Migrating one to a heal spec

[Starbuck_Jones]

I run a paladin and 4 druids.

Ive seen a lot of posts that at some point a group gets stuck or starts running into trouble and one of the fixes is to spec one of your toons to healing. Mostly shaman groups where finally one is shifted to healing over DPS and it "made all the difference" or "now its easy mode". Right now with my group the druids are all balance (dps). They collectively do more than enough healing with just two HOTs to get me through, however I am starting to think that im loosing out on quite a bit of DPS by stopping all 4 toons to 4xCast Regrowths and Rejuves etc.

When you made the transition to a dedicated healer, What did you do different with that toon over the others? When your four follow toons can all heal, did you still heal with all 4, or drop healing to just the one speced for it? If anyone is running druids can you explain how you're doing it? Even shaman examples will be helpful.

[Coltimar]

In TBC I switched one shaman to heal for heroics. He did all the healing, except for AoE damage then I did Chain Heal x4. Once I farmed a bit of gear I switched him back to DPS. Going resto DID make all the difference. Until I overgeared the heroics I needed the healing. Some can do it without, but I needed it. Once I farm a couple hundred more badged I will spec him back Elemental, I think.

[GizmoxLoW]

i did the same, when i started doing northrend heroics a resto shaman helped so much, now that my palidan is geared enough to take the hits or dodge them that shaman is back to dps and i blow through heroics so fast. its definatly a way to start things out

[Multibocks]

you know if you set up your macros right you can just smash the "heal" button until you see enough HOTs rolling on your tank and then smash the dps buttons again. I did that with my shaman. They all had a heal and dps button and since they will go out of sync when doing /castrandom dps it worked out well for healing. I would hit the heal button until I got 2 dps to start casting heals and then I would go back to mashing my dps button. That way dps continued on 2 shaman while 2 healed. I think Hachoo is to thank for this idea, it works great.

[puppychow]

you don't need a dedicated healer until heroics, regular instances are easily outleveled if you are dying a lot.

Even heroics don't need a dedicated healer, they are just slightly easier when undergeared with a dedicated healer. Once your teams gear is pretty good its actually a lot easier running without a healer, assuming you have 2-3 classes that can heal (druids/shamans/priests; not mages for example) since stuff will die a lot faster and your tank doesn't require much healing.

Until my accounts expired I ran DK (prev prot pally) / mage / resto shaman / 2 ele shamans, and just had 6 keys I used for healing. Those 6 keys were healing only, they did nothing on my other chars. 1 = lhw tank, shift-1 = earthshield tank, h = riptide tank, shift-h = emergency heal tank (ns + heal wave), g = chain heal resto shaman, shift-g = chain heal mage (the person who couldn't heal themselves in emergencies). My main DPS key (2) did nothing on my healer, was just an empty button.

I pretty much just used 2 for dps/tanking so all my fights consisted of mashing 2, and when my tank needed heals pressing 1 a few times in between 2. Retardedly easy and I cleared every heroic with pretty much just mashing half a dozen keys.

You can get fancy and have your healer DPS while healing, using things like the below to stop casting offensive spells when you cast a heal spell:

/stopcasting [harm]
/target <tankname>
/cast lesser healing wave

and in DPS macros:

/assist focus (or tankname)
/castrandom Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Flame Shock

but I don't really recommend it, theres no reason to get that extra DPS (all the bosses with maybe 1-2 exceptions are tuned around 3 mediocore DPSers), your healer goes OOM faster, and you get into GCD issues when a dps spell has just gone off, you can't toss a heal for 1.5 seconds and sometimes you really, really need that heal

[Starbuck_Jones]

Thanks for all of the info. Right now I'm using a whopping 4 buttons for my group. The paladins macro is the same 969 rotation on all 3 buttons.

Button one I don't use, its still the default melee attack from level 1
Button two is a /cast random starfire, wrath, wrath
Button 3 is a /castsequence reset=target rejuvination, regrowth
Button 4 is to pop treants and the 'E' key is bound to a leftclick
Button 5 is a /castsequence that has all the dot's and stuff for longer boss fights as well as pvp.

So when I play, my left hand pinky finger rests on the tab key to cycle targets. Middle finger is on the normal dps button (2) and pointer finger on the heal. When I need a heal, I just hit the spacebar to jump and cancle any spells and hit the heal. It works out really well because all of the paladins spells are instant cast and rejuv is as well and can be cast while moving/jumping so it doesnt add any extra delays, If I need more than a rejuv I pop a regrowth right after.

[OogaJiggaWooga]

Button one I don't use, its still the default melee attack from level 1

lol at this - That was the first spell I got rid of from the first day I played WoW, and you've still got it