Off spec healing...

On Jan 31, 8:10 am, Smid <smids....DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got two level 69's, a feral druid and a shadow priest... The
> priest has stored up all those quest + AH heal gear having dmg and
> healing gear. The druid keeps tanking and dmg gear, but no healing
> gear.
>
> I've been asked to heal instances on the druid, but I will refuse (and
> offer the shadow priest as an alternative). The few times I've had to
> heal, I get the impression I'm out of mana so quick its barely worth
> it. Other times, on Ring of Blood quest, an off spec shaman was
> failing to heal my tank...
>
> How are the prot/ret paladins, feral/balance druids and non resto
> shamens when it comes to healing? I got the impression that Priests
> can heal out of spec, at least non heroic, but exactly how bad are the
> others? Even with a bunch of healing gear?
>
> Smid

In most situations where I have had a healer who wasn't specced for
healing, its been a disaster. Not to say it can't be done, just I
have never seen it 100% successful.

I did Old Hillsbrad with a ret paladin healing. He did ok until the
last boss encounter. During that, he would got OOM by the 3rd wave,
and have nothing left for the boss. This resulted in several wipes
and the failure of the run (and this was at the time I was trying to
finish OH so I could do BM).

I got into a heroic BM group a few weeks back, and we had a shaman
healing. Turned out he was enhancement spec, and for heroics that was
a big no no. We didn't even make it to the first boss.

Offspec healers usually have the problem you describe, the OOM
problem. They might be able to get by in instances with simple
fights, but anything with longer fights, such as the one I described,
is going to be difficult for an off-spec healer. If you're interested
in healing, I'd say go spec for it, especially at higher levels.

Ashen Shugar wrote:
> Cool, my shadow priest is up to +1550 healing.  Maybe I should rope my
> guildies into letting me try out healing a heroic run.  ; )

Careful, Botanica is one of the easiest heroics, it doesn't surprise
me that an off-spec healer can manage it, also depends on the gear
level of the rest of the party. If the tank and dps were all BT/Hyjal
gear then a bandage spec rogue could probably have healed the
instance.

Hoofu, 70 tauren shaman, Argent Dawn (EU)

I used to main heal lots of 5 man instances with my druid as balance
spec, and I have a guildie who has main healed a lot of instances as a
feral spec druid.

The key is not in spec - a shadow priest is no better suited to heal
than a feral druid. It's in GEAR. You need a caster set at a
minimum, and preferably a *healing* set. Shadow priests already have
caster (if not healing) gear, so that might make it seem like they
make better healers, but if you get a good healing set for your druid
you should be able to heal pretty much any 5 man just fine.

BTW: trick to druid healing which results in VERY good mana usage.
Lifebloom is your friend. If a dps takes damage, they get 1
Lifebloom. It'll tick and bloom eventually and hopefully they haven't
taken any more damage. If they did, it's their own fault. Tanks get
a 3 stack of Lifebloom, always refreshing at the last second. If
that's not enough to keep them up throw in a Rejuvination too (and if
THAT'S not enough throw on a Regrowth as well but never recast it
until the HOT has ticked off completely). If you can manage to keep
the tank up with only the Lifebloom stack, you'll never run out of
mana. As a matter of fact when I do it (though my druid is now resto
and pretty well geared), as long as it's only Lifebloom I'm casting on
just the tank, my mana will actually tick back up faster than I use
it. Toss me in with a Shadow Priest doing VT and I don't even need to
look at my mana bar anymore .

Mike

On Jan 31, 4:39 pm, PhilHibbs <sna....DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ashen Shugar wrote:
> > Cool, my shadow priest is up to +1550 healing.  Maybe I should rope my
> > guildies into letting me try out healing a heroic run.  ; )
>
> Careful, Botanica is one of the easiest heroics, it doesn't surprise
> me that an off-spec healer can manage it, also depends on the gear
> level of the rest of the party. If the tank and dps were all BT/Hyjal
> gear then a bandage spec rogue could probably have healed the
> instance.

True, Botanica is easy. No hard hitting mobs and they don't do much
AOE damage either. We had good DPS people (mostly PVP gear) and I was
tanking in nearly full Karazhan/heroic drop/badge purple gear, so it
definitely wasn't a hard situation for a decent healer.

On Jan 31, 2:39 pm, PhilHibbs <sna....RemoveThis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Careful, Botanica is one of the easiest heroics, it doesn't surprise
> me that an off-spec healer can manage it, also depends on the gear
> level of the rest of the party. If the tank and dps were all BT/Hyjal
> gear then a bandage spec rogue could probably have healed the
> instance.

It's easy if you have enough DPS. My rule is that if Boss 1
(Sarandis) is down to 10% before she calls for guards, you have enough
DPS for a very smooth run. If she's at 40%, you can do the instance
but you have a long tough struggle ahead. If she has more than 40%,
you need more DPS.

- Gerry Quinn

On Jan 31, 8:36 am, lcpltom <lcpl... DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:

> Offspec healers usually have the problem you describe, the OOM
> problem. They might be able to get by in instances with simple
> fights, but anything with longer fights, such as the one I described,
> is going to be difficult for an off-spec healer.

I dunno, I tend to think it's more about gear. In PvE gear, my Holy
Paladin has about +1,460 healing, and he had one heck of a time
healing that opening the dark portal quest in BM. He ran OOM a lot,
and would only be able to drink half a mana drink before he had to
immediately start healing again.

Now, half my "PvE" gear consists of S1 PvP gear, which has no MP5 at
all, so until I get better equipment, my MP5 is really bad. OTOH, S1
gear has a lot of spell crit, much more than the MP5 gear that I
replace some of my S1 gear with for PvE healing. For longer fights I'm
not sure if it would be better to stick with the PvP gear, yet have
less +healing, so I can get mana back through Illumination more with
the higher crit rate, rather than replace some of the items with stuff
that dropped in instances, which only raises my MP5 into the "still
terrible" range, but reduces my spell crit by a lot.

--
Jill

On Jan 31, 11:32 am, Catriona R <catrionarNOS... RemoveThis @totalise.co.uk>
wrote:
> I remember halfway through a *heroic* Shadow Lab, our healer DC'ing, being
> about 4am there was nobody else online to ask so the feral druid in the
> group as dps put his healing gear on and we finished it 4-man. Ever since
> that I've never doubted a feral druid's healing capabilities if they need
> to heal

This has been my experience too. I'm a feral druid with 1800 healing
and 150 mp5 while casting, unbuffed. I can heal *everything* if I have
a decent group.

It all comes down to 2 things: gear and knowledge.

Gearwise, you need about 30% more +healing and 30% more mp5 while
casting as a feral druid than an equivalent resto druid to heal the
same thing.

Knowledge really means, have you had to main heal before? Once you've
done it a dozen times, it becomes old hat, and you can do it no matter
what your spec is.
--
// T.Hsu

I think it was vmkiili.RemoveThis@gmail.com that wrote something like...

>
>A week ago a shadow priest healed my group in heroic Botanica. He had
>+1350 healing (dunno about mana regeneration). He ran out of mana in
>Laj fight, but none of us died. No other problems during the instance
>run. He told us he's shadow when we were halfway through the
>instance.

Cool, my shadow priest is up to +1550 healing. Maybe I should rope my
guildies into letting me try out healing a heroic run. ; )

Ashen Shugar
--
The lions sing and the hills take flight.
The moon by day, and the sun by night.
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool.
Let the Lord of Chaos rule!

S> How are the prot/ret paladins, feral/balance druids and non resto
S> shamens when it comes to healing? I got the impression that Priests
S> can heal out of spec, at least non heroic, but exactly how bad are
S> the others? Even with a bunch of healing gear?

I play a feral druid, I have a lot of healing hear, mostly epic (around
+1350 heal and I have only weapon enchant) but I always refuse to heal
unless it's a 5 man quest or something like that. I tried instance healing
and it was really hard, oom too fast specially on hard pulls and bosses so I
gave up to heal as feral druid. Fearl druid can do great dps and tank,
that's enough.

I know that shadow priests can pull off a heroic run as healer as long as
the party is good and they have good gear (CC+good tank) and I know that our
prot pallys heal if needed in raids but pallys are very mana efficient where
druids spend all mana pool on 10 healing touch for example.

Shammy wrote:
> S> How are the prot/ret paladins, feral/balance druids and non resto
> S> shamens when it comes to healing? I got the impression that Priests
> S> can heal out of spec, at least non heroic, but exactly how bad are
> S> the others? Even with a bunch of healing gear?
>
> I play a feral druid, I have a lot of healing hear, mostly epic (around
> +1350 heal and I have only weapon enchant) but I always refuse to heal
> unless it's a 5 man quest or something like that. I tried instance healing
> and it was really hard, oom too fast specially on hard pulls and bosses so I
> gave up to heal as feral druid. Fearl druid can do great dps and tank,
> that's enough.

Are you talking about healing in heroics? I ask because I have main
healed many non heroics as feral spec in healing gear with only +971
healing. I don't have a lot of regen, but I have 10k mana and I make
liberal use of all the mana pot rewards from the daily in Skettis plus
innervate when needed. Perhaps I've just been lucky to have a good tank
most of the time? On boss fights it can get tight on mana which is when
I use the pots, but with normal packs it's actually very decent since
lifebloom is mana efficient. I main healed SL just the other day and
even on the big pulls we managed fine. But, this is non heroic, I
wouldn't come close to healing a heroic in my current gear.

> I know that shadow priests can pull off a heroic run as healer as long as
> the party is good and they have good gear (CC+good tank) and I know that our
> prot pallys heal if needed in raids but pallys are very mana efficient where
> druids spend all mana pool on 10 healing touch for example.

If we had a good tank, good CC and a shadow priest in the group I'd be
tempted to try healing a heroic with my druid, but only after upgrading
my gear a fair amount. I'm still in all blue healing gear, but now that
my dps/tank set is almost complete for the content we're at I'm tempted
to start bidding on Kara healing drops.

Mn> Are you talking about healing in heroics? I ask because I have main
Mn> healed many non heroics as feral spec in healing gear with only +971

Yes I was talking about heroics, anyone can heal non heroic if the tank is
decent but in heroics you get pushed to the limit much more. For example the
patroller in mecha heroic with charged fist is really hard to heal for a non
resto druid.
But I might look at non heroics differently than undergeared ppl since my
druid has gear that I cant even get enough rage in non heroics if I put tank
gear and even in dps gear I had problems getting enough rage in non heroic
BM while tanking rift lords so I suppose a feral druid in feral gear could
keep me up (on rift lords) and just a few +heal items for boss.

Shammy wrote:
> Mn> Are you talking about healing in heroics? I ask because I have main
> Mn> healed many non heroics as feral spec in healing gear with only +971
>
> Yes I was talking about heroics, anyone can heal non heroic if the tank is
> decent but in heroics you get pushed to the limit much more. For example the
> patroller in mecha heroic with charged fist is really hard to heal for a non
> resto druid.

Yup, I agree. Actually, I was dps for a heroic mecha run with a prot
paladin tank and our healer said he needed to go afk. I always carry my
healing set with me and someone asked if I could heal. I said I could
try but no guarantees. We'd just got to the top of the elevator before
the nethermancer and needed to clear the packs up there, including the
charged fist patrollers and the pack of 4 humanoids by the entrance to
the tunnel. Well, with a tank and 2 dpsers we managed with me healing,
but only *just* each time. We cleared them all, which was pleasing, but
I wouldn't have handled a boss fight. I actually enjoy healing for a
change style and would like to get my healing set up to Kara level at
some point. I'd even like to respec and try it properly one day.

> But I might look at non heroics differently than undergeared ppl since my
> druid has gear that I cant even get enough rage in non heroics if I put tank
> gear and even in dps gear I had problems getting enough rage in non heroic
> BM while tanking rift lords so I suppose a feral druid in feral gear could
> keep me up (on rift lords) and just a few +heal items for boss.

Yes, I have the same problem and usually tank in mostly dps gear when I
need to go to a normal instance for some reason.

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:10:00 -0800 (PST), Smid <smidscot DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:

>How are the prot/ret paladins, feral/balance druids and non resto
>shamens when it comes to healing? I got the impression that Priests
>can heal out of spec, at least non heroic, but exactly how bad are the
>others? Even with a bunch of healing gear?

I remember halfway through a *heroic* Shadow Lab, our healer DC'ing, being
about 4am there was nobody else online to ask so the feral druid in the
group as dps put his healing gear on and we finished it 4-man. Ever since
that I've never doubted a feral druid's healing capabilities if they need
to heal
--
EU-Draenor:
Balgair - Human Rogue (lvl 70)
Naomh - Draenei Priest (lvl 70)
Rosad - Human Warlock (lvl 70)
Sealgair - Dwarf Hunter (lvl 70)
Sagart - Undead Priest (lvl 70)
Eilnich - Blood Elf Warlock (lvl 60)
Beag - Dwarf Paladin (lvl 60)
Sgoildubh - Human Mage (lvl 53)
Cathach - Gnome Warrior (lvl 30)