Making a healing decision

I know this has been debated several times but would like to know which would be better looking at 3.3 five man dungeons.

My set up is Pally Tank 3 ele shammies DPS and a healer I have a 80 priest or resto shammy.

Shammy has 1 extra elemental every 10 min 1 healing stream totem (all other totems are given by others)

Priest is superior AOE healing ( H-TOC) BK comes to mind Fort and Spirit buff (although I can make Runescrolls so really an extra 50 Stam and spirit spirit buff)

Basically which healer would you use.

Shaman, priest healing is overrated, and they are squishy, not to mention theres more then a couple of times where i've appriciated the extra tremor or grounding totem.

Tbh, with earth shield i hardly have to heal my main tank at all these days. And honestly theres not a whole lot of places i miss my priests aoe healing.

hmm with Shaman i will be able to clease curses, but with the priest I will not be....hmm anyone know if the new 3.3 dungeons have lots of curses in them?

Not many have even run those dungeons, so not sure how much information you're going to get.

Sounds like there might be a lot of moving around during fights though. That might also mean more AoE damage.

Anyway, you'll most likely have to figure that one out on your own.

If you need the heals regularly, I'd go with a Discipline Priest.
They have so many mitigation options and are amazing healers.

However the 4th shaman can easily dual-spec.
And be both dps and heals.
And a 4th elemental shaman (geared as a resto) is a lot more damage then any spec priest.

Shammy brings an extra grounding totem, extra healing stream, additional aoe.
Slightly weaker on mobile heals, but strong enough to heal anything.

It is a preference call.

ok I want to (for my own purposes included) talk about holy priests vs resto shamans (i am not an expert in either, but I want to get it started with people who are)

also, I have not included Disc, but if someone wants to add Disc information here, please do, i understand they heal a bit differently than Holy, but i wouldnt want to make a post about them since i have never played them.


Lets take a look at whats similar:

Earth Shield / Prayer of mending.

Well, since you want heals on tank, Earth shield stays where you put it, and still heals for a ton of dmg when it is needed. Prayer, while offering more aoe healing due to its bounces, isn't guaranteed to heal a target in need, and bounces randomly to toons you are probably trying to avoid taking dmg on anyway.

Greater Heal / Healing Wave

Well, I haven't played a priest in a while as holy, but as I remember, greater heals were very slow and very large, offering little in the way of emergency huge healness.. and only offering an inner focus / GH combo which guarantees a crit, but still a slow cast, so not terribly useful in an emergency. Healing Wave, though still a relatively slow heal, if talented for it provides a huge healing option with increasing gains, and can be insta cast for those o shit sit's.

Renew / Riptide / Healing Stream

Well as for hots, a priest has an awesome renew spell which hits often and for a lot of HP, and is a very good spell for any healer to use. riptide, with a cooldown and not as much healing per tick is inferior to long lasting heals, but provides much more instant healing than renew. Resto shamans also have Healing / Mana stream totem, which when glyphed / talented provides a lot of passive healing to the group, and when stacked with other shaman totems can provide a good amount of healing over time on all targets at no mana cost is setup before a fight and able to last the entirety of the encounter.

Small Heals:

Heal or Flash heal are good spells, and lesser healing wave is equally as good, and when glyphed and talented, provides a lot of healing on your tank with earth shield on. These are staple heals and fairly similar. A Shaman will be able to heal like this longer than a priest I believe, because LHW is more mana efficient than the priest equivalents, please correct me if im wrong on this one, like i said, its been a while on a holy priest.

Bubble / nothing

This is where a priest really gets a free point, in bubbles, not only on tank but on anyone who needs it. This is a great dama mitigator, and an excellent buff for anyone. Unfortunatly it is not as well used on warrior or feral druid targets as they lose rage, but a minor problem on fights which generate tons of the rage you require.

Aoe Heals

Ok, so apart from healing stream totem, a shaman has no real good heal for everyone at once, but chain heal is much more mana efficient than any priest equivalant and can almost chain spam this spell an entire fight, and has recently gotten a much needed upgrade making it chain further and for more healing each jump. This is a great spell and can hardly be compared to any of the priests equivalent spells. It chains on people who NEED it and do not waste a jump if a target is in range who needs a heal. Prayer of Healing is also a great AoE heal but will drive the priest OOM very quickly is relied upon. Circle of healing is also a great spell, and heals for a lot of all targets are close enough, but has a cooldown and can not be spammed in situations where your DPS is taking a lot of dmg at once.

ok, just a short write up from my experience since im bored at work anyway, and please add or fix it as you guys wish, I am not a priest or shaman expert, but this can be a springboard for people to talk about the benefits of each healer class.

I would also be interested to see what people think of a druid healer here, since they have great aoe healing as well as single target heals and emergency heals. I would be inclined to take a druid healer before a priest healer i think.

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Originally Posted by palvarik

hmm with Shaman i will be able to clease curses, but with the priest I will not be....hmm anyone know if the new 3.3 dungeons have lots of curses in them?

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The 5man dungeons dont need any decursing.. But I would definitely go with the shaman.. You can get scrolls if you rly need the priest buffs but chainheal and earthshield + an extra tremor/grounding totem are much better than the abilities you will gain from a priest..

One short comment, from some-one who uses a priest as his main healer (although I have no experience with a shaman healer):

The spell I love the most from my holy/disc-priest is 'holy nova'.
Sounds funny, but with the glyph, which gives it 20% more healing, an instant, spammable group heal is realy fun, and I often do all my group healing with it, if the range is not a problem.

Other than that, I do my main healing with 'flash heal', 'renew' and PoM, 'Greter Heal' I normaly only use for healing individual members, if I can predict, that they get big dmg, so a 10k heal is needed and holy nova (or circle) wouldn't do it...

..and when the shit realy hits the fan, I occasionaly use 'Divine Hyme' or 'Tranquility' on my druid.

Spells of my priest I don't use regular (because I'm to lazy or forget about them) are: Lightwell, Gurdian Spirit, Desperate Prayer...

For PvE, priests are a lot better for boxing (in my opinion). I' ve run heroics with both a resto-shaman as healer and a holy priest as healer and not only is it a a lot less hassle to heal with the priest, the priest AE heals are amazing.

Earth shield is nice, but PoM combined with CoH/PoH, and holy nova is amazing :-) Also, allow me to comment on the comparative analysis above:

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Earth Shield / Prayer of mending.

Well, since you want heals on tank, Earth shield stays where you put it, and still heals for a ton of dmg when it is needed. Prayer, while offering more aoe healing due to its bounces, isn't guaranteed to heal a target in need, and bounces randomly to toons you are probably trying to avoid taking dmg on anyway.

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Prayer of mending is great in part because it's spammable and easily macroed. You can simply bind it to your dps key and forget about it. It's insanely mana efficient even if only hitting few targets and in encounters where all party members take damage (including spell damange obv.), it will bounce around without having to be managed in any way. When I was running with my mixed team, this spell was one of my favourites :-)

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Greater Heal / Healing Wave

Well, I haven't played a priest in a while as holy, but as I remember, greater heals were very slow and very large, offering little in the way of emergency huge healness.. and only offering an inner focus / GH combo which guarantees a crit, but still a slow cast, so not terribly useful in an emergency. Healing Wave, though still a relatively slow heal, if talented for it provides a huge healing option with increasing gains, and can be insta cast for those o shit sit's.

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There is no huge difference betweeen healing wave and greater heal. With haste gear and talents it's pretty fast and it's pretty much reserved for the occasions where the tank is taking massive damage. 90% of the time, PoM is enough, but it'll do the job when needed.

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Small Heals:

Heal or Flash heal are good spells, and lesser healing wave is equally as good, and when glyphed and talented, provides a lot of healing on your tank with earth shield on. These are staple heals and fairly similar. A Shaman will be able to heal like this longer than a priest I believe, because LHW is more mana efficient than the priest equivalents, please correct me if im wrong on this one, like i said, its been a while on a holy priest.

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Not once have i ran out of mana with my healer (both shaman and priest) while multiboxing, unless the rest of the party was out of mana anyway. I've never looked into the mana efficiency of flash heal because mana has never been an issue - on my priest or my resto shaman. If there is a difference, I'm sure it's fairly insignificant, but it's also not often I've been using flash heals, since PoM/CoH takes care of a lot of the party healing.

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Aoe Heals

Ok, so apart from healing stream totem, a shaman has no real good heal for everyone at once, but chain heal is much more mana efficient than any priest equivalant and can almost chain spam this spell an entire fight, and has recently gotten a much needed upgrade making it chain further and for more healing each jump. This is a great spell and can hardly be compared to any of the priests equivalent spells. It chains on people who NEED it and do not waste a jump if a target is in range who needs a heal. Prayer of Healing is also a great AoE heal but will drive the priest OOM very quickly is relied upon. Circle of healing is also a great spell, and heals for a lot of all targets are close enough, but has a cooldown and can not be spammed in situations where your DPS is taking a lot of dmg at once.

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Several points here. Chain healing is more efficient in terms of healing per mana, but there are several drawbacks and mitigating factors. First of all, like i stated above, mana isn't really an issue (outside of raids). Second of all, chain heal needs to be targeted, unlike PoH/CoH. Resto shamans have no instant AE heal (well, I guess you could use CD to get an instant CH, but still). In addition to this, PoM works at the same time as the AE heals, unmanaged even.

That's not to say that there are no good points to make for resto shaman. Mana tide totem, extra totems (grounding, tremor etc.) and earth shield are all very nice, but for PvE healer in 5-man instances, the priest is better in my opinion.

hmm, good to have a priests point of view, as my opinion is heavily shaman based,

2 things, I completely forgot about Desperate Prayer, and that is a talent now. the last time I played a priest, it was a racial, so please forgive my ignorance. DP is a great instant heal, even if its mana cost is high, it is effectively an instant flash heal? about the same healing on it? confirm/deny

Also, I forgot about the heal that heals the priest as well as the target, which would help on some fights i suppose, another tool in the arsenal of a priest to use for times when.. you're getting beat on i suppose? Ideally this spell should never have to be used outside PvP, but you can't say ideal is the standard in the game :P Making sure your healer is always getting heals in an "o-shit" moment can't be bad.

One other thing, and I know this feels like a post leaning towards priests a little, and that may be the case.

When you are gearing your toons, badge gear aside, having some diversity in your team's requirements for gear is useful, as the cloth drops wouldn't be sharded anymore, and that results in a net benefit to your gearing time.

I have 4 priests on their way to 80, and I would definitely try one out as a healer when it gets enough gear to be useful in heroics. I have no doubt it would be a good addition to my group, but there is also one problem.

1. I have found, that when I tried to include a Boomkin in my group, I found I missed my shaman, which is my team, and what I enjoy playing. My DPS was sacrificied a bit by the loss of a Boomkin, but my heals went up because I have the extra chain heal again, and more totems as well as chain lightning and synergy of all casts.

I enjoy a 4 elemental and 1 prot pally setup with a button to just heal my paladin 4x at once, and one to chain heal my entire group, and it works great. I see no real reason to incororporate a healer at all, but the new dungeons are sure pressing my ability to box them, and I am glad, a challenge might just be what I need to try and incorporate a priest and a boomkin to my group again =)

Afterall, it's what we like to play, but also what works =)

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Originally Posted by Mokoi

hmm, good to have a priests point of view, as my opinion is heavily shaman based,

2 things, I completely forgot about Desperate Prayer, and that is a talent now. the last time I played a priest, it was a racial, so please forgive my ignorance. DP is a great instant heal, even if its mana cost is high, it is effectively an instant flash heal? about the same healing on it? confirm/deny

Also, I forgot about the heal that heals the priest as well as the target, which would help on some fights i suppose, another tool in the arsenal of a priest to use for times when.. you're getting beat on i suppose? Ideally this spell should never have to be used outside PvP, but you can't say ideal is the standard in the game :P Making sure your healer is always getting heals in an "o-shit" moment can't be bad.

One other thing, and I know this feels like a post leaning towards priests a little, and that may be the case.

When you are gearing your toons, badge gear aside, having some diversity in your team's requirements for gear is useful, as the cloth drops wouldn't be sharded anymore, and that results in a net benefit to your gearing time.

I have 4 priests on their way to 80, and I would definitely try one out as a healer when it gets enough gear to be useful in heroics. I have no doubt it would be a good addition to my group, but there is also one problem.

1. I have found, that when I tried to include a Boomkin in my group, I found I missed my shaman, which is my team, and what I enjoy playing. My DPS was sacrificied a bit by the loss of a Boomkin, but my heals went up because I have the extra chain heal again, and more totems as well as chain lightning and synergy of all casts.

I enjoy a 4 elemental and 1 prot pally setup with a button to just heal my paladin 4x at once, and one to chain heal my entire group, and it works great. I see no real reason to incororporate a healer at all, but the new dungeons are sure pressing my ability to box them, and I am glad, a challenge might just be what I need to try and incorporate a priest and a boomkin to my group again =)

Afterall, it's what we like to play, but also what works =)

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Actually I play paladin + 4 shamans at the moment. I still feel that priest is a better healer, but I like the PvP option and the synergy of the shamans :-)

If you have the option, you may want to think about including a lock instead of a boomkin. Anyway, as far as gearing goes, I find myself having almost exclusively badge and crafted gear, so that has never really been an issue. Sure, you'll prbably save a few runs, but in the end it's not something I'd weigh as a part of my decision. Like you're suggesting, even though the spell dmg debuff is nice, it's not necessarily worth the sacrifice of playing 4 of the same class. Anyway, that's my (very subjective) perspective - but I've done both and I find the 4-shaman setup more enjoyable. In the end it's a matter of preference I guess :-)

Like you, I'm looking forward to seeing how the 4-shaman setup works in the new dungeons, but I'm fairly confident they'll be doable once the current gear is upgraded. While a dedicated healer is a significant benefit in some encounters (Black Knight phase 3 for example), the spread healing is also sometimes beneficial. The Brann encounter was a walk in the park with my shammie team - also doable on my mixed team (they're equally geared except for a few Triumph pieces), but easier with the shamen.

As for desperate prayer - I've never used it while boxing.

Yeah, I am lvling my priest/warlock team now and I am considering the following setup when i am finished

Prot Pally
Elemental Shaman
Destro Warlock
Shadow Priest
Resto Druid

I know that people are opposed to shadow priests atm, but with their new buffs and a class I really enjoy, I find it a good addition.

Now, the plan is to use the druid and priest as dualspec dps/heal so if needed I can go holy priest / boomkin.

I'm not convinced that a resto druid will heal as well as a holy priest, but I do know it will be easy to macro and my druid already has tons of gear. Plus like I said if resto/shadow doesn't work I can still go Boomkin/holy.

SO, I end up playing 5 of my favorite classes and playing the game the way I want. Maybe not perfect, but check out raidcomp, its got all the buffs and debuffs you want in the game, spell power+ maxxed, haste, HP, Kings, Spirit, spell hit debuff, CoE to replace earth and moon, the only thing its missing is a BM hunter 3% flat dmg increase.

I succesfully switched my resto shaman with a disc priest and all i can say is: WTF

Honestly my priest heals a lot better and even though hes in pvp gear he never runs oom.. The downside is that my paladin has to drink after every group in a heroic cause he never gets hurt :(

Tried a few heroics now and it went like a charm in ToC hero (no toon had under 80% of his hps).. I usually rush through ToC but I was having more problems when I was using my shaman healer.. Brb gotta farm PvE gear ^^

wow, thats good to hear =)