In Wrath: you joined a raid. There’s a paladin and a druid as heals. You know right away that the paladin is tank healing and the druid is raid healing.
Leading up to Cataclysm: a lot of talk about triage, mana management, tweaking heals… and a general sense that if the paladin wants to raid heal and the druid wants to tank heal, the system is going to support that.
Join a Firelands raid: there’s a paladin and a druid as heals. The paladin is tank healing, the druid is raid healing, and nobody really thinks twice about it.
Maybe that’s simplified but it really does seem the state of things right now. Of course, since I’m a druid healer and the always-there other member of my healer team is a paladin, maybe I’m helping perpetuate that myth. Maybe we could shake things up. But we don’t. She just doesn’t have as many AOE tools as I do. My big heals are wet noodles compared to hers, and there’s nothing I have that’s comparable to Beacon of Light (or Bacon of Light as certain of our raiders keep calling it)
I’m perfectly willing to tank heal. I had very little trouble with Baleroc as far as keeping a tank up went. I was even doing one of the Shannox tanks until our shaman pointed out that this fight was not a good one for her to be raid healing. But again, there was my perception, that shaman are better at raid healing than tank healing, that had me put her on the raid in the first place.
And priests? I have no idea how those weirdoes work at all. We’re talking about having our shaman switch to her priest and that could be…. interesting… but I have a feeling that my default configuration is going to be to keep myself on raid and Kerick on tanks, and the other healer can just fill in wherever.
But it makes sense! Wild Growth is such a cheap, easy little AOE to toss out. I’ve got enough mana that I can toss Rejuvs around like it was Wrath again. And I proc free Regrowths all the time – if the tank ain’t hurting, someone in the raid is. Depending on the fight, I can’t necessarily keep the whole raid alive but I can come close. And Kerick owns at keeping the tanks up. Sure I’ve got Lifebloom on one of them and I toss a few heals their way when I need to, but I just don’t need to.
So, is it in our class or in ourselves that these stereotypes are set? Maybe I just do better at raid healing because I’m vaguely OCD about healing bars and have to heal everyone right NOW darn it. Maybe Kerick is better at using her cooldowns to fill up a tank right before the next Decimation Blade hits, not because she has better cooldowns but because that’s what she’s practiced.
But – I don’t think that’s the whole of it. I read blogs and I never read about raid-healing paladins. Sometimes about tank healing druids, but mostly in the sense of “I can tank heal, why doesn’t my raid ever let me?” Shaman and priests don’t seem quite so stereotyped. I’m not sure why that is.
Is it really just me? Was I reading too much into things before Cataclysm? I’m not saying I’m disappointed: I’m just saying I want to make sure I’m not doing things wrong!
I think the main idea was … you don’t HAVE to have a paladin to keep the tanks up, or you don’t HAVE to have a druid to heal the raid. Paladins are still better at tank healing than raid healing, but not having one in the group won’t kill you. It might have in the Wrath model.
Agreed, Paladins are not “needed” but they still seem to have the best toolbox for tank healing. Raid healing they can be hurting, unless maybe in a 25 man setting where LoD can actually hit a lot of people.
druids can tank heal or raid heal, depending on favored playstyle and spec. They seem to bring a raid back fast from the brink of a wipe with tranq, and their lovely HoTs. Their weakness seems to come in the form of not having a tank saving CD. Unless you count swiftmend or nature’s swiftness.
shamans can do both as well, (clumped up – CH, HR, WG, the druid pool thingee) very well imo. they also can bring a lot of buffs as well. Earth shield is quite nice. Mana tide while gimped now is still ok.
Holy Priests – I would have to say are better at raid healing, not as well perhaps as a clumped up raid (shaman – CH and healing rain own) or as a druids WG, rejuv etc. They have no external way to regen mana except for straight up spirit. Even in the single target chakra they will not be able to do it as well as a pally, druid disc priest. AoE heals – I still think shaman’s and druids are better. No real raid saving CD, sure guardian spirit helps but its only single target. Divine Hymn is meh at best, And Hymn of Hope…ugh use it at the wrong time and you are SOL.
Disc Priests – good at tank healing, meh at raid healing, but can mitigate a lot of the dmg that might have otherwise happened. However, disc weakness come in the form of playing the catch up game. once dmg has occurred, it can be hard to play catch up, especially when dealing with lots of damaged targets. Look at the Alysrazor fight, or people who get hit by Magma flow. Disc does bring good raid cooldowns in the form of PS and PW:B.
Priests seem to pay the a lot more then other healers to have their verasility, which in turn may not make them as “good” as the other healers in certain situations.
I’ve wondered with priests is it a case of just having too many spells? I get overwhelmed a bit when I try to priest, there are just so many abilities! With druids, the key skill is “who has to be healed now, who can wait”. With priests, I think it’s more “which of these almost identical tools is the best fit for the job?”
I think you’d be better off with a three-priest setup than any other class stacking three the same.
Agreed the priests toolbox is a lot larger then other healers, but even now with the gear stat inflation, at least for disc. I find that I can FH quite a bit without too much worry when needed, The go to heals for me GH, FH, bubble, POM, POH.
Sure they said you dont need X to heal this fight now. But still its the same as it was in Wrath, certain classes are always going to better at X assignment due to its class makeup and abilities, Unless Blizzard was to overhaul all the healers, it will still be the same stereotypes probably till the end of WoW
I only healed on my driud for a little bit in the beginning of Cata so I am not quite sure where we “really” are in terms of my playstyle. I did however, heal all through Wrath as a druid (seriously that is about all I did until the end). As a result of my Wrath experience I keep up with the druid blogs.
I read an article yesterday about the importance of spirit and people’s thoughts in regard to it. That people who weren’t feeling any kind of difficulty changed up the amount of spirit their gear had and increased their other stats. Doing that brought about the difficulty/choice options for their healing.
I started writing this like 45 mins ago and completely lost where I was going with this >.<
If you remember where you read that I’d be interested in seeing it. I know things got way easier when I got a comfortable level of spirit on my gear.
I think it was Beru’s blog – http://fallingleavesandwings.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/devaluing-spirit/
Thanks. Odd, I thought I had her in my RSS feed but I don’t remember seeing that.
Mmm… BACON of light… Yumm!!!
Our resto druid tank heals, and has since we lost our healadin midway through ICC. According to him, he didn’t have to do any playstyle adjustment in 4.0, because he was already used to using his direct heals from tank healing.
Not having a healadin did require some creative thinking on our part to get through ICC. (Obviously we weren’t doing it on a competitive schedule; after our healadin and her husband, our off tank, departed, we took a couple months off raiding and didn’t come back until the buff was at 30%). For example, we started attempts on H Marrowgar with the same two-tank strategy as everyone else used, and which we had used on normal – but without Beacon, it turned out to be significantly easier to just have one tank eat the full force of his saber lashes.
Our usual heal team these days is rdrood, rsham, priest. The priest handles the heavy raid healing, in disc or holy depending on whether he needs wide coverage or spot healing, and the rdrood and rshaman heal a tank each and help out with the raid as needed. The priest and shaman switch roles if the raid is stacked – even within a fight, e.g. they switch roles after the phase transition on Beth’tilac – but “You must spread out” is such a common mechanic that I don’t think shaman can be considered capable full-time raid healers anymore. (Full disclosure, my healing alt is a shaman.)
In Tier 11 we ran with myself (Druid), a Disc Priest and a Shaman. Because our Shaman didn’t feel comfortable tank healing, the Priest and I were the tank healers.
For Firelands our Shaman decided to switch back to his Paladin, so guess what? He’s on tank heals and I’m back on the raid. Every once in a while on a 2-healer fight we sit a healer and I switch back to tank healing, or I switch to Boomkin since I’m the only healer with a strong DPS spec. I’m sure our Pally *could* raid heal if he really wanted to – he’s certainly had to take over on occasion if I die. It just isn’t ideal.
Personally, I love how flexible I can be while raiding now. Need a tank healer? No problem. Raid healer? Yep, can do. Extra DPS? Let me switch to chicken for you and blow stuff up.
As others have pointed out, in Wrath if you didn’t have a Pally you were pretty much screwed for tank heals. Things are a lot more balanced now. If anything, the reason Pallies are still the go-to tank healer is because their AoE is weaker than the other healing classes, not because Druids are weak tank healers. It’s good to be a Druid! 😀
The problem is that while every class essentially has the tools to perform both roles well (tank healing and raid healing), people are still hung up on “optimal” and this leads those in positions of power (like raid or healing leads) to shove healers back in their respective boxes.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had bitter arguments with people who insist that a holy priest can’t take heal. Never mind that we have an entire Chakra devoted to it. Never mind that we have talents in our tree and glyphs that can support us in this role. Because it’s not “the best” it’s seen as not possible. People don’t seem to be able to separate the two and that’s very unfortunate.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still some holy priests that would balk at the notion of having to do anything other than Renew spam or CoH spam. Not every priest wanted a challenge or wanted more for themselves. At the end of the day, it really boils down to what kind of guild you’re in and what kind of leadership you defer to.
If you’re in a group that is insisting on that cutting edge performance and wants top of the line heals, you will probably get stuck falling into your typical role. If you have a healing lead who trusts in their team and their abilities, they won’t mind mixing up the assignments. We all have the things that we would like to do, but we are often put in situations where it’s not our call.
I hope this made sense. I kind of went off on a tangent there.
>.<
Bang on about optimal vs acceptable.
In fact, there’s a whole wall-of-text desperate to escape about the difference between optimal and acceptable as it applies to WoW, but that’d be a digression. But there is a fairly horrible tendency for people to say things like “such-and-such spec isn’t viable for raidiing” or “classX can’t tank heal” when the difference between the unwanted spec/class and the “best” is a couple of thousand DPS or some such.
If your raid is genuinely pushing progression, working on hard modes etc and you’re failing because you don’t have enough raw throughput, then perhaps there’s some legitimacy. However I suspect the vast majority of guilds/groups fail because people are making basic mistakes: standing in the wrong place, attacking the wrong target and (for the numberheads) getting rotation priorities wrong — particularly during the parts of the fight where you’re not just standing still, bashing buttons.
Agreed. My raid has two mages and no lock or shadow priest; that’s not “optimal” but it works. Sometimes we have two druid healers instead of a druid and a shaman or priest. Not optimal, but it works. And this weekend we had two bear tanks. Ok well that’s kind of optimal because bears are the best but…. I like that the game lets us succeed without “optimal” builds.
We may only be 3/7 (we almost got Ryo Saturday though) after three weeks of serious attempts in FL but I don’t blame it on “not optimal”; that’s just the level of raiding we’re at. Very competent but not server-first quality. Not this patch…
Crap. That should have said “tank healing.” Sorry!