Comments on: But I Can Be A Paladin Too! Right?

By: Don Parker

Don Parker — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:49:33 +0000

This really depends upon the encounter also, back in Naxxramus I was puggin with a group since my guild wasnt ready to raid, we got to the one boss (cannot remember his name) nad he had a very short cast time spell that my instant hots could not deal with and my direct healing spells had too long of a cast time, I could with my panic button keep every other player alive due to the CD.
I eventually convinced the RL to put me on Tank heals as the tank wasnt taking significant damage and put the Priest on raid heals, he/she was able to keep the people alive ahem by spamming flash heals and I was able to keep the tank alive.

Yes I agree we do much better on raid heals but Blizz does like to switch things up to keep us on our toes.

Poisn

By: Inquisitor

Inquisitor — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:55:53 +0000

One druid, one disc priest, 10-man raid. For the love of the gods, run split roles. HoT stacks, but no Nourish, on the tanks, shield spam from the disc priest, with the disc Penancing to fill in individual spikes, and the druid WGing to fill in raid drops.

Everything that is really great about Disc is brought with less than half their time, so please, please, use that throughput to let them do something more useful than spam Flash Heal – and they, in turn, will smooth out raid damage, and shield anyone who gets low, so your hots get used to maximum effect.

Not a fan of strict assignments. They always seem to make disc priests go to waste.

By: Monkey

Monkey — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:32:53 +0000

That does clarify quite well, thank you. The buff is indeed 15 seconds. I also agree. While there are ways to increase crit chance if the buff falls off, it’s much less likely that anyone has to worry about it if there’s more than one person providing the buff.

I’m looking forward to the healing changes in Cataclysm. I think they’re going to go a long way toward making it such that you’ll always want your best healers on the tank regardless of class. That’s sort of the case now, but from everything I’ve seen so far regarding the changes, the devs are making that a priority.

By: Jurik

Jurik — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:49:26 +0000

With mana being a non-issue, keeping virtually 100% uptime on this buff is really (or ought to be) part of the job of healing as a shaman / priest.

By: Vyll

Vyll — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:19:28 +0000

If I get assigned to heal a tank, it’s usually the second or third tank in the encounter. If that happens, I usually whisper the holy paladin assigned to one of the other tanks and suggest to him that we “team up” on our tanks. I roll HoTs on both and he fills the gaps with direct heals on both. We work best as part of a tank-healing team rather than just to be assigned to an individual tank.

The best example of this is the Valithria fight. We usually have a pally, a shaman and me go through the portals. I never feel embarassed by my output and we win this fight more often than not, but I rarely beat the shaman and never beat the pally on pure throughput on a single target.

I can adequately fill the need for a tank healer solo by using HoTs and Nourish. I never feel like I’m not up to the task of keeping my tank alive if needed. However, that isn’t where I’m most efficient.

There’s nothing wrong with that! Ask the pally to raid heal and he can probably do it, but not as well as me. There’s nothing wrong with have other classes be better than us at certain things as long as we have something we can excel at.

The safety net analogy is a great description. That’s what we do. We had a discussion about effective healing the other day and how much of my HoTs were overhealed and one of the tank officers spoke up in my defense and mentioned that my numbers explode on a fight where we lose a healer or two early and people aren’t sniping my HoTs all the time.

I just wouldn’t get that upset about it. We’re not as good as pallys at tank healing, but we’re not inadequate to the task if asked to fill the role.

Vyll

By: Beruthiel

Beruthiel — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:40:25 +0000

@monkey – yes, and no. Keep in mind that neither inspiration or ancestral fortitude has 100% uptime. Both are activate by the healer having a critical effect on their target, and the buff is somewhat short in duration at 15 seconds (iirc).

So while it is true that they do not stack, if you have multiple healers on the target that have the ability to provide the benefit, you ultimatly increase the uptime of the effect, which is a net benefit. Sure, the counter argument would be that your healer would have a crit at least once every 15 seconds, but that is not a guarantee.

Now, I am not saying that you should put two healers with the talents in that spot, but you should have at least one of them providing it to your tank. However, there is no downside to having multiple sources of the buff on the tank. I hope that clarifies my phrasing some.

By: Monkey

Monkey — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:49:15 +0000

Saying “at least one” implies that “both” is also an option. The clarification is really for the benefit of anyone who isn’t familiar with the abilities and thinks they ought to be stacking.

By: Beruthiel

Beruthiel — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:11:15 +0000

“you want at least one of these two buff’s gracing your tank”

By: Monkey

Monkey — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:36:30 +0000

Ancestral Fortitude and Inspiration can’t stack; one will overwrite the other.

By: Kermet

Kermet — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:37:29 +0000

By the way, I’m the evil GM that started all of this with the original poster/question/statement.

The druids in our guild are amazing healers and I would not have any qualms about one of them tank healing if we needed it. As other people here and on other boards who fielded this same question have stated there are other classes that are just better at it. That does not mean that an individual could not still do a great job, it just means that when we have to pass out jobs in a 25 man raid we are going to think of what class is strongest in what job. Simple as that.

In 10 mans we really could care less and put whatever healer we have on tank or raid healing but 25 mans are usualy a different story. I am not apposed to switching things up to help keep people from getting bored with the same job but the strengths of each class are pretty well known so druids can expect to be used on raid healing most of the time, especialy if the raid has paladin healers to deal with the tanks.

I really appreciate the unbiased feedback and responses this question has received and I feel good about the ranking system we use for jobs. Thanks and great site.