Resto Druid vs Disc Priest AoE Heals

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I am getting pretty well geared in general but now I am wondering how much benefit a swap out of my healer would be. My current resto druid works really great with click heals using vuhdo and ISboxer. The issue I am running into from time to time is Wild Growth just doesn't seem to get enough health back on my group heals. Would a Disc priest do more healing for the group? Or is chain heal for a shammy better?
I have 2 priest and a shammy sitting at 70 and now thinking I should level them to help out with heals and possibly dps.
Has anyone moved from resto druid to disc priest for healing? How did they compare?
Just a little frustrated with Wild Growth lol

[Jubber]

If you want AOE healing you can't get much better than resto druids or holy priests.

Disc priests don't have much in terms of AOE heals, they are mainly a single healer. Although i have found if you have a caster group that sits close to each other you can holy nova spam and that is pretty good cuz it shields the group. Then I just pop a renew on each of my team members to top them off.

My shammy is great when it comes to chain heal spamming my melee team though, I love her. I usually swap her with my 5th pally in the pally team on fights that I know are gonna be AOE heavy. Usually the pallies do fine by themselves but with my shammy grouped in they are unstoppable.

Edit: I still think Resto druids and Holy priests are the best AOE healers though. Don't forget you also have tranquility on your resto druid if wild growth isn't enough.

[crowdx]

So then my question would be, is holy Nova a better way to go,? Never really played my priest too much so the other question is, how mobile are they when healing? I like my druids mobility

[Jubber]

Disc priests can be fairly mobile.. No where near that of a druid, but good enough. I can't comment on being holy as I never played a holy priest but with my disc priest so far I love her. I haven't put her into a situation where enough AOE damage has come in to risk my team. For expected AOE that comes in timed bursts, holy nova then a renew is usually enough to top off my team.
Not sure how that would hold up to constant AOE damage. Holy priests definately do better in those situations.

[genocyde]

Disc priests don't have much in terms of AOE heals, they are mainly a single healer.

I disagree. Disc has plenty of AoE power. Not as much as holy sure but more than other healing classes. The biggest bonus of a priest is they can throw unmatched AoE healing while moving.

Prayer of Healing - Long cast, big heal, no cooldown.

Holy Nova - Instant, medium heal, also does damage, no threat, no cooldown.

Prayer of Mending - Instant, fire and forget, large reactive heal, single target but bounces around between toons for a while.

Power Word: Shield - Instant, Shield, small instant heal + Large damage shield, single target but can cast on entire team quickly if you know an AoE is coming, increase your next spell cast by 25%.

Renew: I don't use it often for AoE but rolling HoT... it's an option....

How I approach an AoE healing situation as disc.

1)Pre-shield everyone. This gives a large damage shield before you even begin taking damage. If you think your tank is going to take massive damage consider pain suppressing him so you don't have to heal him.
2)Throw a prayer of mending out. This thing will bounce around several times to your toons while taking AoE. It's single target but over multiple AoE's this thing pumps out some insane healing.
3)Spam Prayer of Healing or holy nova if your moving.
4)When Power Word: Shields debuff starts wearing off start rotating power word shield with Prayer of Healing. This gets your sheilds back on your toons 1 by one while giving you 25% haste on every prayer of healing.
5)Throw a new prayer of mending on every cooldown.

This is overkill for nearly any AoE encounter in heroics, etc. Take Loken in Halls of Lightning for example. I pre shield before the fight. I stand outside of lightning nova range the entire fight and do not have to cast ANYTHING but one prayer of mending and keep my shields up. If for some reason i get hit by the lightning nova one prayer of healing tops everyone back off. Best part is I'm not effected by spell knockback from his aura because power word shield is absorbing all the damage.

In PvP it is an insane amount of heals allthough more than likely in PvP you will be dropping Prayer of Healing due to it's cast time.

Still the shields + Prayer of Mending + Holy nova is still a good amount of healing and you can penance anyone that gets low or through a pain suppression on their kill target.

Now Holy priests do get circle of healing which is a nice on the run instant. Plus their AoE heals are a tad stronger. They do lose the good shields, the hasted prayer of healings and pain suppression and most likely the zero cooldown on Power Word: Shield. But they require almost no micro management at all. Just spam Prayer of Mending and circle of healing on every cooldown and fill the gaps with nova or prayers.

Now if someone gives you the pros - cons of shaman aoe you should have all the info you need

[Jubber]

Prayer of Mending - that's the spell. That is a very awesome spell.

[HPAVC]

Where do you need to be so mobile and have a dedicated healer? Is this pvp?

[crowdx]

I hate pvp, and really mobility is only for the newer dungeons where sometimes being able to move and heal can save the team
I just moved my 70 priest onto the team with my resto druid and I think I will 4 box the priest, shaman, rogue and mage up to 80 which will allow me to drop some new toons into my mixed groups.
I have 2 other shamans at 60 and 65 which I am also considering leveling to 80 but one would need to be moved from another realm.
The pain now begins with trying to sync them all up so that I can start questing the same quests with the full team

[Fishbeak]

Hi all,
so I am getting pretty well geared in general but now I am wondering how much benefit a swap out of my healer would be. My current resto druid works really great with click heals using vuhdo and ISboxer. The issue I am running into from time to time is Wild Growth just doesn't seem to get enough health back on my group heals. Would a Disc priest do more healing for the group? Or is chain heal for a shammy better?
I have 2 priest and a shammy sitting at 70 and now thinking I should level them to help out with heals and possibly dps.
Has anyone moved from resto druid to disc priest for healing? How did they compare?
Just a little frustrated with Wild Growth lol

I will throw in my $0.02. It really depends on what type of AoE healing you are talking about.

-- If you have a melee team then Holy Nova will require you to be close to your group. Prayer of healing is slower and not as powerful as holy. In this setup I would go Holy.

-- If you have a caster team then disc will be ok.

In my current setup (casters) I have really come to value a resto shaman, with earth sield, riptide there is very little I have to do to keep the MT up and healing stream totem is completely fire and forget, chain heal is intelligent and so as long as you are targeting the right person it is very powerful. With ISBoxer and click healing I find this setup works very nicely.

Can I have my money back?

[crowdx]

I am running a caster team and so I think either the shammy or disc priest is looking like the best option
Just have to level them both and see which shines in my group I suppose. I think I may also revisit my druids Wild Growth and put it on the same spam key as my dps for some fights, this way it is something that will be up whenever it is off cooldown, I will just have to pay attention and make sure I do not run out of mana.
My current fight that I think of is Ick and Crick in PoS where there is a lot of running away healing lol and those puddles sometimes do some damage before i get my group moved and so an AoE heal would help a lot I think.