Can a paly be a good healer?

[Guest]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?

[Quark]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
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Weakly-educated guess:

Aggro would not be a problem. Not only would you not care as much, pally heals don't get nearly as much aggro as druid/priest heals.

The later you get into the game, the problem changes from "Healing enough" to "Healing quickly enough". With no talents, a priest's last Flash Heal is 812 to 958 for 1.5 second cast time. A paladin's last Flash of Light is 343 to 383. Maybe if you constantly spammed Flash of Light it would work. Certain groups did this in MC with the lowest rank Flash of Light, before the talents were changed. However, that leads to the next problem.

Your mana pool is much, much smaller than a druid/priest. That will come back to bite you every time, probably.

In the end, it would probably be like everything else in the game. You can start off doing it fine, but as you progress in levels the game becomes less lenient to variation. Rogues don't have to care about aggro until about level 40, when every other melee class jumps in armor. Hunters can melee until late in the game (I've seen it). One of the great things about this game is how the difficulty ramps up so it allows for poor play early on (when you're clueless), but slowly forces you to learn the tricks of the trade. People who zerg instances obviously miss out on this (and you can tell who these people are when they hit 60 ... ugh). The consequence is that non-intended roles are that much harder to fill.

[Tal]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

I've always specc'd for a combination of retribution/protection but I would say you could make it up through Sunken Temple. After that, as Quark has already pointed out, it becomes a question of healing quick enough and having the mana to get the job done. I also don't think the longer cast times on heals would be capable of keeping up with when things go wrong™.

This is really a long way 'round of saying "No a healadin can't heal as well as a priest/druid". ;)

[vor_lord]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

Paladins have two big problems as main healers:

Small mana pool
No HoT spell

With talents, their flash of light + blessing of light is not too bad as far as mana efficiency, but as Quark points out it is still only healing about half as much as a priest's flash of light. You do have blessing of sanctuary but that is not an option against the main tank. Interestingly, blessing of sacrifice might help buy someone time (share your health pool with them -- you'll NEVER draw aggro with a paladin heal).

A druid has no flash heal, but does have regrowth, which is instant + HoT, and the instant part is much bigger than the paladin's flash heal.

A paladin specc'd completely towards healing would probably be not quite as good as a druid without any restoration spec. I don't know as most druids are restoration (innervate anyone?).

My paladin is holy spec and at level 54 I am a decent enough healer during routine battles -- but who isn't in that situation?

[Guest]

Question on Mana pool. I have never played a mana class in WoW, so I dont really understand.

You guys are saying evem with items with the same stats, a paldin would have a much smaller mana pool than a druid or priest?

[Skandranon]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

From what I can tell, a properly specced and equipped paladin can primary heal for a long, long time. No, you can't heal every 1.5 seconds, but you *can* heal constantly without ever having to worry about aggro.

Current healadin builds centre around tossing Blessing of Light on everyone (at level 60, +400 to Holy Light spells) and then using Holy Light (rank 4) as your primary heal. With three points in Improved Holy Light, you'll be able to heal for something like 760 to 814 every 2.5 seconds...at a cost of 190 mana. Rank seven Flash heals only a little more for 380 mana, double the cost, but does it in 60% of the cast time.

Obviously, without Renew and Shield and PoH, paladins will never be healers on a par with priests. However, it looks like paladins can spec to be extraordinarily efficient healers, with the bonus that they'll basically never draw aggro.

[Artega]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

Paladins are Priests-in-Plate, not Warriors-with-Heals :)

We've done a 4-man DM run through both the Ogre and Elemental sides with a shaman as our only healer, so I'd assume that Paladins can do at least as well as a shaman, and probably better.

[acidjax]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

I think the advantages are:

-A Paladin can gain a 100% chance not to be interrupted while casting heals through talents and concentration aura. This can even lead to some specialized creative tanking against packs of nonelites, heh.

-A Paladin can take hits better then a primary healer, even when equipped with primarily +int/spi "shaman" chainmail armor.


The disadvantages are:

-Paladins can't burst heal as quickly as priests or druids.


I've heard of some paladins breaking 7k mana but I've never seen one personally. I think the biggest hurdle will be being able to heal fast enough. I find the idea of a healadin intruiging. It's a good question on seeing the limits of just how extreme talents and gear can make a class.

[DarkCrown]

I dont expect to match a healing focused priest, but can a paly heal as well as a druid if you build for it?

If you focus on Holy talents and gear that will help you heal can a paly be a primary healer for 5 man groups?
[right][snapback]73514[/snapback][/right]

I've never seen a paladin who could heal as well as a druid. A druid heals as well as a priest in most cases.

I've played my druid in BRD and DM (as the tank) with only a paladin healing. In both cases the pally put Blessing of Light on me and spammed his low mana cost heal (the name of which escapes me at the moment). It worked fine. The paladin was able to keep me and the rest of the group alive. In the case of the BRD run I don't think the paladin had ever before cast a heal on anyone but himself. It took a few pulls before he got some confidence in his abilities --- after that it went fine.

I'm not sure this would work well in a 5-man Strat or Scholo, but lots more is possible in this game than many people seem to think.

-DC

[The Gnu]

I'm not sure this would work well in a 5-man Strat or Scholo, but lots more is possible in this game than many people seem to think.

I actually had some first hand experience of this during the weekend. We went with a 5-man party to the scarlet side of Stratholme, to hunt down the Archivist and Balnazzar. The group setup was mage (me! :lol:), warlock, warrior, paladin, rogue, with the paladin as the designated healer.

In the fights leading up to the scarlet area, the warrior charged into a group of mobs, holding as much aggro as he could. The warlock, I and the rogue took out the non-elite casters first, and then the non-elite melee mobs. Then we could focus on the elite ghouls. This way, the paladin only had to focus on healing our warrior, which worked really well. In fact, we only had one death on the way there. (me, getting a little trigger happy with the Arcane Explosions too soon :P )

Once among our humanoid friends, the class specific skills started to shine.
Sap, polymorph and charm, and suddenly you only have to fight one or two mobs. The paladin once again did a splendid job, and we didn't really get into any trouble before pulling extras from a side corridor. That was our only wipe on the whole run, and we couldn't really blame our healer for that one. :)

The archivist was pretty easy, sap and polymorph his guards, and once again we had the target all by himself. Everyone but the warrior stayed out of his blast wave-range, and the paladin could focus his healing.

During the big final brawl against Balnazzar, we actually were on the verge of collapsing, when our tank got killed. He didn't have that much health left though, so a final "max your DPS NOW!"-burst did the trick. ;)

That being said, I really wouldn't want to face the Baron in a 5-man group without a priest. It probably isn't an impossible task though, with good group communication and tactics. :)