Apparently he was doubting that Druids had the HPS to heal through high-damage encounters.

our standard heroic group is a druid tank, dps warrior, dps shaman, rogue/mage/warlock/hunter, and me as a priest.
goes pretty smooth most of the time, only botanica seemed close to impossible with this setup.

From reading this thread through, it seems that once again, skill wins out. Skilled players with less than optimal specs *can* get the job done. A recurring theme, I think.

I've done a few heroics with myself as main healer and a paladin tank.

I never had much of a problem healing instance runs, only with TBC particular encounters are specifically tough for a paladin healer such as the second boss in crypts. I also don't consider myself a hybrid, healing is the only thing I can do. I'm definately not doing any DPS, my tanking is limited to taunting off mages/warlocks/priests, but I never try to actively keep their agro. Besides, the defenders in slave pens hit me for 4k and I'm in all plate with 11k armor and 6% damage reduction talent - not really much of a tank.

I think all the heroics I've done have been with a paladin tank. I can't say wether a warrior/druid would've been better for particular spots, but I imagine it would be less stressful/avoiding a possible wipe in a situation where max hp is a factor. On a personal note, I absolitely despise a paladin tank because they'll need different buffs from what I need so I have to resort to 5 minute buffs.

You can take upto three "hybrids" (quotes since I don't consider myself a hybrid) on a heroic run given one of them is tanking, one is healing, and one is a shadowpriest. Any more than that you won't have enough CC. I don't consider shadowpriests hybrids anymore either - you want them on your raid to perform a specific task. If forced to heal they're far worse than holy priests much less paladins.

I've been running heroics for the past couple weeks and our usual group makeup is Warrior (me), Mage/Warlock, Mage/Rogue, Shaman (resto) and Druid (0/30/31) or resto.

I've done alot of them as 34/5/22, but I respecced protection to get heroic Arcatraz done over the weekend. All you really need is one very good healer from any of the healing classes, a skilled tank from any of the tanking classes (with decent gear for the harder heroics), and decent dps and you can pretty much do any of the heroics. My guild is fairly priest light since TBC so it's pretty common to have druids as main healers for mostly everything. A druid friend of mine has solo healed many of the heroics, so I'd say a hybrid class can get the job done if they're skilled enough (their group is usually Warrior, Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Druid and they do fine in heroics).

I play a Prot Paladin Tank, my GF plays a Resto Tree of Life Druid, With her buffs (including dodge rating from 2 pc moonglade) i get 20% dodge, 16.5% parry and 13k armor 11.8k hp. She's got 1100+ healing.

We did most of our runs with me tanking her healing and 3 DPS, or 2 DPS + Elem Shaman.

We haven't run in Anykind of bind or situation where we felt not prepared or lacking tools to get the job done.


if that helps.

Yep, especially at omrogg/blackheart, we love trees. Isnt it funny to see trees owning ogres?

As a druid, I have MT'd the following heroics:
Ramparts
Blood Furnace
Shattered Halls (trials of the naaru complete on the 2nd try)
Shadow Labs
Sethekk Halls
Slave Pens
Underbog
Steamvaults
Botanica
Mechannar

If you want to count Karazhan, I've tanked everything in there, up to Nightbane (working on him now). Sometimes I even double-tank stuff that's 'meant to have 2 tanks because we're short on warriors.

I'm honestly pretty confident that I can tank anything, at least until they nerf the bejesus out of me. On the other hand, I'm a nervous wreck when it comes to healing (which I don't do very often). Maybe it's because I'm rusty, or because I'm not resto, but it's very tenuous from start to finish. A big reason for that is the near worthlessness of HoTs, which make up a big part of a druid's playstyle. Someone can die in the global cooldown I just wasted to put up a HoT. Downranking seems to have gone out the window, not so much to do with the nerf to downranking, but just the fact that things hit so hard and you're using max rank a lot.

Personally I get annoyed by the OP's guildmate's sentiment, especially since it can only be based on ignorance. I would say that all heroics (though I haven't tanked all of them, so I can't say for sure) could be tanked by a paladin or a druid, though some fights, like the inciter fight mentioned (I hate tanking that fight so much) are particularly hard for a pally tank.

To say a druid can't mainheal is absolutely ridiculous. There are no "pure" healing classes. Druids are as much hybrids as priests, shaman and paladins are. The only class I'd be a bit worried about really is the shaman, and that's mostly because of my unfamiliarity with them.

That said, the real limiting factor on whether you can heal/tank in heroics is gear. It's the same thing that's seriously limiting you on DPS as well. Can a protection paladin tank heroic instances? Yes, but you'll want that paladin to have 10k+ HP, at least 25-30% dodge+parry and 15-20% block. Can a protection warrior tank heroic instance? Yes, but you'll want that warrior to have similar stats. Can a holy paladin tank a heroic instance? Possibly, you'll have to go a little easier on DPS and you'll want him to have slightly better stats, but it's doable. Can a fury/arms warrior do it? Probably, but you might have to ease up on DPS and he'll need some better stats.

I think the thing that holds back the public image of prot pallies is those who leveled to 70 retribution, hear that paladins should be able to tank, respec to protection sporting 8k HPs, 370 defense, 17% melee crit, and insist on tanking. Those are the ones who give the impression that paladin tanks just can't do it.

There are warriors like that too, but people understand warrior tanking better, and if a warrior sucks at tanking people think "Man, that's a bad warrior" But since people don't understand paladin tanking, since it's a new thing, if a paladin tank sucks people think "Man, paladins can't tank"

Personally, I was protection since 2.0 came out, and started collecting gear since then. When the expansion hit, I tanked every instance from ramparts up to arcatraz, collecting every piece of gear to upgrade that I could reasonable stand getting. (About 10 shadow labs runs and no greatsword of horrid dreams ) I've started heroics, tanking there too, and haven't had much problems. The mobs hit hard, but they don't hit me any harder than they hit a warrior really. I can keep aggro. I have some tricks like bubbling and taunt for "oh shit" moments like getting stunned by a nasty dual-wielder. I lose some utility like shield bash and demo shout, but I often run with a warlock and ask him to put up weakness.

But gear is what really makes the difference about whether you could tank an instance. If you could give a warlock 60% damage mitigation, 30% dodge, 30% block, 12,000 hit points, a taunt, and a high threat curse, they could probably tank a heroic.

To think that you need to stack all of your heroic runs with a Warrior + Mage + Priest trininty is seriously a PuG mindset, and probably a self-defense mechanism against the aforementioned 8k HP paladin with as much armor.

Last night I ran Heroic Slave Pens with this group:

Arms Warrior
Feral Druid
Enhancement Shaman
Holy Priest (me)
Subtlety Rogue

Aside from the Improved Sap, we had little to no CC. We wiped a lot but it was really learning curve kind of stuff. There were many occasions where the Shaman and Druid changed up roles on the pulls on the fly when things started getting tough. The Coilfang Defenders were pretty brutal, but our Shaman got good at kiting very quickly. We soon worked out fear rotations about halfway through to take care of the really hard pulls. We got Quagmirran to 11% before he suddenly turned and just killed the rogue/druid with some random cleave. The shaman and I were healing through it fine, and it did not appear to be an aggro issue, just some bizarre "sorry, time for you to die!" mechanic. Pretty frustrating but next time we'll nail him. Karazhan shortly after was a picnic, so I think heroics are an awesome training ground.

We thought it was fantastic that people with what are considered 'off-specs' are definitely viable in this type of content. Though I have to say as a healer, I don't think I'd have a chance in hell doing this as a shadow spec, between losing the clearcastings, huge heals and the like. If I was shadow with a resto shaman/druid, then yeah sure.

Template optimal heroic group arrangement.

1. Tank: (Warrior/Druid/Paladin)
2. Main Healer: (Healing specced: Priest/Druid/Shaman/Paladin)
3. Off-spec healer enabled: (Offspec for Priest/Druid/Shaman/Paladin)
4/5. Two DPS CC classes: (Mage/Hunter/Rogue/Warlock)

With this setup, you should be able to hit almost every Heroic dungeon. The only issue you may have is with Rogues and Warlock when certain mobs have immunities. (I.e. mage can sheep 80% and Hunter can trap 90% of mobs)


P.S. And yes, a non-tanking warrior is kinda screwed here.

I think this is the prime example of hybrids basically being the "5th man", who shifts to whatever needs to be done, especially knowing what we need before the pull with multiple gear sets. I carry heal/tank/dps sets around with me everywhere.

Actually, I think wow has sucessfully started to break the "holy trinity" model of tank/healer/dps. The way I see it there are 4 classifications: dps, healer, tank, and control. All of the "pure" dps classes are actually dps/control hybrids. Most of this is not overlapped by the healer/tank type classes.

Being a mage, I would say that polymorph is super-awesome, and you should definitely invite a mage to all your groups .

AO had the control class archetype (crats, and NTs/metas/fixers as hybrid control) long before WoW did it, but it was a little MMO so it can hardly have been said to break the stranglehold.

I'd argue that the control role drops way off in raiding content compared to trinity roles, which is the major problem with trying to change the trinity model - there's no non-gimmicky way to make fights that don't require the trinity roles, but it's quite easy to make non-control fights; control, as a result, will always feel gimmicky when it's incorporated into a fight, because the player *knows* it doesn't need to be there.

I'd bring up C'Thun as an example of control needed in a non-gimmicky encounter. Of course I always do end up pointing to C'Thun, since it is an impossibly well designed encounter that is atypical of most other raid bosses.

I've tanked every heroic except for SH and Botanica. No real class requirements, though I do *greatly* prefer to have my shadow priest with me. Bringing less-optimal group setups makes things more fun, you get to be a lot more creative (or cheesy, depends on your point of view).

Blackheart the Inciter remains the only boss that is just too much of a PITA for me to bother with. The last time I did normal shadow labs, I put on healing gear and told the rogue "You're tanking. No, I'm not kidding."

I've been a part of many 'nonoptimal' heroic runs and as has already been mentioned, skilled players find a way to make it happen even if it takes unconventional means and spur of the moment inspired plans.

Some of the setups I've been a part of that were more successful than we initially thought they'd be are:

Fury Warrior(mt)
Resto Shaman
Hemo Rogue(me)
CD Rogue
Hunter/Mage/Warlock/2nd Warrior(tends to vary based on who is online)

Fury Warrior
Resto Druid
Resto Paladin
Hemo Rogue
CD Rogue

Feral Druid
Resto Priest
MM Hunter
Demo Lock
Hemo Rogue

The double Rogue groups surprise alot of people because of all the 'Rogues suck in heroics' talk that goes around. With sap, stuns, blind, evasion tanking, kick, etc we effectively OT and burn mobs down quickly. The threat of being 1 shot at any second is very real but even when this happens we've managed to keep the pull together and get through it. Ultimately even if we're the only CC the group has all of us have enough 5 man experience that we can adapt to freak CC breaks or adds or random death.

As to Hybrids doing MT/MH in heroics, I've seen it plenty of times, and really the success of the group hasn't rested on their shoulders it has been on the CC'ers to keep the pulls from getting out of hand.

The biggest thing holding back a hybrid/non-prot warrior in a heroic 5 man is threat. You can do most of them fine since gear is the major factor in minimizing your damage taken. You just have to be ready to taunt when you can't keep up with your dpsers (healer/warlock/mage get the same polarity shift on the first boss of mechanar and pop trinkets/heroism). Some bosses have an enrage or are dps races where you need to burn them down before you get overwhelmed, and that's where hybrid tanks have problems.

Depending on the instance and the mobs, alot of the stuff is easier to just kite kill rather than tank. When we first started Heroic Ramparts before getting into Kara, my 5 man group was usually rogue, mage, mage, druid, warrior. 2 frost mages + rogue can deal with a mob on their own without any help from me and I pretty much just offtanked/kited things around while they picked them off one at a time. Reduces healing needed and simplifies your job since you only have to beat out healing aggro and can get a huge headstart while your dps'ers burn down a mob on their own.

Thanks for some confirmation. I'm 1/3 Defiance right now and might think about a respec just to drop imp intercept and go 3/3 Defiance then, just to make it easier. Against all but the best-geared mages (and that moonkin mentioned above) I can hold aggro reasonably well. I've definitely become friendly with the taunt button though.

Your kiting comments ring true to me as well, even in non-heroic with sub-optimal group composition (but high DPS) we've done some serious kiting (Shattered Halls big pulls, those large Shadow Lab pulls, etc). Skill > Gear > Spec, indeed.

I find Blackheart doable as tank in good groups. But I do usually pop a mana pot; I'm used to the kind of DPS that means we can get him down in about four MCs, with if he does a fifth that being at 5% or so.

Before first MC is easy enough, second MC you should still have enough mana to tank normally, third MC starts getting tricky and I usually a mana pot, fourth MC I'm usually OOM and it starts getting chaotic, fifth MC he should be dead.

Having a hunter there helps a lot though, the misdirection headstart after an MC should be enough to maintain your aggro.

It is the fight that makes me hate the 15 second cooldown on Righteous Defense the most though...

My experience, as a balance/resto druid, is that a druid needs far, far better gear than a priest to successfully mainheal a heroic. We did heroic Steamvaults tonight and, on the Bog Lords and with +998 healing, I could not keep our warrior tank up by chain-casting HT13.

While raw HPS was something of a problem, reaction speeds were too. Our group setup was far from ideal (warrior tank, druid healer, hunter, rogue, warlock). Whenever anything broke our various gimpy forms of CC, I'd have to switch to heal them. That means 6 seconds minimum off the tank, and, as often as not, that would kill him.

I can solve the first problem by getting more +healing, since I really don't have that much. The second problem is down to the fact that HT takes 3 seconds to cast and my only burst option is on a 3-minute cooldown (Rejuv->Swiftmend takes just as long as casting HT).

I can't see that problem ever really being solved. While kiting is a possible alternative, you do have to clear the entrance first (although Steamvault is more cramped than most). Throw in the lack of a res and you've got a recipe for frustration. If you find a druid mainhealing a heroic, be very very careful to never ever pull aggro and hope that your crowd control is very good. It can be done, but it's no fun at all.