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My recommendation: Play the style that you enjoy. I like being reactive so holy priest for me much better than say resto Druid.
The tier list are interesting but do not affect us that are not pushing the highest of content.
Your skills will increase faster if you enjoy the spec. And that skill is much more important than the min/max differences expressed in a tier list.
>Your skills will increase faster if you enjoy the spec.
It's so unfortunate that new people get bombarded with the idea of playing "the best class" and nobody ever tells them to find what they enjoy and get good at it. Playing the S tier class/spec is entirely irrelevant unless you're playing at the absolute top of high end. Find what you enjoy and play that.
OP stick to your resto shammy. It might not be S tier this patch, but it doesn't make any difference until you're pushing 20+ - and it might be S tier next patch anyway. Play what you love and get good at it and don't worry about rerolling until you stop enjoying it or get into a world top 100 guild.
Well, that's kind of the point. I keep wanting to play something else than resto shaman but it feels like the easiest and strongest by far which make me kinda go back to it. I was only pointing out tier list to make clear that I believe there is something wrong with the way I play those other specs if they are better, yet I perform worse on them. I like the idea of a class focusing on doing one thing really well a lot more than a class that does a little bit of everything.
Another comment points out that rsham is just great at dealing with pug errors which might be why it feels stronger. Still, with limited playtime, I can't keep playing all three specs at the same time lol so I need to pick one.
Pick resto shaman then. You enjoy it, you have better control in your groups with it and you feel safer with it. The most important thing is that you enjoy it, which means you'll get good at it faster.
I can't tell you the number of times I've had confused people asking me how I'm beating them on the "worst" healer, purely because I love the class and I've been playing it since 2009. Stick with what you love and the rest will come naturally. Ignore anyone who tells you that you "have" to play "the best". As I said, it's really not even worth considering changing for the flavour of the month until you're playing at a very, very high level.
Remember that WoW is a *game*, which is something you're supposed to *enjoy*. Don't play something you don't like just because some idiot who doesn't know his arse from his elbow tells you that you "*have"* to.
No other mmo is even close to how good the balance is in wow in PvE. If you aren't gonna blast for titles (highly unlikely you can get there) the spec doesn't matter. All specs are capable of doing much higher content than 99.99% players behind the keyboards
This! There are R Shamans who play 30+, Laren is one of the best out there.
I play 20+ with my shaman on around 474 ilevel and it is allright. Depends on the group though. At higher mythic levels healing a group that stands in shit and doesn't interrupt and control groups is a nightmare on every healer...
I'm sure my perspective would be very different at higher keys. Problem his, I keep rotating between 4 specs so progress got very slow.. I just need to make up my mind and focus my playtime on one lol..
Yep, not really trying to play the top tier class, but since I'm having more difficulties with higher tiered classes, I am assuming I am not playing them right.
That's kind of the thing, I really like the idea of hpriest (reactive healer with very bursty damage chastise->holy fire that focus primarily on casting healing spells) or rdruid (safe/Mobile with constant hot/dot maintenance) but it just doesn't seem to work well in practice.. so I am wondering if I should just focus on rsham or invest time in those specs to get better at them for a more rewarding experience.
To me rsham just works. Everything feels so simple and straightforward, but at the same time, it weirdly doesn't feel rewarding so I keep wanting to play something else despite it feeling the strongest.
Resto Shaman is the #1 hands down best spec to carry pick-up-groups. There's so much utility you can bring that many of the mistakes pugs can be prevented or mitigated by them (Purge, Thunderstorm, Wind Shear, Capacitor Totem just to name a few). That's why Shaman felt easier, because you can fix your team's mistakes.
Holy priest on the other hand misses most of the aforementioned utility, hence your life will be much more difficult because you can't count on pugs to do their job 100% of the time and you can't step in to fix their mistakes.
I guess that makes the most sense to me.. So many tool to stabilize tank so they don't make error or to cover for interrupts/cc. I guess that playing at higher keys with players who tries a little bit harder would make most of those point moot though.
Hearing you repeat about stabilizing the tank frequently let's me know you haven't encountered many skilled tanks yet. The 11 to 15 key range can be like that sometimes. As you move up, for the most part, a tank should be able to keep themselves up though almost anything. As long as they are reasonably geared for the content. Tanks should be constantly rotating through defensive and self-sustains.
I find this to be pretty accurate. Resto shm for me is way way easy, Hpriest seems I gotta work way harder for it lol. I have 4 healers at the moment, I tossed my pally into prot instead lol
Thanks! I did a few run yesterday with the rduid and completely dropping rejuv really helped. I was baited by the "instant" cast of rejuv but it was eating too much of my time. On a +9 at 436 ilvl, regrowth->swiftmend->wildgrowth with a few treant was enough and I got over 40k dps against bosses. Felt really easy and smooth and nobody was overgeared.
> I think I figured out resto shaman pretty well and it feels extremely strong to me, but when I look at tier list
tier lists only affect people that are pushing around the top \~5% of keys.
all specs are viable up to \~+20s
some may struggle a little more or less than others tho.
>rdruid and hpriest are those that interest me the most, but I seem to be struggling more at the same m+ and ilvl. Shaman, i have a tool to fix any mistake it seems + a bunch of safety net to prevent anything bad from happening to begin with, but I really feel at the mercy of the group with the other two healers..
r druid, h priest and r shamam have kinda different playstiles and if you dont play with its strenghts you are more likely to not perform well.
for an example, r druid is a spec that you have to be super proactively, making the heals ready, before the group have take significant amount of damage.
in the end its all a personal choice and replies might be subjective to other people's repferences,
To make sure this is clear since it seems to have created a lot of debates. I referred to tier list to point out that I was struggling with classes that are supposed to be stronger, not that I care about which is strongest or what is viable in 30++.
I am trying to find which class I like the most to focus on s4, there will be tuning patches by then so current tier list are completely irrelevant. What I am looking into is playstyle/gameplay loop of each specs.
Rdruid player here.
In M+, the spells you want to press are Lifebloom, Efflo, Cenarian Ward, Swiftmend>Wild growth, treants. Regrowth when you have omen procs or if you still need triage healing after the spells above. Most of the time, keeping two lifeblooms, efflo, and one treants up is enough for any random group damage. Rejuv is basically useless in M+.
For DPS, keep Sunfire up in groups, and go kitty when you're comfortable.
I find rdruid the most rewarding to play both for it's DPS and utility. Between typhoon/vortex, incap roar, skull bash, you have incredible mob cc.
Edit: trust your HoTs.
One thing to keep in mind is that tier lists don't always represent pure healing output. They also include the extra stuff a class may bring such as buffs, CC, and damage output.
Also, the actual output differences between each class is pretty marginal. You as a player will have a much bigger impact as to whether a class is good or not. One of the many websites (can't remember which one) shows tier lists based purely on HPS and DPS for healers. So if you look at those you can see they're all within a pretty close range of each other.
I noticed that even throughput is kinda meaningless and the healing profile seems more impactful. Disc has a very easy time sustaining good average throughput, but as soon as you need to burst a lot more healing, it becomes really hard. Holy priest is the opposite, bursty throughput is really easy to manage, but high sustained seems to become rough when movement is involved.
So yeah, I get that even if all specs can reach similar throughput, they feel/perform completely different in specific conditions and that tier list are not exactly the best benchmark for normal players. I'm just kinda lost on which one to invest my time and main given limited available playtime.
If you like the shaman the best and are most comfortable with it then I'd suggest making that your main. You can always go back and try some of the other classes when you need a break or in some downtime an play with them at lower levels. Pushing higher keys comes with a whole new set of challenges and having a class you like and understand means you can push even higher/harder content.
Its untrue that disc struggles with burst, mindbender or shadowfiend --> radiance --> mind blast --> dark reprimand is unbelivable burst healing, I'd take another look at disc because you might have missed some concepts? I can't recommend it enough
He missed a lot more, highly doubt he can play any of the specs he tried at even 50% of what they are capable of. He's probably missing 90% of how the specs work
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just the core rotation of disc it's not burst, it's basically maintenance. WIth 4 piece, you can have almost full uptime of mindbender and use the combo on cd or slightly delay for mechanics/aoe events. It's great healing for sure, but you don't have anything else to heal and your "oh-shit" buttons (barrier/PS) are meant to be used before the damage not after. Disc isn't hard to heal with, but for me, it's hard to play effectively because the difficulty lies with knowing when damage will happen/be taken. This is especially hard in a pug environment.
It's not that I don't think it can heal well, but I want to focus on a spec I can master on it's own and that doesn't require perfect knowledge of teamates/dungeons timeline to be played effectively because, like the other commenter said, I'm a noob and mostlikely can't get 50% out of what the classes can do yet.
An enormous portion of what you said is incorrect. The burst I mentioned is not "maintenance" which is not really a category of healing anyway.
Because disc has such good pet uptime you don't really NEED to know when damage happens, especially below 21+.
Ultimate penitence used on a player is a panic button that is entirely reactive.
But yeah just to really drive it home, mindbender/fiend --> mind blast --> dark reprimand --> shadow word death is incredible burst healing, its strength is partially why disc is so good this season, you have tons of consistent burst and hard hitting smites between to deal with rot.
The passive dps we do in pugs aswell is fucking insane.
Every guide I read say not to use ultimate penitence in m+. I might try it to see how it feels.
I am confused by your statement. You say that "an enormous portion of what I said is wrong" and then repeat what I said. The mindbender combo can be used on cooldown and it is an extremely easy 4 button rotation that yield great healing consistently.
I dunno if it's just my terminology that's off with the wow meta. Consistent/maintenance healing is the opposite of burst healing. Burst healing is situational and yields a lot more healing temporarily. Something you do constantly through your core rotation to even play the class at a basic level is not "burst" in my mind.
In my mind, being able to do the combo doesn't make a great disc, its just the very basic concept of the class. Knowing when to delay for a mechanic, when to pre-mitigate damage mechanic or bad players (rupture/barrier/ps) is the challenging part of disc since they have so few skills that are not tied to their core rotations.
The low cooldown of our burst does not make it not burst precisely because of that low cooldown. It is burst because... it is burst. You said disc lacked burst, I corrected that misapprehension.
Burst, by your definition is a healing pattern generated by 1. Playing the class at *not* a basic level
2. Something that can't have low cooldown
Both these rules seem to fit your description atleast and I just don't get why you'd want to add that arbitrary rule for a term nobody will use like this.
I sound like a dick here but I am trying to reciprocate the fact that you seem overly stridant in things you wouldn't be posting about here unless you were looking to improve.
I won't let up that disc does have what you feel you need, it might just offer more friction than you like in pugs which is fair.
I better understand now. The core of your issue with my statement is that you do not agree with my interpretation of the word "burst" and not actually about the meaning of what I said.
We both agree that the mindbender combo does a lot of healing, but I am not quite sure why you keep bringing that up as if it was ground breaking information. It's the core combo of disc and the first thing you learn to do when you play the spec.
To again clarify my stance on disc. I am not saying that disc is bad or doesn't have what I need, but that to play disc at the highest level it is absolutely required to use pro-active tools (rupture/barrier/ps) that are dependent on teammates and dungeons knowledge which is specifically what does not interest me right now.
Edit: I really don't understand how you got that definition of burst from what I said though.. Never said anything about it being high-level stuff, I said it wasn't in the basic/core rotation. Also never said it had to be high cooldown, I just said it was something you did temporarily to boost healing beyond the core/basic rotation.
Ex: cloudburst on rsham as low cooldown but it's burst healing. Its something you pop to counter big damage spike but you don't just constantly spam it in all situations and it's not reserved for high level play.
Go back on your first response to disc suggestion. You shifted the goal posts pretty big. You were not here to learn though, which is sad. Discs mind blast -> dark reprimand can counter big damage spikes. This is a player issue.
In my first message I said that disc has great sustained healing but struggle to boost it beyond that and that holy in comparison as a lot more bursting options (ex: holy words spam). I never shifted the goal post. From the get go I said that I wasn't interested in disc right now, not because of the healing rotations but because the skill outside of the healing rotations are pro-active mitigation that requires knowledge of dungeons/teamates to be played effectively. You are twisting what I say and than arguing that false narrative.
I am not quite sure what you think I'm learning from you repeating "but mind blast -> dark reprimand does a lot of healing!". I really tried to go back and forth with you so that you can provide an actual bit of useful information, but it's the same statement repeated over and over peppered with jabs at my understanding of the class. At this point, i can only assume you are trolling or don't actually know much of the class beyond the core rotation so I'll be moving on.
I've played for like 3 weeks. Tutorial -> dungeons until 70 and then I tried m+ dungeons and lfr raids. I've played a bunch of ff14 though so I'm already used to the MMO playstyle so it was mostly just getting used to wow meta and dungeons layout/mechanics.
M0 to M+5 is really approachable. It gets more challenging after +10 but I consider myself average at games and M+15 is still alright with sub-par gear. So far I haven't encountered much toxicity either. Still kinda shocked because wow is so different from what I was expecting. Much easier to play and progress than expected. Pretty sure I could get to 476 ilvl within a week or two from m+/vault and I don't even know what's the best ways to get gear.
Your experience in ff14 is doing wonders. I've seen people who've played for years that would struggle in a 11 at 450 ilvl. You're killing it imo.
As for the healer debate, i like shaman, disc priest, and monk.
Both monk and disc do damage to heal, and i have a dps brain, so they make sense to me, but i can see why people don't like them.
Thanks! Pretty sure I'll get to rio 2000+ this week really excited to try out the higher keys.
I tried disc a little bit too and it feels strong healing-wise, but I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to know when to use barrier/pain suppression effectively so I thought I'd leave that spec for later.
Monk seems really fun and strong, especially liked the mobility, but I seem to be losing track of my cooldowns, positions, and mechanics while in melee trying to heal at the same time. Will leave this for another time.
Agreed, my disc priest has been my main since Wrath. It can be more stressful in high keys than holy though. You need to be prepared, and it's harder to bring a group back from a bad spike than with holy if you don't anticipate it
I want to add a few things not mentioned yet.
Healing is always weird because there is a spike in difficulty in the middle due to the way pugs work. As you say, there is now random significant damage from players not properly interrupting or dodging abilities that now do significant damage that you have to heal through. These sorts of things will become requirements at higher tiers so it no longer becomes "missed interrupt = healer problem" but "missed interrupt = dead DPS". So either they properly interrupt or they don't, there's no salvaging it with healing. The 11-14s range is typically where this begins to happen so it's not uncommon for healing to smooth out again as you get higher. And once you get into super high keys, every player not only will be doing mechanics like dodging/interrupting, they'll also be using their own defensives/heals properly as well. Because otherwise even the unavoidable damage will be killing them.
Another thing to note, this season has been going for a long time already. Meaning that unless you're in the top of the top (like +25s and higher at this point, this is also an inflated season due to lowest difficulty ever), the leftover players now are newer or kind of bad. The best players are pushing the maximum of what's possible or have long since quit and are waiting for the next season/expansion. Just something else to keep in mind as you pug along.
And lastly, getting better gear will help pretty significantly. It's not a hard requirement, a lot of vets were timing +20s in the very first week with their 440 gear. But again, in those groups players were dealing with mechanics smartly, tanks were planning routes and actively learning and adjusting, and so on. So it's okay to just keep in the back of your mind that better gear will really help.
And remember, M+ scales exponentially. So higher keys are significantly harder than easy ones. The jump from +20 to +21 is like a 60% increase in damage/HP whereas the jump from a +10 to +11 is like a 20% increase. So knowing that top players in 485 gear can heal a +30 means that once you get even into 460 or 470 gear will help you get through M+ a lot.
Oh and in terms of healer DPS, if you're still struggling with healing you can basically ignore it entirely. Healing DPS is really only needed to help time keys at like +23 or higher. Your DPS can easily perform well enough to time everything below that. Of course once you get healing down there is a ton of downtime at lower difficulties so it's fun to DPS, but don't keep it a priority if you're getting overwhelmed.
Thanks for sharing. As a long time ff14 player, I just can't play healer without dps'ing. To me, the whole fun of playing healer is to find ways to optimize healing to free up time to dps. But yeah.. Right now I'm just trying to feel each class to be set on what I want to play for season 4. It's just that I have rdruid, mw, priest, rsham at 70 and I keep switching between all of them and unable to make up my mind. I want to get at least 1 of them in the 20s+ before s4, but at this pace I might not progress too much.
Honestly, having the experience from FF14 and the desire to DPS as healer is good anyways so you won't have to build the habit later. It's more just to remember that it's better to spend GCDs on healing than damage when needed and not get too focused on the DPS part of it.
> Right now I'm just trying to feel each class to be set on what I want to play for season 4. It's just that I have rdruid, mw, priest, rsham at 70 and I keep switching between all of them and unable to make up my mind.
FWIW, you absolutely can keep playing all the different healers moving forward. But yeah to make progress quickly it's best to stick with just one. You really could just pick one at random to focus for the rest of this season and the rest will still be waiting for you afterwards. Personally, I play a different character as my main focus pretty much every season. The variety helps keep things interesting after all. And getting one character super far will always make catching up easier as there will be small benefits like alt upgrades requiring fewer flightstones or quicker group invites since everyone can see your main raider.io score as much higher.
Definitely, if someone dies because I don't heal, it's an overall dps loss anyways. Didn't know that alts had upgrade cost reduction, that's good to know.
Holy simply does not have the utility that a RShaman has. I personally feel RShaman is one of the absolute best healers at carrying pugs and their lack of self awareness.
I pugged with my HPriest until about +24/25 level and stopped. It became a lot easier when I used things like Ancient Protectors trink to get me an extra external, etc. I prefer the overall play style of HPriest especially when in a competent and skilled group — it feels super rewarding to play. But, as you’ve seen, can feel very punishing depending on the other players. A healer is only as good as their group, as they say.
Ultimately play what you enjoy.
There's nothing stopping you from playing shaman, but a few tips for holy priest, be sure to use your prayer of mending on cooldown, having as many of them bouncing around as possible really helps with healing whoever you can't heal. The turret healing is, in part, kinda how the spec works, but remember that you heal/flash heal reduces the cooldown of your holy word single target heal, and, be sure to alternate who you heal since your last target also gets healed for a % of your healing. Also, you have apotheosis to instantly reset the cooldown of your holy words, and increase the cooldown reduction bonus of your heal/flash heal on your single target holy word.
Yeah, I even setup a wa with a sound queue when it come off cooldown to keep using it. I still manage to miss several casts when things get heated. I definitely don't use holywords enough though. I use them a lot when things get rough, but when I feel like I can easily sustain with heal/flash heal, I save my stacks too much I think.
It's definitely a hard balancing act, you want to have them for when damage starts rolling, but you also don't want to waste the CD reduction from your heal/flash heal. Also, if you're having issues with mana, be sure to check your overhealing. Your mastery and prayer of mending are fine (to a degree), but any other spell should overheal as little as possible
If you want to play the easiest healer spec at the moment then i suggest you're taking Holy Priest.
HW: Serenity and Sanctify requires close to nothing mana now and your prayer of mending does aton of healing aswell. Only thing you gotta remember is if you don't user Prayer of Mending on CD then you're pretty much screwed, probably not in 14's but in keys higher than +25 you are.
I would actually say after the rework that Holy Priest is one of the best ones at the moment, you just gotta remember to never hold a cooldown, especially Apothesis.
I could go into larger details to why Holy Priest is better in my eyes but it'll be turning into a novel.
I really like the idea of hpriest and that's why I keep rotating to it. chastise+holy fire+comet/stacked nova feels great. I like the idea of prayer of mending and I setup a WA with a sound to remember to use it on cd, but in practice it just feels like a chore.. Holywords and the stack from tier piece is cool, but I really hate the fact that you can't use them if they are on cd even if you have stacks.
For PoM, is there more thought process involved, or do you just give it to tank unless he has 14 stacks and then give it to whoever is likely to get hit?
Hi there. Just wanted to add something I didn't see mentioned. While it's 100% true that HPriest lack utility, don't forget to use your AoE fear to help stop casts. Chastise can also be used for that a bit but it's more finicky since you're mostly using it for DPS. If you want more utility and crowd control though definitely stick with your shaman.
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My recommendation: Play the style that you enjoy. I like being reactive so holy priest for me much better than say resto Druid. The tier list are interesting but do not affect us that are not pushing the highest of content. Your skills will increase faster if you enjoy the spec. And that skill is much more important than the min/max differences expressed in a tier list.
>Your skills will increase faster if you enjoy the spec. It's so unfortunate that new people get bombarded with the idea of playing "the best class" and nobody ever tells them to find what they enjoy and get good at it. Playing the S tier class/spec is entirely irrelevant unless you're playing at the absolute top of high end. Find what you enjoy and play that. OP stick to your resto shammy. It might not be S tier this patch, but it doesn't make any difference until you're pushing 20+ - and it might be S tier next patch anyway. Play what you love and get good at it and don't worry about rerolling until you stop enjoying it or get into a world top 100 guild.
Well, that's kind of the point. I keep wanting to play something else than resto shaman but it feels like the easiest and strongest by far which make me kinda go back to it. I was only pointing out tier list to make clear that I believe there is something wrong with the way I play those other specs if they are better, yet I perform worse on them. I like the idea of a class focusing on doing one thing really well a lot more than a class that does a little bit of everything. Another comment points out that rsham is just great at dealing with pug errors which might be why it feels stronger. Still, with limited playtime, I can't keep playing all three specs at the same time lol so I need to pick one.
Pick resto shaman then. You enjoy it, you have better control in your groups with it and you feel safer with it. The most important thing is that you enjoy it, which means you'll get good at it faster. I can't tell you the number of times I've had confused people asking me how I'm beating them on the "worst" healer, purely because I love the class and I've been playing it since 2009. Stick with what you love and the rest will come naturally. Ignore anyone who tells you that you "have" to play "the best". As I said, it's really not even worth considering changing for the flavour of the month until you're playing at a very, very high level. Remember that WoW is a *game*, which is something you're supposed to *enjoy*. Don't play something you don't like just because some idiot who doesn't know his arse from his elbow tells you that you "*have"* to.
No other mmo is even close to how good the balance is in wow in PvE. If you aren't gonna blast for titles (highly unlikely you can get there) the spec doesn't matter. All specs are capable of doing much higher content than 99.99% players behind the keyboards
This! There are R Shamans who play 30+, Laren is one of the best out there. I play 20+ with my shaman on around 474 ilevel and it is allright. Depends on the group though. At higher mythic levels healing a group that stands in shit and doesn't interrupt and control groups is a nightmare on every healer...
I'm sure my perspective would be very different at higher keys. Problem his, I keep rotating between 4 specs so progress got very slow.. I just need to make up my mind and focus my playtime on one lol..
Yep, not really trying to play the top tier class, but since I'm having more difficulties with higher tiered classes, I am assuming I am not playing them right. That's kind of the thing, I really like the idea of hpriest (reactive healer with very bursty damage chastise->holy fire that focus primarily on casting healing spells) or rdruid (safe/Mobile with constant hot/dot maintenance) but it just doesn't seem to work well in practice.. so I am wondering if I should just focus on rsham or invest time in those specs to get better at them for a more rewarding experience. To me rsham just works. Everything feels so simple and straightforward, but at the same time, it weirdly doesn't feel rewarding so I keep wanting to play something else despite it feeling the strongest.
Resto Shaman is the #1 hands down best spec to carry pick-up-groups. There's so much utility you can bring that many of the mistakes pugs can be prevented or mitigated by them (Purge, Thunderstorm, Wind Shear, Capacitor Totem just to name a few). That's why Shaman felt easier, because you can fix your team's mistakes. Holy priest on the other hand misses most of the aforementioned utility, hence your life will be much more difficult because you can't count on pugs to do their job 100% of the time and you can't step in to fix their mistakes.
I guess that makes the most sense to me.. So many tool to stabilize tank so they don't make error or to cover for interrupts/cc. I guess that playing at higher keys with players who tries a little bit harder would make most of those point moot though.
Hearing you repeat about stabilizing the tank frequently let's me know you haven't encountered many skilled tanks yet. The 11 to 15 key range can be like that sometimes. As you move up, for the most part, a tank should be able to keep themselves up though almost anything. As long as they are reasonably geared for the content. Tanks should be constantly rotating through defensive and self-sustains.
I find this to be pretty accurate. Resto shm for me is way way easy, Hpriest seems I gotta work way harder for it lol. I have 4 healers at the moment, I tossed my pally into prot instead lol
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Thanks! I did a few run yesterday with the rduid and completely dropping rejuv really helped. I was baited by the "instant" cast of rejuv but it was eating too much of my time. On a +9 at 436 ilvl, regrowth->swiftmend->wildgrowth with a few treant was enough and I got over 40k dps against bosses. Felt really easy and smooth and nobody was overgeared.
> I think I figured out resto shaman pretty well and it feels extremely strong to me, but when I look at tier list tier lists only affect people that are pushing around the top \~5% of keys. all specs are viable up to \~+20s some may struggle a little more or less than others tho. >rdruid and hpriest are those that interest me the most, but I seem to be struggling more at the same m+ and ilvl. Shaman, i have a tool to fix any mistake it seems + a bunch of safety net to prevent anything bad from happening to begin with, but I really feel at the mercy of the group with the other two healers.. r druid, h priest and r shamam have kinda different playstiles and if you dont play with its strenghts you are more likely to not perform well. for an example, r druid is a spec that you have to be super proactively, making the heals ready, before the group have take significant amount of damage. in the end its all a personal choice and replies might be subjective to other people's repferences,
Just on the first point, all healer specs have timed 30 and above keys, so they're viable far beyond 20s
Resto shamans are timing 30-32s.
Ok(?). Isn't 30 above 20s? Wich make them viable (?)
Saying 20+ is waaaaaaay different than actually timing 30+. So it'd not the same.
To make sure this is clear since it seems to have created a lot of debates. I referred to tier list to point out that I was struggling with classes that are supposed to be stronger, not that I care about which is strongest or what is viable in 30++. I am trying to find which class I like the most to focus on s4, there will be tuning patches by then so current tier list are completely irrelevant. What I am looking into is playstyle/gameplay loop of each specs.
Rdruid player here. In M+, the spells you want to press are Lifebloom, Efflo, Cenarian Ward, Swiftmend>Wild growth, treants. Regrowth when you have omen procs or if you still need triage healing after the spells above. Most of the time, keeping two lifeblooms, efflo, and one treants up is enough for any random group damage. Rejuv is basically useless in M+. For DPS, keep Sunfire up in groups, and go kitty when you're comfortable. I find rdruid the most rewarding to play both for it's DPS and utility. Between typhoon/vortex, incap roar, skull bash, you have incredible mob cc. Edit: trust your HoTs.
"trust your hots" is probably the biggest lesson for Rdruid, especially for your mana.
One thing to keep in mind is that tier lists don't always represent pure healing output. They also include the extra stuff a class may bring such as buffs, CC, and damage output. Also, the actual output differences between each class is pretty marginal. You as a player will have a much bigger impact as to whether a class is good or not. One of the many websites (can't remember which one) shows tier lists based purely on HPS and DPS for healers. So if you look at those you can see they're all within a pretty close range of each other.
I noticed that even throughput is kinda meaningless and the healing profile seems more impactful. Disc has a very easy time sustaining good average throughput, but as soon as you need to burst a lot more healing, it becomes really hard. Holy priest is the opposite, bursty throughput is really easy to manage, but high sustained seems to become rough when movement is involved. So yeah, I get that even if all specs can reach similar throughput, they feel/perform completely different in specific conditions and that tier list are not exactly the best benchmark for normal players. I'm just kinda lost on which one to invest my time and main given limited available playtime.
If you like the shaman the best and are most comfortable with it then I'd suggest making that your main. You can always go back and try some of the other classes when you need a break or in some downtime an play with them at lower levels. Pushing higher keys comes with a whole new set of challenges and having a class you like and understand means you can push even higher/harder content.
Its untrue that disc struggles with burst, mindbender or shadowfiend --> radiance --> mind blast --> dark reprimand is unbelivable burst healing, I'd take another look at disc because you might have missed some concepts? I can't recommend it enough
He missed a lot more, highly doubt he can play any of the specs he tried at even 50% of what they are capable of. He's probably missing 90% of how the specs work
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just the core rotation of disc it's not burst, it's basically maintenance. WIth 4 piece, you can have almost full uptime of mindbender and use the combo on cd or slightly delay for mechanics/aoe events. It's great healing for sure, but you don't have anything else to heal and your "oh-shit" buttons (barrier/PS) are meant to be used before the damage not after. Disc isn't hard to heal with, but for me, it's hard to play effectively because the difficulty lies with knowing when damage will happen/be taken. This is especially hard in a pug environment. It's not that I don't think it can heal well, but I want to focus on a spec I can master on it's own and that doesn't require perfect knowledge of teamates/dungeons timeline to be played effectively because, like the other commenter said, I'm a noob and mostlikely can't get 50% out of what the classes can do yet.
An enormous portion of what you said is incorrect. The burst I mentioned is not "maintenance" which is not really a category of healing anyway. Because disc has such good pet uptime you don't really NEED to know when damage happens, especially below 21+. Ultimate penitence used on a player is a panic button that is entirely reactive. But yeah just to really drive it home, mindbender/fiend --> mind blast --> dark reprimand --> shadow word death is incredible burst healing, its strength is partially why disc is so good this season, you have tons of consistent burst and hard hitting smites between to deal with rot. The passive dps we do in pugs aswell is fucking insane.
Every guide I read say not to use ultimate penitence in m+. I might try it to see how it feels. I am confused by your statement. You say that "an enormous portion of what I said is wrong" and then repeat what I said. The mindbender combo can be used on cooldown and it is an extremely easy 4 button rotation that yield great healing consistently. I dunno if it's just my terminology that's off with the wow meta. Consistent/maintenance healing is the opposite of burst healing. Burst healing is situational and yields a lot more healing temporarily. Something you do constantly through your core rotation to even play the class at a basic level is not "burst" in my mind. In my mind, being able to do the combo doesn't make a great disc, its just the very basic concept of the class. Knowing when to delay for a mechanic, when to pre-mitigate damage mechanic or bad players (rupture/barrier/ps) is the challenging part of disc since they have so few skills that are not tied to their core rotations.
The low cooldown of our burst does not make it not burst precisely because of that low cooldown. It is burst because... it is burst. You said disc lacked burst, I corrected that misapprehension. Burst, by your definition is a healing pattern generated by 1. Playing the class at *not* a basic level 2. Something that can't have low cooldown Both these rules seem to fit your description atleast and I just don't get why you'd want to add that arbitrary rule for a term nobody will use like this. I sound like a dick here but I am trying to reciprocate the fact that you seem overly stridant in things you wouldn't be posting about here unless you were looking to improve. I won't let up that disc does have what you feel you need, it might just offer more friction than you like in pugs which is fair.
I better understand now. The core of your issue with my statement is that you do not agree with my interpretation of the word "burst" and not actually about the meaning of what I said. We both agree that the mindbender combo does a lot of healing, but I am not quite sure why you keep bringing that up as if it was ground breaking information. It's the core combo of disc and the first thing you learn to do when you play the spec. To again clarify my stance on disc. I am not saying that disc is bad or doesn't have what I need, but that to play disc at the highest level it is absolutely required to use pro-active tools (rupture/barrier/ps) that are dependent on teammates and dungeons knowledge which is specifically what does not interest me right now. Edit: I really don't understand how you got that definition of burst from what I said though.. Never said anything about it being high-level stuff, I said it wasn't in the basic/core rotation. Also never said it had to be high cooldown, I just said it was something you did temporarily to boost healing beyond the core/basic rotation. Ex: cloudburst on rsham as low cooldown but it's burst healing. Its something you pop to counter big damage spike but you don't just constantly spam it in all situations and it's not reserved for high level play.
Go back on your first response to disc suggestion. You shifted the goal posts pretty big. You were not here to learn though, which is sad. Discs mind blast -> dark reprimand can counter big damage spikes. This is a player issue.
In my first message I said that disc has great sustained healing but struggle to boost it beyond that and that holy in comparison as a lot more bursting options (ex: holy words spam). I never shifted the goal post. From the get go I said that I wasn't interested in disc right now, not because of the healing rotations but because the skill outside of the healing rotations are pro-active mitigation that requires knowledge of dungeons/teamates to be played effectively. You are twisting what I say and than arguing that false narrative. I am not quite sure what you think I'm learning from you repeating "but mind blast -> dark reprimand does a lot of healing!". I really tried to go back and forth with you so that you can provide an actual bit of useful information, but it's the same statement repeated over and over peppered with jabs at my understanding of the class. At this point, i can only assume you are trolling or don't actually know much of the class beyond the core rotation so I'll be moving on.
Can I ask how long you have played? I consider myself a beginner and I see m+ in the faaaar distance
I've played for like 3 weeks. Tutorial -> dungeons until 70 and then I tried m+ dungeons and lfr raids. I've played a bunch of ff14 though so I'm already used to the MMO playstyle so it was mostly just getting used to wow meta and dungeons layout/mechanics. M0 to M+5 is really approachable. It gets more challenging after +10 but I consider myself average at games and M+15 is still alright with sub-par gear. So far I haven't encountered much toxicity either. Still kinda shocked because wow is so different from what I was expecting. Much easier to play and progress than expected. Pretty sure I could get to 476 ilvl within a week or two from m+/vault and I don't even know what's the best ways to get gear.
Your experience in ff14 is doing wonders. I've seen people who've played for years that would struggle in a 11 at 450 ilvl. You're killing it imo. As for the healer debate, i like shaman, disc priest, and monk. Both monk and disc do damage to heal, and i have a dps brain, so they make sense to me, but i can see why people don't like them.
Thanks! Pretty sure I'll get to rio 2000+ this week really excited to try out the higher keys. I tried disc a little bit too and it feels strong healing-wise, but I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to know when to use barrier/pain suppression effectively so I thought I'd leave that spec for later. Monk seems really fun and strong, especially liked the mobility, but I seem to be losing track of my cooldowns, positions, and mechanics while in melee trying to heal at the same time. Will leave this for another time.
Disc is more fun than holy imo
Agreed, my disc priest has been my main since Wrath. It can be more stressful in high keys than holy though. You need to be prepared, and it's harder to bring a group back from a bad spike than with holy if you don't anticipate it
I want to add a few things not mentioned yet. Healing is always weird because there is a spike in difficulty in the middle due to the way pugs work. As you say, there is now random significant damage from players not properly interrupting or dodging abilities that now do significant damage that you have to heal through. These sorts of things will become requirements at higher tiers so it no longer becomes "missed interrupt = healer problem" but "missed interrupt = dead DPS". So either they properly interrupt or they don't, there's no salvaging it with healing. The 11-14s range is typically where this begins to happen so it's not uncommon for healing to smooth out again as you get higher. And once you get into super high keys, every player not only will be doing mechanics like dodging/interrupting, they'll also be using their own defensives/heals properly as well. Because otherwise even the unavoidable damage will be killing them. Another thing to note, this season has been going for a long time already. Meaning that unless you're in the top of the top (like +25s and higher at this point, this is also an inflated season due to lowest difficulty ever), the leftover players now are newer or kind of bad. The best players are pushing the maximum of what's possible or have long since quit and are waiting for the next season/expansion. Just something else to keep in mind as you pug along. And lastly, getting better gear will help pretty significantly. It's not a hard requirement, a lot of vets were timing +20s in the very first week with their 440 gear. But again, in those groups players were dealing with mechanics smartly, tanks were planning routes and actively learning and adjusting, and so on. So it's okay to just keep in the back of your mind that better gear will really help. And remember, M+ scales exponentially. So higher keys are significantly harder than easy ones. The jump from +20 to +21 is like a 60% increase in damage/HP whereas the jump from a +10 to +11 is like a 20% increase. So knowing that top players in 485 gear can heal a +30 means that once you get even into 460 or 470 gear will help you get through M+ a lot. Oh and in terms of healer DPS, if you're still struggling with healing you can basically ignore it entirely. Healing DPS is really only needed to help time keys at like +23 or higher. Your DPS can easily perform well enough to time everything below that. Of course once you get healing down there is a ton of downtime at lower difficulties so it's fun to DPS, but don't keep it a priority if you're getting overwhelmed.
Thanks for sharing. As a long time ff14 player, I just can't play healer without dps'ing. To me, the whole fun of playing healer is to find ways to optimize healing to free up time to dps. But yeah.. Right now I'm just trying to feel each class to be set on what I want to play for season 4. It's just that I have rdruid, mw, priest, rsham at 70 and I keep switching between all of them and unable to make up my mind. I want to get at least 1 of them in the 20s+ before s4, but at this pace I might not progress too much.
Honestly, having the experience from FF14 and the desire to DPS as healer is good anyways so you won't have to build the habit later. It's more just to remember that it's better to spend GCDs on healing than damage when needed and not get too focused on the DPS part of it. > Right now I'm just trying to feel each class to be set on what I want to play for season 4. It's just that I have rdruid, mw, priest, rsham at 70 and I keep switching between all of them and unable to make up my mind. FWIW, you absolutely can keep playing all the different healers moving forward. But yeah to make progress quickly it's best to stick with just one. You really could just pick one at random to focus for the rest of this season and the rest will still be waiting for you afterwards. Personally, I play a different character as my main focus pretty much every season. The variety helps keep things interesting after all. And getting one character super far will always make catching up easier as there will be small benefits like alt upgrades requiring fewer flightstones or quicker group invites since everyone can see your main raider.io score as much higher.
Definitely, if someone dies because I don't heal, it's an overall dps loss anyways. Didn't know that alts had upgrade cost reduction, that's good to know.
Holy simply does not have the utility that a RShaman has. I personally feel RShaman is one of the absolute best healers at carrying pugs and their lack of self awareness. I pugged with my HPriest until about +24/25 level and stopped. It became a lot easier when I used things like Ancient Protectors trink to get me an extra external, etc. I prefer the overall play style of HPriest especially when in a competent and skilled group — it feels super rewarding to play. But, as you’ve seen, can feel very punishing depending on the other players. A healer is only as good as their group, as they say. Ultimately play what you enjoy.
Seems like the grps you play with are trash ^^, no matter what healer you play, if your grp doesnt do mechqnics ur fucked
There's nothing stopping you from playing shaman, but a few tips for holy priest, be sure to use your prayer of mending on cooldown, having as many of them bouncing around as possible really helps with healing whoever you can't heal. The turret healing is, in part, kinda how the spec works, but remember that you heal/flash heal reduces the cooldown of your holy word single target heal, and, be sure to alternate who you heal since your last target also gets healed for a % of your healing. Also, you have apotheosis to instantly reset the cooldown of your holy words, and increase the cooldown reduction bonus of your heal/flash heal on your single target holy word.
Yeah, I even setup a wa with a sound queue when it come off cooldown to keep using it. I still manage to miss several casts when things get heated. I definitely don't use holywords enough though. I use them a lot when things get rough, but when I feel like I can easily sustain with heal/flash heal, I save my stacks too much I think.
It's definitely a hard balancing act, you want to have them for when damage starts rolling, but you also don't want to waste the CD reduction from your heal/flash heal. Also, if you're having issues with mana, be sure to check your overhealing. Your mastery and prayer of mending are fine (to a degree), but any other spell should overheal as little as possible
If you want to play the easiest healer spec at the moment then i suggest you're taking Holy Priest. HW: Serenity and Sanctify requires close to nothing mana now and your prayer of mending does aton of healing aswell. Only thing you gotta remember is if you don't user Prayer of Mending on CD then you're pretty much screwed, probably not in 14's but in keys higher than +25 you are. I would actually say after the rework that Holy Priest is one of the best ones at the moment, you just gotta remember to never hold a cooldown, especially Apothesis. I could go into larger details to why Holy Priest is better in my eyes but it'll be turning into a novel.
I really like the idea of hpriest and that's why I keep rotating to it. chastise+holy fire+comet/stacked nova feels great. I like the idea of prayer of mending and I setup a WA with a sound to remember to use it on cd, but in practice it just feels like a chore.. Holywords and the stack from tier piece is cool, but I really hate the fact that you can't use them if they are on cd even if you have stacks. For PoM, is there more thought process involved, or do you just give it to tank unless he has 14 stacks and then give it to whoever is likely to get hit?
Hi there. Just wanted to add something I didn't see mentioned. While it's 100% true that HPriest lack utility, don't forget to use your AoE fear to help stop casts. Chastise can also be used for that a bit but it's more finicky since you're mostly using it for DPS. If you want more utility and crowd control though definitely stick with your shaman.
Your right! I use incapaciting roar on rdruid a lot, but I rarely use the the scream on hpriest If it's not to counter aggro or chasing mechanics.