A Study Of N00bs

[mjdoom]

The shield is much more of a utility for a rogue or a hunter that accidently steals aggro during a multi-pull.  Again, major boss fight?  I don't bother shielding you.  I'll heal you to try and keep you vertical, but if I can't, move on.  Vanish or FD for the win there.

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First I'll respond to this. Shield has more utility than you give it credit for here. As Skan pointed out it is very useful for shielding mages for aoe (and it's not the interruption thing that matters; Improved Arcane Explosion takes care of that). The best a druid can do is chain heal where a priest can instantly pop a shield to buy a few extra seconds to get that next heal off. In that vein the fact that PW:S is an instant gives it much more flexibility for reactionary healing as Tal said. Druids have to anticipate more with their heals as they don't really have an instant "heal", Nature's Swiftness notwithstanding.

Quite simply there are many cases in the end game where I would refuse to enter an instance with only druid healers. The rez thing would likely only be a small part of that (especially in raids where there is a greater chance of pallies being around). Using only druids as your healers will force other parts of your group composition. An example is the Lyceum in BRD. Either bring a priest as healer or you are basically forced to have two aoers so that the mobs will die before your aoe does (and if someone does die you can run into the rez timer thing again). Simply bringing a druid as your healer almost forces the group to have a pally and two aoers, thereby highly limiting what group composition you go with (yes, I'm ignoring the potential of a rogue soloing the Lyceum; but not every rogue is good enough to do that).

Also, by going with only druids you lose potential CC utility in shackle and MC. The usefulness of shackle in Scholomance is not to be underestimated and heaven help any team that tries to 5-man that place with a druid in place of a priest. Sure, a druid can put a beast to sleep, tell me how often that is useful...

I really haven't considered whether druids should have a non-timered rez. The utility they gain by having their rez be a combat rez is not negligible. I'd be inclined to disagree with Quark and say that if you want a druid to be your main healer you should look to have a pally for additional rezzing ability (and additional healing if need be) or bring a priest and a druid and let the druid use more of his skills along the way. You may even make a friend of a druid this way if they can have some more fun instead of having to be main healer. But I'm not sure that giving druids a non-timered rez would send priests the way of the dodo either.

- mjdoom