Please be kind to your healers. For those who don’t know, our throughput and mana efficiency got slapped hard in early cata. While heroic dungeons aren’t as hard as they were in OG launch, they’re still not kind to us freshly walking in with 333 gear.
Please let us drink if we’re below 70% mana, you’d be surprised how fast we can go through that, especially if you guys aren’t doing mechanics right.
Please wait for us before pulling, dont pull even if we’re at max mana and not near you, we might be drinking 100 yards away from you. If you pull while we’re walking up we need to spend inefficient spells to catch up if you aren’t already dead.
Please dispel yourselves if you can and interrupt where you can, don’t be afraid to use stuns etiher. Avoid damage where you can. Use defensive cooldowns where you can.
And lastly, if you’re a mage or warlock, please stop needing on cloth gear/trinkets that have spirit on it. Its a dead stat to you, you’re literally taking gear away from priests & trinkets from healers (or shaman/druids who are dps). Its like taking a piece of gear with 1 secondary. That gear is going to get replaced for you for sure because you have a dead secondary on it while that priest its going to be their pre-raid bis possibly. Be kind.
Shoulda rolled Resto Druid to heal dungeons imo. Mobility is unparalleled (still find myself wishing I could travel form in dungeons lul). Mana efficiency is unparalleled also. You just lifebloom the tank and keep it rolling, he never dies unless he literally pulls an entire chamber of mobs. I had a tank pull that entire chamber before Ozruk and I was able to keep us up, non heroic though. That was just a litmus test for R Druid capability, I didn’t even pop tree form because I forgot it’s a CD now.
That’s the biggest thing is remembering I have tree form as a CD now. Otherwise the entire kit is basically identical to Wrath. Multi hotting with Rejuv is so good in Cata, you can tell the devs appreciated someone who was willing to individually HoT people like that.
Why can’t healing feel this good in Retail lmao.
There’s also that glyph that makes Roots like a 1 second cast. Yeah you are going to be ripping threat in these pug dungeons if you are any good at healing, trust me. I thought I wouldn’t ever need to use Cyclone or Roots, I’m not even max level yet and that notion has been dispelled already. Roots and Cyclone will remain at the ready.
I spent like 12 hrs spamming dungeons yesterday. I’ve had a few tanks be like this but I have no problem calling them out. If they dont stop I’ll let them wipe, leave and find another group or play an alt until the timer expires to join another. Healer queues for heroics are instant right now so that means theres a shortage. You can sit and wait 5minutes for the next one now since you wanna save 5 minutes by rushing the entire dungeon!
I was going to level paladin or druid second or maybe just both gradually at the same time to see how their mana compared to priest.
I had a feeling early priest might just be one of the worst ones since druid and pally both seemed like they’d have more efficient options early on but I wasn’t sure if they changed as drastically 80-85 as priest does. Pallies seem like they have more emergency cooldowns to deal with random pug nonsense.
Curious what early 85 druid mana is like. Do you have to be conservative with rejuv on the party to not run OOM frequently or can you afford to keep a lot of hots up even early on? I’m guessing frequent omen procs probably are big for them early as well. I was going to respec into surge because of how bad early mana seems, though surge seems like it’s a much less frequent proc compared to omen.
I did one dungeon at 80 on my druid and didn’t seem to have any issues with mana. I am however, having a difficult time on my priest (now 83) with mana. I would level up the druid, but I am prioritizing my priest and rogue for PvP so I doubt I’ll touch my druid anytime soon.
As a holy pally we don’t really need to drink and I hear rshamans are the same but I’m not 100% sure about them. personally I hate when tanks stop moving , I want them to keep pulling or healing just boring to me
Once you get enough int and about 1500 spirit on all healers they are basically just as strong as each other with each having its own niche.
Rdruid - raid healing good, single target healing bad.
Hpriest - raid healing ok, single target healing ok.
Dpriest - raid healing amazing, single target healing ok.
Hpal - raid healing bad, single target healing INSANE.
rshaman - raid healing good, single target healing ok.
Obviously there are other factors like cds and other things but each has a niche and don’t really go oom once you hit 100k ish mana and have 1.51.6k spirit and 4 sets.
I mean realistically if everyone’s doing the mechanics you should mainly only be healing the tank and if the tanks using their cds and whatnot to reduce DMG they can move a little faster in wrath I had a prot pally id push through to a point where everyone’s used up everything cds and what not ones the libs dead then we rest if you have more then 50% mans buttercup up
I’m only 83. I think I actually had to start drinking, so it definitely gets worse, I was probably in a honeymoon phase.
But I don’t really blanket Rejuv the party unless we’re about to do a massive pull. I’m finding it more efficient to Wild Growth and then Regrowth while rolling LBx3 on the tank. You get a lot of free Regrowths like you said and Regrowth refreshes its self in Cata if people get low and then Regrowth also refreshes Lifebloom, it’s kinda busted, you’re just refreshing your hots with free Regrowths. It’s more involved and combo oriented than the other healers, but worth it if you pay attention to detail. (Nourish also refreshes Lifebloom and it’s 1/3 the cost of Regrowth)
Healing at 85 and healing pre-85 are basically entirely different games.
Mana costs go up massively, regen goes down, all your secondary stats tank. Until we get good 85 gear, you’re going to need to drink regardless of your class.
As a first time healer (resto druid) and just doing Norm dungeon runs, I appreciate you saying this and look forward to all the angry tanks/dps when I enter heroic and heal for the first time and have to start yelling in chat to slow down and give me a minute to mana up