Cataclysm Healing

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so on other forums I am seeing a lot of QQ'ing over the latest Pally healing "nerf" , how do you guys feel about healing in Cataclysm? My current team that I am leveling to 85 has a druid healing and so far it has not been too bad. With the re-working of the spells etc it does seem like spells such as nourish have less healing power and so can force me into using higher mana spells.
How are you guys dealing with it? What are your main healing spells in dungeons for Druids, Priests or Pally?

[Malgor]

I fail at the new dugeons so I can't give a great perspective of that.

On my highest geared team (5400gs average) I can only kill the first boss in BRC, trash and other things are no problem and the problem isn't healing it's mechanics and me on a slow learning curve. This is my druid healer team. This team is currently 81.25.

On my lowest geared team (4000gs average) I can't kill the first boss in BRC, but have no problems with the trash and can complete all group quests easy. This is my shaman healer team. This team is currently 82.3.

To heal effectively I think you just have to use what suits your style. Personally I think druids are the best healers, but many say that discipline priests are the best healers. Everything is always situaltional though.

My two guildmates with similar mixed teams have no problems with BRC, so I know it's just me that is being unskilled and unwilling to adapt (yet).

[shadewalker]

I am running a Prot Pally, Holy Priest, Arcane Mage, Ele Shaman, and a Balance Druid, I just hit 83 with my team. I have cleared BRC, TotT, SC, and VP so far. Stone Core was probably the hardest for myself (especially the last boss).

I started the first instances with the same setup i had for Wrath, basically flash heal for any slaves and greater heal for my tank. this worked ok, it seamed to heal enough but flash heal ate into the mana if i got into a situation where i needed to heal my slaves much. I changed flash heal out for heal as it is supposed to be the new "mana efficient" heal.... I found that while it may be efficient, it did not heal enough to keep my team up. The cast time of heal just seems too long for the amount of healing i get out of it. Any time where 2 or more of my slaves were taking damage i just couldn't easily out HpS the incoming damage.

Right now I am using greater heal for all my toons (in addition to PWS and renew if needed) and it is working out much better (but renew also seems to do less healing).

regarding AOE heals, I am not getting much out of them at all. Holy Nova seems to heal for much less than in wrath as does Circle of Healing. I have been meaning to change my AoE heal macro to Prayer of Healing but i have been lazy and not gotten around to that yet.

I guess these are all the changes we get to learn from with the increased health pools in Cata.

[crowdx]

I am wondering is it that the heals are still healing the same amount but all classes now have much more HPs and take more damage and so takes much more healing?

[Tonuss]

I am wondering is it that the heals are still healing the same amount but all classes now have much more HPs and take more damage and so takes much more healing?

Based on my very limited experience (two non-heroic Stonecore runs at 85 for a guildmate) this is part of it. Players will have 95,000 to 150,000 (or more?) health at level 85, and you are no longer able to heal a player from 0-100% with one or two heals, and your 20k crit heal is only going to fill up 15-20% of the tank's health bar. At the same time, mobs do not seem to be able to quickly drop a tank's health so that you find yourself spamming heals (unless your tank is awful).

What they've done is made mana an issue again, and they added some challenge by making it difficult to simply spam a heal and keep everyone topped off. I did not have an issue keeping everyone topped off, but again I was level 85 in a level 83 normal dungeon. I like the new healing setup, you get to show some skill by selecting the right heals at the right time and keeping people alive is no longer a case of topping everyone off all the time and not worrying about overhealing due to excess mana regen. It does seem to make it tougher on multiboxers, because it's something else to track during a fight.

[Lpwned]

You guys tried NO healers yet? Its working for me just fine

I run 4 Ele shammys and my friend tanks on a Prot Pally (4 DPS 1 tank). We seldom have a problem with heals or manna. (Yea yea, I know you can only do it on this type of comp)
How? Earth living weapon and unleash (30% more healing on next heal) followed by a Healing surge = full tank HP (100K+). Raid damage? 4X healing rain baby All my guys use EarthLiving weapon and are specked into improved healing (6% more healing, 15% more healing taken!) after Insta ghost wolf. Each tick of healing rain has a change to proc EarthLiving on the target, and with 4X of them rolling… well you get the idea.

Heals are NOT a problem for me. I can roll heals between my heavy hitting spells to maximize damage and healing. I tried a healing spec and found that the healing and manna efficiency was nowhere close to what I could get running 4 Ele with intermittent heals.


-Clarify this. By efficiency I mean my healer’s manna bar (Not the manna / heal). When your healer is OOM… you wipe. My ele shaman’s manna goes down a LOT slower than a solo healer’s did. And I lose a lot less than 1/4 my damage running all Ele.

[Ualaa]

Mana is important, as well as mana efficiency.
But the instances should be doable, with an adjustment to healing strategy.
I mean, the game is balanced around one-player per toon.

We cannot just spam Flash Heal on a Priest, like we could pre-Cataclysm.

I'd imagine those who adapt to the changes are successful.
And those who cannot change, are whining on the Blizzard forums.

There are quite a few videos of instances being cleared, so they are doable.
I've not tried any, so cannot say what needs to be changed.

[Khatovar]

My healer is a shammy, which you didn't ask about, but she feels pretty gutted on a lot of her heals. Chain heal and Healing wave aren't even worth using. They heal for nothing, leaving me with my mana-pig heals for direct healing. My mana goes down as fast as health goes up.

Non-healer healing has become pretty vital for me, at least until I can get some decent gear going. I've spec'd both my pallies into WoG, and I've got a mass healing button set up to have both shammies drop Healing Rains and both pallies drop Holy Radiance. I've found just depending on my healer alone to take care of healing was not working.

[Enoah35]

So far I have completed:

BRC: Not hard but was level 82 when I cleared. No healing issue
Tott: Was quite hard but completed. Not much healing issue
SC: Completed 3/4, needed a friend healer to finish off with the last. Major healing issue on last boss and some trash.
VP: Completed at level 84(yes pretty high...). Healing issue on trash.
HoO: Haven't done yet.
GB: Completed. Serious issues on trash packs, 2nd boss.
LC: I just can't beat the last boss... way too much damage going all around.

I am running with Prot pala, Arcane mage, destro warlock, Disc priest, elemental shaman. I always have the shaman use
chain healing to help out the aoe healing but doesn't help much. I tried holy but I have a hard time tracking chakra up on
mid fight, and the loss of penance was quite big, so back to disc again. I use PoM alot now, as well as renew compared
to in wotlk, and I think I better replace flash heal with G heal since when I panic I just spam flash heal which empties my
mana instantly. I also put holy radience (I think this was the name) on my paladin to help out the healing, as well as putting LoH in my hot bar for emergencies. I may start putting healing stream totem instead of mana spring...

[Toned]

Triage is key...

You can get away in most cases with just keep your group at 50% health. Then keep the tank at 75%+ depending on the fight. You want to use the most efficient spells as possible don't healing surge spam to keep yourself topped off you will oom before the boss is even close to dead.

A good combination for keeping the tank up as a resto shaman is riptide > 2 healing waves repeat... if damage gets heavy riptide > 1 or 2 greater healing waves depending on dmg > healing wave if you only had to do 1 greater... repeat.

All of the normal cata dungeons are very easily multi-boxed I've succesfully cleared them all with Pal + 3 ele + 1 resto.
The heroics on the other hand hehe. They're challenging and I like it, but I guarantee blizz nerfs them down. There is no way
your average player base will be able to clear these.