What Class to replace my Boomkin with ?

My current group:
Prot - Pally, 2X Elem Shaman, Resto Shaman, and Boomkin.
I am only interested in PvE.

Well I am just disappointed the the DPS from the Boomkin and thinking of replacing her.
The first thing that comes to mind is to convert the Boomkin to a healer and convert the Resto Shaman to Elemental. But I have heard that Druids are bit more difficult to box as healers.

I am not opposed to going to an different class. I see Fursphere dropped his Boomkin for a destruction Warlock. I am wondering why Warlock, why not Mage ? I am wondering if Fursphere had a good reason to go Warlock or was it just an easy change because he had a lvl 80 Warlock setting on the shelf. I was thinking Mage because I have some level 60's Mages setting on a shelf.

I am not very familiar with either Mages or Warlocks or maybe I should consider some other class? I am doing research on this topic and if any body has has quick thoughts they don't mind sharing I would love to here it.

warlock ! (+13% spelldmg debuff .. coe , and very good dps with click makros)

I run a druid healer using ISBoxer and regions to heal with Vuhdo and it works really well. I cannot see how a druid would be more or less difficult to box than other healers BUT I have not boxed with either a shaman or a priest. Druids shine for their mobility while healing.
I have two warlocks in my main group but if I were going for sheer raw dps I would go arcane mage, not as many extra buffs but blows up stuff really fast :)

My Destro lock has a GS that's about 200 points below my shaman and she does around 400-500 dps less than them :/ When I added her, replacing a shaman, my group dps went up noticablely so I can't replace her. I'm thinking my problem is an issue with my /click macros. She has about 290 haste, up from the 70 I had at 80.

Warlock or Mage

I traded Warlock for Shaman, between my two 80th alliance teams.

The PvE progression team (heroics basically), is now:
- Prot Pally.
- 3x Elemental.
- 1x Destruction.

The Warlock does about 75% of the damage of the shammies.
But the teams damage has increased by a large amount.

All the essential totems are still covered.
And now we have health stones and some extra health from the imp.



Conversely, the other team loses the lock.
But gains a second shammy, which helps to cover all the totems.
Also, even if this team lost a lot and gained nothing, its a worthwhile trade.. they can still do their dailies, which is basically the goal of the team.

Thanks for everyones input.

My plan now is to Level 4 Shaman and a Warlock ASAP. They where all level 60's on the shelf from RAF. When the group hits 80, I will move the Druid to Tank and setup an alt group with Bear Tank and 4 Shaman. Put the Warlock in the main group and see how it goes.

My marching orders are No-collection quest leveling. I have BOA gear for the group and they where fully rested, did RAF a year ago. I started leveling the Shaman/Warlocks Friday I am skipping every collection quest and I almost dinged 69 Sunday and still in Outland. Super bowl slowed me up a bit. I am going to do the non-collection quests in SMV then on to Northend.

Four of my druids had no BoA +experience gear initially.
I added the first piece in Terrokar to these toons.
And the second piece has been added late into the Nagrand quests.
They are 69th, and about to hit Blade's Edge Mountains.

The other druid had two pieces of the +experience BoA gear right from the start.
She has just dinged 72nd, having only run Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar and Nagrand.

Granted the team has played every minute with rested since RAF ended.
But I much prefer the BC quests to the WotLK collections...
I'm pretty amazed at hitting 72nd off of four BC zones.
I might actually stay in BC until 71 or 72 on the other toons.
Chances are Northrend will be faster... but its also about fun, and non-collection BC quests are more fun then needing some collections in Northrend, to open non-collections, which open collections, etc.

Make the druid your healer, make the shaman elemental.

People who say druids are more difficult to box as healers simply have no idea what they are talking about. They are by far THE EASIEST healers to box. You simply make a macro that rolls hots and does wild growth on cooldown. Tie it to your dps macro, and do heroics and raids smashing one button the entire time. No thinking involved with the healing whatsoever. Once you go tree, you never leave!

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Originally Posted by jimbobobb

Make the druid your healer, make the shaman elemental.

People who say druids are more difficult to box as healers simply have no idea what they are talking about. They are by far THE EASIEST healers to box. You simply make a macro that rolls hots and does wild growth on cooldown. Tie it to your dps macro, and do heroics and raids smashing one button the entire time. No thinking involved with the healing whatsoever. Once you go tree, you never leaf!

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Fixed :P

Makes me wish druid trees had seasonal foliage ;)

Can you describe your rolling hot set up in a little more detail please?

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Originally Posted by Mac

Fixed :P

Makes me wish druid trees had seasonal foliage ;)

Can you describe your rolling hot set up in a little more detail please?

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Basically it's just a macro that casts my hots, and I use spells like swiftmend with cooldowns as stopgaps. You'd have to play around with your own button mashing speed/etc to make them work for you, but I basically have different macros depending upon how much damage my tank is gonna be taking:

Stuff I'm trying for the first time or boxing raids, basically non stop healing:

/castsequence [ target=focus,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,,,Swiftmend,,,,Lifebloom,,,, Regrowth,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,Nourish,,, ,,,Nourish,,,,,,,Nourish


easy stuff:

/castsequence [target=focus,nochanneling] reset=combat Rejuvenation,,,Swiftmend,,,,Lifebloom,,,,Rejuvenat ion,,,Lifebloom,,,,,,Lifebloom,,,,

The above just keeps rejuvenation on constantly, makes sure the blooms bloom, and uses swiftmend as the stopgap to make sure it happens. This macro is very mana efficent, however if this is not spammed, it can get stuck w/out a rejuvenation for the mend, especially if you use the glyph of rapid rejuv

and this is just bound to the same button as my dps/tanking button, so I pay zero attention to what is going on in regards to healing.

Just play around with your timing and what your tank needs in the way of healing - all you have to do is keep rejuvenation, maybe some lifeblooms on your tank in a lot of situations. If gear is still a problem maybe you need to keep regrowth and throw a few nourishes in there. In heroics now I actually just hot the tank before bosses, and otherwise chain cast starfire and wildgrowth on cooldown. (I have wg bound to my scroll down button, and my healing/dps/tank stuff to scroll up - so I just scroll my mouse up and down while I do stuff and this ensures wg is cast on cooldown)

Druids are just great 'set it and forget it' healers. And when you're playing 5 characters, one less thing you have to pay attention to is nice.

I had an epic fail with my new team composition last night. (dk tank, druid healer, warlock and two shaman).
A lot of it was due to tweaking setup (weird things happening) but i found trying to watch the hots on my tank before driving heals from the druid via a repeater region was splitting my attention too much.

I was going to drop the druid and turn him into a tank - but realised that if i did a macro (like above) healing the tank i would only need to use the repeater region to heal others when needed. it will definitely simplify things.

Resto druids are AMAZING healers- I never have mana issues and if for some reason a fight went that far innervate it away. Running 4 druids and a pally I could even innervate X4 on my healer IF needed but I never have run into a situation like that.

As for ease of use- I use ISBoxer repeater regions + healbot. My DPS druids have their DPS keys tied to my tanking keys. My healers bar is basically empty and I solely use healbot+ISBoxer. With healbot you can put any spell you wish on one bar. It becomes like a whack a mole game really- when a bar goes down on healbot click it lol.

Jim's way i'm sure works just great, not sure how he adjusts for overhealing? I like the control healbot gives me so I don't accidently blow all my mana healing a full health target.

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Originally Posted by shaeman

I had an epic fail with my new team composition last night. (dk tank, druid healer, warlock and two shaman).
A lot of it was due to tweaking setup (weird things happening) but i found trying to watch the hots on my tank before driving heals from the druid via a repeater region was splitting my attention too much.

I was going to drop the druid and turn him into a tank - but realised that if i did a macro (like above) healing the tank i would only need to use the repeater region to heal others when needed. it will definitely simplify things.

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Are you using healbot?? If not that's all you need+repeater region.

If you feel like it's splitting your attention too much- maybe try moving healbot to where you are already naturally looking while fighting. For me I am looking at my bottom bar for the cooldowns- so my healbot is set up right above my bottom bar where I can easily move off the repeatable regions for camera adjustments and movement.

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Originally Posted by jinkobi

Resto druids are AMAZING healers- I never have mana issues and if for some reason a fight went that far innervate it away. Running 4 druids and a pally I could even innervate X4 on my healer IF needed but I never have run into a situation like that.

As for ease of use- I use ISBoxer repeater regions + healbot. My DPS druids have their DPS keys tied to my tanking keys. My healers bar is basically empty and I solely use healbot+ISBoxer. With healbot you can put any spell you wish on one bar. It becomes like a whack a mole game really- when a bar goes down on healbot click it lol.

Jim's way i'm sure works just great, not sure how he adjusts for overhealing? I like the control healbot gives me so I don't accidently blow all my mana healing a full health target.

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I have extremely mana efficient rotations (like the one listed above) and extremely inneficient rotations, but I actually just don't care about overhealing. Mana is never a problem. I remember a 10 minute faction champions where it was down to me and 4 others, and I kept rejuvenation/growth rolling, and mended the entire time. Druids are ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

I love single playing my druid and trying to max out what he can do. But when it comes to boxing, I don't even want to bother with it. I want to target mobs and watch them fall over dead while I scroll my mouse. Healing is just something extra to have to worry about. Running a druid healer means you can simply ignore that something extra and pay more attention to runing out of the fire, the tank switch, and why one of your dps is facing the wrong way.

edited to add: Druids are proactive healers, as opposed to reactive healers like shaman. (although they have been given many more reactive tools in the recent expansion) So rolling hots will always have quite a bit of overhealing, even when you are paying 100% attention. I think it's this proactive stance (simply keep this stuff going and you're golden) that makes them such great healers for boxing.

as for dps the destro is superior. I have 2 teams one has lock and oder boomkin and lock is much more efficient. Even it uses CoE i can keep hes dps (not overall damage) at shamans level, but at bosses its like at level 70 it has 1500dps and shamans have around 1000+.