I think I might be a *********Follow

I may have mis-read your post so please dis-regard this if it seems that way but...

I main-heal 5mans by spamming lsser healing wave and still never go below 40% mana.


Priests aren't the best healers at any scenario. They aren't the best raid healers (shamans), or tank-healers (paladins), or rotation healers (druids) but they are definately the most versitle healers. Which is great to have when say if I ever go down on gruul. Or our pally healer goes down, they can MT heal almost as well. You need at least 2 priests in 25-mans, one in 10 mans. AT least in my 10-man setting which consists of 1 tank, 3 healers, and 6 DPS with a ret paladin as a select off-tank.

Gruul hasn't killed me in battle... yet. But a few of my guild mates and I joke around on TS and leeroy bosses to mess with the guild master sometimes. BEst guild master ever, even he does it sometimes. But only with our raid-group. The rest of the raid groups (non-guild veterans) need to l2raid before joing around.
Ask nocturn about how we try to cath the flying gryphon outside prince.

Other healers are good at what they do assuming equal gear. I agree they are better for the most part, but does not mean we are incapable of main tank healing very well. On some fights, I would NOT want to be the main tank healer because of the mechanics of the fight. Any fight where there is continual aggro wipes is generally bad for shaman healers because you have to allow tanks to reestablish threat and you also have to stop healing before the aggro wipe because if you are a touch slow, that heal will land ON the aggro wipe and you will turn a boss that cleaves or if positioned badly (ie Hydross) cause your raid to wipe as you spawn multiple adds.

Do you honestly prefer a paladin healer for 5 man content? They have a terrible time dealing with keeping a tank up and dealing with splash damage. They shine on small content with little splash damage or with the support of another healer to clean up the rest of the group.

Druids are great healers relying on HoTs. They only run into issues if their HoTs can't counteract splash damage fast enough. This is a fairly rare occurrence.

Shamans are pretty darn good too. Their downside is lack of mobility and slower casting (which is why they have a lack of mobility). Buffing a group to down a boss faster makes mana-efficiency on the heals less of an issue than it would be otherwise. Focus chain healing on the tank can take care of splash damage. Adding healing spring totem into the mix instead of mana spring can actually make quite a difference in mana efficiency (though that all depends on the composition of the group). 120 health every 2 seconds (300 health per 5 seconds) is rather easily achieved. 3600 health per minute (36,000 for a 10 min fight) for 5 people (so 180,000 health healed over 10 min from a passive totem).

Priests just have a lot of versatility which makes them quite good at whatever role they need or want to fill.

In 5 man content, if I were on my alt, I'd try to pick the healer that most complimented the instance that was chosen. But if they are all capable of healing the instance, you'd probably pick the one that gets you through fastest. I agree that shamans have to really be on their toes when healing a tank because we don't have a lot of fast reaction heals, but we're probably one of the most sought after healers because of our buffs.

For 10 man content, you usually want 2 (or 3) different healers for additional buffs. We're assuming shaman has a spot. We're quite arguably the best raid healers. I've also done kara where I was virtually the only healer (had a paladin that did a whopping 28% of the healing while I did 55%, shadow priest did the remainder via vampiric embrace). I also did the majority of the healing on the main tank because... well the paladin decided he'd rather DPS while holy. We may not be the BEST main tank healer, but we are capable of it.

The same goes for 25 man content, except you have even more healers and more tanks and more dps taking splash damage. 2-3 Resto shamans can clean a 25 man raid rather efficiently while others focus on tanks. Again, I've seen healers be retarded and I've switched over to main tank healing. Yes, my mana goes a bit faster... but not from the main tank healing but from trying to do both main tank healing and raid healing in a long fight.

We aren't the gods of healing, but I do think we're underestimated as healers quite often.

For five-man content it really does not matter. It's all easy to heal no matter what class you're rolling with. That being said, the vast majority of five-man healing is still single-target healing, and if I was the one tanking I would personally prefer to have a Paladin, Priest, or Druid healing me. If you'd prefer a Shaman... great.

As far as ten-to-25-man content goes... there is no reason to have a Shaman along as a tank healer unless you don't even have the choice of one of the others. Ever. End of story. If you think otherwise... well... you're wrong, and I'm just leaving it at that because I am tired of explaining why.

Edited, Apr 24th 2008 5:50pm by Gaudion

Ever take a Paladin healer into Heroic MagT? Every time I have it has been a disaster (yes, I have more than one toon). Same can be said for SO MANY instances. Very few encounters don't have aoe damage. The only time I like paladin healers is MT healing on 25 man raids (and sometimes 10 man raids).

I never said we are the BEST main tank healers, but we can do it fairly well. Paladins and Druids (assuming equal skill/gear) can do it more efficiently. A shaman is capable of main tank healing. I've done it. I'm not saying main tank healing a level 70 5 man either. I've been on the main tank in SSC on several of the fights. It's rare, but it happens and I keep him up and don't run out of mana generally. You just have to know how to use your tools. You rarely have everyone with 100% equal gear AND skill.

You make it sound like if a shaman were to main tank heal you may as well just wipe before going in to try anything. Others can do it more easily, but it's by no means terrible if shaman is needed to main tank heal.

only reason i ever disputed what you said at start is we where talking about 5 mans and 10 mans, it morphed into raiding which I see what he means as far as raiding, both druid and paladin are more mana efficient, for us to be able to heal like them we would need to be able to spam heal LHW on MT and not go oom fast. Paladin's have an awesome ability to never stop casting and never go oom.

where in 5 man and even 10 man content I think healing is much simpilar and character differences mean a lot less in those situations except certain healers may be needed for certain situations.

like depending on what debuffs are being thrown around.

for 5 man content healing is even similar and one could use LHW if that is what is needed without worrying about being oom.

and ya druids have swift mend and nature's swiftness, imo you want an oh **** button so bad to save your *** bring one of them whoever mentioned it.

then again I hate druid healers because they cant rez like the others can.

so yes if we are talking a raid I can see where a shaman is less of a main tank healer then a paladin or druid, they over heal plenty btw, they can heal longer then us tho, and druid hots stopped getting counted as over heals a while back.