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…

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.

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.

>.<

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!

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.)