PvP healing team

[Owltoid]

I let my accounts expire after failing with four rets and a warrior. The itch has come back and I'm searching for success. The biggest thing that added to my frustration was knowing that I could not carry my weight in smaller BGs. EOTS was the only smaller BG that I felt effective with five toons. The others, including AB, I felt largely responsible for the loss. 10 man BGs wasn't even a debate - it was my fault.

So I am searching for a solution where I can carry my weight and I believe that means having a smaller team. The problem is the smaller the team, the less burst and focused synergy, the less advantage of actually multiboxing. That is leading me to believe that if I want to be a BG hero, then I may need to switch to healing.

I played four disc priests in BGs during the early days of atonement and loved it. However, I'm not sure three priests would be enough and they may get slaughtered. Three resto Druids seems like it would be valuable, even in 10 mans, but I would like to hear the viewpoints of others.

Anyone had success with a BG team primarily meant to heal? Any and all feedback is welcome!

[heyaz]

I did a bit of BGs as resto at 90, since elemental is so weak. Stacked resto shaman are incredibly strong and it takes more than 4 dps several minutes to kill me, if they ever do. But they are still prone to most issues with boxing BGs:

In 10 mans I usually ended up in the same scenario: stuck somewhere on the map with 4-6 DPS on me getting snared/stunned/feared endlessly but never dying, I couldn't help my team and all I could do is heal myself forever. If I had competent teams they would go around this mess and three cap; I actually won more games playing resto than elemental because I'd frequently have 70-80% of their team on me at once, accomplishing nothing. In flag games if I didn't get caught in the middle we would turtle until the end. So, the thing that made 10 mans winnable was the fact that resto shaman stacked are near invincible, I was typing up entire teams or making me and my FC unkillable.

In 15 mans the problem with only being in one place at one time was a big problem. You rarely needed four healers in one place.

In 40 mans it was helpful to the team when a lot of synchronized healing was helpful or a turtles, but not so much where multiple mobile healers would've avoided mass CC. A dps or two cannot shut down four mobile healers controlled by separate people but they can certainly do that to all your guys stacked in one place. I spread them out a little but it rarely mattered. They otherwise worked very well as tower defense and at bosses, the former because they're practically invincible and latter because of synchronized healing on the tank and team.

That being said, I'm enjoying quad resto more than elemental at the moment and shaman have so many passive healing abilities and cooldowns that you can survive being cc'd over and over. The above is just my limited experience of maybe 30 games, I'm sure there are better strategies at the moment. I do really like the idea of healing larger BGs but I think options are limited in smaller BGs because if you get caught in a stalemate outside of the game's objectives, you have no chance to win but to hope some lone druid or warrior went and got their flag and snuck by, or capped bases while you were busy.

I would think priests would get wrecked all stacked up, and paladins don't have enough passive healing abilities. Druids are decent but I don't have much experience. I'd vote resto shaman due to my experience surviving and healing through warriors, bm hunters, shadow priests, mages, etc. for what felt like an eternity. You have several tools:

1. 4x spirit link totems
2. Ascendance duplicates all heals for 15 seconds
3. Chain heal is always good especially when 1 or more of your guys may be CC'd at any time
4. Healing rain is passive and procs earthliving weapon
5. Healing stream totem does 50-130k healing per second
6. Healing tide totem, especially with bloodlust or EM is 200-300k+ healing per second. You can't really die during this.
7. 4x tremor totems
8. 4x (if you want) windwalk totems break you out and make you immune to all snares for 6 seconds, which includes mage freezes and believe it or not - remorseless winter can't proc its stun.
9. You can have both earth shield and water shield at the same time, by having each shaman cast earth shield on another one.
10. Riptide heals for a ton and stacks
11. Ancestral swiftness + ascendance + your choice of big heal is practically a lay on hands on your entire team
12. Stone bulwark totem, although not in line with other shields, is decent and scales with pvp power
13. 90 tier talent you can go with either unleashed whatever, but i rarely bother with the spell since it costs a GCD. Earth ele totems have a 10(or 20%)? damage reduction to the caster, they just sit there and shield you for a minute... and a 4 sec stun to enemies. Fire ele have one to increase healing done to you.

All good tools, and I'm not simply theorycrafting here - I've actually used all this stuff in 90s against nasty OP dps and it works. I was just amazed at how long I stayed alive with an onslaught of aoe cc; the class by itself is very CC prone, but when stacked others can take care of a stunned or focused shaman easily. When all are cc'd or you only have seconds between endless cc's, the passive healing keeps you alive a very long time. Once people run out of cc's you can start hard casting and top off.

[Owltoid]

Wow - tons of great info. Thanks!

Have you considered going down to three? Would that severely hinder your survivability? Do you ever kill anything? Is the rest of the BG appreciative or their usual blame game?

[heyaz]

My concern with going down to three is losing passive healing and anti-cc from the fourth shaman. I think you could do 5 and do even better; unlike stacking dps classes I've found they scale better vs more targets. For example if you have 4 dps you can maybe take on 2-3 decent players, but 8 dps wouldn't necessarily be able to take on 5 or 6 players. With 4 resto shaman I can take 4-8 players at once already.

I haven't even bound dps abilities yet but it may be beneficial so I can knock off one guy at a time, slowly.

Everyone seems really anti-boxing at the moment, much much worse than wrath (the last time I boxed). If you win, it's because they carried you. If you lose it's your fault. I ignore BG chat now.

10 mans:
- I'm usually told something along the lines of "lol go elemental who needs 4 resto", but I know better.
- During CTA especially with 2-3 man premades and hopefully a really beast FC, they love it. They know how to get the flag back without me and I can keep them alive forever or at least get people out of their way. Pugs are mixed, they often run around like retards and even though I tied up 6-8 of their team in the middle to give them a shot, they still blame me. If the FC dies it's my fault, although that's unlikely even with 10 stacks I can keep them up. We end up with a lot of 0-1 or 1-1 games where we end up losing.

15 mans:
- EOTS and AB I'm not well appreciated so far, with the exception of some instances in AB where we turtle the farm for 10 minutes and NO ONE DIES. Not my shaman, not the DPS. A few lone guys go cap the rest and we 4 or even 5 cap. People are so fixated on killing multiboxers and spamming emotes and lol, when they realize I'm quad resto and they're wasting their time, they end up losing the game. The emote spam stops after they pop enrage and heroism and what not and realize I'm not anywhere near dead. Then they're already engaged and my team's DPS is picking them off.


40 mans:
- Usually good. If they can understand the power of stacked healers they utilize me as much as possible. They tell me where they need me, ask me to come to Van to heal, etc.
My problem on defense has been not enough DPS or peels to support me and 20-30 players can unfortunately wipe me.
It's hard to blame 4x healers for a loss (or even a win) with 36 other players in there. But it has happened, and the weirdest thing always happens; without exception, 20-30 players on my team instantly get booted from the battleground. I can't figure out why


But overall don't expect much love. Multiboxing hate is near ubiquitous now. I don't know what happened between wrath and mop but, maybe more people were doing it, maybe they weren't as effective in Cata (I didn't box then), but everyone knows what it is and they mostly seem to hate it. I'm so tired of hearing ("well looks like we have to 6v10") - basic logic eludes these morons. I watch guild chat or combat log during BGs.

[remanz]

heyaz got some great info here. But I want to reiterate why does it have to be 5. For BGs, I find 3 is the optimal number for me. My team is barely noticable in the bg so there is no rage. This is kinda important as I do read bg chats and what they say do bother me if it is all hateful rage. I can take flags by myself. I can also defend. I am not 1 shotting but there is also more to do. More control and finer CD management. One of my slave gets focused, I actually switch to his window manually control his movement and run away to heal himself while the other 2 continue auto-IWT smashing my target. Think about it, how do you use pvp trinket on just 1 character, or bubble on 1 character. You can do it, but with 5 to manage it is clunky and slow.

3 seems a bit underpowered in 40 man bg. But in 40 man, alliance and horde barely fight each other as they are so busy rushing for objectives. So playing 3 are also not too bad there. Obviously if you also want to run heroics then you need 5 accounts, and you don't want the other 2 to be left behind. But if your focus is pvp, I don't think you need 5.

Also 1 minor benefit for me was, my PC was not as beefy as others. So I was having medium on main with no AA and all 4 slaves on low settings with no AA. Now after down sizing, I was able to beef up my graphic settings on main. It looks hella better now.

as for pvp healing, shockdin can go offense. 4 or 5 of them can kill. Holy shock + Holy wrath + word of glory + judgment x 5. From what I can see, they are more offensive than restore shamans. Anti CC, and mobility, they are not that hot.

[heyaz]

I prefer 4. I won't be totally under the radar but I just don't see reason to play only 3. I've taken five in (added my resto druid) and that's too much. Too many in the BG and very little added by a 5th healer when I'm already that powerful w/ 4, and taking up so many spots and being stuck in one place, etc.

But I'll try 3 and see how it goes, but I have a feeling I won't be as strong.

In 40 mans I have no problem bringing my resto druid as well.. why not

[Ualaa]

In Cataclysm, I pretty much boxed either Pally/4x Death Knight or 5x Druids.
The Druids were both Feral and Resto specs.



Almost all 5x Healer play, was as Alliance in AV or IoC.

As Resto x5, I had Rejuvenation and the Cleanse spell as clicks.
Control Clicks were less efficient but bigger heals: Lifebloom and Regrowth.
Alt clicks were more efficient, but slower casts: Nourish and Healing Touch.
Scroll Wheel Up for Swiftmend and Scroll Wheel Down for Wild Growth.
Tranquility was on round-robin, and I'd frequently tap the key every 10 seconds or so, for a long period of time with overlapping Tranquility going off in Drek's room.
Another take on boxed healing with Druids: http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/4...TH-focus-macro

I would frequently: Rejuvenation > Swiftmend (which would proc AoE healing Efflorescence) > Wild Growth.
While the Efflorescence and Wild Growth were ticking away, the team was fairly immune to damage (when starting, a solo Ret or Rogue would solo the team; by the time they had 3/4 honor gearing in Resto equipment, 10-15 players did not have the straight DPS to kill them)...

I definitely missed having Tremor Totems...
Druids don't have much against Fear; just their Trinket.

Insect Swarm & Moonfire (x5 of each) on 3-4 targets, then refresh the AoE heals...
That would slowly take out groups who were attacking me.
Anytime I had a friendly DPS nearby, they had more killing power than my 5x healers did without cooldowns.

Starfire was superior to Wrath (excluding Tree Form), because there was no travel of the bolt/spell.
I could cast from down a hill, and take out a ton of players who did not know who was killing them.
The long road between Stormpike Graveyard and Icewing Bunker, with the short drop to the right was really good for that.

The only cooldown that made a huge difference for the Healers was Tree Form.
With Tree Form, Wrath casting speed made that quite a weapon.
At a choke point, like the alliance bridge in AV... during a Tree Form, I could drop 6-8 opponents with Wrath spam.

Druids have Stealth, which is huge...
They can bypass a lot of crap which others get stuck on.
They have Aquatic Form, allowing indefinite underwater play if you want.
Flight Form is instant, once they're out of combat.

[heyaz]

Not having constant fear/seduce and snare protection is a real game breaker for me when boxing healers. Everyone knows to fear bomb boxers. They will do it over and over until you are out of immunities. With shaman they will run out of fears and/or you will become immune long before you run out of totems - you get 4x a minute, 8x every 3 minutes with the talent that resets cooldowns. It is a raid wide fear break as well. The same with windwalk totem, 4x per minute, 4x more every 3 minutes. It's really really hard to get snared with that, it breaks snare/root and then gives you 6 sec immunity.

I can see multiple paladins and/or druids being extremely effective as boxed healers, and some of their abilities are better than shaman's as far as healing... but invariably you will be fear bombed and caught with your pants down.

[Lyonheart]

My monks are only 80 atm.. so this might not hold true at 90. Monks might be a good option at 90. I played several BGs, all sizes, as Healing monks. They seemed unkillable.. and yea at those levels that might not be saying much. However, I have played druids, palies and shaman healing groups as well in the past. Monks was by far the most enjoyable, and seemingly most effective. They do good dps and lots of passive healing. They have talented CC breakers and if you play the right race ( human, gnome? ) They can have i think 3. I know a few people have 90 monks now.. maybe they have tried this and can chime in!

One thing i meant to try and never did was mixing 3 healers with two DPS. Even the non healing specs get some great passive heals and talents that do damage and heal. 5 might be overkill for healing. I know that if i had a bunch of people on me, and say a few were CCd.. even one monks spinning crane kick would keep the rest topped off..and if there were two or more spinning.. forget it, my health did not budge. Just a thought....

I forgot to add that everything I said was mostly from a fun factor perspective. I don't think any class/spec is going to help you win 10/15 man BGs like DKs did last expansion. That being said, only playing 3 in smaller BGs might work better?

[Ualaa]

When I started boxing, there were quite a few who were playing four toons for pvp.

That gave enough firepower to still one shot opponents.
Not sure if four toons can one shot people now or not, but four was a good balance in the day.
It gave you decent fire power.
It left the fifth spot open, for a healer friend.
It was small enough, that four players in one place was not a serious detriment for 10-man BG's.
Four is enough toons, to be immune to anti-boxer vote-kicking in 5-man content.

Three might work as well.