I am interested in creating a healer alt for classic and am not sure which class to make. Would appreciate others’ thoughts on the questions below.
I am leaning toward making a shaman. I am not a fan of the priest archetype (images of Jim Bakker come to mind…). From what I have read, paladins are supreme single-target healers in classic and have the best buffs and defensive abilities in the game. However, the playstyle looks really boring (cast buffs periodically, flash of light over and over, and hope you’re the one who can apply seal of light).
Shaman has a lot more to do in terms of totem management, and enhance and elemental look interesting. However, main concern is healing since they only have 3 abilities (healing stream totem is weak and competes with mana spring totem), whereas priest has many abilities and paladin has 5 abilities (albeit lay on hands has long CD, and I think only one paladin in raid can apply seal of light). I guess playing around with spell downranking and correct application of chain heal (to limit the characters to whom it will bounce) might make it somewhat interesting for shaman. However, seems to me most of the action is in the totems.
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I have read shamans are the best raid (AoE?) healers. However, when I compare the details of chain heal with the priest’s prayer of healing or the paladin’s seal of light, the other abilities appear to be better. The priest spell is true AoE, albeit with a slightly longer cast time, and seal of light would seem to be limited only by the number of attacks melee can get off in 10 seconds.
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Are the off-healing dps specs of all the healer classes viable in dungeons (pre-raiding)? I am not looking to tank and an not counting puffin bear.
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I have read that shadow priest can be brought to raid to provide buff for warlocks. However, I would think dps would be severely constrained due to 16 debuff limit.
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I may do a bit of pvp/battlegrounds. Among priest, paladin, and shaman, which has the best/most reliable dps spec(s)?
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Is the paladin truly as boring as I have read it to be? Even in pvp, I have read that it primarily rolls holy and either heals warrior or bubble hearths.
Thanks for your input.
If you roll a shaman. You ll always be wanted for all content for windfury.
Its shamans job to raid heal because of chain heals mana cost. They are also good in pvp for frost shock spam.
Preist dont do anything thing other the spam flash heal. Shadow priest are brought for the warlock buff and have major mana issues. Spriest are also a top pvp class
Idk about pallys (horde4life)
Also keep in mind you will be down ranking spells most of the time to save mana and get through a fight.
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Priests do have aoe heals, but their single target heals are better then a shamans and they make better tank healers.
Both classes can do tank or raid healing, but shamans are wanted for the totem buffs/dispels/raid heals while priests usually handle the tank heals/dispels.
I picked resto shaman back in the day for the lore, the armor class, and the offspec options.
Thanks, both. That’s my general impression. I was not aware there is a significant mana cost difference between prayer of healing and chain heal. ClassicDB indicates they are both ~400 mana. However, Wow Wiki suggests the difference is greater (19% vs. 48% base mana).
How would you stack shadow vs. elemental/enhance in pvp (battlegrounds) or dungeons?
Why aren’t druids an option for you?
All healers will use multiple ranks of their healing spells, so even if the heal has the same name you’ll have different ranks on your bars. Normally you’ll have 2 or 3 different ranks (depending on class and +healing).
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Chain heal is the original smart heal, so you pick the original target but it picks the others and it doesn’t care which group they are in.
Prayer of Healing is based on the group of the target, so if the priest targets a person in group 4… the heal goes to group 4 and only group 4.
Judgement of Light (seal is self only, judgement is when you break the seal on the target) is raid wide and if the judging paladin hits the target with a melee attack it will refresh the debuff. It does not scale outside of t1 and t3 set bonuses.
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All specs are viable, period.
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That’s really going to be up to the individual guilds.
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All 3 can be extremely strong when played well, and terrible if played badly.
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yes and no. Many players find the game play of the paladin to be boring. It’s a defensive hybrid, so it excels at durability and outlasting opponents.
Honestly, druid would be my go-to healer. I healed dungeons and some raids through WoD on a druid. However, from what I have read, I do not like the design philosophy for druid in classic. The limitations on HoTs and lack of true rez are problematic. Also, resto usually synergizes with balance, and balance has… issues… in classic.
Max rank chain heal is about 400.
Max rank PoH is over 1000 mana.
Rank 2 PoH is about 500 mana and has a lower base heal.
What’s wrong with balance?
At the least, balance has significant mana issues.
sorry you had to play with suck priests maybe its a Hoard thing. flash, shield and renew are our bread and butter. but we MIGHT do a little more . make sure to say that to every priest in your group before you enter a raid or dungeon. 
Yeah, i was referring to raids. I remember priests saying anything other than flash heal was sniped and renew is always sniped and was nothing but over healing. Shields might be good when a big damaging attack is coming.