Pally healer not worth it in a mixed group?

[Smoooth]

My current mixed group is:
Warrior tank
Druid moonkin
Shadow priest
Fire mage
Pally healer

My main point to this group was to have maximum buffs, spell dps synergy, abilities, and max use of gear types. I love warrior tanks and think they are underrated as multibox tanks. They have pretty good aoe tanking abilities and superior single target threat. I didn't want to use a pally tank for this group but wanted to have the pally buffs. So I tried using one as the healer. I'm not liking it so far as a healer. Theres seems to be too much concentration needed for it. I have to be constantly watching my health bars. Basically if im not pressing a button, I'm not gaining any health back. I think a resto druid would be the best healer in this situation but then I lose out on auras, blessing of wiz, and use of plate casting gear.

The best options in my mind are:
Switch pally with resto shaman. This keeps some of the buffs and mana regen with totems but adds another level of complexity. I would get bloodlust, elementals, and ankh. Seems like it would be easier to heal with earth shield and riptide HoT also.

Drop the pally and shadow priest and use a holy priest for heals and add in a elemental shaman. Basically the same pros/cons of the last option but with totem of wrath. I am not very familiar with holy priests though. But they seem like they would be better suited than a pally with renew, CoH, and guardian spirit.

What do you think is my best bet? Maybe something I didn't think of?

[KvdM]

Which instance is causing the healing problems?

[Bigfish]

A paladin, by the nature of its heals, is going to be more difficult to box heal with. Their lack of AOE healing makes for difficult "hit it and forget it" aoe heals you can get with a priest or druid. You might be able to do a work around with some clever macros, but you'd have to specifically tell us what aspect of paladin healing is giving you trouble. I mean, outside of the constantly having to push a button thing. For that, I'd just ask if you have a spam macro, and if you do, just put the healing button on there. It kind of depends on what heal rotation you are using.

[Poetry]

I'd just ask if you have a spam macro, and if you do, just put the healing button on there

This is how I use my paladin healer. Just a macro on my spam button with the typical [target=focustarget,help][target=focustargettarget,help][target=focus,help] conditions. No doubt other healing classes cover AoE much better, but this is a nice system for just raw spamming of heals. And for this style of healing, I really like the paladin. Flash of Light has a short cast time combined with an effective heal size so she can be done with her current target and switched over to topping off the next target really quickly.

[Smoooth]

I never thought of putting the heals on the same button as the dps macro. I figured it would be over used and the healer would go OOM. But I'm going to try it, hows this macro for it?

/target focustarget
/cast [help] Flash of Light;[target=targettarget,help] Flash of Light;[target=focus,help] Flash of Light

I wish there was a % health conditional.

I was also thinking about how to do mouseover heals from the tank. Maybe this would remove the need to have seperate heal buttons for each party member or change targets to heal someone. On the tank it would be /clearfocus;/focus [mouseover,help]. On the healer it would be /cast [target=focusfocus,help] Flash of Light. It would have to be spammed 2 or 3 times due to lag. Think this macro would work?

[wowphreak]

Just gear the pali with lots of regen that way he can spam till the cows come home :P

[Khatovar]

If I were multi-boxing a full group, I would not use a paladin healer. They require way too much micro management to make suitable use of the tools they have. The only reason I was successful {my measurement of success} with my paladin healer was the fact that I didn't have to tank. I was able to play my holydin like I was solo healing and dps in the "background". But even then, sometimes you just had to give up on the idea of keeping everyone up.

If I were to do it again, I would probably swap my pally for a resto shammy {vastly superior utility to a druid}. If I were feeling exceptionally motivated, I'd try a priest, as that's the only healing class I hadn't played. But the exceptionally spammy nature of the paladin and lack of group healing/healing options easily puts paladins on the bottom of my healers list, even in solo situations.

[shaeman]

One other option s to switch the pally to ret and the priest to holy.
You keep the pally buffs. It's just whether you think handling a melee in the mix would be more trouble than it's worth.

[Dominian]

If you think you can handle it, everything is possible!

My setup: Protadin,hunter,2 ele shamans,resto shaman

This is how i heal:

Numpad 1: Earth Shield (also use sacred shield with my paladin)
Numpad 2-5: The option to chain heal seperate slaves
Numpad 0: Healing wave
Numpad del: Riptide
Insert,home,end,insert: All shamans lesser healing wave spam slaves 1-4.. Very useful on fights were my healer gets CC or a certain char takes high damage.
Shift-R: All shamans chain heals
Shift-D: All shamans lesser healing wave spams the tank.

Always trying to keep earth shield up and the normal rotation is riptide,healing wave,healing wave..

With a holy paladin you can trow beacon of light on your tank and spam heals on your slaves without worrying about your tank. (IF your able to handle the multiutasking)

Cleared nearly all heroics now with this setup, HoL,Old kingdom and the last boss of the oculus left. (hopefully dies later today while frapsed)

[puppychow]

just fyi if you use earth shield and have glyph of lhw on your resto shaman, its insanely more efficient to use lesser healing wave than healing wave. I never, ever, ever cast healing wave on my resto shaman - just chain heals, riptide, and lhw on MT. with ES up and glyphd LHW, it heals for 5-6k non crit and 8-10k crit @ 2k spell power - and with 2 ele shamans you are pretty much critting all the time.

[Dominian]

I wont put pve before pvp and im not changing glyphs just to do pve.. The only heroics that is left is old kingdom,HOL and last boss of the oculus, im not realy overgearing heroics either.

I never claimed it was the best rotation but i dont run oom or see my tank die with Riptide,HW,HW and keep ES up at all time. It also gives me tons of time to heal the other chars, big heals often lead to overhealing but i dont spam heal anyway.

[Khatovar]

With a holy paladin you can trow beacon of light on your tank and spam heals on your slaves without worrying about your tank. (IF your able to handle the multiutasking)

Except Beacon is expensive and does not count overhealing, nor does it pass the splashes off GoHL or JoL. Tanks have much more HP than DPS and indirect healing is a dangerous means of keeping a tank stable in healing intense fights. Beacon is better used put on yourself, direct healing to the tank keeps the healer up, Flashes to the DPS keep the healer up. HoS on the tank + Beacon on the holydin + SS was a good way to create a cushion for rough pulls. But it is a lot of multi-tasking to make good use of a paladin healer in a MB group. The attention you'd need to put into it is much better spent on making better use of your DPS and a lower-maintainence healer that doesn't need to target every single heal and heal one {2 if you blow mana on Beacon} toon at a time.

[daviddoran]

One other option s to switch the pally to ret and the priest to holy.
You keep the pally buffs. It's just whether you think handling a melee in the mix would be more trouble than it's worth.

This. Ret pallys still give replenishment buff, and priest aoe healing is the best.

[Poetry]

I never thought of putting the heals on the same button as the dps macro. I figured it would be over used and the healer would go OOM. But I'm going to try it, hows this macro for it?

/target focustarget
/cast [help] Flash of Light;[target=targettarget,help] Flash of Light;[target=focus,help] Flash of Light

This is the macro I use:
/cast [target=focustarget,help][target=focustargettarget,help][target=focus,help] Flash of Light

I think this is pretty much what you have. I typically set my focus to the tank. This type of macro means I first heal any friendly unit my tank has targeted, second it heals whoever is being attacked by the mob my tank has targeted, and finally heals my tank. I still find this macro magical at times. For the first condition there can be some assist lag so it can take a couple spams to hit the focustarget but in general this is a pretty good setup for running a single target healer and doesn't take too much management.


I wish there was a % health conditional.

Ah, as a multiboxer I miss the days of the lowest health button. That would make all of this so trivial. :)

That said, I agree with the previous posters who say AoE healing with a priest can be wonderfully powerful.

[KvdM]

Ah, as a multiboxer I miss the days of the lowest health button. That would make all of this so trivial. The next best thing would be some sort of smart HUD that filters information based on relevance at that moment. So instead of looking at health bars, you'll get a message stating "Y health is low, press X".

(Like an aircraft "pull up" message that only triggers when things go wrong)

[daviddoran]

I never thought of putting the heals on the same button as the dps macro. I figured it would be over used and the healer would go OOM. But I'm going to try it, hows this macro for it?

/target focustarget
/cast [help] Flash of Light;[target=targettarget,help] Flash of Light;[target=focus,help] Flash of Light

This is the macro I use:
/cast [target=focustarget,help][target=focustargettarget,help][target=focus,help] Flash of Light

I think this is pretty much what you have. I typically set my focus to the tank. This type of macro means I first heal any friendly unit my tank has targeted, second it heals whoever is being attacked by the mob my tank has targeted, and finally heals my tank. I still find this macro magical at times. For the first condition there can be some assist lag so it can take a couple spams to hit the focustarget but in general this is a pretty good setup for running a single target healer and doesn't take too much management.


I wish there was a % health conditional.

Ah, as a multiboxer I miss the days of the lowest health button. That would make all of this so trivial. :)

That said, I agree with the previous posters who say AoE healing with a priest can be wonderfully powerful.

I use a very similar macro on my priest, so i first heal the tanks friendly target, then the tanks target's target, then the tank itself if i have nobody selected that meets the criteria. But having that AoE Trump card makes all the difference in the world. It seems that WotLK has a lot more "gimmickyy" boss fights where there is a lot more splash damage. It's a real shame there isn't some sort of talent that makes consecration heal whoever stands on it...

I know holy pallies usually spam Flash of Light (or at least we did in TBC), but there's a glyph that turns holy light casts into a gimped AoE heal, which may work in a pinch, trouble is overhealing, it heals based off of the amount healed, so if nobody is low enough, you can't heal everyone else. But if the tank is taking consistent damage, everyone else will benefit slightly. I could see a paladin healer with 3 ele shaman dps, chain heal negates the paladins lack of aoe.