Better holy trinity healer - shaman or priest?

[Vyndree]

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

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.

[Fuzzyboy]

Nice two cents - bookmarked. Thanks for the info

[Anastasiya]

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:

[BobGnarly]

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.

[Vyndree]

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