I'm the guild leader of a small post-TBC guild that's looking to move into Karazhan in the near future. We have a good group of people with raiding experience through TAQ and/or early Nax, but our healing roster is stereotypically short. I'm considering rolling up a healer alt (my main is a Warlock) to help fill in the gaps when we need it. I want to be able to main heal a 5-man, and contribute as a raid healer.

What healing class can be most effective when played by someone who isn't very good at the class?

I have the utmost respect for the dedicated healers out there - it's a stressful, low-glamor job, and I wouldn't presume to grind up an alt to 70 and think that I'm going to be a drop in replacement for someone who's been healing since release. Obviously there is no "best" or "easiest" healing class at the high end - each has a different set of tools, etc. etc. I just want to know what class has the shortest learning curve to "better than crappy." The alt would have an appropriate talent spec, so shadow/feral/enhancement don't really enter the equation.

We're an alliance guild with plenty of pallies, so I'd pick shaman, all else being equal, but my understanding is that longevity and mana conservation become issues, and I don't know if they can solo-main heal heroics.

Shamans can main heal many heroics, save the very high end ones that require 1.5healers regardless of class. Shadowpriests and paladins of any spec really cover for a shaman's weakness like no other classes. Shamans also take a relatively high level of skill to play, juggling totems and dealing with your mana pool make for some interesting decisions and issues.

Priests and non tree Druids take a bit more skill to play, but have more tools to make you effective. Tree druids are far more simple than other healers because you're limited to 3 spells and swiftmend.

Paladins probably take the least amount of skill since you only have 2 effective heals +holy shock if specced for it so you don't have many choices to make. You can spam flash of light all day and never run out of mana.

I dare to ask you for you experience in playing both shaman, priest, paladin and 2 differrent specs of druids to be able to compare them in 'skill required'.

Having played both a shaman, priest and now a paladin in high raiding levels, I can say (out of my own experience) that the three are completely different classes. As shaman I was watching my totem timers/situations, as paladin I'm watching my blessings frames for the entire raid and am alot more conserned with debuffs.

I'd wouldnt call the lack of more heals any easier for paladin, as I'm constantly fighting the GC to keep my group up and the tank at the same time, and I'm alot less flexible to react to certain burst damage. Not to mention that the endless FoL spam defenitly doesnt work in heroics, where a much more intelligent choice of HL ranks/FoL is required.

What makes you think that a tree druid never has to make the decision to drop out of tree to throw a direct heal around, or why do you think a priest requires more skill simply because he has more tools to work with?

I personally would advise the OP to roll a priest, as they have a big amount of tools to work around problems. Few group members taking damage but your tank needs constant healing? a few (downranked if must) renews and a shield if really needed does the trick, some big AoE and you need quickly heal your group up? PoH sounds perfect for that, etc..
If you'r looking for a easy to play healer class yet want to play it to its max, shaman defenitly isnt for you. (the pure healing aspect isnt that hard, but shaman is so much more then that.)

This suspiciously seems to fit in the category of "try them out and see what you like"

I'd beg to differ. Spamcasting one spell over and over is lazy healing, and doesn't work for any instances that are challenging for your group.

Being limited to single target heal means you have to work a lot harder to successfully keep your group up when there's AOE damage - judging who can survive a few more seconds without a heal, while still using Cleanse and any other relevant abilities as needed. (For example, HoJ can be used a pre-emptive "heal" in many situations)


That said, the OP said his guild has quite a few pallies already, so I would aim for a healer class with a more diverse healing toolkit. A priest, shammy, or druid are all decent choices.

I can't comment on shammies, but of the three I'm familiar with I would advise you to roll a priest. Where poorly-managed paladin/druid healing will get people killed immediately, poorly-managed priest spells will probably keep people alive and run you out of mana quickly. The latter is likely more forgiving to learn main-healing with.

That said, measuring the amount of skill it takes to play independent healing classes is preposterous.

It seems to me that healing as a shammy is really easy, since you have a powerful flash heal.


And now that we've shared the stupid, g'night.

Take it from someone who actually played more then 1 healing class on raiding level: you'r wrong.

edit: Also, to quote your own forum rules:

It depends on what you want to do. Priests heal -- that's basically it. We provide relatively no utility to the group, other than the fact that we are supposedly the best healers. Druids are basically the same way. Paladins and shamans provide retarded amount of utility, and are still very capable healers.

While Shabadu is pretty much speculating, the OP also pretty much called for it, asking which healing class takes the least skill to play effectively.

Healing in general takes practice and focus. The basic skills required are the same no matter what class you play -- you just have different tools. It's an impossible question to answer.