what healing class to choose?Follow

Absolutely. Never had any trouble doing 10-mans with 3 priest healers, we probably had a prot pala and maybe an ele shammy.

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I can say the same for any class; A raid with druid healers only? No blessings, no auras, no totems, no health buff, no spirit buff, no grace, less panic buttons. A raid with paladin healers only? No totems, no combat res, etc, you get the drill. Raiding with 3 healers of the same class is of course never a good idea, but you can't really say priests add so little to the group that a 'perfect' group would exclude them.



Tell him that. Last time I spoke to him about it he said that the only way to probably do it is to have the whole raid stack stamina at the cost of DPS. Also, when I say 10+ tries I'm talking 10 tries the 3 or 4 times they entered the place.

It makes sense really. Aside from one small 6 sec CD heal a paladin *can't* heal while moving. Malygos' vortex causes 20K damage to all players in the raid while moving them around. A paladin which is forced to move for 10 seconds can heal ~32K damage at most, assuming both his Holy Shocks crit and his beacon is up. Also assuming everybody is actually on 100% hp when a vortex starts, this allows 3 paladins to heal at a maximum of 144K damage out of 200K damage done. With 56K damage unhealed (assuming the paladins do everything correctly and ALL their spells cast crit) at least 2 raid members will die on the first vortex, leaving you to 8-man the encounter. The chance even *that* happens is like one in a million. On your avarage attempt more people will die, less heals will crit, beacon will not always be at the ready and people will be low on hp before the vortex starts. And I haven't even mentioned that this is a decently geared raid I'm on about (Naxx 10 geared), players lose 10% of their maximum health as they fall down, and since vortex scatters the raid any sort of aggro error or AOE damage done within ~10 seconds after the vortex will likely result in another death.

Yes, sure, if you throw it all you got, are overgeared, have an otherwise perfect raid set-up and have all 3 pallies communicating intensively about who to heal when, you'll eventually down him; nothing's impossible. It's just that the chance of succeeding is negligible.

I always considered priests to be the foundation of the healers. Sure, pallys can pump out spam heals with crazy numbers. Shaman can multi-target heal like nobody's business. Druids HoTs make raid healing a breeze. Priests fill in the gaps, AND put up nice numbers. As an ex-pally healer, those gaps are the difference between a hard but successful boss fight and a highly frustrating and stressful string of wipes. Our "buff" is the ability to make lemonade from lemons. And now that we have two specs for healing, if a guild is druid or shaman-heavy, we can go disc for MT healing. If it's pally heavy, we can go holy for raid healing.

Sure, you can come up with many all-star raid rosters that would be successful and don't include a priest. Although this works on paper, how many people are in guilds that have exactly the number of people slotted for this roster, with 100% availability? If that's you, cool, good for you, roll without a priest. I'll bet the other 99.9% of us out there would rather just have a good priest in the raid.

Saying one is better than another is a bit silly, imho. Classes are tools. Each tool has a main purpose. Would you rather have a toolbox with only screwdrivers? Only hammers? Even a toolbox with a hammer and a screwdriver is going to have a tough time sawing wood. /lame metaphor

That about sums it up. Though I don't see myself arguing with Moz beyond the definition of "impossible"

I'm playing druid AND priest because of the way they both suck in certain situations. Playing a priest does not keep me from being very critical about it's abilities, especially in comparison to other classes.

I'm not trying to prove anything - other than the fact that some people just consider themselves and their toon as way too important. So stuck up in their own little world that I'm wondering if they would have ever patched their game beyond 1.0 if that had been a choice.

So, as a 70 feral druid who is currently weighing up either
(a) re-speccing my 48 ret pally to holy and levelling to 80 or
(b) levelling my 26 holy priest up to 80

as my 'healer' alt, what am I to take from the above posts?

It seems everyone agrees that at the cutting edge of content, there are some raids where holy pally's do not perform at the required level. It also seems that there are some raids where they perform very well.

Which holds true for your typical random PUG 5 mans, heroics, etc? Is there anything that holy pally's can do better than priests?

Yes, but pallys can only dispel one of each type every cast. Priests can dispell multiple with every cast. For example, if a target had 3 diseases and 2 magic effects on them, it would take a pally 3 casts to get rid of them all, while a priest would only need two. In addition, the priest disease dispel provides a buff that removes additional diseases for up to 20 seconds.



Yes, they have blessings which are extremely useful buffs in their own right, but I don't see how not every class "benefits" from a priest's buffs. The two main buffs that a priest can give are Power Word: Fortitude, which is useful to everyone. More stamina = Staying alive longer. Period. And the other, Shadow Protection, is useful for the times that the enemy is using shadow magic. I just don't see how "not every class" would benefit form those.



You can't compare the two. The only similarity is that the graphics look kinda the same. A pally bubble is complete immunity on the PALADIN ONLY on a 5 minute cooldown. Or were you thinking of Hand of Protection? That's able to be cast on anybody, but only protects against physical attacks. In addition, all of the pally bubble abilities cause a debuff that makes it impossible to be bubbled again for 2 minutes. All of this is untalented, of course.

And then there's Divine Intervention, which is basically an "OHSH**" button, used for wipe prevention. And it involves the caster dieing. Yes, it's better for when things go wrong, but if the tank and healers are doing their job in a group/raid setting (which is the only setting that ability can be used in), then there shouldn't be a need for it anyways.

A priest bubble is an ability on a 4 second cooldown that absorbs a set amount of damage, not make the target immune to it. It also places a debuff on the target that makes them unable to be shielded again for 15 seconds. This spell sees everyday use, and in a group setting it is useful for stopping the dps from taking some damage. It's useful for healing, it's useful for soloing. It gets much more use than any pally bubble. Period. And it's on a shorter cooldown.



True, but like I said above, although stuff goes wrong occasionally, if everyone's doing their job then you shouldn't need this spell.



No. Just no. If a pally is in full healing gear, then they can solo fine. Soloing is easy. Soloing is meant to be doable as a healer. But in a group or raid setting, a holy-speced pally in healing gear can not dps or tank. That is just asking for problems. Please people, not just pallys. PLAY AS YOUR SPEC. If you are a shadow priest don't try to heal a heroic. If you're a fury warrior, don't try to tank. This only applies to higher-level content, I suppose though. I healed as a shadow priest up until ~65 in BC, and today it'd be possible to go even higher.

However if you're a holy pally with healing gear, don't expect to be able to tank or dps very well without a respec and gear change.

Just one thing I'll have a go at;





Yup, but unlike priests, pallies have to give up another buff to grant shadow resistance.

I don't see why it would 'in most cases' be devotion aura, you could just as well have a ret pallie or tankadin. And just because you need a shadow resistance buff doesn't mean that your "major concern" is magic damage.

Nah, sorry, but a priests' shadow protection does beat a paladin aura by a long way.

Not when we're discussing holy paladins - healers - and how they compare to priests. That kinda implies having a holy pally and NOT ret or prot...

Otherwise you'd had to throw in Shadow Priests too, who can buff Fortitude and Shadow Protection as well.

Well thanks again gentlemen for putting your opinions on the table...

I jumped on my 25 holy priest the other day and healed Blackfathom Deeps. I'm not sure how much we overgeared that place but we only had 4 people in total and we breezed through... and I had an absolute blast healing.

Back when I was a moonkin I healed a few instances and to be honest I always really struggled, although the fact I didn't have any resto talents probably contributed to that. :)

But with the priest, I really enjoyed the playstyle. I clicked with it straight away and the talents further up the trees sound fun. In fact I ontend to level as holy (lurrvve holy fire).

One question: how effective is fade at higher levels? Because in BFD, I pulled aggro a few occasions and every time I just hit shield/fade and the mob would instantly turn back to a dps.

The main attraction of a holy paladin was (a) Lay on Hands and (b) knowing that if I pulled aggro I had bubbles and plate armour to keep me alive.

In a heroic say, if I aggroed a mob and did the same shield/fade how many hits would I be able to survive?

Glad you're enjoying it, I never thought I would but have found that I absolutely love the playstyle of the healing priest. I would definitely advise sinking 3 points in shadow for Spirit Tap (this is almost not optional while leveling) and speccing down Disc far enough to get Meditation.



Not as effective at higher levels but it does the job. Having said that by the higher levels you should have found yourself a couple of good tanks and therefore should find you almost never have to use it.

The only times I use fade these days are on certain fights where fresh adds spawn in and aggro to me because I am healing (and even then my usual tanks will sort it out so fast i could probably get away with not using it) or when I PuG.



2-3 at best. My solution, don't get hit and be ready on Desperate Prayer (holy tree) at a moments notice.