Thursday, July 9, 2009

What's my job?

So most places I look there is the general consensus that Resto Druids are Raid healers, end of story. We have the arsenal of spells, the mobility to heal hard to reach players, and the springy branch arms to get the job done. Since we have the ability to mash rejuv and wild growth until our entire grid screen is a bright Christmas tree of HoTs we must absolutely suck at tank healing. I believe that statement is false. Although we don't have the same amount of life-saving cooldowns (Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Bubble/Sacrifice, Aura Mastery, I probably left some out but I thought of those off the top of my head) as other classes I'd like to think that our HoTs are providing a reasonable buffer as well as multiplier for Nourish to allow us to effectively heal tanks. We do have Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch but when a tank is being 1 shotted by a boss even the fastest fingers in the west can't NS/HT the tank to life.

I think in terms of versatility Druids are a close 2nd behind Priests. Those silly clothies have 2 specs to pick to heal from and a broader array of healing spells that just makes them a better jack-of-all-healers in my opinion. And while more and more I see that druids are being assigned to the raid healing position I'd like to believe it is because we're the best class for that job, not because we're the worst class for tank healing.

So here's my mission. Over the next few weeks/months I plan on doing some number crunching and theorycrafting on all things Resto in order to verify or challenge some of the assumptions about our healing. I think it will be a fun project and hopefully one I can archive to help all the little trees out there. Now where did my calculator go?

3 comments:

  1. My favourite "assignment" will always be to keep a HoT or two on the tank ('look after' them) and then heal the raid as required.

    This mix of proactive and reactive healing is what I love best. I adore it being a buffer for the tank and his healers.. but zipping around to heal anyone else who needs it. Keeping my HoT timers in the front of my mind, but watching for trouble and anticipating damage on the raid.

    I hate being pigeon-holed into being a raid healer. I don't ever want to be resigned to always healing the raid.

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  2. I already worked out tank healing stuff. The 20% buff to nourish next patch just makes us even better MT healers. It's just that Ulduar just thinks "hard" means "everyone take damage".

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  3. I am actually one of the 2 main healers in our guild. The other is a priest, but that is to be expected I guess. But I am happy to say that there is some people that see a druids full potential.
    I have been one of the 2 main healers since ZG days and hopefully will continue to be. So yea Druids!!
    Plus I think it is also because my hubby is the second main tank of the guild and we work well together,lol

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