If you've played multiple healing classes...Follow

Yes, this is another "which healing class is best" thread but please bear with me.

I am the epitome of a casual player. Because of playtime restrictions, altitis, and canceling my account a couple of times, my highest level char is currently a 68 hunter, although I did get a DK to 72 once. I've had a priest in cold storage at 62 for over a year until the new LFG feature came out in 3.3. My previous healing experience was half a dozen or so Uldaman, ZF and ST runs well over a year ago. Needless to say this did not provide a particularly strong basis for doing TBC instance healing, but I've managed to get her to 66 over the last week or so anyway. Nevertheless, the learning curve has been very steep and the results sometimes painful.

Research and more play time will take care of getting down knowledge of the wealth of healing options, keymapping, macros, Grid, the specifics of the dungeons, etc. Unfortunately, nothing will change the fact that I'm partially color blind and over 50, so I'm never going to have youthful fast twitch reactions again.

I will never top a HPS meter and don't care, but I want to be reliable and useful enough so that I can see all the content I can, including (hopefully, some day) the 10 person raids. I intend to keep leveling my priest, because I'd really really like to get a char to 80 before Cataclysm, but I'm still somewhat worried about being viable with her on the high end content.

I've been considering rolling either a pally or druid alt and learning instance healing all the way from the beginning now that the new LFG seems to have made that a viable option for me, so I'm wondering, based on all your own experience, whether you think either of them would, over the long haul, provide a more forgiving platform for healing than the complexities of priest does. If so, which would be better, the relative simplicity of what pallies have available plus the fact that in raids I'd likely only have to focus on one target, or the smoothing functions of all the Druid HOTs? For aesthetic reasons I'd rather be a pally than a tree but I'll go druid if it appears to be the most forgiving route.

Thanks for any input.

I have slow reflexes. I have healed on Priest, Paladin, and a tiny bit on Druid. For casual play, I find the Priest most forgiving for PVE and Paladin for PVP, in terms of it not being a tragedy if I take a fraction of a second longer to hit the right button than a whippersnapper would.

In PVE, a Priest, a Disc Priest in particular, can proactively mitigate enough damage to make reacting to the damage coming in much more forgiving. Keeping Shield, Renew, and Prayer of Mending rolling all the time means that even though I'm not Miss Twitchy Fingers the damage isn't going to get ahead of me. Plus, I have lots of options for instant spells, depending on spec: the aforementioned PoM, talented Renew, glyphed Shield, glyphed Dispel, first tick of Penance, Surge of Light Flash Heals, Circle of Healing. Instants are very helpful for making sure I never get behind the ball.

For PVP, the Paladin gives me similar margin for error by simply being survivable; the difference between living and dying isn't a tenth of a second.

What I like about both classes is that neither is "simple" in the sense that they are still a mental challenge to play well. You have lots of tools (whereas the priest's are more healing tools, paladins have a huge amount of utility when played well) and you need to be quick in the head to know which to use in what situation without hesitation, even if your fingers aren't as quick to follow. But I don't think either requires lightning quick reflexes to play well in casual play as long as you make a point of knowing your class well.

So my 2 cents: if you're interested in PVE content, I'd stick with your priest. Either level your current one to 80 or if you want to start at the starter instances and learn as you go, start a new one. Maybe choose a different race or faction if you want a change of pace.

Plus, you'd get to hang out here with us, and the priest forum has the best cookies.

Having healed (5 man and raids) with my priest and paladin, and 5-man healed with my shaman, I'd say stay with the Priest. The priest won't put up the big numbers that that Paladins will, or have 3 HoTs running like the Druid or have a stellar smart heal like Shamans (lazer heals, ftw!), the priest is ... versatile. A Holy Priest, played right (and not nearly as twichy as thought) can do single target (tanks) like a paladin (and in some cases, better than the pally) and still be awesome in the AoE healing are that Shamans excel at. Between Renew (talented or not), Power Word: Shield (though not as durable as a Disc Priest's, they're still a good chunk of our ********* PoM, Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing (and the talents for PoH/CoH to make them hit harder/farther), the tools available are varied. Of course, that same versatiltiy makes it a little hard to heal as a priest - you have to be able to pull the right tool out of the kit for the right situation.

With a Paladin, you've got 4 possible buttons to hit for healing Flash of Light (fast cast, relatively small amount healed, but extremely cheap), Holy Light (the single target nuke - 2.5sec base cast time) (fairly expensive, but glyphed for a small AoE effect it works), Holy Shock (single target, instant cast, median expense, can trigger an instant cast FoL) and Lay on Hands. Sure, you don't have as many general purpose tools as the priest, but what you've got make you a superb single target healer. And with Beacon of Light, healing 5 mans (or healing both tanks in a 10 man run) is a breeze. My paladin's solo healed Patchwerk (due to the other healer DC'ing). Didn't miss a beat.

Shamans, have a few more tools to use than the Paladin has, but not quite as many as the Priest. Can't give too much advice on this yet 'cause mine's only level 73 and just recently dual spec'd Elemental/Resto, so my healing experience here is fairly limited. I will say that it's a different experience from the other two classes. Lesser Healing Wave is the equivalent of a Flash Heal from the Priest. Healing Wave is similar (in cost & amount healed) to a Greater Heal. Chain heal is very nice. Hits your target and then smart bounces to the next most needy target in range. And it looks like a yellow laser beam between you and the target. Who wouldn't love lazer healz?

All in all, the different healing classes are all good for 5-mans. And they all have their uses/specialties for raids. And they all have their own playstyle. The best thing to do is pick one (or two or three ...) and try it out. With the Dungeon Finder, you'll have little problem finding instances to practice in.

I have to agree on the shaman thing. I've healed a lot on both and I prefer my shaman overall. While my priest can be a lot more versatile, the shaman style just suits me better in terms of healing.

Penance and pain supression are by far the best looking healing spells in the game. These things are important (yep, i'm shallow)

Personally I'm a fan of my tree. I don't care much about topping the charts as long as I'm solidly in a useful range, and I know for sure that I've saved many a run that would have failed in the absence of the druid "oh S###" buttons.

That being said, Druid takes a while to pay off imo, and the first 30 levels or so can be a bit slow.