sorry for posting on an old thread, I’m playing catch-up today

Here is how I assign healing roles in Karazhan. I normally assign myself to the offtank, and a Pally or Priest to the main tank, then a Shammy or Priest to the raid. The reason I assign myself (a druid) the offtank, is that the offtank doesn’t often take much damage. That frees me up to “help where needed.” I spend most of the trash pull time helping out with raid healing and doing a little DPS. During boss fights I let the healers know I will roll lifebloom on one or both tanks, depending on the fight.

A lot of this also depends on the healer’s gear levels. A tree with a lot of plus healing can fill ANY role (my Lifebloom ticks in the 600 range, and I am not all THAT well geared….all Kara stuff), and might be best served rolling lifeblooms on the tanks.

As far as 25 mans, you have to assign based on skill and knowledge more than gear or class, IMO.

I think one thing you might be missing is the perspective here. I wasn’t trying to argue whether or not Druids make good healers. I believe Druids make GREAT healers, and can be integral to any group, raid or high level encounter. Rather, I wanted to make a post to help the ill-informed and “clueless” understand what our strengths and weaknesses were. This was largely inspired by other bloggers I had seen do similar treatments to their classes, but it was also inspired by the groups I have been in that flat out don’t understand our strengths and weaknesses.

For instance…

The group where the DPS sits around waiting for a rez after a tough encounter, expecting me to blow my Battle Rez.

The Kara raid that is using me only as a raid healer, and leaving the healing of the tanks to priests.

I’m also not saying we CAN’T handle spike damage, but certainly every other healing class can handle it better than a druid. Now, skill does play a factor and I personally don’t have real problems with it, as I stay on my toes and aware. I can anticipate damage and start a regrowth rolling fairly easily, or be prepared to hit NS or SM. Still, a priest, shammy or pally will be more effective in mitigating large spikes of damage.

In the end, I think we can quickly agree on one thing, skill means a lot more than anything else when it comes to healing. I’ve greatly outperformed healers that had much more experience and better gear than I, because I am able to anticipate. Thanks for reading!

I’d go so far as to say that you’re not doing your job as a resto druid if you’re not anticipating spike damage, which can be easily mitigated with a well timed NS, Swiftmend or a Cyclone, if you’re not debuffing with IS and Faerie Fire, if you’re not Hibernating anything when it’s applicable (I used to do this regularly in heroic instances and in BT) and if you’re not automatically giving the tank Thorns whenever it’s up. Any buff, however small, is an edge, and I can’t even begin to explain how important all of the above are on a tightly-tuned encounter like Brutallus. My thorns alone did over 7003 damage to him before we all bought it. He’s the perfect example of how druid buffs and debuffs can add up, and while not everyone is trying to slam an 11million HP Pit Lord on steroids in six minutes, it just goes to show that all of that can be utilized on a normal instance-to-instance basis.

Unless you’re purposefully trying to “poke fun” at your class, I suggest that in the future, you try illustrating how our “nearly useless” abilities can also be strengths.

Utility – Remove curse, cure poison (multiple poisons with one cast), being immune to Polymorph, still having cat form and the ability to stealth and even having a stun (when in Bear).

Rezzing – Yes, 1 rez every 20 min is not for bringing up lazy people. It is for bringing up a dead dps when the boss is near death, bringing up another healer to help keep the raid alive, or in extreme cases, bringing your MT back. I know alot of Resto Druids who took on the Engineering profession just to get another rez possibility with the Goblin Jumper Cables XL.

Healing – I’ve always looked at Druids and Priests as great group healers and Pallys and Shaman as the better Tank healers. Though, I did know one Resto Druid who was a fantastic MT healer, even in places like Kara, Gruul’s and ZA.

HOTs – My first true love for Resto HOTs came when I saw that our druid could heal the victims of Moroes’ garrotte through the ticking damage with the greatest of ease. Nothing like “set it and forget it” healing.