Reply With QuoteGo check out plusheal.comOriginally Posted by Theomach
Eid
I have been holy since my belf hit 70, and I rolled my paladin the day BC was released. I can understand the lack of holy pallies, the tree does look underwhelming especially with the changes that were made to prot and ret. The spec didn't drastically change, but it did add some needed utility.
After some time playing with the new spec (mostly pvp) I feel extremely powerful. I am in mostly t5 gear with smattering of mismatched t6 of and few s3. (I took a break when 2.3 hit.)
Holy shock is now actually useful with the 6s CD and the spell coefficient changes. My HS now crit heals at 3.5k - 4k and about 2k non crit.
I am also becoming a big fan of Beacon of Light, i think this spell is great. In PVP I just cast it on myself and heal everyone around me in a 40 yard radius, and not worry about my health. I am able to focus on healing the dps classes, without having to pay attention to my health which is nice. Previously I would have to choose between healing myself or keeping the dps up, this is no longer an issue.
In an instance I keep it up on the tank all the time. This has become a blessing in 5-mans. The worst thing for me in a 5 man is when the entire group takes damage... first priority is a tank which leaves to much room for at least 1 group member to die. With beacon... by the time you heal 2 group members the tank will be back up at full health.
Mana hasn't really been and issue to me, but it never was before. Although I have always felt a holy pally should be in the mist of battle standing with the melee classes (due to the old judgement system and the plate armor) to keep up judgements (previous guild had no ret pallies, someone had to refresh the judgements). The current amount of mana that is now returned for having seal and judgement of wisdom up is impressive (although I believe this is getting nerfed), so I do my best to throw melee hits in between heals.
When the 3.0.3 changes add the instant cast flash of light and separate GCD for auras I will be fairly happy with how holy turned out. I am not that upset with the damage nerf to seals, well because I am so used to not being able to damage as holy.
Go check out plusheal.com
Eid
@Theomach:
I learned in high end Guild Wars PvP...
Yeah not so helpful. Check out your class thread on elitistjerks.com as well as plusheal.com (mentioned above) and lightnatured.com
Nothing compares to actually healing something though. Just go out and do it. The low level instances are lenient and well help you get a feel of what to use when. Just pay attention to health and the environment (watch out for healer tunnel vision, standing in whirlwind/fire/lava/whatever is bad).
No Worries!
As for the shortage of healers, the exact opposite is currently true in my guild. It is sad to hear of so many people leaving healing, but it does offer those of us who stay a great opportunity to shine. All we healers can do about a shortage is keep playing and enjoy the extra invites. Its up to non-healers to provide more healing population.
I've found that both healers and tanks are quite rare, especially of the pally breed. All the pally tanks I knew that weren't 25m raid tanks are basically ret now. I don't know if the ret changes will balance that out at all, but everyone seems to want to dps because they view it as more fun.
Maybe they're just burned out on their role. I know i leveled both a prot warrior and a holy priest just to experiment with other roles. That could very well be what's going on here. Maybe these ret pallies (and tg warriors) will decide that dps isn't for them and go back to their holy or prot ways, or maybe they'll stick it out.
The other factor is people are leveling to 70 all the time. It's pretty difficult to get geared sufficiently for heroics as a tank, because what is sufficient has less to do with the instance and more to do with the expectations people have. Expectations have moved from 'complete the heroic' to 'complete the heroic in 30 mins'. While this is an understandable expectation, it means the pool of new tanks is pretty small.
Generally speaking, the same holds true for healers. If you're under 1k spellpower, it can be a bit challenging to find a group, even for things like heroic slavepens. It's all a little silly, but whatever.
I "taught" myself raid healing by doing AV's
Lots of mobs with unpredictable damage
Quick reaction time to raid healing requirements
Movement required to keep players in range
Finally - no downside if they Die
Bonus: If you try to heal you will most likely top the Healing meters at the end of the AV and be giving much virtual love and appreciation (esp if you are alliance - some folks are simply SHOCKED when they get a heal)
I did the same thing when I started my holy priest. In addition to the above post, what AV brings that normal instances dont is that you also have to be aware of your surroundings. Arrows flying at you, big meanie warrior with a huge axe coming your way, etc. etc. It cures the tunnel-vision syndrom.I "taught" myself raid healing by doing AV's
Lots of mobs with unpredictable damage
Quick reaction time to raid healing requirements
Movement required to keep players in range
Finally - no downside if they Die
Bonus: If you try to heal you will most likely top the Healing meters at the end of the AV and be giving much virtual love and appreciation (esp if you are alliance - some folks are simply SHOCKED when they get a heal)
Being a good healer is actually not difficult. Get a good set of addon's, GRID, clique/mouseover macros, etc. and you are almost set. It only takes a couple instance runs to learn to use them. Experience, anticipation and reaction, confidence, these qualities are what make a great healer.
I don't know about healing, but I have noticed I'm being bothered a lot more for random tanking than I was pre Wrath. Even when I've been in LFG I'll see 3 each of pallies, warriors and DKs and each one is labelled 'DPS'. I thought with a new DPS class there'dbe less necessity for me to tank, but no - it seems now there's even more.
Ott - what server, what guild, and need a tank?
Nice 'problem' to have, heh.
DKs certainly took a bite out of the player base, everyones gotta try one.
I got an Alliance and Horde one past the start zone - and that's it.
Probably because I have a Horde Pally and Alliance Warrior. /shrug
It's catch-22 for me - I'm Prot for instances, and I can't get one, I can't AoE grind like I'd hope, I go Ret.
I'm Ret and levelling, but then a guild group or PUG could have used me as Prot. Argh.
Dual Spec will be huge - frankly I think Blizzard messed up by not having this ready for the expansion.
Even better to get more healers, but important for DPS/Tank switches too.
Just seems such a mistake to not have this ready at release, meanwhile I level pass UK and Nexxus... sigh.
Last edited by CKaz; 12-05-2008 at 09:09 AM. Reason: merged posts
CKaz-
I have to admit that I do not know the general server status for healing ratios. I'm currently in the server 1st guild and we tend not to have much of a roster issue. I think the same is prob true for most of the highly ranked guilds (in terms of server, not world). It is harder to get the people you need when your just starting. But at least in my experience, there is no major shortage of raiding healers.
In TBC Pallies were allowed to tank but we got shammie healers so with a little shifting and shoving equilibrium was maintained.
In Wrath we have a new DPS class, Death Knight, the Pallies can now DPS as they have alway swanted to and so we have more DPS and a reduction in the healer pool.
In addition the following holds true;
Druids; Not much changed but they were usually the hardest to find anyway.
Pallies; Respecced DPS.
Priests; So what did we actually get, TBC gave us Fiend, CoH, PoM, Wrath brings nothing.
Shammies; Universally disgusted that their signature move has been handed out to druids and priests.
Summary; WotLK decreased the pool and made the remaining fish unhappy.
My experience has been that the legendary status of Huntards is being usurped by Death Tards.DKs certainly took a bite out of the player base, everyones gotta try one.
When Wrath was announced it left me with two options at first - go holy and leave myself to the mercy of 5-mans to level, or go Shadow and forgo instances. I took option 3 and went with lolsmite. I can DPS, Heal, and to some extent, Tank.
Healers leveling up in Wrath need to thoroughly explore their options and look at unorthodox specs for leveling rather than min/maxing as if they were raiding.
[Insert witty signature here]
a nother reason that there isnt very many tanks and even less healer is that they give up trying...
some because they think its no fun
but i think they do it because they get sick of ppl yelling at them if a group wipes
yes its the healers job but come its not always the healers fault if the group wipes...
This is the essential statement to why you don't find that many healers leveling from 70-80. Unlike tanks which got an overhaul and allowed us to level efficiently, healers didn't get one. Running instances without a dedicated group to clear->reset->clear is horribly terribly slow compared to knocking out dozen or so quests. Leveling a tank was easy mode in comparison in Wrath.
Healers get some unfair criticism that usually belongs to the tank. PUG tanks will frequently and habitually overpull and charge off into a pack of mobs with only 7K life from the previous near-wipe and an OOM healer. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they get what they need and then go raid, and never touch a heroic again except with friends and their guild.
err there's no healer shortage. There's a shortage of healers for the popular and harder heroics, like HoL, UP and AN. These are the only ones I normally see lacking healers. My alt healer (shaman) can spend half a day in LFG only to run 1-2 heroics. My alt tank (paladin) has the same experience.
Why won't I run AN on my healer? bc dps sucks. I've seen dps in greens and level 70 epics get invited to raids a heroic geared healer will be scoffed at. I get pestered for stats on my healer and tank more than your typical dps, so no there's not really a healer shortage just low tolerance for stupidity among healers.
I predicted this on beta when every moron and their brother would get a deathknight and try to tank, now even if someone is a healer, they most likely aren't interested in PUGs anymore. there were always 4 healing classes for 3 tank classes, and that balance didnt quite work. now the inverse is true.
we need dualspec.
BTW- first moron paladin to go PVE ret PVP ret gets gkicked from my guild
Lethargic -Discipline priest, US-Velen
" I can heal Instances, I can heal Raids, but I Can't Heal Stupid."
Well good news! The way the Retribution tree is shaping up for 3.1, this wouldn't be necessary as there are as many as 11-14 floater points to figure out how to not waste.
Assuming you'll enforce that on everyone else who also likes to PVP and has a variation of their spec that is ideal for raiding, and another for PVP. I'd probably snipe all the tanks that are going to pick up a waste of time "trash" build myself :P
I have only played a tank, and I am power levelling a healer atm. I'll be facing one problem or the other. I have to agree with someone and say that the best way to learn healing is in a BG.
Yep. I predicted the same thing. their is a healer shortage as of now. Maybe since Ret is getting rebalanced maybe we will get some more Holy Pallys in teh mixI predicted this on beta when every moron and their brother would get a deathknight and try to tank, now even if someone is a healer, they most likely aren't interested in PUGs anymore. there were always 4 healing classes for 3 tank classes, and that balance didnt quite work. now the inverse is true
I laughed ..so true so trueMy experience has been that the legendary status of Huntards is being usurped by Death Tards.
Its a close call still, DK's may be pulling ahead though, because now in addition to the loot crazed hunter rolling on all leather and mail dps, melee weapons, and ranged items the DK also feel entitled to roll on all the dps plate and tanking items.
Few points:
1) In general I've found healing heroics/raids on my Resto Shaman to be much less involved and enjoyable than tanking them on my Protection Warrior. Healing is, in my opinion, just a lot less interesting. Fewer buttons to press, less strategic decisions, etc.
2) Leveling a healer sucks for most people without access to efficient instance running groups. People have to make a conscious decision to respec as dps for 70-80, collect lots of dps gear in the process, and then respec to healing at 80 and begin collecting gear from scratch.
3) Healing a bad pug is worse than tanking a bad pug in my opinion. If I'm the tank I control the pace of the run (how fast I pull, how many mobs, what sort of cc, how much threat I am putting out, etc.). If I'm the healer though, I'm at the mercy of some screwball tank who has no clue what they're doing. So, I will frequently run PUGs on my tank but rarely on my healer.
4) I have definitely noticed that healer spots are almost always the last spots filled in any given PUG on my server. I am pretty sure this is not a problem for mid to high level raiding guilds, but mostly for casual guilds and PUGs.
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