What healers do you assign to heal you?

I've been in discussion with our healers about a best case scenario for healing setups. So I'm looking at what each healer provides and how to save lives, specifically tank lives.

One thing specifically that has caught my attention is Inspiration which reduces all incoming physical damage by 10% for 15 seconds. Compared to Blade Barrier which provides 5% damage reduction for 10 seconds, Inspiration is obviously superior on physical damage when looked at out of the box.

So here is a list of different abilities that I can think of for healers that directly effect your damage income.

Priest
Inspiration - Reduces your physical damage taken by 10% for 15 sec after getting a critical effect.
Power Word:Shield - Absorbs damage
* A holy Priest provides ~5k bubble. A disc priest is currently providing ~8k shields depending on their gear. Additionally if they glyph for it "Use: Your Power Word: Shield also heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount." Which with an 8k shield would be ~1600.
Guardian Spirit - Increases healing received and prevents death.
Renewed Hope - Provides 3% raid wide damage reduction
Divine Aegis - Creates a shield when a critical heal hits.

Shaman
Ancestral Healing - Reduces your physical damage taken by 10% for 15 sec after getting a critical effect.
* Essentially the same as a priest's Inspiration.
Earth Shield - After you take damage, you instantly receive healing from the Earth Shield. Earth shield is placed on 1 target.
* While not a damage reduction ability, it provides an instant self heal after you take damage.

Druid
No damage mitigation abilities that I know of. Only provide an aura that increases healing received.
- their living seed talent works much like earth shield

Paladin
Improved Lay on Hands - Grants the target of your Lay on Hands spell 20% reduced physical damage taken for 15 sec.
Sacred Shield - Provides a small bubble like PW:S

So with all those things there, it would seem like the most advantageous buff that we could receive is the Inspiration or Ancestral Healing. 10% damage reduction is huge.

So my question to the TS community, and it doesn't have to directly relate to the mitigation abilities above, is what healers and/or buffs do you make sure you are receiving?

For me, I have (when possible) made sure I have a Paladin, Disc Priest and a Resto Druid on hard hitting bosses like Gormok. How about you?

its situational but also massively dependent upon what you have avilable to you.

I raid lead but i rely a lot on my officers and particularly my healer officers to sort healing assignments.

Each boss fight is different and as such rather than just running through an entire instance with one dedicated healer on one tank..the assignments change.

However, in general we tend to have 5 or 6 healers in a 25 man raid. Our typical set up on healers is resto shammy, resto druid, pally X 2, prst x2. (we have in one or two cases run 25 man raids with 4 pallies and 1 prst).

In this setup i would generally assign the two pallies a tank each and ask the druid to hot the tanks as well. raid healing is then assigned to shammy, druid and prsts.

Invariably the prsts also drop heals like PoM on the tanks and CoH centresd on the tanks for the melee classes. And ofc..guardian spirit...

It does ofc vary dependent upon where you are.. and the level of your guild in relation to the instance...our guild are now doing ToGC and are 1 shotting normal ToC with 4 healers.

I guess the answer to the question "who do i assign to heal me"..is Everyone. Be reactive, work as a healing team and understand whats going on around you.

We operate a seperate healers chat channel and all players are in vent.. that way the healers can communicate faster if they die/stunned and the tank priority healer is incapacitated.

Some classes are suited to raid wide heals others to spot healing assignments.

All can do the job and all should if needed. All have various benefits to offer and combinations of all are used.

We rarely assign healers based on the buffs they provide, but rather on the style and optimal strengths/efficiencies of the heals for each class.

Paladins (of which we have 2-3 always) is a shoe in for tank healing because of the strength of their single target heals, and the fact that we can cross Bacon's and have a LOT of healing constantly landing on the tanks.

We *usually* have Shamans ES'ing the tanks and covering the raid as Chain Heal is a marvelous tool with a smart tracking feature.

Unless there are encounter specific bleeds or constant drains on the tank, we'll usually have the Tree druids spreading hots on everything that moves, tanks included, but not focusing on any one target exclusively (they're smart enough to figure out who will need the most love).

Our priests are our pivot players. Our Disc Priests we tend to use like Pallies, and overlap them with Pallies some, but for some fights we have them throwing bubbles around to cover the raid some. Our Holy Priests are both strongly suited for burst AoE healing with CoH, as well as solid single target heals for tanks or spot healing. We go back and forth on need by encounter for who goes where, and regardless of assignment, we assign our Sacred Shields, Bacon of Lights, Earth Shields, Pain Suppressions, and Guardian Spirits carefully, and work in larger CD's where needed.

Are Inspiration and Ancestral Fortitude great procs? Absolutely, but it's also not sufficient cause to make our Holy Priests tank heal only.

PS Bacon of Light is WAY too good against Gormokk. >.<

Don't forget Renewed Hope in the Disc arsenal, which reduces damage to the whole raid by 3%, stacking with BoSanc.

But like Satorri said, place your healers in ways in which they heal well together. Disc priests play really well with druids. If you have a paladin and a priest, you may want the priest to switch to holy. That sort of thing.

Renewed Hope and BoSanc, and Vigilance, are exclusive, unless I'm mistaken.

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Originally Posted by Satorri

Renewed Hope and BoSanc, and Vigilance, are exclusive, unless I'm mistaken.

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You are not :)

Our guild usually uses Paladins (2 in 25mans, usually just 1 in 10mans) on tanks. On the other side we have Holy Priest(s) and Resto Druid(s) almost always raid healing. In between we have 2 Resto Shamans (me & another one) and sometimes a Disc Priest. Those are used to fill up the gaps such as Chain Healing & LHW spamming tanks for the buff (glyphs + Tidal Waves 'rotation' work wonders here), while our Disc Priestis usually assigned for non-tank assignments (mimi p3 tank, orb soakers on twins, ...).
Especially these last 2 are switched alot between assignments depending on the encounter, as they can do both at a semi equal level.

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Originally Posted by satorri

paladins (of which we have 2-3 always) is a shoe in for tank healing because of the strength of their single target heals, and the fact that we can cross bacon's and have a lot of healing constantly landing on the tanks.

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don't cross the streams!!!!!

With my guild, I brought the theory, that there is no such thing as single target healing. Everyone heals everyone. Pallies, and Shamans throw Becon and ES on tanks and everyone raids heal. If someone is dying then jump to them. Though with logic and common sense someone focuses more on the tanks but not solely on them.

Though with this I must mention the reasoning for it, is that we run a healer short usually. If we can we bring a dps and run 4 healers, unless it's called for 6-7 then we bring 5. We bring the extra DPS just so that we don't have to raid as long. Helps quite a bit we find and we nuke through things.

@ OP

concerning druids
- funny typo: a Tree's aura obviously increases healing received
- their living seed talent works much like earth shield
- full HoTs provide a similar form of EH, because you can effectively provide extra healing before any damage is taken; as soon as you take damage you immediately receive some healing because of the HoT ticks.
- I agree with Satorri though, Druids are in their element if they can HoT as many different players as possible.

Class differences are much more important than buff differences in my opinion, so this is how I normally assign healing:

In my 10-man raid, we have our beloved holy priest, dedicated to raid healing, but always with half an eye on the tanks for these spike specials, our holy paladin, healing both tanks by himself with his beacon of light, and our resto druid, who is usually assigned to at least HoT both tanks, then help where needed, which is the raid most of the time.

I'd say, unless you're doing something weird like going to algalon with an all-pally team, the best advice would be to bring the player, not the class :P

I aim for variety on 10mans (ie 3 different classes), 25man usually has one of everything anyways.

The rest is up to you for assigning the right healer for the right job.

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Originally Posted by Síhrtogg

@ OP

concerning druids
- funny typo: a Tree's aura obviously increases healing received

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LOL :o Ah yes that would be a horrible aura otherwise :P

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Originally Posted by Fledern

I'd say, unless you're doing something weird like going to algalon with an all-pally team, the best advice would be to bring the player, not the class

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In our situation, we have a guaranteed 2 pallies, resto druid and holy priest. Our 5th is either a resto shammy or disc priest. The reason I started looking at this is fights like Heroic Beasts and sudden tank deaths that are occurring.

On nights when the disc priest was in we noticed fewer of these tank deaths so I've begun looking to see what the correlation might be. I found on average when the disc priest was healing that the impales, melee and stomps were less on average then the nights we didn't have a disc priest.

Example:
On 10/25
- melee avg was ~18k
- impale avg was ~27k

On 10/27
- melee avg was ~17k
- Impale avg was ~23k

I also looked at specific occurrences of the tank deaths. An impale (27k) and melee (18k) is 45k. If an impale tick lands just prior to an impale+melee combo that adds another 9k which is 54k and tank dies. However, on nights when the disc priest is in, we'd see 17k + 23k + 9k = 49k and tank lives. (I understand the above example is using averages, but I looked at specific occurrences as well, I'm just trying to give the reasons without making a huge post of data that is outside the scope of the post) One of the reasons is disc priest is landing shields just prior to impales where the holy priest was not. Holy priest was on raid healing. Additionally, with disc priest on tanks we are going to see more Inspiration uptime as well as 3% damage reduction from Renewed Hope.

For huge incoming spike damage it seems stacking as much damage mitigation abilities would be a wise move.

So we have asked the holy priest to switch to disc spec on Gormok and moved the resto druid to raid healing with the resto shammy. That leaves disc priest and 2 pallies on the tanks.

Any thoughts?

One of the healy forums I frequent was claiming that while Vigilance and BoSanc are exclusive, Renewed Hope stacked with them. Can anyone point to testing that confirms all are exclusive?

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Originally Posted by Fusik

With my guild, I brought the theory, that there is no such thing as single target healing. Everyone heals everyone. Pallies, and Shamans throw Becon and ES on tanks and everyone raids heal. If someone is dying then jump to them. Though with logic and common sense someone focuses more on the tanks but not solely on them.

Though with this I must mention the reasoning for it, is that we run a healer short usually. If we can we bring a dps and run 4 healers, unless it's called for 6-7 then we bring 5. We bring the extra DPS just so that we don't have to raid as long. Helps quite a bit we find and we nuke through things.

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I am a holy priest main, although my first 80 was a Protection Warrior that tanked all of t7 content.

I can see why people might think this. However, one of the best ways, especially in a 25 man raid, to increase the effectiveness of your healing corps is to assign them healing targets. Healing is a twitch game, especially on fights like Gormok, where the tanks easily take huge spike damage that needs to be healed immediately. That means, if you force all of your healers to focus on the entire raid, it is difficult for healers to coordinate their efforts. In that situation, you're liable to have all 5-7 healers hitting one target for massive overhealing, and then losing half the melee to aoe damage inside the same global cooldown. Assignments allow healers to maximize their effectiveness without worrying about being sniped. Also, there is a limited amount of attention that each healing player has, and if you force him to focus on all 25, and move out of fires, you're going to be disappointed.

A better setup would be more like what Sartorri mentioned. In the best of all possible worlds:

1. Disc Priest and Holy Pally on the tanks
2. Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, and Holy Priest on raid healing.

Its not that the #1's can't raid heal, and the #2's can't tank heal, its more that giving them these assignments plays to their strengths.

Also, try to match what I'll call "stabilizing" healers with "bomb" healers, especially on tanks. Disc Priests and Resto Druids, for instance, are all about small, quick healing that adds up, making sure the target is "stabilized" enough to live until the "bomb" healers land their big heals. Holy Priests/Resto Shaman play a similar type of role on raid healing: Circle of Healing and Chain heal hit lots of targets quickly for low to moderate amounts, preventing players from dying. Meanwhile, Wild Growth tops them off before the next AE spike. In general, Holy Pallies are the true "bomb" healers, while Disc Priests and Resto Druids are "stabilizers". Resto Shammies and Holy Priests can be either depending on playstyle and talents. When there's a Holy Pally in my raid, for instance, and I happen to be healing tanks with him (say in a 10 man raid), I will use flash heals often to "stabilize" tanks and allow the Holy Lights to land. However, if I am running with a Resto Druid instead, I am more liable to use greater heal and take the role of the "bomb" healer. Some holy priests believe the spec is no longer capable of tank healing, and drop most of the talents supporting greater heal. These guys are good for raid healing only, either in 10 man or 25. They may have a disc spec in their back pocket, though.


Priests, especially Holy, and Druids, can be interesting because they have many different spells in their arsenal. I raid with another Holy Priest who uses Empowered Renew as one of her top 3 healing spells. She manages to get a lot of healing done that way. Meanwhile, I'm using flash, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing much more often, and I don't even talent for empowered renew (which means t9 4pc does NOTHING for me, by the way). Druids can make for pretty effective tank healers if they are paired with a few "bomb" healers to take care of big spikes. These specs have more than one right way to get the job done, so keep that in mind when evaluating their spell use.

When healers talk about "that guy", one of the things that he does is not give healing assignments (or assigns the Holy Paladin to raid and the Holy Priest to heal the Main tank because the Holy Priest happens to be higher on the meters).

Also, under Priest mitigation, you should add Pain Suppression. PS is the 41 pt disc talent, and Guardian Spirit is the 51pt Holy Talent, so you can't get both, only one or the other.

Ah, and the Raid Wall that Pallies are trying (although I hear that's getting nerfed). It redirects raid damage (party in 3.3) to the Paladin, who can cast this while under his immunity bubble, effectively giving a 30% shield wall to the entire raid (entire party in 3.3). Also, Hand of Sacrifice, which redirects 30% of the target's damage to the Paladin (another mini shield wall).

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Originally Posted by Masterkiller

In our situation, we have a guaranteed 2 pallies, resto druid and holy priest. Our 5th is either a resto shammy or disc priest. The reason I started looking at this is fights like Heroic Beasts and sudden tank deaths that are occurring.

On nights when the disc priest was in we noticed fewer of these tank deaths so I've begun looking to see what the correlation might be. I found on average when the disc priest was healing that the impales, melee and stomps were less on average then the nights we didn't have a disc priest.

Example:
On 10/25
- melee avg was ~18k
- impale avg was ~27k

On 10/27
- melee avg was ~17k
- Impale avg was ~23k

I also looked at specific occurrences of the tank deaths. An impale (27k) and melee (18k) is 45k. If an impale tick lands just prior to an impale+melee combo that adds another 9k which is 54k and tank dies. However, on nights when the disc priest is in, we'd see 17k + 23k + 9k = 49k and tank lives. (I understand the above example is using averages, but I looked at specific occurrences as well, I'm just trying to give the reasons without making a huge post of data that is outside the scope of the post) One of the reasons is disc priest is landing shields just prior to impales where the holy priest was not. Holy priest was on raid healing. Additionally, with disc priest on tanks we are going to see more Inspiration uptime as well as 3% damage reduction from Renewed Hope.

For huge incoming spike damage it seems stacking as much damage mitigation abilities would be a wise move.

So we have asked the holy priest to switch to disc spec on Gormok and moved the resto druid to raid healing with the resto shammy. That leaves disc priest and 2 pallies on the tanks.

Any thoughts?

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On nights when the disc priest is there, keep the other priest holy, because they could start stumbling over each other's weakened soul debuff on the tanks. Otherwise, disc mitigation is really helpful to have.

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Originally Posted by Knighterrant81

Ah, and the Raid Wall that Pallies are trying (although I hear that's getting nerfed). It redirects raid damage (party in 3.3) to the Paladin, who can cast this while under his immunity bubble, effectively giving a 30% shield wall to the entire raid (entire party in 3.3). Also, Hand of Sacrifice, which redirects 30% of the target's damage to the Paladin (another mini shield wall).

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Both of which can be further talented to 40% redirection.

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Originally Posted by Knighterrant81

On nights when the disc priest is there, keep the other priest holy, because they could start stumbling over each other's weakened soul debuff on the tanks. Otherwise, disc mitigation is really helpful to have.

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Roger that, I think what we are going with is: Paly (x2), Disc priest (asked them to do disc instead of holy for gormok), resto druid and resto shaman and have the druid and shaman on raid heal. Sound good?

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Roger that, I think what we are going with is: Paly (x2), Disc priest (asked them to do disc instead of holy for gormok), resto druid and resto shaman and have the druid and shaman on raid heal. Sound good?

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I think that's a pretty good setup. Just watch out for those Jormungar on phase 2 and make sure your raid minimizes the amount of damage they take from burning bile and the poison. On heroic 25, you pretty much need to focus healing on any target that gets the poison, and the AE from burning bile can kill people pretty fast. Any healing team will get overwhelmed quickly if you get a lot of poison or burning bile in your raid - which means either a dead tank or not enough DPS alive for Icehowl.

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Roger that, I think what we are going with is: Paly (x2), Disc priest (asked them to do disc instead of holy for gormok), resto druid and resto shaman and have the druid and shaman on raid heal. Sound good?

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I think that's a pretty good setup. Just watch out for those Jormungar on phase 2 and make sure your raid minimizes the amount of damage they take from burning bile and the poison. On heroic 25, you pretty much need to focus healing on any target that gets the poison, and the AE from burning bile can kill people pretty fast. Any healing team will get overwhelmed quickly if you get a lot of poison or burning bile in your raid - which means either a dead tank or not enough DPS alive for Icehowl.

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Originally Posted by Davout

Both of which can be further talented to 40% redirection.

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*Sigh* Pallies are so OP :P

I guess its sort of like the Pally equivalent of Divine Hymn or Tranquility. I can see where it would be a pain to balance around that much mitigation on the entire raid without making it a requirement to bring x amount of holy Pallys. Ah, well, at least the party version will still be pretty neat, and you can use it in Arenas.

In my raids, I always give the healers 2 healing assignments, one a first priority and one a second priority. This way, everyone's covered if one of the healers gets incapacitated for a bit or if there's some burst damage to be healed through, and yet no one's stepping on each others' toes or wasting mana on overhealing. For example, I might have a pally assigned to heal MT/OT, a disc priest assigned to OT/MT, a shammy to raid/MT, a holy priest to raid/OT, a tree to raid/both tanks. If I only have one "tank healer" (pally/disc) in the raid, I'll have one of my "raid healing classes" focusing on the OT, and have 2 other healers assigned to the OT as their second priority. Of course, there's the general understanding that if you've got nothing to do atm in either of your current assignments, you can heal other people too.