Which would be best in a raid group, discussing healers and tanks.

[Massivebacon 0]

Hi!

Myself and a few friends have re-joined WoW a few weeks ago, and we have started getting back into raiding.

Since we aren't up to tier, we are currently clearing ToT, and in a few weeks, we are going to start breaking ourselves into SoO when we have the gear. :3

We did our first run of ToT on Thursday, and we cleared 4/12, we spent about one and a half hours wiping on Megaera.

 

Our current set up (for tanks and healers) is,

Tanks -

Main tank - Monk

Off-tank - Warrior (That's me!)

 

Healers -

Tank healer - Holy priest

Raid healer 1 - Resto druid

Raid healer 2 - Resto druid

 

(For good measure, I'll also put in our Deepz.)

 

Melee -

Frost DK

Warrior

 

Ranged -

Warlock

Mage

Hunter

 

 

Currently, the main tank monk is finding he is taking waaay too much damage, and is strongly considering switching to his Paladin as a tank.  We figure this will be a good idea, since Paladins seem to excel at single target tanking, and I, being the warrior off-tank love tanking multiple minions so I get to spam revenge since I'm getting endless proc's from parrying so I can keep shield block up forever, and can use Shield Barrier for the 3 second downtime.  I'm also capable enough to not have any problem picking up adds (like bats in the Tortos encounter)  so tanking-wise, we think that will be great set-up.

 

However, our current problem is with our healers.  Firstly, even though I'm not informed on healer set-ups, I'm still somewhat confident that a Holy Priest and two Resto Druids is hardly ideal.  However is this *really* pulling us back?

Also, Holy Priest has offered to level his Paladin to heal, as a tank healer.  However the guide on this website says that they aren't brilliant tank healers, and should just raid heal while keeping Beacon on a tank to support a little.  Would a Paladin Healer be better at healing us tanks, or is a Holy Priest better? Or are both of them equally good/bad?  Also, we are currently having a little difficult with healers and their numbers, what is the hps expected around ilvl 500~?  Currently we have one Druid getting 60-75k (510 ilvl) one getting 40-65k (495 ilvl) and the Holy Priest getting 40-65k (508 ilvl), the Holy Priest being the tank healer.

 

Ideally, we would want to clear all of ToT normal for a week or two, clear SoO on normal, and eventually start on heroic progression.  Is there anything with our setup that is majorly holding us back?

[Krazyito 521]

You should be able to do normals with just about any group composition.  It shouldn't matter there.  Heroics, you may want to think about it more.

 

Priests and Paladin are better tank healers IMO than any other healer.  But they are also versatile enough to perform raid healing.

 

In a 10 man all your healers should really be "tank healers" especially if you are 2 healing unless a specific fight calls otherwise.  Honestly, I would say have your priest learn Disc, which can do a bit more tank healing (IMO) than holy.

 

The other problem could be 2 druids.  if its possible, id say for one of them to go shaman which I think would synergize will with the disc priest bubbles and the druid hots because shamans give +max HP when they heal on top of the useful raid cooldowns.  They can also work well as a tank healer when need be, but the problem is that they lack single target cooldowns for the tank.

 

 

If you're set on keeping 2 druids, I would say have your priest try Disc before he switches to paladin.

[Massivebacon 0]

Thanks for the reply :D

It's good that we should be able to clear normals regardless, providing people don't suck (which I hope they don't :D)

Why do you think are Priests and Paladin's better tank healers than others? (curiosity) I always loved a Shaman healing me, personally ^^

 

In our 10 man, it's somewhat rare that I don't see a load of Druid HoT's on me, however when I say "tank healer", I mean the healer that is primarily focusing on the tanks, so I get what you mean with that.  However why Disc? I thought Disc would just put a bubble on you that would absorb half a hit, use penance then start crying while spamming flash heal because there is nothing more he/she can do.  Or that was what it felt like when our priest tried Disc :D Perhaps he needs practice. 

 

I could very kindly ask one of our druids to switch to a Shaman, however neither of them have a leveled shaman, so it would have to be a very nice favor of them. 

 

Big thanks to the reply, it's been helpful ^^

[Xinto 18]

If you can't "replace" one fo the druid with a different class (any would maybe be better than two druid), don't worry as druid are pretty strong.

 

Disc priests seem to be stronger than Holy imho so I would certainy suggest that before moving to Pala, and Pala healing has changed this patch making it so you priest would have to relearn the class ... in most circumstances player skill makes more difference than the difference between classes so I would definately say to stick with their priest.

 

My raid team completed ToT with 2 warrior tanks, I would not switch tbh, as mentioned above, competancy, make a massive difference relative to class differences.

 

Dont know too much about druid healing but can they set their characters up differently so they are complimenting each other rather than competing? Ofc they want to compete but I mean both being highly capable in difference circumstances rather than the same which would lead to more overhealing.

 

And a note about what you are raiding. Get your butts into Flex SoO ... first two bosses should be doable with a skilled group of 510ers. The 540ilvl will boost your guild more than a few 522's from ToT, especially as you would be willing to upgrade the 540 whereas the 522's seem a bit pointless to waste valor on.

[Massivebacon 0]

Thanks for the reply :D

 

I'll run it past the raid leader to see if we can get the Priest to go Disc.

 

I'm really interested in what you mean by getting the Druids to complement each other rather than compete, how exactly would that be done?  Would it just be a matter of co-ordination, or would one have to change their spec etc?  I'm rather uninformed on Druid healers considering we have two :D

[Xinto 18]

As I said, not too sure myself but I remember reading about it in the druid forum.

 

This was the topic https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/2859-high-mastery-or-hard-cap-haste/

 

Not a lot of info or evidence to suggest one going for the high haste and the other high mastery (I believe they all mastery stack in general).

 

But its just an option which may be worth investigating.

[Nemo 27]

The most important thing when you're running two druid healers, is that they coordinate their hots.

Of course both of them should have rejuvenation and lifebloom ticking on the tank, but usually the rest of the raid wont need more than one hot per person.

Having your druids set up their raid frames, so that they show each other's hots should do the trick.

 

It can be a little tricky to tank heal as a druid, since you need to be careful not to run OoM when hardcasting your direct heals.

However with a little practice it is entirely doable. Especially with the new shrooms and barkskin being on such a short cooldown. Druids are very strong at the moment.

 

When it comes to holy priests they are the traditional raid healer stereotype.

However as the patch is unfolding they can serve as exellent tank healers as well. This is do to a great combination of hots and strong single target heals and cooldowns.

Holy certainly isn't far behind Disc when it comes to tank healing, in fact is close to being the other way around at this point.

Disc priest are crazy strong raid healers (in ten-mans) with spirit shell.

 

My point is, nearly all of the healing specs can perform exellent as either a tank healer, raid healer or (and this is the option I find used most of the time) as a flex healer with varying responsabilities that change throughout the fight.

 

Finally; don't bother with the hps numbers of your healers.

They can be very misleading due to the fact that healer hps is basically capped by the amount of damage your raid is recieving.

Thus, depending on the tank, a hps of 40.000 can be exellent for a dedicated tank healer.

Leave you healers to compare hps, overhealing and mana usage among themselves. They'll know what's happening in way more detail than the raid leader does. Of course if one of your healers is consistently below the other two by 40.000 hps, you might wanna look into it (or start running with just two healers).

 

I hope this helps :)

[Shine 144]

I personally always liked playing discipline priest, they are quite powerfull and when used properly they can perform really well.

 

I think you should really try using a disc priest as a tank assigned healer. Make sure to read the input on the Disc Priest class of this site, and practice it a couple of times in LFR first, before dragging yourself in normal content.

 

The key to winning is knowing your class (regardless of which one) and performing rotation to max capacity. If you do this then I agree with Krazyto, you can do pretty much any combination of heals/tanks/DPS and still make it.

I do advise to at least try and bring some variety in your team, but reading which classes you bring it should be fine.

(we once tried clearing Terrace with a team made of only Shammy's and Pally's and although this is alot of fun it is not very usefull. this is ofc perfectly logical.)

 

Finally, regarding your tanks. Any combo of tanks should work, but I personally play DK. DK's take a bit spikey damage but they can be VERY good soakers, and they will heal half the damage they get back themselves. They will also have a very good absorption shield throught their mastery.

I heard (at least before 5.4) that Pally's are the top choice for tanks. I have not really learned the pally class myself but they seem to be very good tanks.

 

Keep us up to date on your performance and feel free to ask any other questions.

[Farnion 8]

I would say it is nice to have a plate/leather combo for the tanks to have a better tank loot distribution (although rogues, cats and windwalker may disagree here ;) )

[Massivebacon 0]

*takes large in-take of breath*

@Nemo

Thanks, I think the Druids were going a little wrong there, we will take it over with them and hopfully iron out anything that's a waste :3

I also think that Spirit Shell would be pretty nice with two Druid healers, just put HoT's on everyone and shield them up so their health slowly ticks up.

You say that almost all healers work well as both tank and raid healers, but is there our Holy Priest was still struggling, which is why we decided to look into a change (and mainly why I made this post)

And the only reason I mentioned HPS was because in every fight each healer was always in the same order, and the bottom healer was significantly lower than the one above, and again with the second healer to the first.  I know that sometimes it can be missleading, but when it's consistantly lower and people are dying, it makes you wonder :D

 

@Shine

Yes, we I really think we are going to switch the healer around to being a Disc Priest and keep him as a tank healer.  I understand that if you preform your class to the maximum capibility it can preform, you shouldn't have many problems, however all the complications come when someone can't preform, and that's a problem in our raid since we have quite a lot of newer raiders.

Also, even if an combo of tanks would work, we would still prefer a stronger combo over a weaker one, obviously, especially since the guild/raid leader and co-leader are the tanks, and we are the ones who want progression more than anyone else, it makes sense that we want to pick atleast strong tanks rather than ones that seem weaker.

 

@Farnion

We have discussed about loot dropping, and it's slightly annoying that we will be sharing loot, however we still feel that it would be for the better of the raid. We would also need to bring in a Rogue, Windwalker or a Cat =P

 

Thanks for the replies all! Our next raid is Wednesday, so I'll make a post so everyone who wants to know can see how well we do :D

(P.S, sorry for not replying sooner, but I moved to a new place and had no internet D:)

[trieu 4]

Disc priests and holy paladins because they bring absorbs in which mitigates damage. Bringing resto shaman and druid are throughput meaning when theres high raid damage say during rampage they can push the numbers while a disc priest could use inner focus/ spirit shell before rampage to cushion the damage before it comes in as well as lower the breath damage on the tanks.

 

Paladin healers provide almost absorbs because all of their heals minus eternal flame put illuminated healing on targets for a percentage based on their mastery. 

 

Monk tanks are one of the most powerful tanks in the game atm, so Im not sure why he is taking too much damage because you didnt really elaborate on it but if its on megaera, is it the breath?, he could glyph guard to absorb more but only magical damage in which he can have up for them. 

 

If its physical damage, is he keeping shuffle up 100% of the time and using elusive brew as needed. Or he could get more mastery for damage smooth or maybe not enough elusive brews generating in which maybe more crit?

 

But with that said monks shouldnt really be a main tank( dont really like that term). the first to tank the boss say horridon or jinrokh maybe you should swap because they have no active mitigation at the pull and can get hit at the start for a hefty amount. Block tanks, e.g prot warrior and paladin, are more of meat shields because they can block and are armor tanks. Monks aren't armor tanks and were (assumed) designed with active mitigation in mind. So you could tank the boss first? its up to how you want to do it. I dont think the healers nor the tanks are the issue especially if you got up to megaera as you are now but I dont think its really necessary to have 2 resto druids and 3 throughput healing classes.

 

Your priest also doesn't like disc because it isn't about the raw healing and throughput of a holy priest. Disc priest is there to prevent/slow the damage before it becomes a problem(alot of their healing are absorbs).  A healer should never have nothing to do at the very last they should be atonement healing when there is low damage. Disc priests stat priority are very much different from holy as well being crit (procs divine aegis)> mastery right after spirit. 

[Nemo 27]

I maintain that practising a class you enjoy will usually lead to better results than swapping to comps that are stronger on paper.

Sure, if your fellow raiders don't mind changing spec/class you can give it a go, just be warned that it is rarely a shortcut to succes. Especially in PvE where the specs are so finely ballanced.

 

I two-healed half of the expansion (up untill ToT) with a holy priest (I'm play a resto druid) and we did alright even though both holy and resto were supposed to be the worst tank healers at that point.

 

Practise, learn your class and have fun. That will lead to much better results than swapping classes at the first sign of trouble.

 

(Which, I am not saying that you are doing. Just a peice of general advice <3)

[Wetty 6]

Hi there! Your main problem for your raid composition is your healers. They could be the best three healers in the world, but those three specs have been designed for healing multiple targets; not one specific target. I know Holy Priests have the potential to be average-good tank healers, but when Discipline is easier to play, more effective (and more fun in my opinion), Holy is made obsolete.

 

Here are some of my suggestions

 

Firstly, I'll start on your Holy Priest...DO NOT GO PALADIN!

• Change to Discipline. Here's why!
• Discipline provides a lot better mana conservation than Holy! Holy spells tend to cost a lot of mana for the effectiveness of their heals. I underline heals because your Druids should be covering the "heal-side" of the damage.
• One of the main things to realize about Discipline is that you're not a "healer", you're a "shielder". Let me explain... Discipline uses various shields to prevent damage on targets, whether that be Power Word: Shield or other abilities such as Spirit Shell or Divine Aegis!
• The problem you have with your main tank taking so much damage is down to the lack of absorbs (though he is a Monk) that are constantly being put on him. The more uptime of Power Word: Shield and larger amounts of Divine Aegis will minimize the damage he is taking!
• Possibly the deciding factor of Discipline is that nowadays they're essentially a DPS class. Atonement - if you don't know about it, READ UP! - is very very good. It can provide A LOT of DPS as well as smashing out a huge amount of healing throughput as well as building up that Divine Aegis through critical strikes. Your Priest must remember that though he CAN heal through DPSing 100% of the time, it isn't 100% effective to do that! Power Word: Shield and other general heals still must be attained for him to produce as much healing as possible.
• But remember, Discipline SHIELDS and not HEALS. You'll get the majority of your HPS through the absorbs you put on targets - This is in no way telling you NOT to use spells such as Prayer of Healing for AoE! Prayer of Healing combined with Inner Focus has the potential to heal A LOT. Especially when taking a lot of damage (for example Rampage phase on Megara).

Now...Your other two healers! Again, they could be the best healers in the world but two healers of the same class (or spec) is never efficiant! The heals will overlap eachother, cancel eachother out and ultimately have the same effect! In essence you could be losing an entire (virtual) healer through having two of the same class. "Variety is the spice of life" they say...Well it's the same for raiding - especially composing your healers!

• The main benefit of changing to a Disc Priest is that you get absorbs from your Priest + heals from your Druids. Now it's hard for me to optimize your healing composition if you're planning to stick with two Druids, but if one of the Druids are willing to change to change class, I would strongly suggest a Shaman.
• Speaking as a Resto Shaman in my 25 man guild, I can't emphasize enough how "needed" one is. The main benefit I can see having a Shaman is the additional health that they provide! Each heal they produce gives their target a larger maximum health pool. This may seem a bit shite, but it makes a huge difference. Shamans provide a lot of variety in terms of healing. If the tank is about to get fucked then their mastery is a "get out of jail" card.
• They have three main healing cooldowns...THREE. All with a 3-minute cooldown, they can essentially use a huge cooldown every 60 seconds! Healing Tide Totem is a Divine Hymn for Shamans, Ascendance combined with a pre-placed Healing Rain is a wipe-saver and Spirit Link is possibly the most powerful healing cooldown in the game.
• If that hasn't tempted you to switch to a Shaman, note that they have just been "reworked" (basically they're been given a massive buff), compared to how they used to work. They're the best healer in-game in terms of healing throughput - This is not to say "OMG GET 3 SHAMANS", remember, variety is key if you want a successful raid team!

To conclude, I would strongly advice my changes to your raid composition, you'll notice a huge difference. I advise you have your Priest have a look at the Discipline notes I have made as I read your post that quotes:

 

"However why Disc? I thought Disc would just put a bubble on you that would absorb half a hit, use penance then start crying while spamming flash heal because there is nothing more he/she can do.  Or that was what it felt like when our priest tried Disc Perhaps he needs practice."

 

From what I remember, Flash Heal states on the Tooltip "Emergency Heal", and It can't be emphasized enough how little you use it. If your Priest is struggling to find healing to do when Power Word: Shield is on cooldown, DPS the boss with Smite, Penance and Holy Fire (Or Power Word: Solace - whatever it's called these days xD), you get extra (and good) damage from a healer as well as direct heals through Atonement and critical strikes result in Divine Aegis! And if that's not enough, you also build up stacks of Evangelism which can be consumed to give you Archangel which gives you even more healing through DPSing (and also pretty wings )!

 

I wish you the best of luck with your guild! Just message me if you want any more information, I'd be more than happy to help!

Edited September 24, 2013 by Vekz

[Massivebacon 0]

(Firstly, this is a long post so theres a TL;DR at the bottom, and sorry for taking so long to reply D:)

Okay, thanks for all the replies! I've read them all, and they've all been very helpfull! :D You're all awesome and I really like this website, everyones damn good and doesn't seem to be eliteist in the slightest. :D

 

Firstly, the future of the guild is starting to look somewhat more like a 25 man, since recently we've had many old members contact us asking to re-join, pushing our raider-count to a grand total 15, which is more than we would want to rotate around.  So the plan now is get in SoO flex and get recruiting untill we have the numbers to start 25 man (I think).  Might take a while, but when we get the numbers I'll contact y'all on some inevitable problem we will have, since you're all so awesome :D  The funny part is that the guild leader really hates the idea of running a 25 man guild, however myself and another raider convinced him he couldn't just keep the guild as a flex guild, so I agreed to take some of the load off if it got too much for him :D  We will be clearing ToT 10 fully first, though.

 

Okay. I'll start with how our raid went, from Thursday (Wednesday didn't happen D:) and Sunday.  For Thursday, we got another healer (another holy priest), from our old guild since our main druid healer had a HDD problem.  We only did a 2 hour raid (supposed to be 3 hours) and we pretty much 1 shot the first 5 bosses with a good bit of explaining before each fight. (Apart from Totos, he took like 4 attempts.)  That was the Thursday raid, honestly everything went well, all healers were on almost identical HpS and myself and the Guild leader both agreed that it went great. 

 

Then Sunday came, when I was raid leading. (My first time D:). We cleared up to Dark Animus, we one shot Ji-Kun, had about 40 mins of wiping on Durumu (people were getting used to dealing with the Drain Life mainly), we one-shot Primordius with the ridiculous zerg tactic (which I think is the most stupid tactic for any boss ever...) and we got to Dark Animus.  We had one attempt and decided to leave it there.

 

Over all, the raid week (as a two day week) went well, and we are gearing up nice.  Hopfully we can get to SoO flex as soon as possible.

 

 

REPLIES :D

 

@trieu - Surly if we had a disc priest and two resto druids, there would be no heavy heals on the tank then?  I get that shields for the raid are awesome and all, but I wanna stay alive!  I don't really see where we would get the major heals from.

 

I'm not sure why we found he was taking so much damage.  Yes he was being the initial tank in most encounters, so he would take quite a bit of damage to start with, but the damage never really lowered.  He tried both crit and mastery build, and found that really, the mastery build was superior in taking less damage.

 

In the end we decided to go with him on a Paladin, and we have been using it since.  We have been doing great, whenever there are adds, I, the warrior has been on them, getting revenge procs all day and keeping up Shield Block, and he's always been on single target whenever possible, which is pretty much every encounter. 

 

Also, you said "Disc priests stat priority are very much different from holy as well being crit (procs divine aegis)> mastery right after spirit." regarding healers.  I'll keep that in mind, I think that could be a pretty vital reason why he wasn't finding Disc to be very effective, thanks :D

 

@Nemo - I get that playing a char that you enjoy would be better than one you don't, and I've only ever asked people to change their class / spec if they were comfortable with it =P It's always good to be reminded though. :)

 

@Vekz - I think it would be easier to just show the holy priest what you wrote, I'll go ahead and send it to him on skype =P Thanks for the really detailed reply.   When we hit to raiding as a 25, I may very well get in contact with you regarding healers :) Thanks!

 

 

TL;DR, We now have two Priests and are steaming through ToT without any problems.  We have had old guildies contact us and ask to join, making our raider count to 15, so we are going to do flex SoO untill we get 25, then changing to 25 man.  Thanks for all the help, you've all been great! :D

 

 

Quick question; for if (when) we convert to a 25 man, would it be worth getting our current holy priest to switch to disc, switch to a holy paladin, or stay as holy priest?

[Wetty 6]

No worries my friend

 

In reply to your question about changing your Holy Priest to disc OR to a paladin...In short - no! Holy Priests will excel in 25 man raids moreso than 10 man, with the MoP changes to Paladin, Discipline and Paladins clash like hell! Now that Paladins are more of a "shield" class, (I believe) they cancel some buffs on the target that the Discipline Priest provides. In my guild, we used to raid with two disc priests, two paladins, a druid and me (shaman), the Disc priests would always be top, myself and the Druid in the middle and Paladins at the bottom! I would strongly adhere to having one Holy and one Discipline Priest IF you're having two Priests, if not...Then have a Holy Priest AND a Holy Paladin, that way everyone is happy!

 

Holy Priests, Druids, Shamans and Monks deal with all of the throughput healing, whereas Paladins and Disc Priests use shields to mitigate damage! Having a combination of both is key to raiding, especially progression content!

 

As a healer, it isn't your job to "top meters" like DPS aim to do! It's very easy to get carried away with getting the most HPS, but it's not what healing is about! You have healers to keep people alive! Obviously this is not to encourage you or any other healer to slack healing because it doesn't matter, as long as people are alive xD Everyone gets excited when they top healing meters but the fact of the matter is...It doesn't really matter! Variety, utility and coordination is what matters

 

Feel free to PM me as I'm not always around on the forums, I'd be more than happy to help you out in any way I can! I hope you found this helpful:) Good luck!

Edited October 1, 2013 by Vekz