I have been playing my Resto Druid ALOT recently, and I am rather impressed with how much healers have to play with, especially as far as Resto Druids go. You can primarily HoT, or you can be a Nuke healer. Or you can be a combination of both.
I know that a lot of Druids are upset about the upcoming Lifebloom Nerf. I can see where it would really hurt some people's healing styles. It will most likely not effect mine much at all. I do use Lifebloom a decent amount, but it is usually nowhere near my top healing spells. I use rejuvenation a lot. I also make good use of regrowth, wild growth, and Nourish.
My normal kind rotation usually consists of a rejuvenation, followed by a Regrowth when they have taken a bit of damage. I then usually fill in the damage with Nourish until I need to renew my Rejuv and Regrowth. If there is a bit of damage going on to the non-tanks, I work wild growth into the rotation. Wild Growth is really a wonderful spell and I would not leave home without it.
I pretty much never use healing touch. Like ever. The cast time is just too slow. It is only really useable in Nature's Swiftness situations. I also do not get much use out of Swiftmend. This is an ability I really need to use more, but have forgotten about.
I think that with the kind of rotation I am using right now, the Lifebloom nerf is not going to hit me near as hard as some other Druids out there.
Besides rotations, there are also reactive and proactive healers. You need to be proactive in most raid content (if it is challenging). You need to be reactive on raid healing and proactive as a tank healer.
What kind of healing style are you? Are you a chain heal fanatic? Are you a pew pew Disc. priest or a big heal Holy Priest? Are you a flashspammer or a Holy Light Spammer as a Holy Pally? There are many different ways to heal with each class. If you get nerfed in one area, just figure out what else works. It is not the end of the world as we know it. Just a chance to show that you cannot hold a good healer down.
6 comments:
My Paladin is all about the Flash Heals. Holy Light? More like "Overheal Light". In fact, come 3.1 I'll be getting rid of the Holy Light Glyph (!!) and getting the Holy Shock Glyph instead. Holy Shock is wonderful goodness that I can't get enough of, whereas that Holy Light splash heal just equals more overheal.
My Druid... I try and heal with HoTs, but I just end up OOM. I blame a lack of practice and a lack of gear. Maybe when I get to 80 I can reevaluate my healing strategies.
I WANT to heal with HoTs since it is so different from Paladin healing. Hopefully I'll learn to make it work. :)
Chain heals are a myth. Resto shaman really are not that much into bondage.. honest... >.> ... ok maybe a little... the fuzzy handcuff kind.
As a shaman (so its like da only class I can speaks for), I try not to rely on one heal exclusively. Sure chain heal is nice, and makes a great light show, but when only one person needs healing... its a bit of a waste. Or when people are spread out more than 5 yards apart.. again, a waste.
Basically what I'm getting at is this: balance your healing choices around the encounter and don't let yourself get into a groove of using one heal heavily to the exclusion of other heals. Adapting to an encounter is really what separates a bad healer from a good one.
I agree with the last part of what you said the most, you cannot keep a good healer down!
I have a level 70 Shaman (use to be resto) and I had to work a rotation for it because like Hikki said, it just didn't make since to cast it and waste the mana when one person needed it, but at the same time it was great for running as a second healer option in Kara back in the day.
My main healer is my Paladin and I remember when the dreaded Divine Plea "nerf" hit. It didn't even phase me because I went against what everyone said we needed to do and focused on leveling spell power, crit, and mp5. Haste came with some gear but was never a big worry and the wierd thing is that I can hang with the raid healers. Sometimes you have to break the rules or the preceived norm. I work in a macro'd holy shock w/auto crit, which allows me to get a free flash of light, so rocking well over 10k healin for a single rotation (which I save that for the oh shit moments), the rest of the time I am working my judgement of light, flash of light, and holy light depending on what is needed. To me healing is situational at best.
Now I find myself leveling a Priest and man am I amazed at what they can do from the holy side. I never want to hear a priest complain again. If I had a third of the stuff they get I would never have to even worry about stuff.
Some day I even have a druid set aside to take a look at how they heal, but that is way, way, way, way down the road.
On a side note I switched my Shaman back to elemental as he shares the account of my wife who is a healer too.
I mainly heal on a shaman and a priest and I'm generally a huge fan of quick spells (though I've been learning to love great heal :P )
as a shammy - the only time you'll see me spamming chainheal is when its one of those "boss stomps and the entire raid is has taken ton of damage" situations (gluth, loatheb, Archavon, etc)
normally - I make sure that my earthshield is always up on my focus target, use riptide on those who need it every time it comes up (and to proc tidal waves) and lesser healing wave when people need a quick pick me up (and with glyph its actually a lot more efficient then healing wave when it comes to healing the earthshield target - usually tank). healing wave generally only shows up alongside nature swiftness in emergency situations. this style also gives me plenty of GC's to decurse :)
as a priest i heal as a weird combination of holy and disc. my build is deep holy, but I'm a huge fan of PWS, so I have points in improved one and I have it glyphed. everyone who potentially starts taking damage, gets a little buffer of renew, I keep my prayer of mending bouncing, and with my love of quick heals - flash heal gets a lot of love. as for CoH and glyphed holy nova? they do come out when necessary, but not very often.
generally though -I'm with Hikki. my healing changes depending on the encounter (for instance - I'm much more likely to use larger heals in 5 mans, when tank is the main recipient of damage and there are no other healers that will try to get off a quicker heal while I'm casting my nuke). there are even situations where I lay off the prayer of mending (like Brand Bronzebeard event on Halls of Stone, where there's a lot of minimum damage that doesn't justify healing yet, but makes the prayer bounce anyway wasting my mana and heals, if I try to keep it up).
healing IMO is all about knowing your abilities and making quick judgments as to what to use and when.
P.S. the one complaint I have about priest healing comes from my competitive nature :P
priests, especially holy priests at this time are still dependent on 5sr for their mana regen and being competitive, I just cannot allow some upstart paladin to outheal me, so I end up throwing my 5sr out the window and chain casting like a maniac. good thing most encounters are pretty short and usually call for a lot of splash damage going to the raid so I keep my overheal down. bad thing is - I run out of mana a lot quicker then other healers, because as a holy at least - I don't have a lot of mechanics that regen mana because of casting (other then serendipity and that feels a little too much like a drop in a bucket)
on a shaman - chain casting is actually in my favor as my crit heals procc my improved water shield :P
I really like Flash of Light on my holy pally (who is moderately geared), but I often end up spamming holy light on the MT in naxx25. Sure, it overheals ALOT, but I can't count how many times it has saved the tank when I'm midway through a HL cast and the MT takes a huge damage spike...BOOM, he's hit with a 18k crit heal. Works out quite nicely. I'd like to use flash a bit more often, but I just feel like I can't keep up sometimes...plus the HL glyph spash actually does a decent amount of non-overheal healing for melee dps next to the MT. I guess for paladins, it all comes down to whether you are planning to heal the MT or raid. Raid healing could probably get away with using just Flash/holy shock combos.
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