3 moonkins vs 2 moonkins & 1 resto (heroics)

[Owltoid]

I have two friends that I play with all the time. One is a holy pally that recently spec'd prot, and the other is a mage. Originally I had three moonkins with the goal of arena. However, due to gear, needing practice, and certain PvP imbalances I'm weeks away from fielding a team that can win in the 1300 bracket. Because of that I am focusing on heroics and upgrading gear.

Do you think three moonkins can effecitvely heal in heroics or do I need to spec one resto?

Last night I healed just fine in regular 80 instances, but I think the pally could have practically healed himself the entire time.

I switched my moonkins to have nature's swiftness instead of starfall. Through using HKN I now have a button that causes one moonkin to NS a healing touch while the other two do a nourish (flash heal). The next time I push the button a different moonkin with NS heal and the other two will flash heal. Effecitvely I now have three "oh crap" heals with a cooldown of 3 minutes each. Also, I am going to set up a macro so that each moonkin heals himself to aid with group healing (I'm obviously missing wild growth and the fourth parth member is a bit screwed unless I switch to heal them).

The problem is I haven't been in any 80 heroics due to gear and just hitting 80 three days ago. If my gear was decent, will I be able to keep a pally tank alive and the group healed?

[TheBigBB]

I have two friends that I play with all the time. One is a holy pally that recently spec'd prot, and the other is a mage. Originally I had three moonkins with the goal of arena. However, due to gear, needing practice, and certain PvP imbalances I'm weeks away from fielding a team that can win in the 1300 bracket. Because of that I am focusing on heroics and upgrading gear.

Do you think three moonkins can effecitvely heal in heroics or do I need to spec one resto?

Last night I healed just fine in regular 80 instances, but I think the pally could have practically healed himself the entire time.

I switched my moonkins to have nature's swiftness instead of starfall. Through using HKN I now have a button that causes one moonkin to NS a healing touch while the other two do a nourish (flash heal). The next time I push the button a different moonkin with NS heal and the other two will flash heal. Effecitvely I now have three "oh crap" heals with a cooldown of 3 minutes each. Also, I am going to set up a macro so that each moonkin heals himself to aid with group healing (I'm obviously missing wild growth and the fourth parth member is a bit screwed unless I switch to heal them).

The problem is I haven't been in any 80 heroics due to gear and just hitting 80 three days ago. If my gear was decent, will I be able to keep a pally tank alive and the group healed?There are many heroic encounters that you would not be able to do without a dedicated healer. If your moonkins are the only ones healing then you will be very limited in what you can take down. Even if the tank is in amazing gear, many fights have the DPS taking large amounts of damage that must be healed. It's just not going to be effective to keep switching out to heal, because you will always need to be healing.

[Owltoid]

I definitely understand that you would always need a dedicated healer if non druids, but with the amount of HoTs 3 moonkins can put up would you still need a dedicated healer? Also, only one would switch to moonkin form (or all could stay caster if very healing intensive). Between regrowth and rejun the tank has 6 strong HoTs. Add in lifebloom for 9 HoTs, though then it's eating into the DPS time.

Thanks for the comment. Since you have significantly more experience multiboxing then I'm sure you're correct. I'm just hopeful that due to the HoT nature of druids, and the non-bursty nature of pally tanks, that a dedicated healer isn't needed.

[Ualaa]

Once dual specs are in, this won't be much of an issue.
Until then, consider two moonkins and a dreamstate druid.

For me, dreamstate was able to heal effectively at the BC level for all heroics and raid content. WotLK heroics seem to be much easier at 80th then BC heroics were at 70th; I don't think you'll have issues healing them as Dreamstate.
For an 80th druid, go down to Moonkin form in Balance and to Swiftmend in Restoration. Be sure to include Moonglow, Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate in your Balance tree.

Regrowth is your primary heal, and with the glyph its a lot better then Healing Touch.
Keep Rejuvenation up all the time, and Swiftmend it to counteract burst damage. Lifebloom up all the time, its not as good as it was, but still very worthwhile.
As a dreamstate, you can dps better then any other healer spec, and are a capable healer too.
The only real weakness compared to a deeper resto druid is the lack of the AoE heal, aside from Tranquility (which should be every 4 mins as Dreamstate). If AoE becomes an issue, you can hotkey Tranquility in some kind of a rotation for the other druids too.

I made a macro for my druids, something to the effect:
/cast [nostance:6] Moonkin Form.
Not sure the exact stance, but its easy to figure out which number to use, from left to right your stances start at 1 with each form you have.
The macro will let a druid not in their moonkin form assume the form, without taking a druid already in moonkin form out of it.
So, when things are weaker, put them all in moonkin for the extra damage, but heal whenever you need to.

[TheBigBB]

The problem with not having one of them be healing specced is that the game is now balanced for every main healer having at least one heal which will heal up multiple people at once. I can't think of a tank and spank boss in WOTLK which doesn't also do something that damages the whole group, and in some cases significantly so. Like Moorabi, he's so easy with a priest AOE healing the quakes, but those quakes will do a good 10k+ damage to the whole group by the end of the fight WHILE he's still hitting the tank, and that's pretty much par for the course now. If you had tree form you could just hit one key and get a HOT on everyone at once and be fine. The single target way won't be really quick enough to be effective, especially with non-healing specced characters.

[Ualaa]

Dreamstate is definitely a heal spec.
But, it does lack the AoE group heal, with the exception of Tranquility which is at best on the 4 minute cooldown (talented).
If there's a lot of AoE, they are at a disadvantage.

The best they will do, apply HoT's to multiple targets in sequence.
But its probably more effort then its worth, if there's a large occurrence of AoE for the content you're doing.

Three Moonkin, even spec'd heavily Balance and not much into Resto, is a fair amount of healing.
Pretty much, experiment with the damage you tank and see if they can keep up with the healing as a group.
If AoE is a very common thing to deal with, a dedicated healer might be a requirement.
3x Rejuvenation or Lifebloom on a single target will probably easily heal the damage, but will you have the time to apply HoT's (1 GCD per HoT) to 5 party members to counteract the AoE, when one druid could click a single group heal?

As long as you can go DPS spec and not healer spec, your team will kill things faster.
But, you might reach the point where certain events or encounters demand more healing then you're capable of delivering with all dps/hybrids spec'd towards dps.
Once dual-spec's are in, and the best estimate we have is... before the Uldaar patch, this will be relatively easy -- dps spec and heal spec on one toon, tank spec and balance spec on another etc.