The perils of questing as a healer
by Mike Schramm 
May 12th 2008 at 1:00PM
Stitchedlamb on WoW LJ wants to know: how do you do any questing as a healer? One reason WoW is such a popular game is that no matter your spec or role, Blizzard has done their best to make sure every class can play solo. But if you've ever played a Prot Warrior or a Holy Priest, you know for sure that some classes solo a little easier than others. Before the itemization changes hit in 2.3 and 2.4, healers had it pretty bad, and even after, it's tough to push out quests when all you've got is a bunch of +healing and no Shadowform to speak of.I rolled my Shaman to 60 as Enhancement (Windfury while leveling is one of the great pleasures of Azeroth), but when I hit 60 way back when, I switched to Resto -- I like playing in groups, and being a healer makes sure you have groups whenever you want them. But when Burning Crusade came out, I still wanted to play instances, so I leveled from 60-70 as Resto.
How'd I do it?
First and foremost, you've got to get yourself a good set of DPS gear that capitalizes on the damage spells you can do. And when I say a "set," I mean a full set -- trinkets, gemmed gear, the works. Aim for spell damage (because you're only blowing through daily quests, you won't have to worry so much about Intelligence or Spirit, though those do help you kill faster in the right situations), and get as much of it as possible. Even if you can't nab DPS gear as a healer on the raids you're doing, a Karathon can net you a good amount of gear these days, and everyone's got so much of it that it's easy to pick up a DPS set even if that's not your spec, too. Badges are helpful as well -- use your healing powers to run a few Heroics, pick up badges aplenty, and get all that sweet badge gear Blizzard put in.
Other than that, there are a few good dailies that don't actually require you to do much casting -- bombing runs, the fishing dailies, and so on. Some collecting quests, as a priest, are pretty easy to do even with just fearing and running away with the loot. And if nothing else works, there's always the daily Heroics and BGs -- you already know being a healer comes in handy while running instances, and people like to see healing in the BGs as well.
In short, there's lots to do as a healer. It can be kind of fun to push your character to do something they're not specced for, but even if you're not up for that, +healing doesn't always have to be a disadvantage in daily quests.
Filed under: Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Instances, Quests, Classes, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jonty May 12th 2008 1:22PM
Why not just put healing gear on your dps specced "healer"?
Gessilea May 12th 2008 1:29PM
While it is perfectly possible to level as a healing spec, it's also perfectly possible to heal groups while leveling as a DPS spec. Leveling my druid, I healed many, many 5 man groups as balance spec, and now I'm doing the same shadow. It's really not until you get to the end game instances that you need to have a healing spec in order to be a healer. One should never think that you have to be resto or holy in order to heal Maura, or Ramparts, or Mana Tombs.
darian May 12th 2008 1:40PM
This is something that many people forget, you don't have to be healing specced to heal. It's harder, but by far not impossible.
Yeah, you'll need better gear to perform the same as a specced healer, but most specced healers I know are bored in heroics anyway; they're too easy.
Linkage May 12th 2008 1:30PM
Honestly, I've never had a problem with questing as a holy priest. Granted it's mostly smite spamming, but with good Kara level and primal mooncloth gear giving you 500 to 600 spell damage bonus anyway, I've yet to find a solo quest impossible or even difficult.
Drew May 12th 2008 1:37PM
I've been running a protection warrior from Lvl 10 and is now 61. Right now he's 5/5/42 or something. I've never had a problem leveling, especially once I got devastate. I have a 70 hunter and a 70 pally, but don't find this that much slower soloing than either of those. I just have to make sure I stay on top of gear.
Actually, I find that I have less down time (I can't stand sitting, not playing, and eating/drinking), so for my style of play it's great.
Vinna May 12th 2008 2:25PM
I agree, I never have any problems on my holy priest, she's got about 700 bonus damage in her healing gear, I never bother to swap out to her DPS gear (and she's got some nice dps gear) I almost prefer questing doing dailies on her and in her healing gear, because with the mana regen she has I hardly ever have to stop to drink. Non stop smite action.. tee hee.
Jamie May 12th 2008 2:40PM
Totally. It's quite easy to solo as a Holy Priest, maybe not as fast as a non-healer, but certainly not taxing.
esk May 13th 2008 4:30AM
I've been playing a holy priest since TBC and never had a problem questing. I have to say, looking at a mage 1 shotting a mob while I fire 3-4 smites at it to get a kill may be a bit depressing, but besides that, it's really not that bad :)
Priest actually has a lot of abilities that allow you to solo plenty of group quests, which not many other classes can do (fear, healing yourself, or healing the additional quest NPC if any, pw:shield to prevent cast interrupt and so on).
Not to mention the satisfaction of killing 'gankers' with only sw:pain and wand as dps :D (this does require some top pvp gear though, but it's a priceless feeling).
darian May 12th 2008 1:32PM
Which healing class you rolled plays a big part in how you solo. There's no universal solution.
For example, Priests will most certainly seek spell damage but what of Druids and Shaman? You can go for spell damage there, but ultimately you'll have just as many talents boosting your melee performance as your caster performance. Depending on how you like to play, it may even be easier to go with the melee setup (particularly if you can't kill the mob before it reaches you in a caster setup).
Paladins are also an either/or proposition. They can do well with either a 'ret set' or going psuedo-shockadin.
I personally wouldn't spend badges on DPS gear, as you should be able to patch together something decent regardless.
ash May 12th 2008 2:35PM
For holy pally's you really have to go the spell damage route. I have decent sets for all different specs and can tell you from experience (and my dps meter) that my ret gear does far less damage in holy spec than some run of the mill spell damage gear.
Funny thing is they nerfed a lot of that spell damage gear into more strength oriented ret gear and so now I'm mostly left with my healing gear for questing. Makes me wonder whats in store for the expansion. I think holy pallys are in a funny situation as our main damage dealing stats are now de-coupled from our only damage dealing spec, which is retribution.
Fugmug May 12th 2008 1:33PM
Same situation with the Resto Shaman.
I obtained the Level 60 PVP gear and used that til 70, when I switched to the Season one PVP gear.
Granted, this was easier for me to decide to do, being on a RPPVP server. On Venture Co, PVP gear *is* your world gear, and Raiding gear (healing or +damage) gets put on when we enter an instance.
Fug
sloegin May 12th 2008 1:42PM
The damage you get from your +heal gear is mostly fine for questing, where you get hammered is not having any +hit from your spec.
Even then it's mostly just annoying, because you have enough healing talents to get thru the quest and mob challenges.
Rawtashk May 12th 2008 1:44PM
To quote you
"When Burning Crusade came out, I still wanted to play instances, so I leveled from 60-70 as Resto.
How'd I do it?"
.........then you went on about how to do daily quests, go to kara, and get badges from heroics. Not a word about how you actually LEVELED to 70.
jdkenada May 12th 2008 2:08PM
Glad I'm not the only one questioning this.
Christopher Veach May 12th 2008 2:44PM
I saw that too. Plus, I doubt people who run karathons or run heroics on a regular basis would have any difficulty patching together some dps gear.
Awlbiste May 12th 2008 1:59PM
Smite smite smite, repeat. It's really not difficult.
Ed May 12th 2008 2:32PM
I know that this is usually reserved for prot pallys, but often when I have a "Kill x of y" quest on my Holy Paladin I can just gather up 6-7 mobs on my charger with retribution aura up, keep consecration up and just spam FoL on myself - with 70% pushback resistance it's quite easy to keep myself healed, and they go down pretty quick.
Although prot pallys can gather up many more, and it sucks for caster mobs, AoE (semi)mass killing can work for a Holy Paladin too, and it's certainly sped up my questing in many areas!
Lab Monkey May 12th 2008 2:34PM
Surely by the time you run enough Heroics to obtain badge gear you've been able to collect a decent blue DPS set from unwanted drops along the way?
D May 12th 2008 2:48PM
A full DPS set is not the way to go. With +healing adding to spell damage mixing and matching healing/dps gear is the way to go. With some fiddling I've managed to reach over 900 damage with 1500 healing. This combination of gear adds a lot to my survivability--more than going say 900/900 dmg/healing.
Unless your healing weapon is trash, you will probably get more +dmg out of it than, for example, picking up the Bringer of Death on the AH so use your +healing wep. Some +healing trinkets have huge numbers and are only slightly behind spell damage trinkets.
The only dps pieces I use are the Spellstrike set, Handwraps of Flowing Thought, Girdle of Ruination, Icon of the Silver Crescent and Mark of Defiance. The rest of the pieces are pure healing. All of the aforementinoed pieces are enchanted and gemmed for dps.
I have plenty of +spell damage with a substantial amount of +healing.
Silverrealm May 12th 2008 2:50PM
I can't tell you how many times recently I have been disheartened trying to solo my lvl 60 + quests.
It takes forever and I am so squishy it takes even longer when I need to heal myself then go for round two. And if your mob is the same level and has limited healing abilities, ZOMG the frustration.
I even took my Hunter friend out and he told me to kill a mob solo just as a test... and he got bored standing around while I used my balance spells to toy with the mob. And I am not even 100% Resto specc'd.