Debating between holy Paladin or resto shaman. Cannot decide. Both are quite enjoyable, and both have great off specs.
I will say that up until recently I’ve never played a shaman so it’s a new experience for me. Any thoughts? Shaman retain its fun factor? Fairly sturdy in a PvP environment?
I haven’t really played hpal since Legion (I think my highest level pally since I came back to retail WoW is level 27), so grain of salt and whatnot, but in a PVP environment, I think a very big general difference in feel/playstyle is whether you prefer melee vs ranged. As a pally you need to get right in the thick of things. As a shaman you can do some nice damage as well as healing from afar.
That, and mobility. I get annoyed on my pallies with nothing but Divine Steed to make me go zoom. Ghost Wolf is so much nicer. OTOH BoF is very nice to have.
Since you enjoy the actual healing of both, and both are in a good spot at the moment, I would consider that sort of thing. Also basic lifestyle type things, if you’re into the RPG side of the MMORPG: class fantasy, lore, covenants, which has better hair (the most important racial of all), etc.
Shaman is fun…resto especially if you enjoy healing. You are a cooldown spec and when rotating cooldowns well, can feel like you have an answer for everything.
That said, it lacks an immunity or anything to hard reset like paladins have. It’s more offensive in nature, with an offensive dispel, lava surge, etc.
Holy paladin also tends to perform better in pvp, but rsham is easily the strongest pvp spec of the class. Be prepared for lots of keybinds, but if you haven’t played sham yet I highly recommens it, if only to just check out the class.
My three favorite healers are rsham, melee holy paladin, and disc. You won’t be smacking people with your hammer like holy, but you can get some good lava surge procs to secure kills as rsham as you weave them between healing.
Great point, survivability is a big difference between the two.
OP, this is going to sound weird to you, if you’re used to pally, but resto shaman has a bug where they sometimes die in combat.
For PvP I would say HPali is def stronger. PvE wise, both are in a good spot like above posts mentioned but Resto is slightly ahead and offers better CDs in a raid environment.
Resto shaman has among the highest amount of keybinds, so if keybinding a large number of spells is not your thing, may not be for you. Overall it is a very fun spec to play at the moment.
I’d say they are both very strong, and are probably my two favorite healers as well. I’m currently in the process of swapping from Priest to Shaman myself. I wanted to Disc but it just feels awful to play in pugs for keys. Maybe now my io is above 800 I might be able to pull it off in better groups, but my experience with it the first few weeks of SL soured me to the spec. And I really dislike Holy Priest.
Resto Shaman and Holy Paladin are both very good in raid and m+. Shaman’s Spirit Link Totem and Holy’s Devotion Aura are critical spells that are tremendously helpful. Shamans have a variety of totems to support your groups while Holy has Blessings to provide an array of utility, as well.
In terms of PvP I’d give an edge to Holy over Resto.
For m+, resto shaman is likely the safest option. They have a great defensive toolkit. That said, I do personally feel that Holy is the sleeper m+ healer pick due to its sheer DPS contribution, assisting well coordinated groups that don’t require a ton of healing with beating timers more efficiently. Though the current meta heavily favors ranged specs, which might deter holy Paladins. But this is a personal preference.
Holy paladin is the strongest healer in pvp at the moment, without much doubt. That doesn’t make resto shaman not viable tho, it’s as well one strong spec wich can be played even at the higher ratings.
I mostly PuG. Would one be better than the other for that?
Go hpally if you want to PVP.
the best healers are
Hpally > Prot Pally > Ret Pally > Disc > Rshaman > All the rest.
no joke, if you want to heal in pvp, any spec of pally will do better than pretty much anything else.
My desire to PvP isn’t terribly high. Pretty casual on that.
Pssh. We have an immunity every 30 mins!
Fun story. Actually preplanned to use this “immunity” on 3rd boss in Sanguine Depths last week. With Tyrannical, we rotated immunities each “collect the ball” phase so everyone but the immune person could get 4 easily.
I mean…I regularly suicide mechanics with reincarnation to eek out more dps. But its still garbage.
Yes