Originally Posted by meringue
So our guild has recently experienced a healer shortage resulting in this bear being converted to tree. In some raids I am the third tree, but still only 7th healer. Due to the fact that I raided feral until last Wednesday, I have mostly gear that the regular resto's didn't want or already had (go go Vashj shoulders). We have had some success since I switched, killing both Teron Gorefiend and Gurtogg Bloodboil this week. So now we are a 4/5 and 5/9 guild. Here is my dilemma: do I run with my druid main in mixed kara/T5 gear + Shroud of the Final Stand (thanks Supremus trash!) as the third tree or is my raid spot better filled with my T4 holy pally? I really wanted my druid in for BT this week so I could make all the shadow resist patterns, and that rep is obtained now. I prefer the mobile and varied healing style of the druid but from reading the thread it looks like the 3rd tree is rather superfluous. Both are keyed for T6, although that was supposed to be for emergencies only. So my questions are: when is it strongly preferred to bring the paladin over the druid and what assignments do you give to three trees in a 7 healer raid. I figure I'm boned on DKP no matter which one is in the raid, but I'd prefer to only have to gear up one. Armory profiles included for gear comparison, ideally it will notice that the pally is no longer wearing her Lovely Purple Dress soon. Thanks for assistance!
Meringue, druid
Ephelea, paladin |
To be honest, while druids keep stacking ok, you definitely want a balance between your healers, and not overstack one type(barring specials encounters, 3priests for bloodboil totally trivialize it since you can just poh the bloodboils easily and a lot of prayers jumping around). Druids are very good at some fights, and not so good on others, and if you have 3druids, you might lack some healing in particular situations. If you can only choose between druid and paladin(assuming you're fine on resto shaman and holy priest), it also depends on how many paladins you usually have. If you run with 2, then I'd say yes, a holy paladin might be better. If you run with only one, a paladin is definitely better.
Situations where 3druids are not so good:
-Najentus, the hots take time to fill people back to full life before a spine, regrowth is long cast and inneficient. One druid is enough on the tank to stabilize, 2 will probably make most of the healing on him superfluous.
-Teron, I'm not sure 3druids alone can keep the tank up on bad strings of hits, because swiftmend only goes so far sadly, and teron hits like a truck. Assigning a druid to raid healing on teron is not efficient at all either, because you need people topped off asap so they don't die to consecutive shadowbolts.
-Archimonde, while druids make good healers there, you want a decent number of priests and paladins because they have tools to keep healing while feared(bubble, fearward, if youre horde your priests can be undead). Matter of taste tho, I guess druids would do fine if you have enough priests on the side.
That's all I can think of honestly, it's not that much. Most fights will see the 3 stack of lifeblooms on the tank healing ~40-60% of the incoming damage between hits, making tank healing trivial. The issue I have with stacking druids is, while we're good for healing timed AE damage(like flame burst on illidan), we somewhat suck for random AEs, or fast repeating AEs(najentus, or illidan phase2 when he bombs people). We fall behind and people die if they're unlucky with targetting.
In the end, it's up to you and your guild, if you don't have 2paladins every raid tho, imo the blessings totally offset any kind of druid perks. There's simply no class that cannot use at least 2blessings efficiently. If you already have 2 paladins, I guess a 3rd druid isn't bad, it's also a 3rd innervate and a 3rd combat rez, which comes handy when learning new encounters.