Shared Topic : Healer Preference

This week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic was suggested by Nigiri from Adventures of a Priest


Nigiri asks:
“I would love to read blogger’s thoughts on who they like to have heal them. Would you prefere a Holy priest or a Disc priest? A Holy pally or a Resto druid. Shammy maybe? As a disc healer, I know how I feel about my healing. How do you feel about who’s healing you?

As a Tank, what I value most in a healer is the trust and bond we’ve developed raiding together. It’s the player behind the keyboard that is much more important to me than the color of their raid bar. I feel like any of our Healers, and we have just about every healing class represented in our core, is fully capable of keeping me upright.

I’m always a little nervous when there’s a new healer, regardless of class, is charged with keeping me alive. With our veteran healers, I know I’m in good hands.

What we try to do to keep healing assignments fairly consistent from Raid to Raid. We usually put our Disc Priest on our Blood Death Knight. This is mostly driven by their in game friendship. Not only do they raid together, but they are also Arena partners, so they are very used to working with each other.

I used to have our Resto Druid on me, but he’s not raiding as much so I get either a Holy Paladin or Elemental turned Resto Shaman. Our Holy Priest is really Shadow with a Holy second spec, so I don't have a ton of experience with them. He does love his Lightwell though.

I love having a Disc Priest heal me because…
I love the Penance animation. It just looks so cool to be on the receiving end of that heal, and what kind of Paladin would I be if I didn’t dig bubbles like Divine Aegis. Renewed Hope means that I don’t have to have that “Sanctuary versus Kings” battle in my mind. The Priest covers Sanct and I can get Kings. Priest Shields work well with my Shield, making each hit smaller which in turn really increases the value of a Block. They also employ a HoT, which I dig, but will talk about more with Druids.

I love having a Holy Priest heal me because…

I love having Fortitude on me. Hit points, gimme, gimme, gimme. And really, who doesn’t dig grabbing a drag off the Lightwell on Phase changes? What kind of Paladin would I be if I didn’t go for having Wings from Guardian Spirit?

I love having a Resto Druid heal me because…

HoTs are cool and synergize well with Spiritual Attunement. Rage tanks get their threat resource as soon as the damage lands. Paladins have to get refueled by healing that damage. A HoT reduces the lag time between hit and refuel. I also think Tree form looks cool. Mark of the Wild is like a mini Kings, an many a wipe turned into a kill because we had a Battle Rez up.

I love having a Resto Shaman heal me because …

I love having Earth Shield floating around me, and having both Strength of Earth Totem and Wrath of Air is fun times. Riptide is cool looking as well. Shamans seem to be able to throw some decent DPS even while Resto spec which is nice for burn phases. Our Shaman gets on vent, and we say “There’s Heroism…I mean Bluetide”. Who wouldn’t like to get big and start really dishing out the threat? And just like Battle Rez, Ankh is pretty nice wipe saver. Our Arms Warrior and Rogue (not sure of his spec) love Chain Heal bouncing from me to them.

I love having a Holy Paladin heal me because…
It’s very rhythmic. Paladin spells have a particular sound effect and they land at very regular intervals. I also love having another ‘set of Hands’. We can rotate Hand of Salvation on Mages as they climb past me on Hodir. Plus we get another Blessing for the Raid. Lay On Hands is about as colossal a ‘save me’ spell as you can get, and I don’t mind the extra armor it gives one bit.