Last weekend I spent time leveling my level 17 Hunter, 16 Rogue, and 14 Mage to level 20. Last night I got the level 20 Warrior to level 21, but I got bored…again.
So out comes the DK. I spent some time trying to get into a regular ToC group which finally happened and I got a couple of tank items, including the trinket, and a dps item. No I have no idea what anymore. I forgot to turn Recount back on and asked to see a meter. Given my gear, I think I was at a respectable 2100 dps, even with dc’ing TWICE!!! WTF?! No lag, in fact better than average latency, and two random disconnects! Not even while zoning in or with multiple adds, etc.
It’s not the ISP. My wife has no issues with anything she does and I have no issues with anything other than Warcraft. Even ran a trace again and I got less hops than before with no lag between any of them.
Anyway, after that group disbanded there was a group that had been looking for a healer for some time so I switched over to my druid. As that run started, Amber logs on and requests (or maybe that was demanded 
) my assistance in running regular ToC when I’m done. Let me tell you. Healing on my druid is a lazy ass way to heal when the tank is geared like Amber. Not to say that the other tank wasn’t good, but admitting that he wasn’t defense capped and then pulling two groups of adds on the 2nd boss instead of one group made for some exciting times! I’m still not that comfortable healing as a druid.
So what’s healing like with all 4 classes? In a nutshell, weird. Well, it’s weird on the druid anyway.
Paladins are primarily reactive healers. Green bar goes down, cast heal. If it goes down a lot, cast Holy Shock to buy time, then cast Holy Light. Otherwise, you cast Flash of Light…a lot!
Priests, at least for Holy, seems to be a combination of reactive and proactive healing. Health bars go down, cast heals. The advantage of Priesting over Paladining (isn’t it nice to invent words by throwing an ‘-ing’ at the end of them?) is in the range of heals you have. If you want a good versatile healer, I think Holy Priests are awesome!
Shaman. I don’t even know what to say here. I’ve read a lot about how Paladins are considered the spammers of the healing community, but the other night we were in Uld25 and 70% of my heals were Chain Heal. Why? Because the mana cost difference between that and Lesser Healing Wave are relatively the same, or at least close enough. My mana regen with Replenishment is evidently ungodly because I can spam Chain Heal and not worry about mana. I popped my Mana Tide Totem once…because I died and self rezzed. The advantage of Chain Heal obviously being that more people are healed and with the “intelligence” of Chain Heal, it helps in minimizing overheals.
Druids. OK, to be fair I have yet to actually heal a raid yet. But based on my experiences in 5 mans, druids are just odd. If I’m doing it right, then druids are proactive healers throwing their HoTs out before damage is actually done in many cases. No wonder why druids have such massive overheals. After having played the other three classes and being a reactive healer, druid healing is taking a little getting used to. I also haven’t quite figured out whether keeping certain HoTs active are worth it.
Overall my favorite is the Shaman. No, it isn’t because given the right conditions a Shaman can outheal everyone and keep the overheals to a minimum. All classes can do that given the right conditions, except maybe Disc, and heal meters don’t read like damage meters anyway. (Hear that?! Yeah you know who I’m talking to!) And it isn’t because I can be a lazy healer and spam Chain Heal all night long, which some would find really boring, but I really do like seeing the chain jump in all directions across my screen! It’s fun! Besides, I like Riptide. Not sure why. I just do. I know I like massive Chain Heal crits! And even though I hated totems once. Managing them is actually kind of cool.
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