Better holy trinity healer - shaman or priest?

[Fuzzyboy]

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?

[daviddoran]

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.

[Vyndree]

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.

[Suvega]

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.

[Dominian]

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.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

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.

[Fuzzyboy]

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.

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?

[Vyndree]

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).

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.

[Fuzzyboy]

(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

[tokadub]

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.