A ..healing question, not hunter question?? What is this!

[Albain]

Recentlyish I raised my monk to 90, and have been gearing as a mistweaver. I'll be honest, though I like monks, their healing playstyle isn't really my cup of tea, which is an unfortunate thing to conclude -after- getting to 90 and working on getting some gear.

So I need a new healer.

I've played priest most, he's sitting at 86. I also have a paladin, at 85, who I have no healing experience with, and a shaman at 83, who I used to heal with but haven't in a while. I'm used to the versatility of the priest, which is why I suffer with the other classes I think, but I'm willing to try something new if they're considered 'better' these days. (except for monk, can't get used to it.) So, petopians; advise. I'm not worried so much about topping charts as being capable at my job. I'd like a class with a reliable HoT that isn't on a cooldown, at least two OMG buttons that aren't some resource other than mana dependent, and fairly decent AOE healing due to gearing in LFR, and it's all AOEs all the time in there.

Also, so there's something pet related: Did everyone get their zandalari raptorlings while they still had the fast drop chance??

[Makoes]

Druids seem to be doing very well in the LFR, and being primarily HoT/AoE heals its not hard to see why. Personally I am using my Monk in LFR and generally coming in within the top 3, for boss and overall fights. Shamans seem to be doing very well as well and priests seem to be primarily taking the top spot (from my observations). I haven't seen very many good paladin healers, but there have been a few that blew everyone else away...I just find that class very hard to get into.

I'd suggest trying a druid out.

[Valinai]

I was also going to suggest a Druid. I have (at varying levels) a healing pally, a disc priest, a cat/resto druid. My monk and shaman are way low level so can't really draw from experience on them. I like my holy pally and I love my disc priest, but they are two very different play styles and heal styles. I haven't been playing my druid much since I came back to the game, but I've done both disc priest and holy pally in bgs and they are fun.

[Albain]

I did have a druid once, played til 85. I didn't put her on the list because I didn't enjoy playing a druid, be it resto, feral or balance, and deleted her when MoP hit.

[Kalliope]

The baby raptors still seem to drop a lot, at least to me!

[Makoes]

Well, priest and Shammy are my other top choices for LFR healing. But if you can pull of Pally healing, they have the potential to be beasts. Can't say I've ever mastered any pally spec so mine sits at 80 collecting dust and being an engineer/miner slave.

I like my priest heals, she's sitting at 85 atm because I have to many other things to do on my 2 90's to level more. Shammy WAS my favorite healing class until they changed totems...I like my totems and still feel hurt at the change so my 2 shaman's haven't had much play time since that was done.
I really do like monk healing, was struggling until I read icy-veins idiot guide to monk healing and suddenly it got much easier.

But play with whichever you like playing best.

[Gimlion]

The baby raptors still seem to drop a lot, at least to me!

This seems out of place.

[Kalliope]

The baby raptors still seem to drop a lot, at least to me!

This seems out of place.

Also, so there's something pet related: Did everyone get their zandalari raptorlings while they still had the fast drop chance??

That's where it came from.

I can't speak on healing at the moment, since I've been so far out of the game regarding my alts this expansion.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I personally love my shaman healer, and if you glyph Riptide (which I recommend), you get a HoT with no CD. I find they have a nice niche of "OSHIT" buttons available and they can still whip out a fair amount of damage in lulls where no healing is needed (I'm actually considering glyphing Telluric Currents to get mana back when I lightning bolt). Plus I think they can compete pretty decently with resto druids in the AoE healing department while still holding decent single target heals.

I also personally like the new totem system, but I know there are some people who miss the old ones. I like thinking about which totem I need for certain situations. My only complaint is the lack of a buff-like fire totem for resto; I feel like only having damaging totems is a bit of a slap in the face when our main focus is to be healing the raid/dungeon/pvp group. Not that assisting in DPS is bad, but our fire elemental won't hit nearly as hard as one for ele or enhance I don't think.

[Albain]

Huh, riptide with no CD, that IS terribly tempting.

I haven't had a single babyraptor drop since the nerf, but I did finally get my magnificence patterns.

[Gimlion]

The baby raptors still seem to drop a lot, at least to me!

This seems out of place.

Also, so there's something pet related: Did everyone get their zandalari raptorlings while they still had the fast drop chance??

That's where it came from.

I can't speak on healing at the moment, since I've been so far out of the game regarding my alts this expansion.

I should learn to fully read an OP...

[Boven]

I personally love my shaman healer, and if you glyph Riptide (which I recommend), you get a HoT with no CD. I find they have a nice niche of "OSHIT" buttons available and they can still whip out a fair amount of damage in lulls where no healing is needed (I'm actually considering glyphing Telluric Currents to get mana back when I lightning bolt). Plus I think they can compete pretty decently with resto druids in the AoE healing department while still holding decent single target heals.

I also personally like the new totem system, but I know there are some people who miss the old ones. I like thinking about which totem I need for certain situations. My only complaint is the lack of a buff-like fire totem for resto; I feel like only having damaging totems is a bit of a slap in the face when our main focus is to be healing the raid/dungeon/pvp group. Not that assisting in DPS is bad, but our fire elemental won't hit nearly as hard as one for ele or enhance I don't think.

Darn, now you have me tempted to try a resto shammy. My 90 shammy is elemental and I love playing that spec. In the past, I've tried healing but have always been horrible at it. After talking to a friend who is loving his disc priest alt, I created a new priest char, but haven't actually done anything with it yet. I kinda wonder if I'll still stink at healing, but figure I wanna try.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I won't say you should try healing on class x or y, they all have their own benefits and what each person finds fun is subjective, but if you have a shaman, especially since it's elemental spec, then I say give healing a shot. You've already got a nice set of starting gear for it. I never thought I would play a shaman; I started off as a druid healer and slowly became more and more disenchanted with the character, especially during Cataclysm. And while I find druid healing more enjoyable now in this expansion, after starting a shaman during Cata and falling in love with their healing style, I still can't stick with the druid. (Not that there's anything wrong with druids, they're great healers.)

My priest is still in her healing stages so I have no real personal experience with priest healing other than dabblings at low levels of playing atonement disc (DPSing to heal people is amusing to me). My monk is still in a fairly young stage too though so far I enjoy both the monk tanking and healing styles. I like the idea of healing when I need to, and DPSing in more lull times and still pumping out some passive healing. I have personally not enjoyed holy paladins since Wrath when I played a flash of light heal-style (as opposed to the more common holy light spam). Even though the new changes in Cata made all pally healing more like the style I played, it just didn't feel the same.

Learning to heal on the shaman was a very interesting process for me. I tend to get very strong anxiety when I'm playing roles like healers and tanks which can make me tense up and panic while healing and lead to bigger mistakes. I still make mistakes from time to time on my shaman and I go over the mistake and then how I could have done it better, but for some reason, I'm a lot calmer on my shaman (as opposed to my druid) and I feel a lot more relaxed playing and healing on her. I can still get anxious, especially if a lot of stuff is going wrong and all of a sudden my brain blanks as to which options I have available and where my buttons are for them, but it doesn't feel like it happens as often. I dunno, there's just something about their heal style that I really love and find really enjoyable. Maybe the watery sounds of the spells are calming.

Sorry for the wall of text there. >_>

[Tsaikojen]

If your not sure which type of class you wanna play then I'd suggest rolling a druid. That way, in case you decide you wanna try something other than healing, you could always switch specs into any other category. Heal, DPS(Ranged), DPS(Melee) or Tank. There also isn't much of a learning curve with Druids. If your new to healing I'd avoid Priests. They have WAY too many heals at their disposal. Ever see someone with a cold in WoW? Precisely! Priests have an app for that...

[Albain]

As I already said before in the thread, Tsaikojen, I don't like druids. I've played them before, all four specs, and while I appreciate having one in my team I have no desire to play one again. I wound up picking up a tiny panda shaman. Thank you for the suggestion but .. no. I do have a priest already! At 86, I smite my way through quests, but didn't know if I wanted to heal on him again.

And now I'm working on leveling both my shamanling and my raptor hordes I got from Isle of Giants.