I want to roll a healer to try TBC, but I’ve heard they’re terrible at soloing mobs out in world content. And as I’m just starting, I don’t have any gold to pay for talent changes. Also, I’ve heard they’re just as bad at end game world content.
How bad is it for healers trying to quest and get dailies done? Is it worth it as my first character?
I keep my druid resto all the time but I still am able to farm primals and do quests. It does take longer to kill stuff. You can level as DPS and swap the heals at 70 as well.
You can keep a gear set that lets you do extra damage as well.
Another option is to level healing dungeons. You don’t really have meaningful talent points until level 15 or so. At that point you can get ready for deadmines.
I do dailies on this toon in resto spec. It isn’t bad for me. Just different.
Druid is 20/0/41 so spec helps. I am in normal dungeon gear with 1300+ healing so like 300-400 spell damage. I could swap rings/trinkets/neck but I don’t bother.
I recommend level through dungeons then quest when you have decent gear.
Also, if you wind up being a priest, be sure to get a wand as soon as you can. You can go pretty far with holy spells and wanding.
Roll an engineer so you can zip around the skies collecting motes and won’t need to kill mobs for primals.
Most responses are going to be druid and priest I imagine. If you’re okay getting money end-game from farming mobs instead of doing dailies, there are some strong holy pally dungeon solo farms. But solo leveling a pally (whether holy, tank, or dps) is a grind…
There are lots of options and you have to have patience for anything that requires dps. Fun is subjective, for me resto druid is the worst to dps with and I won’t do it. Simply not fun for me but others do it.
I like holy priest. You can make a holy disc spec that is a powerful healer and adequate dps for leveling. I did the dungeon grind to get to 70 and quested then to make gold. You can still do that though normal dungeons might be getting harder to find on most servers as a lot of the players have moved onto heroics. As a healer you can get dungeons relatively quickly and you can probably heal the early dungeons in boosted gear.
I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do when I finish the questing and go to a full raid healing spec. I’ve done that before and had zero fun with the rest of the game. You can farm if you a high tolerance for the tedium of extremely slow kills and don’t mind running anytime you pull an extra mob. Some people don’t mind that. Fun is subjective.
Most healers do not spec for healing until they reach level cap. Additionally, many of the leveling-up dungeons can be healed by non-healing specs who agree to take on the role and throw on “healing set” gear if necessary, albeit some will have an easier time than others. This was the norm in the original classic WoW and through BC. There’s no real reason to spec for healing prior to level 60 and even up through 70 unless you are leveling with a partner.
Healers have an easy enough time killing mobs for daily quests and whatnot at level cap. You’re also likely to find other players who welcome the opportunity to knock dailies out with a pocket healer.
Grinding and farming as a healer can be slow but entirely possible. It helps to sponge up some DPS gear no one else needs.
There is one caveat. Holy paladin. They’re not just slow, they’re S-L-O-W. If you go paladin, make a DPS alt to do your farming or go engineering so you can farm primals that way.
Yes they are. WoW’s “world content” isn’t very difficult.
Of course they are, they get spell damage from their healing gear, you will have 500+ spell power in pre-raid gear. My shaman has 1835 healing and 714 spell damage unbuffed. You will easily be able to kill any mobs out in the world.
Anyone saying otherwise has no idea what they are talking about. You will not be as fast as a pure DPS but you will easily be able to kill anything you come across.
As for leveling you can heal as any spec while leveling if you gear correctly for it. I healed as elemental on my shaman while leveling, I just put on appropriate healing gear when I wanted to do a dungeon. It was pretty straight forward.
Too many people seem to think they need to respec all the time to do basic content. (things that are not heroic/raids) TBC was literally the expansion where they made doing something offspec the easiest.
Levelled healers in all expacs. It’s a pain sometimes but over all it can be done and you can keep yourself alive easier than most. Slower going but still fun.
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This can dps almost as good as shadow for farming / leveling AND you have most the healing talents. I used this spec until early kara and heroics.
Druid and paladin - you might want to tank in dungeons. I hear holy paladin isn’t terrible at leveling though. Shaman is miserable in restro spec. Do not recommend, I’d ele and maybe if you have enough +dmg then go restro late.
Or search for videos on Black Morass paladin one-pulls. You can clear 120+ elites with a holy spec in 12 or 14 mins. Or farm undead Strat. Holy pallies can make plenty of money fast by farming. It’s the dailies and such that will be slow.
I went holy for a hot minute to farm Nethers for Deep Thunder. It’s not nearly as bad ad it was back in the day. 2.4.3 made it so 1/3 of your + healing on much of your gear went toward spell power. That means you can actually kill stuff a lot easier. I can see folks leveling a healing spec these days. Especially if it’s an alt and you can feed it BoEs.
Nice to see some informative responses in this thread. So many people like to exaggerate. It’s the same as with a tank specced toon, the key is to build and maintain a solid dps set. Always be looking to upgrade it with gear that nobody else wants. Put at least some cheap gems and enchants on it. You’ll be able to kill stuff easily enough, although it will take like 50% longer, give or take.
I would look for ways to make gold that doesn’t involve just straight up mindlessly farming mobs. Use your brain. There’s gathering skills, quests, crafting and selling stuff on AH, etc.
Grinding mobs as a resto druid is miserable—I don’t suggest it. If you want to heal and do solo stuff I recommend going priest and playing some sort of offensive discipline/holy build. You could probably also make a hybrid elemental/resto build with shaman.
Stay away from holy pallies and resto druids tho IMO. Unless you are doing some sort of AoE holy/prot pally spec but I don’t know much about those.
Personally, I main a healer, but I always level/grind the healer in a dual-box with a DPS. My healer hits like a wet noodle.
Cutting an acre of a short flat field with a push mower is not hard either but a dixie chopper makes it even better.
This wins the rural metaphor award. But it’s not wrong!