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Which do you enjoy more for PvE and PvP.
I am trying out both, the Resto Druid is slightly more geared but it feels like they mesh better as a team and take less focus to perform their functions ( you can get their hot rotation down and not have to hard cast any heals) This nets better for PvP since it';s on the move and less interrupts.
The shaman brings some nice group buffs and spirit link, but I am unsure if it is worth it at this point.
in combination with what other classes? if its with elemental shamans you get the silence beam from the resto druids through symbiosis, which is a massive ability to score kills (if you put it on the healer/casters/ or dk/enhance)
Quote:
Originally Posted by zenga
In combination with 4 dk's. I am thinking about just doing a trial run on some heroics using a Druid healer and enhance shaman with 3 dk's before I start moving around my accounts.
@Ellay Please share your impressions after your trial runs. I'm brainstorming about a very similiar question and would love to hear some opinions.
I'm not experienced with Shamans but imo a gread thing for melee teams is, that the resto Druid can dps as a melee. If you drive the tank and don't need a dedicated healer all the time, just let him dps for a while.
I have them both on a "dry run" sitting at a training dummy. Again about equally geared in terms of spell power and doing normal heals without popping any cooldowns. On 1-2 targets the Shaman will be slightly higher but mana is depleted greatly. Anything above that and the Resto druid heals are off the charts due to aoe heal nature of it.
Will report back when I give it a try here shortly.
Yes, I think even on heroic instances it doesn't really matter. Both are good and the content isn't too hard in terms of required healing. I think this is true for a boxing team, too (I'm not expirienced in boxing, is it true?).Quote:
> Again about equally geared in terms of spell power and doing normal heals
For me, it's more about the integration into a melee team. Which one is more fun and suits more.
>Yeah, thanks!Quote:
Will report back when I give it a try here shortly.
I just did Jade Serpent Temple and while the constant hots and aoe heals were nice it felt like it lacked the punch when I needed heals the most..
Going to keep testing and switching them out because it doesn't hurt.
I've got no complaints with my Resto Shaman in my melee team {PvE, of course}. Overall I have a ton of passive healing just due to the nature of my team {2*HST, 2* Holy Prism, 2*Sacred Shield, Glyphed Riptide on a randomized cast, Earth Shield}. 90% of the time she's right up in there in melee range because it just makes it easier to move out of the way of things.
She has 2 setups I can use, 1 where all she does is totems and shocks/UE between casting Riptides all over the party and 1 where she has an actual rotation with Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt spam added in. The latter is the one I've used pretty much exclusively. Glyphing Telluric Currents can help while you're gearing up if you want/can DPS while running content, but I swapped that out pretty early for Healing Wave.
Then I have mouseover regions set up so she can do {NS+}GHW, HW or Chain Heal based on mouse position on the frame. A separate button allows me to manually cast Riptide on mouseover {also tied to Rez out of combat, battle rez in combat}. Plus I still have Spirit Link/Healing Rain/Healing Tide Totem/Ascendance/Spiritwalker's Grace for really disastrous moments.
I haven't used a resto Druid since cata, but this was my impression also. I just felt I fell behind and couldn't keep up when I really needed lots of healing in pve content.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellay
Well dks are tanks that take more dmg by default compared to the other tanks as they rely for a big part on self healing cq building up a blood shield. But when you take 2 consecutive big hits then it might indeed feel that you gonna die, definitely with a resto druid hots on you. But in fact you are probably just fine. Either way I'd say that resto druid paired with a blood dk demands way more active cd management on both toons compared to any other tank with any other healer.
I love coming in the next day and seeing genuine thoughtful replies. Thank you everyone :) I'm going to stick it out with the R Shaman. I'll need to figure out PvP a little more but for PvE the shaman is the clear winner at this point.
Also from my limited Heroic / Dungeon running a Blood DK seems to tank much better than a Guardian Druid in terms of damage taken for amount healed. As a fresh 90 I was able to do the Arena of Annihilation scenario and required no heals for the entire fight. My second run through I just did 1 tank and 2 dps for a faster finish.
Did all of Temple of Jade Serpent with 0 issues using a Resto Shaman, that area was actually extremely easy.. I thought the boss was going to be a problem but if you just stay on top of dispels it's a very easy tank and spank. No one went below 75% hp.
Gate of the Setting Sun was a bit of a learning curve on the bosses. I like to just try and go into a boss for the first time and dodge what look like bad things and see how I do, that doesn't really work too well here. After actually reading the fights, I got them all down. The last boss took an extra made macro but went down pretty easy after that.
With that said, Resto Shaman feels like a great choice and continually modifying the layout to further improve.
*These are all Heroic dungeons.*
I've found stacking Resto Druids to be very strong.
But running a solo felt weak, because of the ramp up time on the HOTs.
I've never had an issue with a Resto Shaman as my heals.
Stacking Resto Shaman will likely be strong too.
You're asking for a solo healer, not stacking several of either... so between the two, I'd go with the Shaman.
Personally, with the DKs I'd take a Paladin over either... more for their PvP potential, since they have enough heals for the PvE end of it.
Paladins are strong but Shamans are more offensive, you gain a Heroism and a Stormlash totem for DPS. For defensive nothing really beats Spirit Link totem.
Good to see you are having some success in heroics Ellay, I'm building up a DK/Shaman team and will be looking to do heroics in the not too distant future.
Just out of interest, what gear level is your team at when you started these?
They were fresh level 90's. They still are as I haven't gotten much gear yet. I can't decide what I exactly want and the dilemma is killing me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravish
Overall I am swirling around the idea of 1 Druid, 4 shaman, 4 dk and somehow transforming it into an amazing 5 man pve and pvp team. Trying to decide ultimately what would work best. Mixing 2 sham and 2 dk seems like the easiest choice but they seem to perform better when stacked.
I've done a lot of training dummy testing and for pve purposes the shaman and dk have equal gear. I can get the dk's to a sustained 40k dps and the same applies for the shaman as well. The problem though is the shaman takes about 10-15 seconds to ramp up, where the dk's more or less blow their abilities in the beginning and taper off.
any combo will work great for pve. I love all of the passive healing you get from the shamans. While the dk's have stronger aoe's (shaman can aoe too but it's not as effective)
for pvp nothing beats the fear and snare breaks shaman have up all the time. While the dk's can grip anyone to them and have nice anytime frontal burst but lack a supreme burst and a secondary on demand burst (elemental blast)
For testing I did temple of the jade serpent heroic not trusting the dps parsers...
4dk and a resto shaman drop the last boss with 2 phase splits where you have to kill the adds.
1 resto sham, 3 enhance and 1 guardian bear tank it took 3 phase splits with the third happening at 25%.
I have further refined my enhance dps rotation though and their weapons are slightly lower quality than the dk's so I'd like to retest this.
last note, wondering if I could do a healing Druid for pvp and maybe throw in a dps cat for pve. We'll see but that's what's on the mind.
I have been trying to tweek my enhance shamans dps.. he has about 469 gear score..two agil axes you get from Klaxi at exalted. I have seen similarly geared enhance shaman doing around 50k sustained.. i cant keep him at 25k.. SO i will keep at it.. not sure what i am doing wrong with him. But both enhance and DKs top charts in LFR all the time ( i don't do normal raids so cant compare those )
get this addon to make macros bigger
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...uperMacro.html
Use this macro, drop Ascendance for PvP, or if you want it on it's own button. Also drop the use items if the trinkets don't have it.
Make sure you use Echo of the Elements paired with Unleashed Elements in the last tier (for PVE), WF mainhand/ FT offhand with Lightning Shield up.
/castsequence [mod] Searing Totem;reset=combat Searing Totem,null
/castsequence reset=target Flame Shock,null
/castsequence [combat] reset=0.3 0,0,0,0,Feral Spirit
/castsequence reset=0.3 0,0,0,Lava Lash
/castsequence reset=0.3 0,0,Stormstrike
/castsequence reset=0.3 0,Unleash Elements
/castsequence reset=5/target Flame Shock,Earth Shock,Earth Shock,Unleash Elements
/cast [combat] Shamanistic Rage
/cast [combat] Ascendance
/use [combat] 13
/use [combat] 14
/startattack
I got 37-40k dps sustained on a lvl 85 training dummy in Stormwind after about 10-15 seconds.
I am using an ilvl 463 dagger in main hand and 450 axe in offhand.
I'll give this a shot! thx! You handle Maelstrom procs separately?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellay
It still needs some toggling but on my isboxer spam macro I have it also include the lightning bolt button with no stop casting after 7 seconds and to last for 1.5 seconds. A full stack seems to be up usually every 7 ish.
I usually set up toggles like this:
a) Main spam mapped key, that calls the other pieces via 'Do Mapped Key' actions (with Target: Current Window).
b) Several other pieces, each their own mapped key (with Target: Whatever)
(Only want one thing deciding the target, either the calling mapped key or the called piece).
So you could have a priority or a two-step or whatever.
Each as their own 'B' step, called from the main spam key.
You could include IWT, if you want.
If you sometimes want Lightning Bolt, but not always.
Make that a mapped key, with whatever parameters you want.
You could have step 1, not advance to the next step for 7 seconds and then step 2 to not advance for 1.5 seconds (or the reverse)... with the keybind for Lightning Bolt, on the step that you want it to fire off on.
Check the box, to not load the mapped key initially.
Then create a toggle key.
It will need a hotkey, and should be two steps.
Keymap Actions > New Mapped Key State Action.
Do the opposite action on the second step.
I often include a Pop Up Text Action, to let me know the current 'Mode'.
Toggle it on, when you want.
And off, when you don't want it.
You can really go crazy, and turn stuff on and other stuff off on alternating steps.
Step 1: Enable A, Disable B.
Step 2: Enable B, Disable A.
Etc..
I think the pop up text action idea is great, especially when you have that many options.
Personally, getting the DPS rotation down for maximum output with the least amount of options is best case scenario.
I'm still stuck on this!
Almost leaning towards the Druid because it's "easier" for PvP. I think I need to PvP more with the group but my mind almost freezes up when I use the resto Shaman, I think due to there being so many hard casts.
So this is the data I pulled.
I had 5 players in a group standing on each other, which I figure I can calculate into the data since we always stack.
Healing Tide Totem and Tranquility healed for almost the same, so negligible there.
Both characters would cast Riptide/Rej on the entire party, Shaman would unleash elements, drop healing stream totem and then spam greater healing wave.
Druid would spam Swiftmend / Wild Growth and a triple stack of Lifebloom on a specific target.
The Shaman would spam heal a target with Earthshield up for the extra 20% healing.
These are my findings..
The druid overall healing was massive to the tune of double using the same amount of mana. I thought to myself hey it must be because of all that AoE, the single target must be terrible. They weren't, using this method the single target heals were also double. I could of added Healing Rain into the mix as well, that's actually quite a bit of aoe healing but the problem is it's a 2 second cast. More hard casting :( :(
AoE heals = Druid easy winner.
Single Target heals = Druid appears the winner.\
Utility = Shaman
Final choice? I still don't know :(
Tremor totem just by itself is a massive thing for PvP, but if I can't even get heals off in the first place whats the point?
You're not asking me but I love my enhance shaman. I have 1 button for rotation and 2 buttons just for maelstrom procs.
i tried doing the procs on same button but it didn't work.
Ellay I pve with a warrior, hunter, shaman, paladin and Druid. They are my only level 90s. I was healing on the paladin but The lack of mobility was tough for me on some heroic fights, and I never much liked the Druid tank. So, I was left to decide who I wanted to heal, and who I wanted to tank. I finally decided on Paladin tanking and Druid healing. I would like the shaman healing but it boiled down to the shaman, for me, was better off dpsing than the Druid would have been. Surprisingly though, the Druid isn't a bad 5 man pve healer. With my teams off heals from the paladin and shaman, the Druids hots keep me up better than the paladin did.
So, for shaman heals vs Druid heals I think it's situational. The shaman is probably better, but 5.2 it might change since Druid is being buffed across the board http://i.wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/15/...-15-bonuses-o/
Thanks for the info Chivalrous, going to give my Druid a strong try and see how it goes. If I need another fear break I can pick up the last tier talent on the DK's to offset.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellay
Just some things I was looking for/at -
Shaman healers shine with their mastery {Deep Healing}, which increases the healing done the lower on health a target is, while the druid's {Harmony} only requires that a direct heal has gone off, so if you're healing at full health, the Shaman's healing isn't going to compare.
You're not getting any healing off Earth Shield on a toon that's not getting hit.
Tranquility is a long cooldown {8m} and channeled {8s} while Healing Rain is a short cooldown {10s} and cast {2s}, making HR spammable. HR can also be made instant every 90s with Ancestral Swiftness and haste will reduce it's cast time.
Chain Heal? Even in PvE that's a large part of my healing for AOE.
Is Earthliving being counted in there?
Of course, I know that the mobile healing and instant-cast nature of the druid is a big pull for PvP, no way I can discount that as I used to play Druid for arena waaaay back in the day. I'm a long, long time out of the PvP world and I've never been an expert by a long shot, so all I've got is speculation from the PoV of one class, obviously. I just wanted to point out that your healing numbers comparison may not reflect the same in a combat environment.
I play both resto druid and resto shaman solo in PVP as well as sometimes healing my melee group (5x DK)
My thoughts:
Resto Druid:
Resto druids' mobility is amazing and they have the ability to kite, shift out of roots, and teleport out of tight situations, or go bear form and have 500k+ hp and 20% dmg reduction. Most of their healing is instant and mobility is important in all situations but especially if you're healing a boxing group. As for healing:
- Rejuv has a small initial tick (20-25k, like riptide) and has a reduced GCD making it easy to apply to a group
- Regrowth is a quick cast, faster than healing surge due to haste and has about a 75% crit chance unlike shaman spells
- Swiftmend has a short cooldown and is a quick 50-75k (non-crit) to anyone with a standard HoT already on them
- NS is a 1 min cooldown, about the only time you'll be casting your one big heal in PVP - it's somewhere between healing surge and greater healing wave in potency
- Lifebloom with the glyph blooms in 10 seconds and is a 125k heal non crit, stack it up before hand and with the other glyph you can move it to another toon with all 3 stacks. If no one is taking damage, appling another tick prevents the bloom and refreshes its 10 seconds
- And then there's tree of life, I don't think Ascendance even compares to it. Instant regrowth is your big one here, with nature's vigil this is a 130k heal insta cast over and over 75% crit. Lifebloom can be stacked on multiple targets. Tranquility hits like nothing else. I don't know of a more powerful healing cooldown in the game, when I solo play I keep 5+ people alive against all hell breaking lose in BGs, or tank 4+ people on myself.
- You also have typhoon and an aoe disorient or bash if you prefer, good CDs. and a spammable cc.
- Less mana issues than just about anything else other than holy paladin maybe.
Downsides: No significant party/raid wide buffs, no big passive healing cooldowns, no spammable big heal when you need it (when people are really dying fast, regrowth often doesn't cut it). Other than that, not much else.
I've seen top arena/RBG players stack either mastery or haste, there doesn't seem to be a consensus. edit: correction about mastery: it's a bit complicated and needs timing: direct heals are increased by X percent and casting a direct heal then increases the healing over time by the same X percent.
Resto Shaman:
- Hard hitting, spammable heals
- Chain heal
- More group/raid wide buffs than other healers. They become less interesting when you aren't stacking them though (I run with 4x shaman so I have virtually unlimited use of them unless the fight lasts an eternity)
- Passive healing that can't be interrupted or stopped after you start it (unless they totem stomp), including one of the most powerful CD's in the game which is spirit link totem.
- Ascendance duplicates all healing across the raid, direct or passive
- Greater healing wave, with trinket easy pushes 350k. Can be instant if you want. Duplicate that with ascendance
- Crit heals increase the target's health temporarily - a big deal if you spam heals or get a big crit on something like GHW
Downsides: Exceedingly prone to CC, easy to lock down, no way to escape anything, the only oh sh*t tools you have are basically one time life savers along the lines of lay on hands (whereas druid tree form, assuming not chain CC'd, is like a 20 second long oh sh*t cooldown). They hard cast a lot. Once you're focused, you either get peels or you die, there's no getting away.
As far as PVP you are going to be stacking crit and spirit. Mastery is less good than it sounds because it doesn't do a whole damn lot until people get low. You may think but that's when you heal people... well, crit also comes in handy there and you do have cooldowns. Crit is what you'd reforge, along with spirit if crit is already there. Spirit is what you're going to gem, because resto shaman mana efficiency sucks.
Personally if I only had one healer out of the two, I'd go druid. A lot of people go holy paladin because they can get out of certain death, deep freeze combos and chaos bolts and multiple melee - with divine shield. Neither shaman nor druids can survive that really, but they offer other benefits over holy paladins.
EDIT:
As far as stats go, the gem/reforge priority I listed above is based on single players. A lot of it still applies to multiboxing, but sometimes things change. Since I box shaman I made some changes based on my play style - I don't stack resilience - going from 60-67% reduction seems pointless when there are 4 of me. I went Very heavy on the spirit due to chain heal being expensive and the most effective way for me to spread out heals with 4x shaman. Everything else, if it already had spirit, I went with crit. Mastery isn't something I'm interested in because I'm overhealing the crap out of everyone anyway and I have little use for extra healing when players get low because they're going to get bombed by 4x healing surge or insta greater healing wave for 500k - 1 million anyway.
That being said as a solo healer for a boxing group you'll have to see whether you can avoid damage and/or peel with your group or if you'll be stacking resilience like you're doing 3v3 arena.
So I made the plunge and moved my Druid over to my resto shaman account to get a better idea on the situation. Ran a heroic instance I downed with my Shaman almost a week ago. It was extremely difficult and as far as PvE goes the Resto Shaman is the clear winner.
The real issue which I didn't even consider the entire time... the Shaman group buffs Mastery and spell power are Massive! not a little bit, but massive. On the tooltip I gain 26% frost damage without a Shaman and 38% with. My team was doing roughly 30k dps each on the Frost DK's. Swap in a Shaman instead and they now pump out 40k dps. Tack on Heroism and a stormlash totem for boss fights and it was night and day.
The only way the comp would work properly for PvE with a Druid healing in my opinion is mixing it up further. Would require an enhancement shaman for the extra buffs.
It appears Paladins also get Mastery too, via Blessing of Kings, and also get the stats modifier as well. For some reason I keep writing them off as a healer when I know they are amazing, frankly I just don't want to level one.
Maybe that's why I don't feel like my Druid is weak, I have the Spellpower, spell haste, crit strike, and mastery buffs in group already. I know the buffs make a dif. Because when I run scenarios I can tell the difference in my DPS-so I'm sure heals would suffer greatly also.
Then it is decided...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ellay
You should level five.
haha good ol' Mirai :)
Yes I forgot about the mastery buff from shaman which can be Huge for DKs in both pvp and pve. In full PVP gear you can push well over 40% mastery with the shaman's buff which is going to significantly affect howling blast, frost fever, and frost strike, but not obliterate. With the druid you get mark of the wild of course which will give them more strength, affecting all abilities by a small amount.
Resto shaman may have more difficulty surviving as your main healer but then again you have a lot peels with 4x death grips, asphyxiate, etc. But the shaman will need to be more stationary a lot of the time. Druids as I mentioned can move about and get out of tight situations themselves without as much peeling. Both, I think, have the capability of keeping all four alive in tight situations, resto shaman with ascendance, healing rain, healing tide totem, and especially spirit link. But I still feel like tree form has a slight advantage, and if you have a chance to go offensive you can contribute some CC to the group, which shaman don't have much of.
I'm talking specifically about PVP here though.
I just did an Eye of the Storm with 4 DK's and a resto shaman, and while we lost the Shaman held his own and I think with gear will be in a good spot.
Checking recount healing stream totem does some massive overall healing for something you drop and forget about. I think this disillusioned my perception on why the Resto Druid did so well in PvP with 4x Enhancement... he had massive backup heals on top of 4 grounding totems every 25 seconds.
This is almost turning into a blog of sorts for me, maybe I should just write about it that way - I find it quite cathartic. The answer is here somewhere!
I'm going to try both this week I think, resto druid then resto shaman. I've had mine at 90 almost since release so they are fully geared. My resto druid was definitely very gear dependent and he kinda sucked until I was 5 piece malevolent + weapons. On the other hand the shaman fully geared do some massive direct healing, and healing stream is a good one with 20k ticks + the glyph that reduces magic damage by 10% across the raid (or party maybe). Healing tide is a big one too, 40k and 80k crit with double that in ascendance. And I love windwalk totem getting my group out of snares from mages or whatever, it can also be used offensively to avoid incoming snares instead of anti-magic shell which is what I use when I'm running without a healer, but you still eventually get snared.
But, don't underestimate resto druids or write them off too quickly; although it's a bit different handling them while boxing, they put out amazing heals once gears - I top healing in nearly every BG, even outdoing most geared shaman. If I use tree form and nature's vigil every time it's up, it's not even close.
Druids can be Kitties! (and I suppose Bear-Bears...)
Shaman can be Puppies!
That makes them both amazing.
Since PvP gear has free PvP stats (PvP Power & PvP Defense), but is lower iLV than equivalent PvE gear...
You'll likely have a set of gear for PvE and a different set of gear for PvP.
It might overlap on some pieces, but in general there will be two sets.
Assuming two sets, you're not really that far behind when you use a Shaman for PvE and a Druid for PvP (or vice versa).
It is another option to consider.