Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Understanding your healers

One of my biggest qualms when raiding in BC was raid leadership that didn't understand healing class strengths. Back then things were a bit more clear cut. Priests were the AoE healers, Shammies were melee healers, Paladins played wack a mole with health bars and druids were the best tank healers with rolling hots.

These days things have homogenized but we still have strengths. Shaman and Paladins seem to have been the only ones that have stayed the same truly. Aside from Riptide and Beacon of Hope they provide the same functionality. Shaman chain heal is good for focusing on groups huddled up (IE Melee). Beacon of Hope gives Paladins the ability to assist with healing one target while healing the group.

Two of the bigger changes for myself is the viability Discipline priests and the introduction of Nourish and Wild Growth to druids.

I have no problem showing my ignorance time and again. However I when I don't know things I will search them out. Previously I had no understanding about Disp Priest and one landed in our guild. As lead on healing I needed to help him gear and learn the ways. I'd like to thank Bobturkey for helping me do this: http://bobturkey.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/dr-turkelife-is-in-the-house-ii/

While I was looking at our WWS I couldn't really read how well our priest was doing because he was doing roughtly half the healing I was. Power Word: Shield absorbtions do not report on them. So I had to learn to add that information in for myself. Disp Priests also can push your tanks mitigation higher. Post heal buffs can push their armor total upto the armor cap of 75% damage mitigations. Huge contribution.

For druids I was used to rolling lifebloom. No longer possible. Now we actually have few different specs and glyphs for us. Druids can spec and glyph for raid healing by emphasizing Wild Growth or we can spec and glyph for tank healing which is emphasizes Nourish. Both are viable you just need to know which is more useful to the players you are running with.

I won't say that I know everything about all the healing classes. I don't expect anyone to. I just think that you should focus on group and player strengths to give your group the best chance of success. As well, understand that any healing class can do raid or tank healing. It just maybe less efficient than if you chose another, but you'll have to work with what you have. :)

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