Healing AssignmentsFollow

I'm not sure if it's normal or not, as I'm Disc.

I will say, I've worked with Healadins for 10 man content and they usually scoop up the raid healing assignment with no qualms or difficulty.

Holy Light has a decent casting speed, for damned respectable throughput and an irritatingly low cost. It beats the pants off of Greater Heal, but can't even begin to hold a candle to Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing or Prayer of Mending.

So maybe it was a decision based on the expected damage input of the fight?

If your contending against Adds, Threat control that could use a little work, DPS that just can't seem to learn where the line is, a PuG, or something else that would otherwise take a few targets down alot of HP at irregular intervals. The Healadin on the raid assignment would probably do a bang up job.

If your contending against massive AOE, medium AOE, AOE Poison/Disease, or any other circumstance that would take many targets down alot of HP at the same time. The Healadin on raid assignment would have a great deal of trouble. If there was no AOE to speak of and if threat was being managed with patchwerk precision, he'll probably be bored to tears on raid assignment.

You may think it's strange that I'm approaching this answer from the other person's perspective. That's because as a Priest you are blessedly versatile. Able to react (all heals), mitigate(pw:s, renew), predict(PoM,renew), aoe heal(CoH,PoH), single target heal (GH, FH), and remove harmful effects at your pleasure. Practically speaking, a Healadin is more restricted in what he's able to do, a creature of reaction and single targets (although he does it well). You might be expected to be flexible and work around his limits, instead of capitalizing on your strengths.




Edited, Apr 6th 2009 2:35am by Zemzelette

I lot of it also depends on what the person healing feels capable of. I am Disc specced as well and I can raid heal but I do find it a little harder as I don't have COH for this so have to flash heal/penance/shield/renew a lot and POM my own group. POM being able to be cast on other groups will help greatly with this though. I feel better tank healing as I have a lot of tools that can greatly extend a tanks life and 3.1 will make my shields even more viable however I can and have raid healed Naxx 10 man with little issue.

Paladins can use beacon and other tricks to great effect and my hubby who is a paladin healer often uses beacon to keep the offtank up while throwing round raid heals at the same time. This helped us both when I was on raid healing duties as he healed OT and his group during AOE giving me more flexibility with my heals.

I have also run with a druid who would only tank heal and another who will only raid heal. I think these days all healing classes are capable of doing all jobs but which they take depends on how comfortable they are in any given situation.

You're absolutely right, in a perfect world you'll want the paladin to do the tank healing while you do the raid healing. Like others said, it can depend on whoever of you is a better healer, has better gear or whatever, but basically palas are for tank healing and holy priests for raid healing. It only makes sense really - holy priests have tons of talents that improve their ability to heal multiple people at the same time (Circle of Healing and Divine Providence being the two most obvious ones), while paladins have no area of effect or heal over time heals at all: they're made for spamming flash heal and holy light on a tank.



Well, first of all, I do not know why your guild puts you on what healing assignment as I do not know your guild. Aside from that however, it usually doesn't make much sense to put an undergeared healer on the raid because "it's easier" or something like that. If you are indeed the 'weaker healer' plainly due to your gear (or possibly inexperience), it makes sense that you do always get the easiest assignments: this is not always raid healing though. Can I ask what class your colleague healer is? If it's a paladin, I can understand this decision very well: paladins basically suck at raid healing and a priest can do the job better than them regardless of what spec they are.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I have VERY limited raiding experience (2 pugs for 10 Naxx...I have yet to join a guild, need to find one that I like). I just found it strange that in both of them I was put on raid heals, especially since in the firs PuG the MT healer was a holy priest (raid didn't last long, one wipe on the first boss and people bailed). The second PuG was a continuation where people bail on the group and a Shammy ,then well-geared pally were heals on the MT.

I was just curious as I have never raided before that. I've spent time reading up on healing (recent switch from shadow, healed 80 dungeons to get healing gear) but I don't know much about raiding.

We didn't wipe much when he was healing MT, though he only stayed for 2 bosses, Thaddius and Razuvious (and we wiped ALOT on him, part from healing, part from a/the tank/s getting things down). And on Thaddius we wiped because there was a mix-up on which side was going to be positive and negative.(someone said the opposite of what we were going to do, I personally had a dyslexic moment). The second attempt we got him, though in the fight I outlasted him in Mana so I ended up healing everyone for part of the fight, focusing on the MT (I ended having to pop shadowfiend and a runic pot too; total forgot that I had hymn of hope).

Raz is my least favorite boss that we did/got to (only others were the 4 horsemen and Gothik, and wipe stopped at the 4 horsemen). Another side question would be what's the best way to get as much single target healing out as possible? When I wasn't worrying about being killed by jagged knife or topping off the other in the raid, I was doing PW:S>Penance>Greater Heal, then flash heal in the times penance was on CD. I also popped pain suppression on the initiate that was in trouble.

Pallies excel at MT healing but both can do either!

For example: Patch(10) we have our Pally solo heal basically and 25 man we use 2 pallies a priest and a druid. Sarth 3D we have a disc priest on the tank and a holy pally on the raid (their heals are awesome for melee groups and at helping keep adds of the squishier healers).

I know this thread was necroed, but I'll add my two cents from the Pally-learning-a-Priest perspective. I have never had a problem in any raid with a Holy Priest healing the MT or OT. I have never been assigned raid healing as a Pally, and if I'm the only raid healer there's going to be people dying because I can only single-target raid heal with no AoE heal.

In my opinion, the OP's raid leader, or whoever was doing the heal assignments, probably doesn't know the different healing classes. On Naxx-10 with only a Priest and a Pally the Pally should be healing the MT. And on Patchwerk, its O.K. to put the Priest on the MT, but putting the Pally on raid? There's no raid damage, and who was healing the OT soaking the Hatefuls? Something is missing, maybe there was a third healer.

As for Pallies being given the raid healing duties because in a sustained fight they cant keep up the Holy Light spam, I have just over 25k mana, raid-buffed. I can spam Holy Light for the entire boss fight. Last night in an Ulduar-10 run 61% of my heals were Holy Light, and that's misleading because WWS shows 11% were beacon heals. Looking at only casted heals its closer to 80%. Maybe you need to stack more Int.

In any event, the reason I leveled my Priest is because you guys are sooo versatile. With my Pally I am pigeon-holed, and with good reason. But if I had to choose the second healing class with me in any 10-man in the game? Hands down a Priesty.



You didn't wipe because Thadd and Raz don't require a lot of MT heals. With Raz you need to heal the Understudies that are MC'd while the MT tanks the other two, who don't do much damage at all. And on Thadd the tank just doesn't take much damage and a Shammy can easily heal one of the two platform mini-boss tanks. If he had stuck around for Sapph I'll bet he wouldn't have been able to keep the tank up alone.