A healer in WoW basically has one job: keep people from being dead. Ideally, you would keep people from ever becoming dead in the first place by healing them, but sometimes people do die and you have to resurrect them. WoW has four classes that can heal, Druid, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman, and three out of those four have more or less the same spell to bring people back to life, whether it's called Resurrection, Redemption, or Ancestral Spirit. There are slight variations in mana cost and the amount of HP and mana the target resurrects with, but they're all 10-second casts and all only work outside of combat.

Then there is the Druid's resurrection spell, Rebirth. This spell is often known as "combat res" or "battle res," since it is the only targettable resurrection spell that can be cast during combat (Shamans can also self-res in or out of combat with Reincarnation). It's a great spell, but it has a 20-minute cooldown, meaning that if you're in a 5-man with a Druid healer and no other resurrecting player, and people die more often than one every 20 minutes (which happens frequently in heroics), they're not all going to be able to be ressed. This is not enough to keep me from wanting to run instances with only a Druid healing - I still love trees. But it is an obvious hole in a the Resto Druid's spell lineup.

Fortunately, it looks like this hole may be closed in Wrath of the Lich King. According to the newly-relocated Wrath alpha wiki, Druids will be receiving a regular, no-cooldown, out-of-combat resurrection spell, entitled Revive. It has a 10-second cast time, and seems to bring targets up with about the same amount of HP and MP as Priest Resurrection. No word on mana cost yet. All I can say is "it's about time." Sure, it does homogenize the healing classes a little bit more, but Druids really ought to be able to fully serve as sole healers, and that means both keeping people from dying and bringing them back up if they do fall.

Tags: alpha, druid, healer, healers, healing, res, resto, resurrection

Filed under: Druid, Wrath of the Lich King, Rumors