Over the course of Wrath up to now, it has been clear that the tenet of “bring the player not the class” does not apply to healers.
Disc Priests and Holy Paladins are considered to be essential in any healing composition. Holy Paladins have raw output and Disc Priests are able to spam PWShield. In many cases the PWShield spam makes other classes redundant.
This cannot be remedied unless all 5 healer types are fixed. A few suggestions:
Disc Priests
Their ability to spam of PWShield should be curbed, and changes to them should encourage smarter preventive healing by the priest. To balance that they can be encouraged to cast Flash heal more.
E.g. Increase the base cost of PWShield. Perhaps adjust the mana return for rapture accordingly. Borrowed time should apply to all flash heals cast within those 5 seconds.
Holy Paladins
Reduce the amount of healing caused by Beacon of Light.
Holy Priests
Basically make it much easier to Holy Priests to keep Serendipity up. Each stack of serendipity should apply to one Prayer of Healing/Greater Heal or Serendipity should be applied by Empowered Renew or Circle of Healing.
Restodruids
Reduce the cost of Lifebloom. Restodruids should have the ability to heal tanks as they did in TBC. It should not be the monopoly of Holy Paladins.
Restoshamans
Either make healing totem raid wide or increase by a lot the proc chance of earthliving weapon.
I’m open to constructive feedback. None of the suggestions above I consider to be absolutely the only way to improve the classes.
Raidwide healing stream would be way too strong. It would be something like 6000+ passive raw HPS. Earthliving weapon would be fairly forgettable even if it had a higher proc chance. The main “weakness” of resto shamans is not having a strong healing/DR cooldown but adding something like spirit link totem from Cataclysm would be much too big of a change.
Healer balance is good, yes paladin and disc is strong, but they have a niche that they fill, so resto druid and shaman can easily fit in with them.
Both druid and shaman is capable of pushing out massive amount of healing when needed.
Only healing spec that really get the short end of the stick is holy priest, and thats not because of paladin and disc being so OP, but because shaman and druid fill the raid healing niche much better
Regarding 10mans. I’ve healed with rdruid, I’ve healed with disc and I’ve healed with rhaman. Honestly on fights like XT/Mimiron I kinda prefer druid over disc. It just feels more manageble and less panic healing required as players loose health more calmly.
On 25man, having resto druid haste build blanketing whole raid feels soo much nicer to heal on fights like XT. Same reason again, while everyone’s health is dropping, but it’s a slow and even drop when raid is blanketed.
The whole Identity of discs is that they shield. If you take the disc’s blanket shielding away, you end up with a much weaker Holy Paladin
This could be workable, and is probably necessary. Already people are talking about healing most fights with 1x disc and 2-3x hpal.
This will fix nothing. Throughput of Holy is great. But it doesn’t offer any DR, nothing like DSAC or Aura Mastery, and is not very survivable. That’s the problem. Holy would still be bad if prayer of healing was instant cast.
This would do nothing. Resto Druids have the same problem that Holy Priest does. No DRs and no Defensive CDS. Fixing the Wild Growth Bug and making Tranq Raid wide would help.
The totem would be way too strong. It heals for 1300 every 3s. That raid wide would be busted.
As someone who plays every healer spec at varying levels, the thing that differs the most between the specs, in my opinion, is healing while moving. Especially now in Ulduar, moving around and positioning is more important than before, making healing while on the move crucial for your overall performance.
The healer spec that gets hurt by this the most is probably resto shaman. Outside of throwing out riptide off cooldown and refreshing earth/water shield, there’s nothing you can do. There’s a reason why shamans were given Spiritwalker’s Grace in Cataclysm.
I main holy priest and they really don’t need a buff, it all depends on who is playing, it is a bit harder to play because you have to really focus on what you do and when, you have to react to things well. Best thing you can do with Serendipity is not spec into it, kind of a waste of potential.
Disc priest is for the people who don’t like healing or can’t handle more than 1 button and its kinda sad how OP it is, wouldn’t mind a nerf to it.
Paladins are fine, you don’t need 'em but they do fill a nice role.
I don’t know much about druids. They’re kinda just there doing their own thing an whatever it is works. Haven’t heard any resto druids complain.
Shamans are nice for bloodlust… I’m sure they do something else as well. My shaman is only 71 so I haven’t healed with it in raids, but so far it seems very basic. You mostly press 2 buttons… could do with a class rework, but I’ve never really liked shamans so I’m sure some shaman main could explain why they’re fun.
Healing is different than DPS, for DPS you absolutely want to bring certain classes for a good raid comp, but for healing, it really doesn’t matter much. Mostly you try to avoid disc priests in the comp otherwise the other healers will get silly and start taking their gear off or try competing on who can craft the most frostweave bolts during a boss fight. Each class is good in its own way and you want to have a good mix of them, but you don’t “need” to have any specific one.
A good will always be better than a decent … You see, it just works for any of them… You wouldn’t take a decent disc priest who isn’t spamming shields the entire fight, you’re better off with a good druid. You wouldn’t take a decent paladin, you’d take a good shaman.
Pretty sad that you go all “Holy priest is for skilled players, disc for the nubs” then you show you dont know the first thing about disc.
Im not claiming that disc is a hard spec to play by any means, but being a proactive healing spec, its all about predicting incoming damage, and playing around rapture to not go oom. Mindlessly spamming shields and you are oom in 2min.
holy is a fun spec to play, its just weaker than other raid healing specs, thats why it rarely get played. It fills a different niche than disc so no point in comparing them, holy compete with shaman and druid for their raidspot not disc
Would holypaladins need a nerf by modern standards? Yes, but we are playing classic. Some classes are overpowered, some arent, thats how the game works (or worked). Atleast everything is viable unlike vanilla.
Well there is a difference in disc priests. Mid-parse discs shield priority targets and cast some other spells as well. High-parse self-stroking discs only spam shields. Also I’ve never seen more than 2 hpaladins in a raid and I’m not sure why you’d even want more than 2… and you can only have 1 disc priest in a raid… so you still have 1 spot for anything else.
Yea. If only healer parses would actually reflect the effectivnes of ones methods and not the stupid hoops you have to jump through to get in highest hps.
These 2 quotes are just so wrong. Hpala is absolutely needed and in high demand for their CD’s and pure throughput - and not only on the tank. And by ‘fine’ you mean S-tier, right?
Disc is a very simple rotation but is extremely proactive, and I like that about disc. CD usage is also very nice. I see disc more as the support class. PI and PS are amazing CD’s and the spothealing with pennance is also very nice.
And like others already have said playing around rapture is a minigame for which you need to know the encounters.
This.
Renew Priest is a weaker Resto Druid,
Serendipity Priest is a weaker Resto Shaman.
But both Holy Priest specs are great substitues if you can’t afford Rdruid or a Rsham.
On every fight were raid dmg is supposed to happen on a certain Timer, for example Algalon, Mimiron P2, XT, or general raiddmg is high and reoccuring (Iron Council, Freya)
2 Discs are perfectly fine. Both can shield 12.5 people in the raid before they can start over again.
Wasting a healer slot with another Dpriest, when just 1 can keep the shield on whole raid (theoretical maximum is 30 targets), sounds fine to you? Second Dpriest is just a raid spectator, nothing more.
No Raid-Wide dmg spike in Ulduar happens more frequently than once per 30 seconds to justify pressence of second Dpriest. Aside from Algalon’s Collapsing Stars of course.
Seeing 2 Dpriests in a raid is a first sign of Demon PuG
Having resto druid and resto shammy on IC, Mimiron, XT feels so much better. They smooth damage intake to the point were there’s no panic healing required.
Haste build restos can easily out heal or tie with paladins on those heavy raid wide damage fights.
Yes palas have broken CD’s and high throughput but that doesnt mean they dont have their limits.
