Better holy trinity healer - shaman or priest?

So, I'm powerlevelling my new team (aimed at PvE 5-man instancing), which consists of paladin, priest and 3x mage, when it strikes me that priest may not be the best choice for healer, especially with WotLK coming out.

My train of thought is: A priest brings shielding and a sta buff along with his healing capabilities. A (resto) shaman, however, brings bloodlust/heroism, which is mad dps with 3 mages in the party. Add to that a spell dmg increase totem in the expansion, a spell haste increase totem, a selfres, resistance totems, earth shield, elementals not to mention mana spring totem.

Is this an easy choice in the shamans favor or am I missing something here?

Im considerning the same thing. I'm gonna take advantage of the RAF gift levels and roll with the priest for now, and then gift as many levels as I can to different healer classes. Shaman is a good option, excellent class for rounding out edges (self rez rocks too). Druid can be a useful addition too. HoTs means you can run around and still heal, battlrez can save a wipe, and can off tank in bear form if your paladin dies.

Suvega does fine with a priest, and if you're truly going "holy trinity" then priest, mage, warrior is what you want.

Priests have great AoE heals (circle of healing, instant cast which can be done on the move during AE), and emergency heals. Their buffs are defensive. They have a multitude of heals -- which makes them very dynamic, but also means you have more buttons to macro.

Shaman are more of an "offensive healer" with a niche in AoE healing -- so much so that chain heal is both more mana efficient and more heals-per-second than lesser healing wave -- EVEN IF IT DOESN'T JUMP to another target. They buff offensively and have a few defensive buffs (grounding, tremor, etc) but are primarily considered to be aoe healers and offensive buffers (heroism, WoA, Windfury, etc). They have few healing cooldowns -- just NS and Manatide, so if damage on your tank is excessive they can't keep up.

Both are fine, but one is very clearly designed to fill a niche, and the other is a straight up well-rounded healer.

If you ever are going to be running while AoE'ing, you want a priest.

If you ever want to go big with a funny symbol over your head and get 20% haste, then shaman is right for you.

You got 3x decurse but only your paladin can dispell with a Shaman healer so a priest would bring better synergy but both are good options from my point of view. Hex wont bring much to your group since you got 3x sheep but Divine hymn certainly will! can be a life saver with a bad pull but you will miss a ank thought since your wipe protection is the paladin but he might die before you manage to react.

http://thottbot.com/wotlk/s47951

The priest also brings shackle wich is nice vs undead targets.

Shaman > priest for versatility/utility, generally.
Priest >>> shaman for mobile healing, big healing and group healing. Period. And you can tie in priest moving heals directly with your DPS's attack button macros, which means you can heal while DPSing and not even have to think hard about it.

All in what you wanna do with 'em.

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Originally Posted by 'Vyndree',index.php?page=Thread&postID=101550#post 101550

Suvega does fine with a priest, and if you're truly going "holy trinity" then priest, mage, warrior is what you want.

Priests have great AoE heals (circle of healing, instant cast which can be done on the move during AE), and emergency heals. Their buffs are defensive. They have a multitude of heals -- which makes them very dynamic, but also means you have more buttons to macro.

Shaman are more of an "offensive healer" with a niche in AoE healing -- so much so that chain heal is both more mana efficient and more heals-per-second than lesser healing wave -- EVEN IF IT DOESN'T JUMP to another target. They buff offensively and have a few defensive buffs (grounding, tremor, etc) but are primarily considered to be aoe healers and offensive buffers (heroism, WoA, Windfury, etc). They have few healing cooldowns -- just NS and Manatide, so if damage on your tank is excessive they can't keep up.

Both are fine, but one is very clearly designed to fill a niche, and the other is a straight up well-rounded healer.

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Thanks for your reply. I believe the "holy trinity" refers to any combination of tank, healer and dps - at least that's how I understand the term is used (http://www.wowwiki.com/Holy_Trinity).

Anyway, I'll revise my initial list:

Priest advantages
- Better healing "on the move"
- Better "emergency"-healing
- Undead CC and divine hymn in wotlk
- Better single-target healing?

Shaman advantages:
- DPS buffs (30% haste from heroism works well with mages, +dmg/spellhaste totem in wotlk)
- Better wipe recovery
- Resistance totems, mana regen totem

It still seems to me that the priest advantages are more situational than the shaman advantages (divine hymn could turn out really nice though).

I am, however, lacking experience in the 5-man heroic multiboxing scenario, so I'm not sure how often the "excessive damage" you mention occurs?

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Originally Posted by 'Fuzzyboy',index.php?page=Thread&postID=101770#pos t101770

Thanks for your reply. I believe the "holy trinity" refers to any combination of tank, healer and dps - at least that's how I understand the term is used (http://www.wowwiki.com/Holy_Trinity).

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Ah, I gotcha.

I was under the impression that the "Holy trinity" of WoW was Priest/Warrior/Mage or Priest/Warrior/Rogue because DPS classes are balanced based off of Mage/Rogue dps, Healers off of priest healing, and tanks off of Warrior tanks. Everything else is considered a hybrid of some sort (hunter/warlock = minitank+dps, shaman = healer+dps, paladin = healer+tank+dps, druid = healer+tank+dps). So usually when I think "holy trinity" for WoW I think Priest+Mage/Rogue+Warrior because, as I understand it, that's how Blizzard tries to organize class balance is based off the performance of these classes.

(late reply)

That would actually make more sense, but I remember the term being used in Everquest before WoW was out, so I'm guessing that's where it originates.

Anyway, I'm really interested in your experiences with shaman/priest as heroic multibox healer since I understand you and Suvega have tried both. Which do you prefer? I realize all this is may change in the expansion, but I still find the subject interesting :)

Honestly if I were running a 3 mage team I would be extremely tempted to go with the shaman if for nothing more then the wrath of air totem. Thats about 100+ spell damage for EACH mage= ownage. But other then that I have no idea really.

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Originally Posted by 'Fuzzyboy',index.php?page=Thread&postID=103484#pos t103484

I'm really interested in your experiences with shaman/priest as heroic multibox healer since I understand you and Suvega have tried both.

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Sorry, I lose threads as the days go by. :P

I have 2 specced healer classes: Shaman, and Priest.

My shaman is the better geared of the two, with sunwell enh gear and (at the time I was doing heroics) 2 piece t4 and offset kara gear with a couple SSC/TK pieces. This put her at about 1600-1700 +healing.

Solo healing:
Shaman are easysauce. Once you reach the correct gear level for the heroic you will likely spam chain heal rank 4 (to keep up the armor buff) because it is extremely mana efficient and hps efficient (even if it doesn't jump). If you're confident, lay Wrath of Air->Trinket->Earth Shield->Healing Stream and then switch to your final totem set (i.e. windfury/SoE for warrior tanks, tremor for fearing mobs, etc). Spam rank 4 chain heal and most heroic (yes, heroic) trash is a cakewalk. When you have people geared in SSC/TK or better gear, most heroics are a cakewalk anyway. Shaman healers excel for well-geared heroic groups because they also buff the offensive abilities of their teammates, making the run faster. However if you or your tank are undergeared, a shaman simply cannot push out the HPS needed and does not have the emergency heals (1 NS+HW on a 2min CD) that are available to other classes.

Multibox healing:
Shaman weakness above is actually not that bad for multiboxing. Consider this -- chain heal is powerful because we don't HAVE the emergency abilities of others. We are designed to spam it (caveat: see WoTLK news for updates as this may change). Because we are designed to spam one ability and use HW for emergencies or to "catch up" if chain heal isn't cutting it, we are ideal for macro'ing abilities. That being said if you undergear the instance you should expect things to be rough. You have little to no emergency abilities, so you should expect your tank to be covering that with trinkets and cooldowns.


Compared to priests, Shaman bring offensive buffing to the table which is awesome once your dps and tank/healer are geared appropriately for it -- but gearing UP to that level will be rougher than, say, a priest who has abilities like Shield and PrOM at their disposal when "things go bad". Priests, however, are harder to macro effectively due to their multitude of healing abilities with varied cast times and cooldowns. Both are effective, but as a personal opinion I find it's easier for me to macro a shaman healer due to their limited cache of heal abilities.

When I play my priest, I often prefer to use her as my "main" using click2cast or other alternate methods. When I play my shaman group, I prefer to play as a tank or dps shaman (for pvp) because I can depend on my healer to be able to heal effectively without micromanagement. In fact, I've gotten to 1650 5-boxing my own arena team of 1 resto / 4 elemental. I doubt I would be able to do that with 1 holy priest / 4 elemental.

So if you're looking for a heroic healer and you're undergeared, I'd prefer priest. If you're looking for a heroic healer and you want something easy to macro, I'd go with Paladin or Shaman. Sad to say it but I wouldn't pick druid until their gear was good enough that their hots could keep up with the damage dealt, and they are also difficult to macro.

Just my two cents.

Nice two cents - bookmarked. Thanks for the info :)

Also, having Played a Priest for 2+ years raiding, and now my shaman since TBC came out raiding.

A Priest is 10 times the healer if you are willing to dedicate the buttons to doing it right. AoE from the Preist is well, not as effecient as Chain Heal, but easily hands down better. Circle of Healing, and Prayer of Healer is Amazing for my 5 box team. Prayer of Mending on the tank, Renew! Hots are great, shaman don't have them. And there is always Flash Heal for when you need a small or Fast heal. Greater Heal when you need to top off your tank. Gear is easier to lay down on priests right now for healing and Mana regen is Ungodly. My priest is currently over 800 MP5 outside and 400MP5 inside 5 second rule.

If you want it to be easier healing, then a Shaman is probably where you want to go, only getting 3 heals, really takes alot of the guess work out of what to cast, but on the same side you don't have the flexability that priests have.

I'll continue to say Priests are by far and will always be the best healers you can get in WOW. They may not be the best at single target, or HOTs, or anything else, but they can do it all and do it very well. Versatility can more then make up for some of the short commings as a boxer or a particular fight (1st boss Crypts, is WTFOWNED whe i bring my priest to heal as opposed to when i've tryed it with 5 shaman.)

Hope it helps. :thumbsup:

If I were rolling a dedicated healer for a mboxing team, it'd be a priest. Mainly because I believe they have the best instant + group heals, on balance. Druids have better hots, but no group heals. Circle of healing is second to none for seat-of-your-pants pvp group healing.

Absolutely -- both Shaman and Priest bring different things to the table, and in normal solo-boxing situations -- for any nontrivial content I'd choose Priest over Shaman.

In multiboxing, it really depends on what you want. If you want to micro the priest spells, you have the potential of being very great. But if you're just looking for something you can "healbot" while focusing on other things, the micromanagement from a priest is adequate but not as tailored to "spamming" one button as a shaman is.

THAT BEING SAID, take a look at the Shaman WoTLK talents. Shaman, in the future, will NOT be "restricted" to spamming chain heal much longer. With the nerfs to downranking on the horizon, and the crit oriented healing way builds in the talents, you might not have the benefit of spamming chain heal much longer... so take that into account when making your decision.

Both are good -- for multiboxing I personally prefer shaman for the simplicity, but priest for single-box healing is better all-around. <-- my preference ;)