Today I’m going to talk a little bit about healing. So far Blizzard has established four main healing classes in the game—Paladins, Priests, Shamans and Druids. Each class has a special tree with talents that benefit their healing abilities. Up until patch 3.0, each healing class had a unique niche when it came to groups. While I’m far from being an expert at any of these classes, I have managed to dabble a little with each type of healing and would like to share my thoughts on them.

Restoration Shamans

Resto Shamans were a big item at the end of BC because of Heroism/Bloodlust and Chain Heal. Many raid groups would bring 4 or 5 of them to just Chain Heal groups through BT, Hyjal and Sunwell. It was true what they said—Chain Heal was broken. At 70 a crit Chain Heal could heal for up to 7k (or more, I never really observed meters or reports); that’s an incredible amount of healing for a spell that will wind up hitting two more targets.

Due to Chain Heal’s long cast time, many Resto Shamans would stack haste to become more precise in their healing, especially when it came to fights that required a lot of moving. Every now and then when raid damage was low, you could toss a Lesser Healing Wave or two. In general I’m of the opinion that Healing Wave is an ineffective means of healing except in certain circumstances, but it’s always possible that future content may provide a use for it.

In BC Resto Shamans were intensive raid healers, mainly focusing on the melee by Chain Healing off the tank. However, in Wrath a lot of the focus has been spread to other abilities like Lesser Healing Wave and the new 51-point talent, Riptide. Riptide + Chain Heal makes a very good combo, and perhaps when I have the time to mess with it, I will tweak the mechanics to make them more efficient for myself :)

Holy Paladins

Holy Paladins have always had the niche of single target healing. Given a single target for healing, a Holy Pally of comparable gear will not only out heal you, but will keep healing long after your mana pool as run out if they know what they’re doing. In BC Holy Pallies had three spells—Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Holy Shock (yeah yeah and Lay on Hands, but that doesn’t really count >.>). They were strictly tank healers and had some base difficulty healing multiple targets.

However with the release of 3.0, Holy Pallies got a new skill called Beacon of Light, which allowed them to designate a secondary target for their heals, essentially allowing them to seriously heal two targets at once. As of now the player with the Beacon of Light buff does not get any benefit from overhealing done on nearby players, but that’s supposed to change in 3.2, giving paladins a significant buff in healing mechanics.

I haven’t actually had the chance to practice Holy Pally healing yet, but I have been forging a set for it; I certianly want to try my hand at it some day.

Restoration Druids

Ah, the tree—an interesting new healing mechanic that came with Burning Crusade and the Tree of Life 41-point talent in the Druid Restoration tree (no pun intended). A rather bizarre addition to the animal shape-shifting abilities of the class, Tree Form increases the druid’s healing based on their Spirit and also increases the healing group members receive. In terms of group composition, trees offer some really handy healing buffs that I don’t normally hear people consider when forming a group (this could just be because everyone has a resto druid already <.<).

Trees are the kings (and queens if you will) of HoTs, healing over time, with their main arsenal of spells including Rejuvenation, Regrowth, and Lifebloom (BC). Essentially that means you cast a spell and it heals for a small amount every couple of seconds over a period of time instead of straight heals. This mechanic often makes resto druids some of the most efficient healers, but it’s not guaranteed. The idea behind it is that as your spells heal for smaller amounts on a regular basis, you’re more likely to fill the gaps in damage and straight healing, but it’s not always a perfect process.

When the patches for Wrath were released along with the new 51-point talents, resto druids were given a new multi-target HoT spell called Wild Growth which hits up to 5 targets (6 with the glyph) within 10 yards. They were also given a new single target straight healing spell called Nourish which gains more effectiveness when you already have HoTs on the target. Blizzard has given them a little more functionality, but HoTs are still a druid’s core healing spells.

I have a level 80 druid myself who is primarily specced resto. I loved healing with her in BC, but unfortunately she’s fallen into the shadows of alt-hood with Wrath. I think there’s been an overwhelming amount of trees involved in my social circle lately, making her less unique; not to mention there’s so many other good trees out there that I think I’m somewhat afraid of being shown up <.<’ I should break out my tree more often though :)

Holy Priests

Priests have often been listed as the champions of the healing class, probably due to the fact that two of their class trees are dedicated to healing. Priests have probably more healing spells than any other class including Renew, Prayer of Healing, Greater Heal, Prayer of Mending, Power Word: Shield, etc. , though a few of them are kind of pointless. Let me explain:

Flash Heal Rank 3	Lesser Heal Rank 3
1.5 sec cast	2.5 sec cast
20% base mana	36% base mana
heals for 327 to 393	heals for 135 to 157
Heal Rank 4	Greater Heal Rank 4
3 sec cast	3 sec cast
36% base mana	36% base mana
heals for 712 to 804	heals for 1798 to 2006

So if someone could explain that to me sometime… that would be great because I can’t for the life of me figure out why these spells (Lesser Healer and Heal) are in the game at all… Anyways, with that nonsense out of the way… Priests have a great number of healing spells in their arsenal. Because of that, priests never really had a niche in a group, but rather could fill any gap if needed.

I have found leveling up my own priest that Holy is really nice for group healing with spells like Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing (take note that PoH is supposed to be nerfed next patch). Not entirely sure what Prayer of Mending does overall because it’s one of those heals that does it’s own thing, but I see from meters that it does a significant amount of work for a “set it and forget it” spell.

Discipline is a tree I’m much less familiar with, but my understanding is that it was at one time an amazing hybrid spec that allowed you to either dps or heal (similar to the druid feral tree allowing you to tank or dps). From my understanding the Disc tree buffs your bubble a lot, reducing the cool down and increasing the amount of damage it takes before it… pops >.>’ Pennance has done a lot to make the Discipline tree completely viable in raids, and made disc priests excellent single target healers as well.

I look forward to getting my priest to 80 and working out the different trees—it’s definitely a class that has a lot of depth to it.

Healing as an Attitude

I definitely thing most people have an affinity towards a certain role in WoW. In general there’s tanking, healing and dps, but even inside of those categories, certain people will perform better at one niche than another. I know plenty of people that only play tanks, or only play healers, or only play dps; I also know people that have 2 or 3 level 80 characters, but they span all three roles.

Some of the best healers I know put their hearts into their classes, most of whom have alts that are healers as well. One good friend of mine once said they really wanted to have one of each healing class, partly to better understand how each class works, but to have a better knowledge of healing altogether. I’ve somehow managed to get a few different healing-capable classes myself, and I have to say that healing is definitely an art form. I highly admire those that can do it on a professional level.

I discovered in my pondering around the time Wrath came out that the mace is the only weapon useable by all 4 healing classes. Paladins can’t use daggers or staves, but they’re the only ones who can use swords. That leaves maces as the only spell power weapon common to Paladins, Shamans, Priests and Druids—that was the main reason people guessed so early on that Val’anyr would be a legendary healing weapon.

Tags: Druid, Healing, Healing Mechanics, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Val'anyr

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under World of Warcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.