd if you really need to but i personally find rushing streams much better as you manage to heal targets out of your range in the whirlings if you position your totem right.

And for the dmg...while it is true that druids can potentially burst higher than shamans in p1, the overall dps isn't that far apart (warcraftlogs show the first druid at 86k dps over the fight the first shaman has 82k). Since the shaman also has a stormlash totem which will give the raid an additional 3-5 mio dmg each time used the dmg isn't that much of an issue.

I personally think that shaman is the better healer than druid on garrosh no matter the heal setup. That said, if you play your druid better then play the druid if you play them just as good take the shaman.

[Deleted]

No question, pick the Shaman lol (said by a i582 R-Druid with multiple Garrosh HC kills in 10- and 25-man). No matter which tactic they use for P1 or whatever, the Shaman is superior - and Shaman 4pc is not that good either. The only thing the Druid might be better are two perfectly timed HotW to help with DPS, but this should not be an issue anymore since the recent upgrades to gear.

[Gardiff]

Sry but if a shaman has problems with the empowered whirl then that is an extremely bad shaman... the whirls have something like 40 sec cd but you can only get three of them consecutively if you fuck up the first intermisson or have really and i mean really really bad dps in p2 or p3 ( a group with good dps which has killed the boss several times will only get one empowered whirl the whole fight). Four in a row doesn't happen. Even then you can just swg+ascendance+em the first which will allow you to do a large amount of healing, healing tide on the second which basically heals the whirl on its own and then em on the third again. If you want to take ancestral swiftness instead you can use it for a chainheal in the 1.+3. whirl when you have to move out of your void.
You can also get ancestral guidance for a third cd if you really need to but i personally find rushing streams much better as you manage to heal targets out of your range in the whirlings if you position your totem right.

And for the dmg...while it is true that druids can potentially burst higher than shamans in p1, the overall dps isn't that far apart (warcraftlogs show the first druid at 86k dps over the fight the first shaman has 82k). Since the shaman also has a stormlash totem which will give the raid an additional 3-5 mio dmg each time used the dmg isn't that much of an issue.

I personally think that shaman is the better healer than druid on garrosh no matter the heal setup. That said, if you play your druid better then play the druid if you play them just as good take the shaman.

Perhaps it was wrong for me to write that paladin / shaman might have issues because they really shouldn't as someone else pointed out. But even with SWG / asc / hst for one and htt for another, you will be largely getting by with single target spamming and not chain heals on the EWC (unless if you want to risk chain heal reaching a dead-end or, like I said in the original post, are doing something like 25s do where they move together as a group for EWC). Similarly, a druid can preemptively have rejuvs out with a sote WG with a sage-mender proc which won't waste NS etc.

I mean I could have given advice in the context of solo healing it since I've done it for basically all of our kills (1 heal / 1 tank). But that isn't relevant to what the OP is doing. Instead, I was pointing out the one area of the fight (emp whirls) that they might have trouble with even if 2 healing. And in that one aspect, the two classes (shaman / druid) are both very capable of handling the situation, with the druid slightly edging out. Hence the comment about how a shaman would have an easier time with every other aspect of the fight except perhaps the empowered whirls.

If you want proof, look up warcraft logs and check the graphs for burst HPS during empowered whirls on pretty much ANY shaman parse vs a druid parse. If a shaman is using cooldowns like you are saying, most shamans during empowered whirls are at ~275-400k burst HPS because of the distinct lack of easy-mode healing rain. Druids can push up to ~500k burst HPS (usually in the range of 400-500k) on the EMPOWERED (NOT talking about regular) whirls. Thus, my point on why a druid can be better equipped for the empowered whirls. But since they are 2 healing, this largely doesn't even matter.

I feel like a lot of you are getting hung up on the fact that I am saying druids are OP or what-not. No, that isn't the case. Obviously shamans are hands-down the easy-mode healer for solo healing the fight - but that's not what they are doing it. They are 2 healing it with 2 classes that are not going to be DPS'ing for the most part. Thus, those parts of the fight that might be difficult while 1 healing / 1.5 healing will not be difficult at all (i.e. transition, normal whirls). The only area that is going to pose a problem from a healing perspective is the empowered whirls, and that was the point of my post - how a druid is just as equipped if not better (unless if literally the shaman saves asc + htt + swg all for 1 empowered whirl and then yes, the shaman would probably pull ahead for empowered whirls, but you better hope you are not getting more than 1 empowered if you do this (and as a caveat, if you blow everything on this one empowered whirl you can't use any of your 3 min cds in P2 since if there is only one empowered whirl because you pushed it before entering terrace, 3 minute cooldowns from normal whirlwind 1 will NOT be up in time for final phase empowered whirl 1)) than a shaman.

And as you pointed out, a HotW shouldn't be overlooked for the transition or to help push a phase (though PE is nice, it is not as bursty).

[Firebug1975]

I'm a resto shaman main. I've healed on Garry hc progress, and it's perfectly suited to resto shaman healing (stacked/semi-stacked high burst).
However, we run a pretty tight roster and our resto druid prefers to heal only so I ended up playing elemental for Garry.. running Conductivity to assist healers, and ofc I've got all the goodies ('cept Spirit Link) plus a cheeky Solar Beam for T1 which helps enormously.

Might be an idea if your Shaman has a good Elemental set...

[Barrun]

It was mentioned druids can easily kite the iron star in phase 4; shaman can too. Ghost Wolf is sufficient for kiting the star, throw in a dark water potion in case of an emergency and ezpz. As far as utility goes shaman is a no brainer, capacitor for the first transition, wind shear for the mind controls, a raid cooldown of every whirlwind.

[Tojara]

I'd go with the shaman just because their CDs are better suited for the encounter, stormlash is nice and capacitor is a nice touch for the first intermission.

Druids are nice for stampeding roar and knock back, depending on what speed boosts or knock backs you actually have available in your raid group.

[Aerna]

Druid gives more dps for transition 1 and phase 3 (HotW up for both)

Shaman gives better interrupt for transition 1.

Healing wise, either will do the job very well, so it's a non-issue.