I am looking forward to seeing what bosses come out in IC. However, each encounter will likely have a healer which will pull ahead of the others. As has been mentioned many a place, low, steady, DOT like auras are a godsend to Druids and from what I have seen, no-one is able to touch a Druid on Twins, except maybe Disc Priest spam shielding – 9k+ shield + 1.5-2k Glyph heal every 1 second, plus POM bounces. Whilst little of this is overheal, it does max out, whereas Druids can pump out more raw healing usually some of this is OH bringing them into line with a Disc, if a little ahead.

1 of 5 bosses of current end game where you are practically gonna be “top” healer is fair play for a game with 5 healing specs.

One other great thing about Druids is that they scale a lot better with the number of healers in the raid. Druids perform a lot better in raids with 5 healers than with 7, which is somewhat true of Paladins as it lets your sheer througput shine through, knocking your massive OH into effective healing. This is especially important for progress fights with a DPS race

I really can’t see most guilds stacking one type of healer, except for some gimmicky encounter – and I don’t think Blizzard’s design philosophy will allow them to produce an encounter with 5 Priests or 6 Shamans or 4 Druid healers without nerfing it to hell and back. IMHO a mix of healers is usually the best way to heal an encounter and that will continue.

Doesn’t mean rejvuenation wasn’t OP in Naxx. It sure was. But it is no longer.

Let’s remember that in SWP, imbalances were a problem. It won’t be as much of a problem as it was in SWP, because you don’t need a heroism for every group, and druids and priests are generally better raid healers than they were back then (which is a positive), but imbalances in PvE for that sort of stuff creates problems when you feel you need to stack a class to succeed optimally. And for the most difficult content in an expansion cycle, that’s a very real possibility. So I’m sticking up for the class I’m stuck playing this late into content, and I have said they either need to introduce more situations where each class shines in Icecrown, or not change things that will create imbalances.

Also, while the glyph will help with isolated damage, it will not increase the amount of healing rejuvenation does per cast. So for steady raid-wide damage, it will do nothing and actually be detrimental (because a lot of our rejuvenation ticks will then become overheal). For isolated damage, however, it will be a buff. But it’s up to Blizzard to include that situation in Icecrown for it to be beneficial on the whole. Hence why I stressed that situations are part of what determine a class’s strength.

As I said in a previous comment, I wasn’t aware PoH’s coefficient was nerfed in 3.2. We haven’t had a full-time healing priest since 3.2 came out, though we now have one on recruit and another about to trial. I just remember a recruit priest that we picked up mid-way through Ulduar hard mode was outhealing me on almost every raid damage heavy fight except Algalon and Mimiron (because people are too spread out). But if it was nerfed, well then my comparison goes out the window for stationary fights and I’ll have to do a lot of calculations.

In any case case, both priests and druids will be in probably the same boat. How will priests feel when shamans outheal them on stationary fights in Icecrown by a good 20% by the time they hit Arthas? Probably not very good. So why should they not argue along with me? It wouldn’t be “whining” in either of our cases.

Bit then shamans should be complaining that they felt behind the curve all the way through the end of Ulduar and are only now becoming competitive. Why? Because CH at a base level is very poor, whereas rejuvenation as a base level is very strong. So there needs to be balancing on both sides of the coin.

All this is not “whining.” Gamers’ connotation of “whining” is far off-base. Argument is necessary to the health and balance in a game. And people who view all arguments as whining are simply narrow-minded or don’t understand the definition of the word.

…

On a different note, a rejuvenation rotation is no more mindless than a lot of other healing styles. You do have to pick your rejuvenation targets wisely on a lot of fights. On Algalon, you need to know who is going to receive less of a benefit from rejuvenation (no self-buffs to increase healing), or who will take more damage (fire mages) and then maximize the uptime on rejuvenation on those people specifically. On Mim hard, this is especially true, as where people are standing relevant to fire is a big concept and requires intelligent rejuvenation applications, because it doesn’t reactively heal (meaning it is a less effective heal for actually keeping people alive through burst, and requires a lot of intelligence to make it succeed on that fight). On Twin Valks heroic, this is true of people who get the DoT and are catching orbs.

It’s not mindless like people think. And people who think it is aren’t exactly optimizing the way they approach it or view it. Not to mention that the rotation you cited doesn’t apply to every fight. It only really applies to XT leading into tantrum, IC hard-mode, Algalon, Kologarn leading into his oblivion thing, Hodir, Freya hard, Mimiron p2/p4, Vezax during animus and Twin Valks. Well, I guess also Sapphiron, but lolNaxx.

Every other fight? We have a completely different rotation and approach. On heroic beasts? I’m stacking and maintaining lifeblooms, rejuvenation, regrowth (and timing the heal on regrowth) on the tanks. Rejuv/SM/nourish fire targets. Stack all different kinds of HoTs on poison/fire targets. And time stacking all my HoTs on the tank right before the stun wears off Icehowl.

These types of fights are not subject to simplistic tools.

And even on the fights I listed, my rotation is not just WG and rejuvenation. I SM people who take burst and could die. I nourish those people when SM is on CD. That’s no different than sitting around and stacking serendipity in preparation of PoHing whatever group looks low on a stationary fight, and then PoMing someone who is about to die, etc. No different than flashing or shielding those people when PoM is on CD. No different than riptiding someone who gets particularly low, and then CH groups of people who need attention. No different than single-targeting someone is great danger before continuing a high raid HPS rotation that each class except paladin really has.

In terms of Renew coming close to RJ, it nearly is and things will be a bit closer in 3.3 but why shouldn’t it be close behind? Becuase Druids are King of HOTs? Renew being good wont tarnish that – you still have the best HOT in RJ plus the breadth of other HOTs. Plus Nourish is by far the best “Flash Heal” equivalent, yet Druids are King of HoTs. Becuase I have something good does not diminish your strength in this area. IMO Holy Priests are by far the worst Tank healers and so should be higher up the Raid healing stakes.

Also, there is potentially an upcoming Glyph boost to RJ that will give Druids an incredible boost in upcoming fights by giving them extra flexibility – do I want 15 sec RJ (bug fixed and talented) for this fight or hasted RJ – swap in/swap out.

POH’s spellpower co-efficient was nerfed heavily from 0.8 to 0.5 (can’t recall exact figures) in 3.2 (at the time this equated to about 20% less healing per cast) and whilst this spell is very good in certain situations, those situations seem to crop up less and less often – or people are being healed up quickly to make this 1500/1800 mana spell overheal too much.

The RJx5, WG tactic was a cheap and easy way to gain EHPS and has contributed to a lot of success for guilds, but you must admit it can be pretty mindless. Look at most high end raiding Priests’ spell breakdown and you will likely see something like POM, COH, POH in high teens/twenties, Renew/Flash in low to mid teens and other spells – surely reacting by choosing the right spell for right situation should be rewarded by more EHPS then going through a rotation? I lovely the HOT aspect of my Druid but do wish to see our other spells empowered – with RJ readjusted – so I can choose from the wide variety I have in my spell book and thus get more fun out of it like I get from my Holy Priest.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the balance of fights in TOC as it gives most healers the chance to shine, if not “win”, including Paladins. I hope to see this continued into Icecrown.

But druids are still fairly good at fights where a few people are taking prolonged damage that aren’t in the same group. Hence why my post addressed situational healing, as our strength as a class will be determined by such situations in the future if they nerf rejuvenation.

I’m… not aware of the PoH nerf. I suppose I should read up on that as it would potentially change my perspective on things.

Personally I don’t have a firm opinion regarding druids or priests being better at raid healing, as both seem to do just fine. If anything i’m seeing well geared resto shamans charging back into the fray raid healing wise and from the noises i’m hearing about 3.3 they will be increasingly strong raid healers in the near future. Oh just read your comment @Mike above. I see you have already covered shaman.

We are going to hear a lot about scaling and healing in future as the sheer amount of spell power floating around is starting to reduce the relevancy of the base heal component of healing spells.

Interesting times.

Gobble gobble.

Fights where they should be losing to druids, currently, are Algalon and Mimiron hard. They should also lose to resto druids if they are also catching orbs on heroic Twins. But otherwise, no (unless I forgot something).

This is comparing holy priests that are raid healing to resto druids that are raid healing on heavy raid damage fights. Not priests actively healing tanks and vice versa.

But they should also be beating druids on fights with lots of isolated damage (like FC, or normal Freya), as FH & PoM & PW:S > Nourish & Regrowth & slow stacking HoTs (and SM has a longish cooldown and requires rejuv to already be running).

Is it QQing to objectively compare classes?

No.

It’s pointing out scaling issues. Rejuv is too good in early content, but it is far from being “too good” in later tiers of gear. That is why I never said rejuvenation was overpowered in general. It may be overpowered in early content, and that’s something they need to address, but it most certainly is not overpowered in the later tiers.

Blizzard merely needs to fix such scaling issues (which you’ll note I said at the end of my entry).

Its also hard to read stuff like this and not just see a QQ: “On some fights, our top shaman now matches my healing, whereas previously he used to be only capable of doing 60% of the amount (using primarily CH)”.

How should I read that other than, “i used to be 2x as good as a comparable shaman but now he can *sometimes* catch up with me”.

I really have no idea how the top level healing stuff is playing out, I haven’t raided in a long time. All I have is this post to go on, and you just aren’t making a very good case.

Hmm, maybe you did say that rejuv is overpowered: “By this point, rejuv is far and away the best in terms of HPS for spells without a cooldown.”