“Trust in the HoTs!”

It’s a hard lesson to learn, but once learned it brings that adrenaline rush of ‘OMG!! I’M/MYTANKIS LOSINGHEALTH!’ back down into acceptable ranges. I always giggle a little inside when I’m tanking with a new tree who has a ful 3 LB stack, RJ, RG, AND WG on me when I’m only down 700hp.

Druid healing is quite anticipatory, and that does take some getting used to, for sure. We are quite unique from all of the other healing classes, and perhaps it is more challenging to master?

I’m just happy that we got an out of combat rez…for all that, wip…er, learning

I think you’re on the button here. It’s much rougher being healed by an inexperienced resto druid who doesn’t know the instance than by someone who does. And I guess for PUGs people prefer to go with the easier options. (Same reason a lot of people prefer paladins to warrior tanks.)

But this was one of the things that drew me to the resto druid when I was trying to decide which class I wanted to heal on. It does have more of a learning curve, it is a bit different, and I do think it’s rewarding when you master it and can go prove that you’re every bit as reliable as any old priest. Also HoTs are fun.

Seriously though.

This might come across as a bit abstract and is probably Just Plain Wrong (as I have much less druid experience than priest) but, having tried my hand at both druid and priest healing, there’s a significant difference in the type of thinking that underlies it. Because of the reliance on HoTs, as you discuss above, I find druid healing requires an anticipatory rather than responsive style of play. And because of this I think it’s more flexible … and arguably more powerful in the intellectual rather literal sense.

This is turning tl;dr on me but, in short, I think I heal better as a druid when I know what I’m doing, but priest healing is far more forgiving when I don’t.

In essence, it’s probably easier to heal badly as a druid.

@ Copernicus – No need for apologies, I’m not offended at all! Just a little fired up. If nothing else, you gave me a good topic for today. =) Next time you are faced with a druid healer, instead of backing out, think “how can I make this work” and try to play to your healers strengths…it might turn out differently.

Instances are always tougher when you are first starting them, before you have gear that out gears them and before you have run them 100 times. I always have a harder time when there is really bursty tank damage along with damage to the group that needs healed up.

For what it’s worth…people die a lot more when I heal instances with my paladin than they do when I heal them with my druid

First of all, I appologize profusely for offending you or any other of my leafy breatheren. I spend most of my time as a bear, to the point I don’t recognize myself in elf form.

We have two druid healers in our guild, one of whom is a top notch ex-hardcore raider. He outperforms everyone in any healing task he’s given. The other prefers being a raid healer; he’s not comfortable healing a tank.

Most of my experience with druid healers was while gearing up for naxx while the expansion was still fairly new. The only time I had problems was when a druid was healing. For some reason, we never finished a run with a tree healing. It got to the point where if I saw a druid healer, I made some excuse and left the group.

Granted, we’d have a wipe here and there with priests, paladins and shaman, but it was just consistant with druids.

Could it have been me? Sure, I may have pulled faster than they were able to throw up hots, but I’m usually a very considerate tank. I mark all the targets, make sure everyone’s mana is up, etc.

Again, I appologize. I was not trying to say druids were bad healers. As I said, we have one in our guild that is outstanding. I was just giving my own personal experiences.