We all want healers to be able to just make our health bars go up, but every healer class has different strengths and different limitations in raid and m+ Understanding this can really help your pug get through.
I can list some of the 5 healing classes I play, if others want to help with others.
Mistweaver Monk: can pour in some big spot healing without a ramp, decent throughput/hps, better mobility, but tends to burn mana, less raidwide healing, needs to be in melee for max throughput but survivability is poor.
Resto Shaman: High throughput and passive healing, raidwide healing, many minor cooldowns, less spot healing ability, sometimes mana issues.
Preservation evoker: Very high throughput capability but depends entirely on positioning (frontal cone heals), less spot healing, hard to heal party or raid members that stand off alone.
Holy Priest: I’m not sure I’ve quite figured this one out yet, but low mobility, requires ramp, party or raidwide cooldowns are long. Very squishy.
Disc priest: Needs ramp for effective healing, difficult to catch up when behind, but good throughput and groupwide healing. Don’t start a healing check without giving a disc priest a bit to prepare. Very squishy. Needs to be casting constantly for max throughput, no passive healing.
Maybe in raid? I would know. In m+, the weakness is people standing as far away as they can. The splash can’t reach you and I have to waste resources special delivering your hp at a significantly higher mana and opportunity cost. Be ranged, idc, just stand with 20yds of the other ranged guy, trying to throw out my chi-ji mist and notice that some guy just didn’t get it. Check the area, he’s standing on another planet from the rest of the party.
Right now Holy Paladins feel stacked for M+ with just about everything a healer could want. This is why the went uber meta this season and are 80-85% of all the healers doing high keys.
10.2 nudged up a few healers, but didn’t address the core difference in utility + spot healing between H-pals and everyone else.
Positioning is really an issue with all healers, the more stacked people are the more heals they get. A lot of ranged don’t get that lol. Warlocks and mages and hunters are always trying to get as far away as possible.
The one thing about hpal I notice is that sometimes there is a gap between cooldowns and there’s no effective spell to fill it, improved spot healing in 10.2 will help this.
I’m planning to bring my mistweaver, prevoker, holy/disc priest, and paladin into 10.2. I pretty much always end up maining mistweaver but second place is still negotiable.
I haven’t really been playing my shaman, it feels weak compared to the others.
The random hunter that takes a hit and then disengages/cheetahs away from the party so he doesn’t get healed, dies, then complains will always be funny to me
I don’t always disengage, but when I do I always make sure I’m out of the healer’s range. Unless I can cut out the middleman and just disengage off a cliff or smth. (Looking at you, ICC.)
Should have a look at the PTC M+ build if you’ve got a good understanding of the tier set and boss timers. Switched to it recently on my Shaman and it’s been amazing, feels way better than the High Tide build.
There’s no real indications that it’s still not going to be a hard Holy Paladin meta again this coming season.
Aug Evokers are going to be mandatory more so due to the fact there’s more bleeds this season which makes it harder for Hero Healers to get into slots.
Disc Priest might be a solid #2 contender due to the revamps.
If Bear Tanks aren’t #1 again than it’d probably be VDKs because they got reworked. That makes having a B-res class mandatory which would probably be the H-pal.
It’ll heavily depend on the magnitude and how often the bleeds go out, since cauterize cleanses one person on like a 3min cooldown. Just like you don’t often see people going “oh yeah, that’s a dwarf. Pick them for their racial”
I mean if its like one person gets this BIG nasty bleed and the evoker can just say nuh uh then that would be really strong, but I haven’t seen the dungeon/raid journals yet
I don’t know it as well as I should, but decided to put my effort into my priest and pally instead. I sort of feel bad, she’s one of my oldest toons. Hope she isn’t lonely.
That and relying on others to stand where they should made me switch from Preservation to Rsham. Nothing more annoying than having your specs play-style rely on others doing the right thing.
