DPS of Healing Specs in Wrath of the Lich King
Maybe because I’m a tank as well, but I’m not seeing many people looking for tanks right now in LFG. As usual there are tons of DPS everywhere (I can spit in any direction and hit no less than 7 rogues, hunters, or mages) but with Blizzard’s introduction to fun tanking and the Death Knight, there’s plenty of meat shielding to go around, however. There are no healers. Not a single fucking one.
Just to prove my point, I asked Samadams (guildmate and friend of mine) to log on his 70 Disc. Priest the other night. We were inside the Nexus already halfway through (running other guild mates) when he told me I was right, he was being spammed with tons of messages asking him to heal this or that. The demand for healers has never been higher, but leveling a healer (no matter what some of you say) is not all fun and games. Sure it’s viable but it’s not exactly the most fun or exciting from what I hear; and when you have to tag mobs in split second windows it doesn’t leave much room for specs that don’t optimize their killing power.
DPS of Healing specs
1) Our goal was never to make all specs exceptional at dps. We did want to improve the dps of all the healing specs though.
2) We do think Holy paladin dps is too low.
3) Resto shammy and druid probably aren’t that great either.
4) We do have plans to improve these, but we don’t think your dps is so awful that you will have difficulty leveling. Certain classes and specs have always excelled at leveling, which means others are going to be slower. If your leveling rate is too low for your comfort, you can respec. (src)
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Nov 17th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I am currently leveling a healer-ish build, but there are some drawbacks to it. I don’t kill stuff as easily on my own and can struggle on some of the harder quests. If you want a healer for your runs, you had better be ready to do more than 1 run. Its not worth a healing classes time to spec healing for one run then have to spend 50g to go back to a dps spec. Most healers will glady respecc if you can assure them they are going to get several runs. I told my guild not to ask me to stop questing to heal unless they have a group willing to do atleast 4 instances/or a ton of group quests.
Nov 18th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’ll let you know once I get to some serious time on my priest how it goes for leveling a healer. My plan was to just heal my way through Northrend, instance after instance. Since healers are always in high demand I had no trouble with this in Outland and expect the same in Northrend.
Usually though I can do okay for DPS for quests as well, and since I haven’t encountered “too many” of the kill X of mob Y yet, it shouldn’t be too bad. It’s a little slower to kill something, but with mana regen as high as a healing priests there’s very little downtime.
Nov 18th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
im leveling a holy priest now and sorry to say …. its slow! Sure i can do pretty good damage on things my range but compaired to a Spriest or a Rogue its alot slower and difficult to do. But ive lvled holy the whole time, ive never once gone Shadow. Just need to have devotion to your class and spec.
Nov 19th, 2008 at 7:36 am
well, as a lock with a resto druid, i struggled weather i should lvl as resto or respecc balance for lvling, but i knew what to do while lvling my lock. he was destro, and perfectly capable of 2 shotting everything in his path, but that mana and health bar just went down so quickly….and i’m not keen on buying food at every vendor i see. So i just respecced to afl, even tho i don’t like it very much. result, i could kill a mob ending up with 100% health and mana for me and my demon! but it was pretty boring, so i respecced to demon, and holy crap! metarmophosis, immolation aura and PEWPEW, 10 q mobs down at once. What i’m saying is that respeccing does pay off, especially if you’re trying to have fun rather then racing to 80. So my druid is defo going to be feral for lvling, cat charge ftw! ^^
Nov 25th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I’m leveling a holy pally, and yes, it’s slow. I’ve spent more time playing than my dps friends, and they’ve surpassed my current level. The only thing is that I want experience healing along the way for arena and pvp, which I believe pve helps with this, while doing the best (albeit not much) dps as I can for good practice. What better time than now to learn my new abilities and be ready? If I respec just to do instances, I’m not truly learning my spec. Yes, it takes more time, but I’m learning about my character more now and and I believe it will pay off in the long run.
Nov 25th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I, too, am leveling as a holy paladin. Like Ennchantress above, I too, am being outleveled by friends who play less than I do. I leveled Holy spec all the way from level 40, so I’m used to it being a slower pace than the other people I play with. They may hit 80 before I do, but as far as I can tell, 80 is going to be the cap for a while (what, like 2 years between expansions), so being the hardcore-casual player that I am, I’m not in any hurry to get there.
Plus, it doesn’t hurt my feelings if the tank and DPS already know the instance from having PUGed it by the time I’m ready to heal for them… makes it that much easier on me.
Nov 26th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Back in TBC I leveled my Druid as Feral, then swapped to Resto for raiding. However, it meant that I left half the quests unfinished. Trying to go back and clean up my quest log as Resto was terrible. Farming my skinning was the same - just really painful.
For WoTLK I’ve specced Boomkin and I’m going to complete all the quests first before I finally shift into Resto mode. Yes, it’s tough that nobody can find healers right now for instances, but that’s just how it’s going to be for a few months until former-healers like myself get through the (superb) quests.
Nov 26th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
yeah I assumed as much that’s what’s going on right now. Hey btw, now recruiting healers for wotlk stuffs…
Nov 29th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I’m doing the level grind 70-80 as a resto druid and with the new talent trees its really not that bad. I just keep a set of resto gear and a set of dps gear and just switch them out as appropriate. You don’t kill as fast as you do feral or balance, but you get by fine with the buffed heals.
Dec 1st, 2008 at 9:08 am
I was raid resto in TBC, switched to full Boomkin to level through Wrath. Yes damage output is great and the change was nice, but there is a demand for healers and I enjoy healing and instancing, so on advice from a guildee I made a balance/resto hybrid, just enough points in Balance to get Moonkin form, and enough in Resto to get Swiftmend. Damage is down, so yes it’s slower (but not too bad), but survivability is way up as getting Nature’s Swiftness and Swiftmend back make it near impossible for groups of mobs to kill you. Where my Boomkin was dying with 3-4 mobs on me, my hybrid is surviving due to greater self healing. The heal gain is much greater than the damage loss for soloing, and you can confidently heal an instance again - Balance spec healing is very poor. If rested, instance xp is rather good for lvling.