Paladin or Druid as main char?Follow

Coming back to WoW again. But what to do? Should I keep my 85 paladin as main, or make my 85 Druid my new main? I like playing both, but I really don't have the time to gear both chars. So as a healer, shoud i go Paladin or Druid? What are the positive and negative things about both in raids? What are preferd at the moment?

Well if you want to PvP as a healer, then you'd probably want to play a Holy Paladin more than a Resto Druid. Resto Druids are currently last place in both BGs and Arena. For PvE only, I see a lot more needs for Holy Paladins than Resto Druids from what I've read of the recruitment. But if you want to play the Resto Druid more, no one is going to say no to someone that wants to heal.

Druids are definitely a challenge to gear up in heroics. You lack the burst healing often needed in there, and since the LFD tool seems to match up people based on their average gear score, I've found that lesser geared healers are often put in groups with lesser geared tanks, except in certain cases.

I'd definitely recommend a Paladin over a Druid for heroics, but I don't have enough experience with raids to recommend one over the other there.

Ultimately, though, I'd suggest you focus on the one with the healing style you prefer. If you enjoy both then I suggest gearing up both. You might find yourself in a situation where your Paladin would be needed over your Druid, or vice versa. If you have the time, definitely gear up both.

Edited, Oct 30th 2011 5:25pm by Mazra

Hola,

Same as it has always been.


Paladin healing: Strong single target healing, mainly for tanks with some aoe healing. You will have some CD's to save tanks or a raid wall via Aura Mastery depending on the damage. If you have been gone for awhile they have fixed mastery, HL now tranfers 100% of the heal through beacon & WoG got a boost.

Druid Healing: The raid healer, as of 4.2. The HPS is very nice, a very attractive healer right now.


As to which way it goes, personal preference and then balance of demand on your server. I'd figure get one raid ready and farm VP/JP. Once you have the one toon on cruise control and content on farm start working on the other. I was back for about 3-4 weeks before I got my paladin up to snuff in terms of gear. Then I started farming my Resto Shaman up once it wasn't going to impact my main.

I've only tried healing normal modes on my pala whereas my druid is currently healing FL heroic, so there's a bit of an experience difference there.

Druid - solid raid healer and there's lots of fights (the ones with plenty of aoe damage) that I really feel useful in, the only fight I don't like on my druid is Baleroc and even then it just feels hard, rather than impossible. Can be difficult at lower gear levels, but with Tranquility on a 3min cooldown now it should be easier to deal with spike damage. Make sure you can easily keep track of LB and clearcasting procs as well as time left on cooldowns (tranq, innervate, br etc), when I was first running heroics I had a lot of trouble keeping LB rolling on the tank and what would normally happen when something went wrong is that I'd be busy healing elsewhere, let LB fall off and then be struggling trying to keep the tank alive and the rest of the group and restack LB up, once I got LB monitored more clearly I had a lot less problems.

Paladin - from my extremely limited experience palas seem to be a lot more cooldown based (Guardian, Avenging Wrath, various Hand of ...) and I struggle a bit with mine knowing what spell is best to cast or when there is aoe damage or periods when I need to heal on the move. That's probably more lack of practice though, I spent a long time working on my druid (and considered quitting it for a while) and have healed on it in every expansion, my paladin has always been an alt. They are very strong tank healers and certainly not useless when it comes to aoe healing (plus more cooldowns to reduce raid damage).

You might want to see which class your server needs more, mine is fairly even between the two when the person specifies the class they want.

Depending on gear level you could also try healing with both of them for a time and see which style you prefer.

I hated my resto shaman with a passion when I left the game.


I am now healing through a FL alt run that is just regular and I am loving it.

I've gone over to Shaman healing as well. Suits my playstyle very well.

Who wouldn't love an occasional 1.5-second 130k heal on a low health tank?

I leveled a shaman to go through the Draenei starting area, and found the pre-Cata DPS experience far less compelling than post-Cata disc priest smite soloing. Never got far enough to try shaman healing, though.

You've never played a fire mage, have you?

Honestly, after leveling what is going to be 3 shamans now (one in BC, one in Wrath, and now one in Cata, all of them to the current level max) enhance is a weird spec to level as. The speed at which things die seems to tier out until you unlock the next big spell, then you hit another plateau until the next big spell. The biggest spell upgrade though is maelstrom weapons when it comes to survivability. Lava lash is mediocre until you get into cata content (leveling wise).

tldr - Enhance shaman is a bit boring to level to start with but get's very bursty at later levels that can blow mobs up real quick when RNG loves you.

...and my threadjack is complete.