10 Man Regulars and Healing

[Zurii]

So I joined a rather casual guild to start off my raiding in Cata, nothing to fancy, 3 nights a week for 3 hours each night.
So here's where my question comes into play, we have two regular healers for our 10 man, myself and my paladin buddy. I raid heal, he tank heals and snipes me on occasion. The third healer is random, basically anyone we can grab but.. Myself and the paladin healer are by far the most experienced healers in the guild and any other healer they bring in normally drags behind us holding something like.. 12% of the overall heals and sometimes gets passed by our DK tank.
SO. I suggested to my raid leader that he just drops the 3rd healer and lets us two heal all of BoT and BWD (regular) in order to pick up another DPS. He continues to push for a 3rd healer spot while I continue to feel that it is wasted, am I being to rash by suggesting this or is it possible to two heal all of those fights in regular?

Also, myself and the paladin are both in (nearly) full 359 gear if that makes any difference.

[vizzle]

You can 2 heal all normal mode fights except for Nefarian. But maybe your raid leader just wants to try to find a 3rd healer that is good to recruit so you guys have a chance to progress into hardmodes? The guild leader might be looking towards the future and not just the now.

[Deleted]

Problem arises when you wanna do more than just clear the same old content. Ideally you will want 2 core healers and 1 very good healer with a decent offspec.

[Grizzlehorn]

Problem arises when you wanna do more than just clear the same old content. Ideally you will want 2 core healers and 1 very good healer with a decent offspec.

This.

You will need three healers for hard mode. Some claim that you can kill regular Nefarian with two healers, but it sounds tricky to say the least.

The other thing to consider, is that your raid will be completely screwed if you or the Pally needs a night off. Healers can be hard to find these days. In the off week that I sit for a fight and join a PuG to help out, their healers are usually horrible. This might not be the case for all realms.

Personally, I switched from my Warlock main in WotLK to a Priest about a month into Cata, because our raid was hurting for healers. From what I've seen, a lot of people don't like healing anymore since it is arguably more challenging. I find it a bit shocking that people would rather stick to their pure DPS classes than have a raid, but that's just the way it is.

[Skyve]

You can easily two heal all of BoT, and you can almost solo-heal Maloriak (requires about 16-17k HPS at most to do that). Nef would be the hardest boss to two-heal, considering it is better to have a healer on each platform (you could however have a shadowpriest, or any other healing hybrid try to heal a platform together with another hybrid), however, it would still be quite an ordeal healing through all the electrocutes while trying to keep the nef tank up, since you'd only have one healer for both jobs.

[Ynna]

We two heal pretty much everything except for Nefarion, but I must say that one some fight having a third healer is quite nice, especially when learning the fights (more room for error). In our raid group we have either a Moonkin or Enhancement Shaman with a very good off-spec, for when we need an extra healer. Recruiting an extra healer might also be worth it for if you or the paladin wants to skip an evening.

Bottom line: Two heal, but either recruit an extra or gear someone for off-spec.

[Zurii]

I feel stupid for not thinking of having a dps with a good healing offspec. We currently have one shadowpriest who runs with us and is a decent player, if all things are go I'll suggest to my raid leader that we gear them for offspec. Sounds like a happy compromise.