I’m looking for some opinions about hybrid healing specs. I am torn between a priest, shaman or druid in that order. My end game goal is to PvP & heal 5 man dungeons. I will never touch a raid.
I tinker around with the talent trees constantly and have watched a few videos on Youtube (Kargoz and madseasonshow) I know a bit about how each class works, but am no where near an expert.
I played a warlock in vanilla but never even got the first dungeon set and didn’t really get into PvP until BC. I’m very excited to come back to Classic.
Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks Classic Forums.
Some thoughts…
there’s a lot of +healing and +damage gear, but not much that does both
respec ends up costing a lot if you do it often
your playstyle will end up being the most important piece in determining what you like, you can gear for the role
From what I researched regarding priest leveling, you can heal all 5 man dungeons while in shadow spec decently. Just get off spec healing done gear and that should be good enough for 5 mans in end game. I haven’t tested it or know about other healing classes but I think it’s entirely possible.
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For pvp damage, shadowpriest is probably a good bet, you can use the same gear you do as holy for healing pve. Shadow cant keep up in terms of pve dps though, due to poor mana efficiency and lack of aoe damage.
Druids are probably your worst bet here, since their healing gear is only going to be useful for balance, which is pretty poor in terms of damage in the first place. However, bear/resto druids are pretty awesome in pvp.
Shaman is what I’d probably go with for mixing the two roles. Resto shaman can heal well enough without going 31 into resto (just 21 for nature’s swiftness should get you through most content, sans raids where mana tide is needed), and that leaves enough points to go pretty deep into elemental. Both specs can use the same gear, and elemental shaman has some really good burst and aoe damage.
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First, you are going to gear differently based on how you want to play. If you are going healing firstly then you want more +healing gear on any of the specs.
Second, regardless of your choice of the first option you should build at least 1 set of gear to each role you see yourself playing at some point. Then build a PvP set that maximizes the traits you want along with stamina.
Third, they all play vastly different. Priest will be the most active play style while having more options for control. Shaman will be a turret most of the time and with an ele/resto build can do fairly good burst damage. Druid will be the most mobile healer and the hardest to pin down to kill. Their biggest weakness which is the dispelling of their HoTs, will be partially mitigated by being horde as alliance doesn’t have shaman purge. Then again you have more horde warlocks and troll priests which means dispelling curses is more valuable.
You can do a holy/disc or disc/shadow spec that is decent at healing or dps. Holy/disc uses holy fire and smite talents. Disc/shadow uses mind flay/mind blast/sw:p.
Shaman are a lil harder because they have a lot of healing talents to pick up. You could do resto/ele decently.
Druids have moonglow spec which is a healing touch spam balance/resto hybrid and hotw spec which is a feral/resto hybrid.
Since you aren’t interesting in raiding (me either), a lot of the advice you’ll get might be relative to raiding, as that’s how many people think.
But since you aren’t going to raid, the old standby approach might work best: Play each one to 20, see how they feel, how YOU feel about them (which is really the most important thing), and keep playing the one that interests you.
Thanks for all the information. How mobile a Shaman is for PvP?
They are all perfectly capable of doing it with 0 talent point investment. Just get some int gear so you have enough mana to heal and you’ll be fine.
I’d focus your build on dps, since you are saying you won’t raid. Unless you want to PVP heal. Then spec for healing.
Spell damage also boosts healing.
Is there a decent amount of mail gear for healing? The good news is that Shaman’s don’t have to compete with another class for healing gear.
This is basically my own question, too. I’m likely playing alliance, so I’d be curious to have thoughts on Paladins too.
I’m not against raiding, just unlikely to do it regularly. I enjoy healing, so would probably want to heal both in PvP and in 5 mans. But i agree with OP, somewhat hybrid specs would be nice, both to solo grind stuff for gold and to be able to toss in some DPS when the PvP situation calls for it. Looks like HotW Druid spec is something to check out, and a few priest specs are out there, but what would people recommend for Paladin?
Paladins are the easiest class to hybrid spec. All the necesssary healing talents are very easy to grab early in the tree so there are holy/prot and holy/ret specs that exist.
@samoht mail healing gear exists but all healers may ultimately need to grab cloth just to fill in slots. Cloth was usually more prevalent. Shaman are decently mobile but they won’t beat out the mobility of a druid.
I’ll have to tinker some more with the talent trees. But getting crazy one shot kills in PvP is tempting with a Sham.
I mained shaman through most of vanilla. We used to run 3 shaman deep with our high warlord war. We just stand at the stables and they coulnt kill us. Shamans are hard to burst and have alot of utility with ghost wolf form for mobility. I did a ele/resto spec for a long time. I even bring it to mc if i didnt want to respect.
Not sure if anyone got back to you on this one, but they are pretty stationary.
If you go Enhance with Imp Ghost Wolf then you have a lot of mobility, if not, or if you are either of the other 2 specs you are going to be pretty stationary.
Blizzard was very light on instant cast abilities in Vanilla for casters.
There are only 2 pvp healers, paladin and priest.
Druid and shaman can throw heals on people in pvp but are much, much worse if your goal is to be the healer.
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No there isnt, unless you want to raid. Healing gear is mostly all cloth until you start raiding.
Go to a talent calculator and decide what you want to do. Put enough in THE HEALING TREE (Disc, Holy, or Resto, depending) to be a decent healer. Then plop your points in THE DAMAGE TREE of your choice.
Make your goal to have as little respeccing as Orcishly possible.
I mostly agree with this. I think priest is the way to go. You can heal all 5 man’s as a Shadow Priest easily. And shadow is really good in PvP plus you have that sweet Mind Control to run people off the Lumber Mill cliff to their death, then levitate down to the Smithy and heal your rogues sniping the flag. ![:grin:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/grin.png?v=6" ":grin:")