Healing Classes and History

(or, Why the Hell do I Have All Four Healing Classes??!?!)

Yep. It’s true. I finally have all four healing classes at max level. I’m still not sure why, exactly, but I do. As such, I feel the need to discuss some of the differences and such between them. This isn’t going to be a direct comparison between all the four classes and five specs, but more my own history and views on each. I feel that I’ve spent a lot of time recently giving out information, which I love to do, but haven’t spent a ton of time on me/my classes/my history, despite the whole “I hate my guild” post last week. So this is a fair amount of rambling about my history with my healers in the game. You’ve been warned. ;)

For those of you who don’t know, I started out playing WoW in October of 2005. I was a hunter. A male night elf hunter. I knew I wanted to be Alliance and I knew that I wanted to be a hunter, since I’ve always enjoyed ranged gameplay (Thief and arrows!) and I knew I wanted to be a male for two reasons:

1) I didn’t want to be treated any differently because I’m a woman. Having a male toon is the first step in blending in with a world that is, to this day, still dominated by males and their attitudes. Having spent a lot of time in online communities who would freak out (in a variety of ways) when a GIRL would open her mouth, I knew I wanted people to assume I was male.

2) The female night elves bounce as their idle animation. I knew I didn’t want to stare at a bouncing bimbo for the next however long I’d be playing. :P (Apologies, nelf ladies, but it’s true.)

I wasn’t bad at DPSing. I actually was pretty good and I enjoyed it. A lot, really. I loved being at range and was able to assist in raids easily or even lead them easily, back in the day. Granted, there was one time I was the main assist and I literally could not find the fourth sheep on Venoxis’ adds, but most of the time, I had a great view of everything. And there was even one night where I topped damage in Molten Core.

However, DPSing was getting dull. My days in WoW consisted of farming for my Beaststalker Helm (28 Gandling kills, thank you) and Beaststalker Tunic (I think the number was 58?) along with running out to Silithus to farm Essence of Air to make Mongoose Boots, which were my big seller as a leatherworker.

It was in the summer of 2006 that I started levelling my bank alt, a human female paladin, who was named Madrana. The name came from the fact that I was actually angry with my guild at the time for some reason, although it’s pronounced “Mah-DRAW-na” and not “MAD-rayna”. ;) I decided to level Madrana because I wanted to see how this hybrid class actually was when it came to healing and tanking. I already had a DPS toon with Kurn, so I didn’t really care to go ret. Besides, ret back in those days was laughable.

I tanked one run of Stocks on Madrana in my 20s and healed every single instance thereafter. I couldn’t stand being so close to the action and I didn’t like the focus on melee as a tank. So I went holy. I wore anything with intellect, cloth, leather, mail, plate. I crafted myself some of the Blue Dragon Mail set which were amazing pieces even back then. I stepped in to Zul’Gurub one night, long after we’d already cleared the instance for the first time, and though I was nervous as hell, I felt like this was what I was supposed to do. I really felt like I was supposed to heal. It came naturally to me although I was still more proficient on my hunter. So I went to more and more raids as my healer, leaving poor Kurn on the sidelines. But when you don’t have enough healers, you do what you can for the guild, right?

Although, if you wanted me to bubble pull Garr, I would often chicken out and beg another paladin to do it. ;)

When things blew up in my guild as the Burning Cruade came out, I levelled Kurn. And then Madrana. And then apped to a guild on Madrana. As a healer. In crappy greens with 800 spellpower, I got in and helped a guild clear through Curator (plus Chess, but no Aran) and got the first piece of T4 in that guild. The guild subsequently lost its entire first Kara team except for me and a rogue. They had been ninjaed by the top guild on the server.

At about this point, my buddies from my first guild were languishing in their current guild and we decided screw it, we’d set up our own guild together.

So Apotheosis was born and, since I was “uber geared” on Madrana, compared to Kurn, and since we had a healer shortage as per usual, I got to heal for, oh, all of Burning Crusade. So I healed. I was healing lead and raid lead and I healed. Everything. Kara, Gruul, Mag, SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT and even one sad night of Sunwell Plateau. :)

However, through BC, I was getting bored. I hated the instances and heroics back then. I just had no desire to go through and heal them, or even DPS them on Kurn. I levelled a mage and then got bored with her. And then I discovered one of my RL friends played WoW and had a shammy alt around 60.

Now, my brother had levelled a dwarf priest from 1-47 or so and then abandoned the poor thing. I had subsequently occasionally played the priest and gotten him to 62ish. I didn’t hate it. Holy was fun! Smite spam was fun! So I ninja transferred my brother’s priest to my account and to my friend’s server and we levelled together to 70. I healed and I had FUN healing as a holy priest. I went out of mana ridiculously quickly, but I still enjoyed the mobility of it, the concept of hots, the idea of group healers, the bouncing of PoM… It was great. I even joined a guild and raided Gruul’s a couple of times, even did some SSC with my friend’s friend’s guild. I had a lot of fun on the priest.

But then, that guild fell apart and my being GM/RL really took up a lot of my time so my time on the priest was really just me logging in to my friend’s server after my own raids. I’d mount up on my ram and do circles in Nagrand for ore and gas clouds and chat with my friend in a custom chat channel where, every 10 minutes or so, I’d see “WIPE!!!” while they were pushing through Sunwell. :)

At the start of Wrath, when my guild fell apart (yes, this is apparently a theme), I decided to level my shammy while raiding on my paladin on Bronzebeard. I made my shammy enhance/resto and she became my miner/herbalist to complement Madrana’s trade skills of jewelcrafting/alchemy. I healed almost all the instances I went to, particularly since dual spec came out just after I hit 40. But I didn’t go to a lot of dungeons. I spent a lot of time questing. It was just easy, being an OP class. Hell, any class where you can heal yourself mid-battle without issue is awesome. (Maelstrom Weapon procs FTMFW.)

And so the shammy hit 80 and is mostly in T9 resto gear. I haven’t put a lot of effort into her and I don’t play her much. She really is my farmer and I’ll do an occasional heroic or weekly raid on her, but doing five or six random heroics on separate toons is really just unmanageable at this point, especially when the queues for two of them are in excess of 12-15 minutes.

Still, I feel comfortable on the shaman. I am confident in my abilities to keep a tank up and I do okay on raid healing. Truth be told, raid healing is my weakness, which is silly when I have Chain Heal. I just don’t think to use it enough, because I’m hard-wired to spam Flash of Light on everyone who needs a quick heal. Overall, though, the shammy has the most similar playstyle to the paladin, which contributes to my comfort. I still reach for Divine Plea and Divine Shield, mind you, but mostly remember Mana Tide and Heroism. I’ve healed on the shammy in TOC10, 25 and ICC25 now and again, but mostly, she’s my farmer, like I said.

So at some point in Wrath, my brother decides he wants to make a return to the game. Not on his druid (stuck at level 60 for the rest of his days) or his rogue (I think he dinged him 71), but his hunter. His 19 twink hunter.

Well, I had a level 20 druid, so we got my brother over to my RL friend’s server (where my druid was) and we levelled together. Naturally, I levelled as feral and resto, so I could tank or heal anything. I have to say that though I’m not a huge fan of tanking in general, I really like tanking on the druid. 360 degree Swipe is totally OP. I also love the cooldowns. Survival Instincts, Barkskin, Frenzied Regeneration… all awesome.

But it was when our buddy Majik started levelling with us in the 70s on a DK tank that I really learned how to heal on a druid. I’m not awesome. I’m pretty much the weakest on the druid as compared to any other class, but the three of us had a BLAST tearing up instances together with the random dungeon finder. I’ve got my Clique bindings such that healing on my druid is almost as elegant as playing the piano. Alt-click, shift-click, etc, it’s beautiful. I really feel the elegance in playing a druid. They’re not the brute-force healing class that a paladin or even a shaman can be. They’re the “here, have a hot or four!” class that will sort of clean up after the mess of raid damage. I really do enjoy it, but my major weakness here is that I’m impatient. I won’t wait for my hots to tick. It’s something that comes from playing a paladin, I guess, where you can’t toss hots on everyone at half-health and then they’re like, all up at 85%+ six seconds later. As a paladin, you basically have to keep everyone topped off all of the time and rely on your ability to cast fast heals to heal people up after party-wide damage. So the major issue for me here is trusting that my hots are doing enough healing.

Then came the priest. My brother bored of his hunter (he’s geared well, too! The jerk!) and decided to level a paladin. Well, I decided that if he was going to level a paladin, I may as well level a priest. It’s not like I had a choice in doing another character — if my brother rolls one, I roll one too. It’s just How It Is. That’s how my mage came to be, to be honest, rolled alongside my brother’s warrior, which he subsequently abandoned.

With my brother intent on DPSing and tanking, I decided to heal as disc, since I’d already had a smattering of experience as holy on my brother’s priest (which I returned to him on our original server prior to Wrath). The tank/healer combination ensured virtual instant queues for us anytime we queued for a random dungeon, which is great. It’s how we levelled. My brother learned how to tank and I learned how to heal by, er, not healing. Shield, shield, shield, shield, shield. Renew. Shield. Done. Things got a little more complicated when my brother got Spiritual Attunement and before he got Divine Plea, so I just stopped shielding him to begin with, since I didn’t have Rapture yet, and that worked a lot better.

My biggest issue with healing as a priest, at least as disc, is the lack of Circle of Healing. I loved that as holy in BC, though it’s true, there was no cooldown. ;) But really, it’s about getting a lot of people up to full health quickly. I’m not a good priest yet. I save Power Infusion for myself for OH SHIT moments where I need to spam Prayer of Healing. I am much better at keeping POM up, too, thanks to POM Tracker and my Grid shows me PW:S and Weakened Soul and Renews and things like Pain Suppression/etc. But I’m not awesome and I probably won’t be awesome, because the priest is just so different from the paladin.

It’s so much more mobile. It’s about mitigating damage more than healing, which is so weird and alien to me. Still, I know that, without a doubt, I am better than approximately 87% of the WoW players out there. :P

So, 2000 words into this post, we get to the point of it.

The shaman is the most similar class in terms of mobility to the paladin, which is why I am so comfortable with it. You stand. You cast. If you move, you hit your instant Riptide which is on, surprise, the same cooldown as a paladin’s Holy Shock.

Druids are still foreign to me and I cannot get out of the paladin/shaman mindset of letting hots do their jobs. Three seconds per tick of Rejuvenation? REALLY? I mean, barring Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation. But seriously. That’s a long-ass time.

Priests, both healing specs, are interesting. They have direct heals. They have a hot. But they both provide mitigation (albeit a holy priest’s PW:S is pretty weaksauce) and cooldowns. It’s a whole new dynamic to play with. I CAN spam Flash Heal like I would have spammed Flash of Light, once upon a time, but I have so many other tools. POM, Renew, PW:S, Binding Heal even. Like, really. A built-in self-beacon? How awesome. I vaguely remember casting this a couple of times on my brother’s priest. And Desperate Prayer is just hacks. I love that it’s a talent and no longer limited to a dwarven racial.

Really, it’s weird, but the more I think about it, the more it’s the vast utility priests can bring that really attracts me to the class. Extra stam, extra spirit, shadow resistance, mitigation, hots, direct heals, passive heals (POM), group heals (POH) and cooldowns. I mean, how awesome is it when someone gets Harvest Soul on Lich King and a holy priest slaps Guardian Spirit on them, it doesn’t get consumed (but helps keep them up) and then is usable again on the next Harvest Soul? Beauty, I tell you. And Pain Suppression is just completely overpowered.

Granted, they wear the equivalent of wet toilet paper as armor and, coming from wearing plate and mail, with an invulnerable shield, that’s hard to swallow. There is nothing worse than praying for Weakened Soul to finish on you so you can cast another shield on yourself when you’re taking lots of damage.

I think it’s the challenge of playing a priest well that has kept me playing the priest and got me to 80. I’ve been a healing lead in three separate guilds this expansion — Apotheosis, my Bronzebeard guild and temporarily in my current guild — and I THINK I know what I’m doing with priests, shammies and druids, but it’s one thing to know the theory behind the class and it’s another to know how to play the class. I think that having played each class has really expanded my knowledge of each of their abilities by a fair amount and has let me assign them more efficiently.

Obviously, I’m not done yet, since the priest is still a wee baby 80, but I do plan to dual disc/holy and play around with that a bit in VOAs and weeklies and the like. As soon as my gear doesn’t totally SUCK.

And now I feel better, having explained to you guys (but mostly myself) why, precisely, I have four healers.

12 Replies to “Healing Classes and History”

  1. I think the most important thing to remember about healing as a druid is that your HOTs very rarely sync up perfectly. Your Rejuvenation may tick at xx.xx.00, xx.xx.03, and xxx.xx.06, but your Regrowth may tick at xx.xx.01, with Wild Growth at xx.xx.02, and Lifebloom at xx.xx.015. Assuming enough haste, and maybe the glyph, there should almost always be some HOT ticking if you need it (i.e., if you don’t completely outgear the instance).

    But generally, I agree with what you’re saying about the healing. I never feel like the HOTs will be quite enough, so I’ll fill in the gaps with a Nourish (which is HAX, I wish I had it while leveling) and it’ll all end up being overheal. But I still can’t shake that feeling that ZOMG THE TANK IS GONNA’ DIE.

  2. As some one who’s main healing has been druid healing (I was a holy priest WAAAAAY back), I’m most comfortable with being a tree, but I still feel “well, I didn’t do anything there” when big raid damage comes along and I just put rejuv on ever one, then I see the shamy slam out chain heals. But then I look back at fight numbers, and you see that I’m doing a LOT of healing. I think it’s that druid healing isn’t healing, it’s mitigation, just like PW:S. I’m comfortable seeing DPS sitting at 75% hp because I know that in 5-7 seconds they WILL be at full, and if they need it, I have nourish/Swift Mend.

    I think this shows up in my play style for my shaman also. I tend to focus on rolling hots, both riptide and the procs, and have my ui set up to show who has the HoTs on them. I’m gettign used to working more with direct heals, but I still almost always fall back to riptide as my favorite spell :P

    I am contemplating DSing the paladin into holy, but I keep coming back to “But, I want more buttons to press!” (it’s a druid thing).

    Come cata I will be leveling a priest (and a rogue and a hunter, the only classes I don’t have at 70+), and I think I’m going to stick him as Disc, and see how I compare that to being a hot freak.

  3. I too have many healers. I have the Shaman (raided BC and Naxx as Resto) and the Paladin. Now my druid is 67, and my priest is 30ish. So very, very different – but knowing how the other classes work helps me mesh with them in raids.

  4. I hope to have all 4 classes of healer at level 80 within a few months. Right now I have a druid (my main) and a shaman.

    I love the druid and I think I always will. I feel exactly the same as you when you say the grid+clique setup is elegant and beautiful. I love that on any given fight I will usually heal every single person in the raid to some degree. Even though I’m primarily a HoT healer I also make a lot of use of Nourish and Swiftmend which I think provides nice burst healing too.

    I have mixed feelings on the shaman. I liked it when Ulduar first came out. LHW/Riptide spot healing was a lot of fun. When they buffed Chain Heal I lost interest. Chain Heal now seemed to be back at almost Sunwell levels of OP and I don’t like only casting one spell.

    My paladin is 71 and I’ve only healed a few random dungeons. I’m finding it completely different than the druid or shaman. I love that you need to Judge the mobs/boss in addition to healing. I’m reserving judgment on it until I get to 80 and have my full arsenal of spells though.

    PS. When Night Elf females bounce, they aren’t being bimbos. They’re working their calves :P

  5. My Paladin has almost dinged 40, whilst my poor druid is languishing at 22. Now, to be fair, healing at 22 isn’t exactly brain surgery on ANY class, but the difference between the two (even when they were at about the same level) is enough to make me wary of my ability to Druid heal.

    I KNOW I can pop off a Holy Light as you tick down from 30% to 15% and have you back up at 75-80% when it hits (or even full health, if it crits), but I can’t bring myself to trust my HoTs. I know they work – I know wonderful Tree healers who rock the role – but it’s just… SCARY to me, I guess, to just be trusting that a few seconds from now, that person will be up at higher health rather than, y’know, DEAD.

    One day, I’m going to learn how to druid heal. I’ll probably get my pally to 80 first, though.

  6. There is a comfort level that everyone has to reach when they play a druid. It’s that level of comfort that shows taht you believe in your HoTs, that they somehow will pull through for you in the end. For me, it was after healing through outland with a “bipolar” spec. i was too cheap to buy dual spec, so i went as far as dreamstate in the balance tree and filled up the resto tree as much as i can. Glyphed HT can simulate Nourish, but even there, i used Regrowth to make up large differences in health, ignoring the added HoT at the end of each regrowth. There is also a glyph for regrowth that made it more powerful if you already had regrowth HoT up. So that helped a bit.

    I started off healing as a priest but didnt get too far (level 70) and switched to Druid healing. it was a good change, at least for me, to see how a HoT healing style class played. and it played great. i was in love and played it until the love got stale. then i tried leveling my priest in northrend and couldnt get past the HoT style of healing. she is disc, so i renew+bubble everyone and pretend that’s my rejuv!

    Druid healing does take a little bit of getting used to. but once you get to that comfort level with the druid where you know your HoTs have you covered, you might really, really like it.

  7. Hey! Desperate Prayer was a Human racial. Gawd. FW was the dorf, Hymn was Draenei. Night elves had starfall – too bad that didn’t get given to everyone too!

    Anyway, the only class I’m not comfortable healing on, is my druid. I have an issue with HoTs and I just end up spamming nourish. So I just tank instead.

    I haven’t leveled a paladin, but I intend to. She’ll likely be prot/holy so I can whip through the DF.

    I LOVE healing on my shaman, CH makes me so happy you don’t even know!

    However, I’m not sure I could ever leave Kaleri. I started a priest in BC (a bouncing nelf) and got her to 60 (questing as disc, woot woot) on a pvp server and then stopped playing. At the request of my MOM, believe it or not, I started leveling Kal on Bronzebeard. Yes, a 2nd priest haha. I leveled her as shadow and once I hit 70, I found out the guild didn’t need healers so I stayed shadow, crafted my OP shadowfrost set thing and became the best mana battery I could be :)

    I’ve given though to going back and being shadow, but… I don’t think I could. Playing on my hunter makes me anxious because I can’t. Heal. Anyone. Ever. /RAAAAGE Tanking is awesome, I loves it on the druid. But again, anxious. It’s a newish role for me, even though I’ve tanked almost every instance in Wrath now, I’m still afraid that I’ll suck.

    The one thing that makes me think I could never give up Kaleri and Disc is:
    Lich King. It makes me feel all powerful when I see 15-20 Infests drop all at once AND your mana bar stays at 100%?! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    Also, we did ‘Been waitin a long time for this’ the other day on 10man and, guess who was full mana after all that waitin’? This lady!

  8. Woot, woot, so many comments, so much discussion to be had!

    X – I’m most used to healing on a druid in 5-mans, so that means that my tank has: Rejuv, Lifebloom (x3) and WG up, with occasionally a Regrowth. Unless it’s my brother’s new tank, in which case he has all four on him at all times AND I spam Nourish. 541 defense and he’s still squishy as all get out. Must get him decked out, and soon.

    But that’s exactly how I feel — ZOMG THE TANK’S GONNA DIE ZOMG ZOMG. I only have faith in the direct heals that work immediately. A large failing of mine, to be sure, but I clearly need some quality time healing on the dr00d so I CAN shake that feeling.

    thansal – I like what you say about druid healing being mitigation. It’s very true and it’s how I used to assign druid healers in BC. I’d always have one druid healer on the tanks, rolling Lifebloom, to fill in for the seconds when the direct healers were casting.

    I’m definitely NOT comfortable seeing people sit at 75% health, but it’s something to work for, I guess.

    I love Riptide too, but for a different reason. I always forget that RT is a HoT. I just use it to proc Tidal Waves and then Healing Wave the target, haha.

    There’s a lot of button pressing for holy paladins, but it’s not all for healing spells. It’s judging, shielding and beaconing, THEN you have Flash of Light, Holy Light, Holy Shock and the possibilities of Hand of Sacrifice, Divine Sacrifice, Lay on Hands… Whereas the druid is all healing all the time.

    I think if you think of HoTs as mitigation, you’ll take to the disc priest nicely. :)

    How did you fare with the downtime? :)

    adgamorix – Can you elaborate on any specific ways in which knowing how druid or priest healing works has helped you as a paladin? I always feel better knowing more about the people around me (hell, I could have tanked as a warrior in BC, had you plopped me down in front of a geared, max-level toon, just because I knew enough about it) but I’d love to hear any details.

    Jasyla – Okay, this is clearly not just me, then. I’m so glad to hear so many people have a ton of different healers. :) And I’m really pleased to hear that someone else would describe druid healing as elegant as well.

    Glyphed Swiftmend is pretty much the most magnificent thing on the planet. I adore it. Nourish is a great “OH CRAP” button and I’m glad druids have it, although the temptation to use it when I don’t need to is awfully strong, given my background. :)

    As to shammies, I think that you pretty much HAVE to switch up your spell use and not rely solely on Chain Heal these days. We have a couple resto shammies in my current guild who really focus on just doing that — so we assign them to jobs where that is useful. But there’s another one who is perhaps not the best player ever, but he WILL use different spells and he’ll use them well.

    For the paladin — pre-casting is always good. In BC, and even pre-BC, you used to be able to sit back and wait until the target was at 80% health or something and then start healing them back up, but nowadays, you just don’t stop casting, ever.

    Bwahahaha, that’s the best reasoning I’ve heard for the bouncing EVER. Thank you. :D

    Apple – Trusting the HoTs is a terrifying prospect, yep. I don’t generally play with combat text on, so I don’t even really know what my heals hit for, on any toon, but maybe if I actually turned it on for my druid and saw the numerical values of my Lifebloom or Rejuv ticks, I’d feel better…

    That said, I have to come out in favour of getting the pally to 80 first. Not that I’m biased or anything. ;D

    Devynity – I was glyphed for Regrowth, too, especially at the early levels. I even bound it in Clique to the same binding as my Holy Light — Right-Click. It came in really handy while levelling and occasionally healing prior to having dual spec.

    Any advice you can share with us about getting to that comfort level? Is it really just practice or was there something that just clicked for you to make you trust your HoTs?

    Kal – HEY, now, Desperate Prayer was BOTH human AND dwarven. Humans also had Perception and dwarves also had Fear Ward. Then the Draenei got Symbol of Hope (now Hymn of Hope) and Fear Ward. And Nelves had STARSHARDS. Sheesh, lady, get it right! ;D

    In all honesty, I totally forgot that humans had Desperate Prayer as a racial, too, although you reminding me totally brought back this memory of a priest back in my very first real guild and how he lived through Venoxis or something due to DP. Man, I wonder what Clixis is up to these days…

    :D

    I am way too eager to resort to Nourish spam, so I like to tank instead, too.

    If you’re gonna go prot/holy, be prepared to do a lot of tanking. 9 times out of 10, you’ll be called in as prot. I highly recommend starting out by going deep enough into ret to get Seal of Command, then going down into prot. It really helps you hold aggro at all levels of content.

    I either didn’t know or didn’t remember you had a shammy! Chain Heal is so pretty, I love seeing the beams hit four people when people are positioned well.

    Kal was your SECOND priest? At your MOTHER’S request? That’s hilarious! I did hear that you were a magnificent mana battery with just one unfortunate tendency — to SW:D yourself to death now and again. As I recall, you were shadow when I first showed up on BB and you died in Naxx on Gluth due to SW:D. ;D I think I started keeping an eye out for you then. ;)

    Not caring about Grid and the people dying or low on health is HARD when you’re playing a DPS class! It’s taken me a lot of practice on the hunter to ignore other people dying. Sometimes, I’ll forget to DPS because I’ll just be staring at my Grid wondering when the healer is going to freaking HEAL PEOPLE.

    I don’t think I ran much with you on your bear, but when I did (VOA 10s?) you weren’t particularly squishy or noobish or anything. As long as you’re holding aggro and doing your best not to die or let others die, you’re doing fine. Have you tanked ICC on the bear?

    Bwahahaha, I hear you, re: Infest! When we started learning Lich King, we only had one holy paladin, so I put a disc priest on the other tank with my beacon. Well, the tanks were staying up, but the raid was dying to Infest. So I had the holy priest in the raid switch to disc and had him bubble spam while the other disc priest stayed on the OT and we eventually downed him with that strat. And through it all, I was like “man, my RL friend the resto druid is going to be SO psyched when she sees we solved the Infest problem!!!!” :D

    How the hell did you maintain full mana during Been Waiting A Long Time For This?! Just by virtue of shielding for Infest? I hate you. ;)

  9. Hi Kurn,
    To answer your question, i really think it just takes a lot of time to get used to trusting your HoTs. But to be fair, i did level a feral kitty/bear druid before i leveled my Resto druid. resto took forever, and having a bit of a bipolar spec helped with the questing and stuff outside of instances. you can do it all the way through Outlands, but i would suggest switching to a full resto spec come northrend instances.

    What did happen often is that before i pull difficult mobs, i would pre-hot myself, possibly with regrowth as well if my health was low, and run into my fights with some healing going off. it will slowly top me off and mitigate some damage done to me. i only do this every so often (when my health dips too low) as i am usually ok after a fight. i got really used to the rejuv going off every three seconds that it just shifted naturally into healing.

    Although you might already experience this, i just want to share with you my priority when healing. since mana regen isnt too big of a deal, i would put rejuv on all of the melees. if a ranged dps gets attack, i would consider it being due to random attacks by the mobs/bosses (the occassional charge, etc) and would just put up a rejuv on them. if they take more damage, i would swiftmend. if they take even more damage, i let them die. thats how it goes i guess. dont piss off the boss. he’ll keeeeel you.

    Melees will always get a hot on them even if they’re not taking any direct damage. some are dumb and take a cleave to the fave, while others stand behind the boss and occassionally take random damage or some bearby aoe damage (like bombs in blood furnace or utgarde keep).

    With the melees covered and the ranged ignored, i mainly focus on the tank (we’re talking 5man stuffs here). at lower levels, i think he got rejuv first, and was given regrowth if his health dropped to 50%. i preferred regrowth over glyphed-HT as my go-to heal. at 80, nourish takes over and regrowth becomes just added insurance on the tank. i dont even care if i overheal the whole direct heal portion of regrowth. i just want the hot on him.

    tank usually stays above 50% health. if under, use regrowth, or nourish at 80. glyph it tho, as it will produce bigger heals. glyph the one you will be using.

    again, the attitude to take when going into 5mans, espeically randoms is that if the dps die (and you’ve done the minimal to keep them up) then its their own fault. they can be rezed after a fight. so their survival isnt as important as the tank. tank stays at 50% or more. if less, then use nourish/regrowth/ht.

    the other thing i did that kinda helped was when i played the “how low can you go” game with myself. as a player gets attacked or takes damage, i’ll place a rejuv on them. the rule is this: i’ll lose when i hit nourish but win when i avoid having to direct heal a player, and instead, let the hot heal him. i dont know if this mini-game is really for everyone tho. i know i’ve had a few dps die because of this (i wanted to win and not use nourish on them) when my rejuv wasnt enough. oh well. /cast revive

    and yes, turn on your combat text. i have it on for only two reasons. one is for my low mana/health indicator. it chimes with this really annoying sound and i like that. the other reason is simply for reassurance that my hots are actually ticking (i like how it changes with different gear and when trinkets proc, etc). try it once. if it doesnt give the same effect, then there’s really no other reason to keep it on.

    hope this helped.

  10. I have tanked ICC10 on the bear, it wasn’t too bad. I feel bad going in there because I know I’m a little harder to heal than Pallies/Warriors, but I get the job done. It’s 25man raids that scare me, haha.

    Yeah, I like priests… No way I’m leveling another one though!

    As for Lich King, I use rank 11 PWS currently and that allows me to actually get about 15 rapture procs. I don’t shield group 5 (melee) or group 1 (tanks/dps) and I don’t shied people who I know will pull the small adds from AoE.

    In the 10man I healed with Chronis and Fad, and I could hear Chronis bitching beside me about mana. Fad must’ve used mana tide at least twice. There’s less people to heal/bubble and therefore less mana back, but it worked out that we got an infest before the transition which popped me right back up, haha. Chronis and Fad now hate me.

  11. Oh, so I checked the logs from our 25man last night: 415733 mana from Rapture, hyuk.

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