Shammy or paly

[Bobby79]

ok so i am running a dk x 4 and a shammy as i already had a 59 shaman but they seem a bit short of healing spells maybe its just me.

I have a paly 83 ,would it be beneficial to use the pally to heal vs not getting as much xp as well or because the Dks are doing the damage would that not be an issue.

[Ualaa]

I would probably level the DK's with the Shammy, at least until 80 or so.
Assuming of course the DK's are fairly close to 59th.
Even if its not ideal, it is probably worth the effort to have another toon at close to maximum level.



Down the road, you'll have to choose between the two healers.
From a PvE point of view, the Shaman is probably the superior choice in that you have some AoE heals like Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem and Chain Heal.
From a PvP point of view, both will likely work well in battlegrounds, but the Paladin has a distinct edge (due to toughness and bubble) in arena.
So it depends on your focus.

You'll likely drive with the healer, so you can use mouse over frame healing well from either toon.

The Shammy has Earth Shield, Mail Armor and a Shield.
They have Tremor Totem as a raid-wide trinket vs Fear/Charm/Sleep.
Their melee totems are mostly redundant with Horn of Winter / the Frost haste.
Healing Stream Totem (glyphed) is the same as Resistance Aura (Pally), except it protects against Fire, Frost and Nature instead of Fire, Frost and Shadow.
Grounding Totem can eat a single nasty nuke.
Fire Elemental is a bit of extra burst.
Heroism/Bloodlust in battlegrounds.
Self Rez is wipe recovery in PvE, and until 4.1 is nice when the healer dies (after 4.1, the DK's have a battle rez too).

The Paladin has Divine Protection/Pally Bubble, Plate Armor and a Shield.
No healer can match their single target keep one target alive.
They will passively heal themselves via Beacon & Tier 1 talent, by healing others.
Resistance Aura protects against the most common attacks that aren't physical... and both Pally/DK's have the highest armor against melee based attacks.
They have a limited PBAoE heal over time, centered on themselves that lasts for 10-15 seconds, every 30 seconds.
The have five or six healing burst effects, off of the GCD for when it is nasty.

Both classes have a Cleanse.
Both can Rez.
Both have decent durability without specials.
The Shammy has a HOT, which is an advantage for movement.



The Pally is easier to macro, for mindless automatic inefficient/high throughput healing...

The Pally has a very simple macro (two macros) to keep a focus target alive.
Castsequence Flash of Light, Flash of Light with Cast Holy Shock (Macro A)
Castsequence Holy Shock, Holy Shock, Holy Shock, Word of Glory (Macro B)
Have both target the focus, if it exists and is no dead.
Set up the software to alternate between these two macros, no matter what you push on the DK's.
Then if you need to keep someone up, Focus them... and DPS away...
And the Pally will put out more healing throughput than any other healer.

[Tim]

The Pally actually has a really good AOE heal, the one that requires 3 charges of Holy power, I forgot the name, but it heals for quite a bit and is instant.

Right now I am finding that I can heal instances simply by using Holy Shock and rarely using other heals on the Pally, so I'd definitely go that route.

I really love the instant cast heal on Holy Shock, enabling you to be very mobile.

I use Healbot on my Holy Pally to heal, goes really really smooth. Check out the 2 new videos that I just put on Youtube of this. It is linked on the homepage of multiboxing.com Let me know how the videos go, I haven't done any w/audio in YEARS