World Of Warcraft Discussion

[Mulk]

Grats! Nice to have that out of the way, eh?

 

You know how good your healers have to be to take down LK? well, they have to be BETTER for Cata raiding. Good grief.

 

So, my pally is 85 and starting to heal in earnest so he can be geared enough to do heroics and raids. I think his iLevel is 326 now, really just need an upgrade at wrist and hands to get there I think. I have run three random normals in teh last couple of days - Stonecore (fairly easy at my gear level), Halls of Origination (some pretty hard stuff mixed with some easier) and Lost City of the Tolvir (omg DIEHEALERDIE). I'm at 101k health and around 73k mana with 1700 spirit or so and I chew through mana so fast on some fights it is ridiculous. Lost City had some trash pulls and a couple of boss fights that were just horrid. Third boss, I was literally meleeing for mana as I sacrificed a dps in order to get enough mana back to heal again. I concluded that judging on every cooldown where someone isn't about to die is a requirement - that little burst of mana that I never needed in Wrath is so necessary now. I no longer think about whether to pop Divine Plea or not, I just do - I need it as often as it is off cooldown.

 

Not sure I want to heal raids or not, but i've historically been pretty good at it and I imagine the healer shortage is only getting worse.

[Verbal32]

I'm finding myself in the same situation. I am part of the 10-man group that downed LK with Emp last night. A few of us then went into Stonecore and switched things up a little. We had a normal DPSer as offspec tank, a normal druid healer as an alt pally healer, and myself (usually resto shammy) as ranged DPS.

 

It was....weird. I kept wanting to look at the health bars and heal. I think I did pretty well, as I ended up in 2nd on recount - ahead of a balance druid that's better geared than me, and behind a rogue that's MUCH better geared than me. All in all it makes me want to slide over to DPS, but I'm not sure I can break the mindset, lol. I'd like to take a break from healing, but I'm decent at it and our group needs healers.

 

I'm not sure what to do, as I'm about to start collecting gear with slots and while ele and resto gear for shammies overlaps a bit, it doesn't in full and I need to make a decision for mainspec.

[Emperor]

For my priest, my iLevel is at 345. I have 88.9K Mana unbuffed buff get close to 100K with food and flask. My Spirit is at 3K and I think 2500-2800 combat regen. I have been really trying to stack spirit as much as I can. I still haven't healed a heroric... I am so gun shy. Healing normals is SO easy now. Yeah I may have to stop after a fight and drink if the tank is new or the dps pull everything. Mostly I am noticing little to no use of CC in normals I heal. It is kind of nice when I can throw my second biggest heal on a tank and fill up half their health bar. I plan to heal a heroric this afternoon and see how I do.

 

For the LK fight I was third in overall healing. I really think Druids and Pallies will have a much easier time healing in cata than the rest of us. I heard that in the next patch they were cutting the mana cost of rejuv and renew which will make these heals more viable.

 

I will be healing in a cata raid a week for today. I am a little worried.

[SinisterDeath]

Can't speak for shamans/palies, but I can say from experience on the druid front, they might have better Hots then you guys get, it might be cheaper, but they can't do the burst healing priests can. Not even Palies.

 

The up coming PTR notes made rejuv cheaper, because they are making our big heal, obtained at lvl 78, instead of 8. So they give us Nourish to replace it. which is a 'kinda' big heal, that does +20% if you have rejuv or regrowth active on a target. I don't know how the supposedly makes healing better for lower levels, I haven't even got nourish yet (its lvl 78 right now, my current 'main' is only 66, but I do got a 78 that 'was' my main, but I haven't really used em since turning 78 to really see how nourish actually works in 'dungeons'.

 

Reading wow druid forums, they say that @lvl 85, druids can't compete with any of the other healing classes, nor can they tank nearly as well (Due to not enough agro, and our main agro abilities being nerfed, longer CD's, less threat, double whammies)

 

Perhaps next patch, druid healers might be able to toss around more rejuvs/regrowths/nourishes/healing touches, but I don't think they'd be able to upgrade to main-healer status. Resevered for 'off-healing'.

[Verbal32]

I disagree, and I think Emp will back me up on this. Even for the LK fight, the 3 healers were Karm (a druid), me (a shaman), and Emp (a priest). That was the order we finished in healing, but Karm beat me by a decent amount. He always has - this guy can heal anything. He's one of the best healers I've ever come across in the game. So my opinion is that if one person can do it, so can others. Which makes druids just as viable as any other healing class.

 

The problem for our little group is that Karm usually isn't part of it. He helped us with the final push towards Kingslayer, but he is part of another 10-man group in our guild. Emp and I are the healers for our other 10-man group. I'm not sure I can make the switch to DPS without leaving Emp hanging......

[Mulk]

got in my first heroic last night as a pally healer - Blackrock Caverns. I'm up to around 1900 spirit and that's making a sizable difference. So much of my ability to heal revolves around the ability of the group to not take extra damage. I don't really like that at all, but it is what it is. Holy Radiance, if I can get people to group up for it, is a life saver.

 

We had some false starts with boss number one due to people not moving out of the chains fast enough and getting one-shot (even the tank once), second boss was easy, third boss took a lot of work for the tank to figure out how to not keep losing the stacks or ramping the stacks up too quickly, fourth boss was fairly easy (lots of CC available for us) and fifth boss was a pushover. I got two more upgrades out of it, my ilevel is 336 now I think. Having done it once it's not such a big deal, though I'm really not looking forward to GB heroic or Lost City heroic.

 

Re: ineffectiveness of druids - no way, Jose. Druid threat and heals may be less but it's enough; probably not good enough for cutting edge guilds that min-max everything and consider a 1% differential to be a reason to sit someone, but my first kills of Magmaw, Omnitron, and Halfus were all accomplished with druid healers, and all but Magmaw with a druid tank. The druid healer in question on Halfus and Omnitron is one of the best healers I've ever seen. What has druid panties in a bind (from the moaning and groaning I hear about it on my server) about it is they can't heal all day anymore, and you have to be smarter about it than just stacking rejuv and lifebloom on everyone and their dog. I know the druid tank is weaker than the pally, and it has a friend of mine frustrated with it, but I just can't get myself worked up about it. I've tanked Vortex heroic, Halls heroic and a few other things and had no issues with threat unless the dps do something stupid like pulling for me on a group that is ranged.

 

Been doing this long enough to remember when druids "sucked" at anything but healing (and keep in mind, I main-tanked full clears of ZG and Molten Core in vanilla as a druid), and I'm still better off than I was then, so I'm cool.

[SinisterDeath]

Only thing I can reply to that verbal, is its possible, That he's one of the #1 druid healers on your server, but compare him to the #1 priest healer, not empy. :P

 

Its kinda like in PvP.

 

Classic Wow, Druid ferals were fearsome, If you were freaking awesome. But that didn't stop a good player from wiping the floor with them. Now against medicore to poor players, they were like gods.

 

Its pretty much the equiovolent here.

 

Btw, isn't lich king fight meant to be lvl 80s not 85s? :P

[Verbal32]

Yes, but if we are all 85s, isn't it relative?

 

We only have 2 major healing priests in our guild, and one is Emp. The other is mostly disc, but offspec holy. Emp is Holy/Shadow, I believe. I don't know how our druid stacks with the disc priest, but I know that I usually beat that priest, so perhaps our druid is an exception. Dunno.

[SinisterDeath]

Yes, but if we are all 85s, isn't it relative?

 

We only have 2 major healing priests in our guild, and one is Emp. The other is mostly disc, but offspec holy. Emp is Holy/Shadow, I believe. I don't know how our druid stacks with the disc priest, but I know that I usually beat that priest, so perhaps our druid is an exception. Dunno.

 

Have you ever explored the realm of healing efficiency? Aka, OverHealing vs Underhealing?

 

If i'm not mistaken, due to the nature of hots, they tend to cause OHealing... Course with not being able to downgrade heals, I supposed priests are now unefficent now to...

[Mulk]

The point is not whether another class could do better, but whether they got it done. I really think people make too much of supposed class superiority or whatever.

[SinisterDeath]

The point is not whether another class could do better, but whether they got it done. I really think people make too much of supposed class superiority or whatever.

 

Not saying its impossible, simply that from everything i've read has is showing blizzard intent of moving the game away from 'hybrids' and more towards the holy trinity setup. (warrior/priest/rogue/mage)

 

We know a Very Good Player can play any class, and do very good at it. But when the game is filled with a lot of shitty players, (not saying anyone here is) A class that 'is' supperior at say, Healing/tanking/dps, IS going to be 'easier' for that 'shitty' player to "getur done" then it would be for a 'very good player'.

 

All I can say is, when it comes to druid tanking,

Swipe used to be major, as we were nevery 'awesome' at holding down one target, but we were Very good at AOE tanking. Swipe used to have 1s GC, now its... 5s? it sucks simply put.

Course theres a new version of 'swipe' but I don't have access to it yet.

Dmg its self was nice, but what made it good for AOE tanking was the threat.

But, over-all druid tank threat, has been nerfed, swipe threat, reduced (probably because cat now has it, and its 1s GC unlike bears)

AOE tanking, is no longer as relevant in Cata as it was in WLOK, and you only did it in BC becuase there were raid encounters, not that you pulled the entire room, its just, each section had alot of enemies, and you'd want 1 tank on the big guy, and another collecting adds.

 

Healing, I did that in Classic, and a lil in BC (wasn't around for WLOK)

Back in Classic, we used to only use Healing Touch, and 'maybe' rejuv on people that weren't the main tank. REgrowth was highly inefficent, and only used if you couldn't possibly get a big heal on the tank, and someone else had a big heal on the way. BC had a theme to it.

 

Druids became Dots/Hots class. They didn't want us to have 'higher' burst damage than rogues/mages, nor higher burst healing than priests. So they gave us realy good dots (bleeds, moonfire/insect) and hots (rejuv/regrowth/nourish/something else i'm forgetting).

 

As far as healing goes, there used to be a time when downranking, actually allowed druids to out heal priests, not in most healing, but mana efficiency. (we could heal all day with our lower level heals) now no one can, making our biggest heals un-efficient compared to other classes.

That efficency, is 'key' in harder raids where you maynot be over and done with a fight in under 2-5 minutes, Or when things go badly.

When your learning a fight, things always go badly. And the class with the best healing/tanking-threat/classes, with the best players behind those classes, are a godsend.

 

But an awesome player behind hybridized classes, are also good, they just aren't 'as good' at that main role.

 

Today I did an instance.

shitty deathknight tank.

Pulled the an entire room in Manatomb(sp)

with the Fearing nexus walker.

 

Since I'm feral, I shifted bear, picked up the adds, whittled them down, when it was back down to just 2 mobs the MT grabbed, I healed myself, went cat, and proceded to shred the mobs to death.

 

Versitility.

[fantasyfan93]

I play on the Stormrage server. My main is a Human Warrior, level 64 currently. Am loving it! Anyone else play on Stormrage?

[Silver]

Hey, what addon's do you guys use? I've seen some screens of other peoples games and they have everything changed around. Wondering if you guys do the same.

[Mulk]

Sinister we're probably going to have to agree to disagree. I spent a good chunk of Wrath as the best tanking class in the game (imo), and another chunk of it as the best dps before I got nerfed. I'm still far from the worst at dps, and if I'm the weakest tank, well, I've been there before. I'll get another turn at the top some time. Further, druids were never the best AoE tank. Paladins have been better at it since it became possible to tank as a paladin. Druids were, in fact, the best single target tank for most of Wrath (prior to the DK buff to Icy Touch), and the best physical damage soak tank in most cases in BC, outside of things like Malchezzar, whose Thrash ability occasionally caused triple crushes on a druid. If you really think they didn't do well at single target, I don't know what to tell you. I was one of the three primary tanks for a raiding guild, the massive health pool I had being a big reason why and until the Icy Touch buff I could out-threat anyone on a single target, even a paladin with tricks of the trade and misdirect help. I generated so much rage off the damage I did that it wasn't hard at all to keep the threat going even when I wasn't the main tank. But it didn't matter much because by and large tanks could all do everything in Wrath, just as they can now. /shrug

 

Blizzard has gone out of the way to make sure the hybrid classes aren't considered second-class citizens - not just a healer class with a dpsing spec so soloing isn't so painful, which is what they were in vanilla. Bottom line - I just don't consider the differences between the classes to be crippling, or anything more than a minor annoyance. ymmv, of course.

 

Silver, I use oRA, Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, Recount, Dominos...and Grid I think, though I'm considering dropping that with the Blizz base raid UI changes. Dominos is the one that allows me to rearrange my buttons however I want. There are others of a similar nature out there as well.

[SinisterDeath]

I spent a good chunk of Wrath as the best tanking class in the game (imo), and another chunk of it as the best dps before I got nerfed. I'm still far from the worst at dps, and if I'm the weakest tank, well, I've been there before. I'll get another turn at the top some time.

 

I quit around BC, at that time As far as I knew, druids were the best at AoE tank, because of swipe threat buff.

I think we are agreeing without realizing that we are. Theres what we were, what we are, and what we are going to become.

 

Wrath of the lich king, by many, many people was considered Easy Mode. Sounds like difficulty makes BC harder than Wrath, (at the levels they are meant to be played at) Kinda like how Cata dungeons are far, far more difficult than Wrath dungeons, specially the heroics.

 

So, assuming blizzard goes through with its nerfs/buffs, depending on which sector of the game you specialize in (pve, pvp, both) depends on how big or smaller your role in 'raids' is going to be, and that big/smaller role, trickles down into the over all game, Meaning if the big guilds say, your going to need 3 priests 2 shammies and a druid to heal through a encounter, eveyrone else is going to say "we need moar preists!"

 

On the bright side, maybe this'll mean thinning the heard of the shitty druids, leaving more of the good ones behind. ;)

 

Further, druids were never the best AoE tank. Paladins have been better at it since it became possible to tank as a paladin. Druids were, in fact, the best single target tank for most of Wrath (prior to the DK buff to Icy Touch), and the best physical damage soak tank in most cases in BC, outside of things like Malchezzar, whose Thrash ability occasionally caused triple crushes on a druid. If you really think they didn't do well at single target, I don't know what to tell you.

 

Coming from BC, not Wrath, here at the time I played, Horde hadn't had very many Palies, (blood elves were hordes first palies, like dreaeni were alliances first shammies.)

When I played, warriors were able to hold single target threat far better than I. Didn't have any competition from palies, though I heard they could hold about equal with druids with single target) and... shamans, you just laughed at them trying to tank.

 

AoE tanking though, as in, with multiple mobs, and keeping threat, Druid kicked warriors ass. Paly, can't say they did so hot on that.

 

In fact, when it came right down to it, the 3 tanks at the time, had aside from 'threat' one type of thing they were really, really good at.

 

Druids could withstand a LOT of phsyical damage, and, yes we had the highest HP evar. Fully raid buffed in BC, I swear I had nearly 100k HP. :P (thats lvl 70) Course thats with my shitty memory that coulda been closer to 50k, I dunno but it was alot. I do know I had over 73% DR with the right gear. ;)

 

(damned guy stole my account sold half my gear. :( )

Warriors though, there speciality in taking damage was also physical but in a different type of physical. They get block/Parry, somethings druids don't have. (we got the dodge)

Think they were better at taking crushing blows, not sure. There gear at least made it easier.

 

Palies were the guys you kept around to tank Magic mobs.

 

When palies became AoE tanks, I dunno, but I guess there bubble shield helps with that aoe nerf druids got... That one where more than 2 mobs hittin ga player, gives them a higher chance at doing crushing dmg, and increases your chance at recieving it... (I think, I might be confusing it with a patch in AoC. BUt I'm sure there was something like that in WoW.)

 

I was one of the three primary tanks for a raiding guild, the massive health pool I had being a big reason why and until the Icy Touch buff I could out-threat anyone on a single target, even a paladin with tricks of the trade and misdirect help. I generated so much rage off the damage I did that it wasn't hard at all to keep the threat going even when I wasn't the main tank. But it didn't matter much because by and large tanks could all do everything in Wrath, just as they can now. /shrug

 

I obviously haven't raided in lich king, but I did raid in BC, not sure if you did or not though. Everything I have read up to this point just makes wrath into easy mode, So I can't take to much stock into the fact every tank could tank well in Wrath, simply because, if its as easy as I think it is, I wouldn't half be suprised to see Shamans, locks, and Rogues tanking to. :P (obviously, not as good, but possible)

 

Blizzard has gone out of the way to make sure the hybrid classes aren't considered second-class citizens - not just a healer class with a dpsing spec so soloing isn't so painful, which is what they were in vanilla. Bottom line - I just don't consider the differences between the classes to be crippling, or anything more than a minor annoyance. ymmv, of course.

 

I know, I was playing Since Beta. Feral buff before BC made the game so much better for druids. But Blizzard does tend to show some neglect in there hybrid classes.

 

If you don't believe it, Consider this.

How long ago was it, until we finally recieved 'different' looking animal forms?

Now which forms haven't changed? Yet what is the most requested of them? (Aquatic) :P

Thankfully we don't need to do that pain in the ass quest to get the swift flight form now.

 

Still can't believe they are taking away our Root-shifting ability. Been in since beta. Theres a few things going on in the patch notes that are going to be disaterious in pvp, and have some affect in pve. Though it'll suck that I can't get to try out my awesome bleeds by the time it takes me to hit 85, on my new-druid. (as they'll be somewhat lowered when patch comes out, but mangle gets more powerful.

 

Silver, I use oRA, Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, Recount, Dominos...and Grid I think, though I'm considering dropping that with the Blizz base raid UI changes. Dominos is the one that allows me to rearrange my buttons however I want. There are others of a similar nature out there as well.

 

 

I don't like recount, of all the dps mods i've seen, it just seems... I dunno, clunky. BUt I use that.

 

Got amod called Paging.

Basically it lets me Hold a button like, Alt for example, and it changes the 'page' of my action bar, then I can hit the 1-0,-,= keys, to use any ability on that said menu.

 

TO me, this is far more efficient then trying to shift-mouse roll, or click all those things.

Mod needs a lil work though.

[Canukistani]

so as far as i can tell, your conversation boils down to: blah blah blah, druids are the best class for everything, blah

[SinisterDeath]

so as far as i can tell, your conversation boils down to: blah blah blah, druids are the best class for everything, blah

 

Well, not the "Best" but "Good" at everything, and it is one of the hardest classes to play in wow, thus it it IS the best class in wow. ;)

[Emperor]

From what I have seen so far, here is how I would rank the healing classes... at least for Cata herorics. I will be running my first 25 man cata raid this Friday.

 

1. Pally - Great mana conservation

2. Druid - Hots gallore... our top healers in my guild are druids.

3. Shaman - Earth Shield and water shield = good mana management

4. Holy Priest - Renew expensive, yes got the big heals that cost big mana, mana conservation tough, Lightwell has become relevant again

5. Disc Priest - All I hear is QQ from disc

[Mulk]

so as far as i can tell, your conversation boils down to: blah blah blah, druids are the best class for everything, blah

 

QFT! >.>

 

j/k

 

I love the class. It's the only one in the game that can do all four roles at end-game level: tank, melee dps, ranged dps, and heal. I'm not blind to the problems, I just don't think they're as bad as I hear. /shrug

 

Sinister, I raided casually in BC. All T4 content, all T5 content, about half of T6 content and I main-tanked or off-tanked all of it except for Vashj in Serpentshrine, for which my mobility was too useful in killing all those stinking adds to have me tank. That's one of the more hair-raising fights I've actually done, and one of the most satisfying first kills I ever had.

 

Wrath WAS easy mode for the most part. Heroics outside of Halls of Reflection pre-nerf were a joke once you had any raid gear at all, and since by the time Icecrown came out you could just straight to 232 and 251 gear, they never really were much of a threat. I did randoms semi-frequently, and specialized in 12 minute full clears. Raids had their moments, and hard-modes...omg. Some of those were flat out ridiculous. Yogg+0 is probably the hardest pre-nerf fight they ever put into the game, at least imo. I never did get that one. Yogg+1 for my drake was hard enough. Firefighter (hard mode Mimiron) and Freya+3 were also pretty difficult. Some of them got zergable once you had Icecrown-25 gear, but Firefighter and Yogg continued to be complete jerks. I'd rate what I have seen of Cataclysm in initial difficulty as easier than BC, harder than Wrath, except for the healers, who are having a heart attack on every fight, kinda like old-school AQ40 or BWL or what not. If not for how hard it is to manage mana now, I think there would be a lot more full clears going on. The fact that healers cannot chain cast to keep fights going while people learn is a bit of a block.

 

Also: Got into a heroic Grim Batol run as my pally...holy crap I HATE Forgemaster. SO VERY MUCH DAMAGE...and even when we beat him, my group broke up. I'm very newly come to the "able to heal a heroic" gear level and that was just brutal. My tank wasn't 100% geared either, I don't think, which didn't help, but holy crap that hurt.

[SinisterDeath]

Sounds like old-school healing issues to me, Had to have priests use big heals, and druids innervate them, until everyone learns the fight, gets geared, then it becomes easy mode again. ;)

 

In BC, on my server, my guild was one of the first to clear Khaz tower. And we had just started Tempest Keep. I think we got about 2-3 bosses down inside there, then the guild died, due to the MAIN tank/Healer combo quitting the game. (they were also the guild leaders)

 

I know I helped tank in Khaz, even started to main-tank when we had enough members to actually do two raids on khaz at the same time. I was far more focused on DPS, (But I did have tank gear... I had tank/caster/dps/Armor/stamina/defense/resistance sets to be percise.)

 

 

Blizzard, IMO is probably making the current stuff so damned hard, because when it boils down to it, theres no real end game in Cata, they spent most of there development on remaking old-school wow. ;)

[Verbal32]

From what I have seen so far, here is how I would rank the healing classes... at least for Cata herorics. I will be running my first 25 man cata raid this Friday.

 

1. Pally - Great mana conservation

2. Druid - Hots gallore... our top healers in my guild are druids.

3. Shaman - Earth Shield and water shield = good mana management

4. Holy Priest - Renew expensive, yes got the big heals that cost big mana, mana conservation tough, Lightwell has become relevant again

5. Disc Priest - All I hear is QQ from disc

 

I think I agree with everything there. I'm still not even geared for heroics yet (play time limited recently, but improving soon), but healing as a Shammy involves praying for Water Shield procs to regen mana. My mana is better than a priest, equal to a druid, and much worse than a Pally. But we need to take Karmaze out of the picture when looking at Druid healers - the guy is a God plain and simple. Other druid healers have been on par with me (assuming similar gear levels). I'm really thinking that the healers are all somewhat equal now. I might have better mana conservation that you, but man can you whip out a TON of healing in a very short time. I can't do that. A lot of my healing is passive procs or procs based on active heals, but none of it can be summoned on call like the massive burst of a priest or pally.

 

I won't be raiding with you guys yet (need moar gear, lol), but I hope to within another week or two.

 

 

I'd rate what I have seen of Cataclysm in initial difficulty as easier than BC, harder than Wrath, except for the healers, who are having a heart attack on every fight, kinda like old-school AQ40 or BWL or what not. If not for how hard it is to manage mana now, I think there would be a lot more full clears going on. The fact that healers cannot chain cast to keep fights going while people learn is a bit of a block.

 

Amen to that, brutha. I'm close to switching to Elemental right now. I'm only sticking with Resto because I don't want to leave Empy alone on an island when our 10-man picks back up for raiding Cata.

[Mulk]

I tanked BC for two reasons: I was good at it, and an alt-tabbed warlock with a certain macro could do more dps than I could working flat out. Ferals and Shadow Priests and Ret pallies were worst at dps for pretty much all of BC. It was better than bringing a third warrior or paladin tank (and 25s in BC needed 3 tanks for a lot of stuff), since my dps wasn't completely lol-worthy, and my dps while tanking wasn't too bad either, but it sucked to be pulling up the rear all the time.

 

My first full Naxx-25 clear in Wrath, when I won at dps over a raid full of good mages and hunters and the like, I did a total WTF, because I didn't know druids had been buffed that much. It wasn't close either: I was 500 clear of the next closest in most fights. We got nerfed a bit in Ulduar, but never so much that I felt as crippled as I did prior to Wrath. Of course, in Ulduar the raiding emphasis shifted rather heavily to effective health, at which druids were the clear winner at the time so I wound up tanking all of the heaviest hitting bosses instead of dpsing: the dude with the flaming codpiece, Steelbreaker in the Council Fight, etc. That got nerfed as well, and at the end of Cata the pally was probably the best overall tank.

 

Healers, the main problem I have in evaluating them is that I know no druid healers who aren't frigging excellent. Every last one of them has pulled something epic out of their butts when everyone else was down. The one I do the most with solo healed phase 3 Lich King on the first kill for that particular group - the other two healers got themselves killed on the first vile spirit spawn, while the druid was inside Frostmourne. The only three shamans I know who main-heal...well, one of them literally wrote the book on shamans back in the day; he does more druid and mage work now though. Most truly hardcore players in WoW know who he is. One other is one of the most talented overall players I've ever met; the third is a bit handicapped by her MS, but is still pretty good. I know quite a few priests and pallies of varying talent degrees, and I see that they hold up fine, and I know pallies pretty well anyway since I play one. I did have a shaman heal my undergeared tank butt through Vortex Pinnacle heroic last night without too many issues. So I'm inclined to think they're all pretty well off; at least as much as they can be in this expansion. Anyone with the requisite skill can do it on any class. It's not like trying to heal Heroic Magister's Terrace as a pally in BC, which couldn't be done without a very specific group makeup and a lot of luck.

 

Pallies do have a fair amount of throughput onto dual targets, at a horrendous rate of consumption. I don't know if other classes are as limited by placement as we are, but the fact that people have to be grouped up to get the best out of my group heals makes them less than useful in several fights that require a lot of movement. A huge chunk of a pally's regen ability depends on having spare gcds to judge with; that's a sizable uptick. I hate that the other major mana recovery mechanic for pallies nerfs their ability to heal for the duration. If everyone is taking zomgdamage, then I burn through it all and can't recover, because I can't afford do use either one. Thankfully, spikes like that are rare, but man I hate it when they occur.

[Verbal32]

I would argue that Shammies are in the worst spot for movement fights. Our 2 AoE heals (Chain Heal and Healing Rain) are very dependant on placement. HR is a placed AoE for us, so if people move out of stuff under their feet as muscle memory, then they'll avoid the pretty blue stuff under them like the plague.

 

As for CH....ugh. It took a major nerf and it's mana cost is so steep that I can OOM myself with just a few casts in a row of CH. And if people are spread out, a CH that doesn't jump is probably the most mana inefficient heal in the game, lol. I use it very sparingly.

 

I totally agree on the Druid part, though. I really think they are the best overall class in the game right now. They are the worst at nothing, and can do everything. That's a pretty damn good situation to be in. Shammies can do everything but tank, which I have no inclination to do anyway. Actually, I don't think I can melee at all - I'm just horrible at it. I've tried Enhancement a few times and I just sucked. Ranged DPS or Healing is where I'm at. Which is fine considering our raid group is melee heavy.

[Mulk]

yeah, I'm the reverse: pretty good at melee, not so good at ranged.

[SinisterDeath]

I never got into shamans.

 

Reason I chose druid over any other class when I started wow, was based on my EQ impression of Druids. (well that and they were awesome in WC3)

 

Escentially, EQ druids were Healers, yes, but they could also CC animals. They could make portals, ect.

I was expecting, wow to have a 'LOT' of beast enemies, thus require alot of CC of beasts (animals) and since, in EQ I was THE main CC class (Enchanter) and I was great at that, I chose that. My specialty in wow is not so much ranged/melee/tanking, but rather the an ability that is great for anyone who is good at CC. Spatial Awareness, and target Priority. Escetially, something that alot of people 'dont' have when it comes to raids. They dont notice that add chewing on there healer, nor do they notice those pathers coming near them. I notice everything, Except for that giant T-rex in Un'Goro sneaking up on me. :P

 

Obviously, if you tank, you need to be hyper aware of your surroundings, and be able to priortize your targets. Same goes for Healing and DPS. Thus I'm suited very well for all the roles, and not just one. However, I exceed even further at actually CCing.

 

Ask around people who have played EQ, ask how easy it is, to stop 3 groups of mobs trained into a group, in EQ, and ccing them all, and maintaining it, while the group whittles away at the mobs.

;)