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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsRaid Rx: Will dual spec affect your healing squads?
by Matt Low 
Feb 14th 2009 at 2:00PM
Raid Rx has returned from retirement! Every Thursday (usually), Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week I explore dual specs and the effects it will have.
The dual spec Q&A was posted earlier in the week and Mike's got a nice summary listed.
Let's get right down to it. How does dual spec capability affect raid healing?
During Burning Crusade raids, most guilds fielded around 7-8 healers in the 25 player raids. Now it is not uncommon for guilds to bring as few 4 healers to their raids. Generally I would leave the raid configuration to your guildmaster or raid leader (whoever it is that handles and calls the raids). It's up to them if they want to run with 4 healers to 7 healers. There are upsides and downsides to both:
- Less healers: More overall raid DPS. Stuff just dies. With higher raid DPS, raids end up being faster. Sloppy play could be risky. Raid becomes more fragile and raid damage takes a little longer to heal up.
- More healers: DPS isn't as high. You get the peace of mind of players surviving more. The overall time spent in raid is longer. Slowly but surely wins the race.
If your raid group is adequately geared, then the group can get away with less healers (in the 4-5 range).
The introduction of dual specs presents GMs and healing leads with interesting options. The obvious no brainer is that a healer has the ability to switch between DPS and healing roles.
I believe our class columnists will be writing about dual specs with more in depth information in the days ahead. But here's a quick suggested summary of combinations that *I* would consider in raids:
- Druids: Resto/Boomkin (Note: Feral DPS is an option but would require a different gear approach)
- Shaman: Resto/Elemental
- Paladin: Holy/Ret
- Priest: Holy/Shadow
With the exception of Paladins, the other 3 classes can switch to DPS roles without significant gear switching (although you'll have to bring up your hit rating and all that). Paladins will need to regear for ret so switching out might be a bit of a problem until they get the appropriate gear.
Here's the question that's on the back of my mind.
Is Blizzard designing raid instances with dual specs in mind? As in will they design healer heavy encounters with the next raid boss after that requiring some sort of minimum DPS output? It reminds me of the days of going from Eredar Twins to Mu'ru.
I hope not.
So how does this affect your squad?
It shouldn't make too big of a difference. If anything, it increases raid flexibility even more. No problems with healing? Bring in the heavy artillery. Time and gold is saved from having to hearth, respec, and reglyph. From the guild management side of things, it's entirely possible to reduce guild recruiting. What I mean by this is that guilds won't have the pressure to recruit dedicated healers or dedicated DPS. If a fight calls for more power or more healing, it's much more convenient to just ask one person switch out accordingly.
The problem is finding players that can truly excel at both roles. I'm sure some of you can switch between DPS and healing with little difficulty. I've got a Resto Shaman in my guild who likes to toss out the Chain Heal but converts to throwing out Lightning Bolts on nights with little raiding activity. I, as a Priest would never be able to play Shadow. I just don't have that desire (and also because I royally suck at it).
What about healing to non DPS specs?
The only dual spec I'll be doing is from Discipline to Holy (more on that in Spiritual Guidance for this week). I'm not familiar enough for the other classes to further comment on other spec types. For Holy Paladins, what I would like to see is for them to pick up that Divine Guardian talent. It might come in handy on certain fights. I know the Paladins saved my bacon when my guild took down Sartharion with 3 Drakes up.
I know one thing is for certain. I won't be using my second spec for PvP! Gosh, I may have to relearn how to play Holy.
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check.Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Wrath of the Lich King, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Tazerface Feb 14th 2009 3:27PM
I know that my priest is going to dual Holy/Discipline specs not for pvp but for raids, itll be nice to have an extra cirlce of healing for some fights *cough* malygos *cough*
dps is for alts, healings for my priest
Vendrill Feb 14th 2009 7:54PM
This.
Jyotai Feb 14th 2009 3:37PM
What does plusheal have that the older more populated Light Natured lacks?
http://www.lightnatured.com/forum/
Apis Feb 14th 2009 5:04PM
@ Jyotai
Plus Healing has between two and three times as many posts on each of the sub-forums as Light Natured has. I pay a lot of attention to the Druid posts: on Plus Healing, there are over 1,700 posts in the Druid subforum, Light Natured has only about 500 posts in the Druid subforum. Light Natured has had no posts in the Druid subforum since January 25 - about 3 weeks with NO activity. There are over a dozen topics (actually, almost 2 dozen) in the Plus Healing Druid subforum that have had multiple posts in the same period.
I also consider it a major plus that the forum moderators and contributors include many of the most well known Healycraft bloggers.
I'm not suggesting that anyone should change their preferred source of information. But to suggest that Plus Heal is an underpopulated forum is not accurate.
Moxxy Feb 14th 2009 4:34PM
Rogue: Assuming no drastic rebalancing act, I will be going PVE Mut & PVE SHAT. I prefer SHAT for soloing (stealth talents + ambush + evisc killing most mobs is really nice). Atm, SHAT>Mut with the right group, but I don't always have the right group, so this feature will help - again, assuming things stay the same.
Apis Feb 14th 2009 5:27PM
I just looked closer at the Light Natured Druid subforum... there have been only 3 posts in that entire subforum since the release of WotLK (one of which was a request for help back in December that was never answered). The stickied topics related to Raid Specs and Gear have not been updated since April 2008 - needless to say, those posts include no information that is currently relevant.
Tarin Feb 14th 2009 5:25PM
Once Dual Specs come out, I'm going to have Resto as my Second spec. I don't mind Being a Healer every now and then to help out friends or the Guild, as long as everyone know that Resto isn't my main spec ^_^
mannymix Feb 14th 2009 8:34PM
the only reason why I'm looking forward to dual specs is to switch between my raiding holy spec and then my PvP disc spec, I think doing a holy/shadow dual would be pretty interesting though....
Andelorn Feb 16th 2009 9:36AM
I'm mainly thinking about switching between my raid Disc spec and PvP Disc spec honestly.
Though I suppose I could build up a Shadow set as well. I'm usually wanted as a healer though.
Arbolamante Feb 15th 2009 2:11AM
Well, I still need all new gear if I'm going switch from tree to owl for a raid or heroic, 'cause my healing gear has exactly +0 to hit. Uff. Probably I'll continue to heal in instances, and use the moonkin for dailies.
Druidface Feb 17th 2009 4:48AM
I'm currently one of my guild's main healers, but I've always had a soft spot for tanking. I've saved up some good "druid only" feral items (some epic) that will come in handy. I'll be resto for instances, and switch to feral for dailies and quests.
I've never tried moonkin though, and I'm pretty curious about trying that build out too. A bonus for boomkin is I could use the high spellpower stuff in my resto set.
Avandara Feb 18th 2009 3:15PM
I'm truly excited for this change, but not for the advantage of having one healing spec and one dps, but for the advantage of being able to switch my healing style. It's true, so many times a priest itches to play shadow, but what about a holy priest who wants to be discipline? Or a discipline priest who wants to go holy? So often our raid leaders require us to switch to one spec or the other, depending on what's needed for a fight. (Exampl being the need for CoH healing on Malygos, and Disc for 3 Drake Sarth.)
Deranged Feb 24th 2009 9:53PM
Only problem I for see with dual spec, is all possible healers rolling for dps and healing gear and vise versa. This will cause a lot of fights, espically for people who need the gear for a main spec vs people who want the gear for their off spec.
Jesanel Feb 21st 2009 1:06AM
I leveled as feral, loved cat, jumped into bear around the 60s as a tank seemed more viable for the feral Future. Around the start of the 70s, I tested moonkin and thought it wasn't bad. At 75, I am full resto, due the simple fact that it was the only spec that got me so many groups. Besides, resto was something I had wanted to try but not level per say. And I do like it ... it is growing on me.
With dual specs, I will probably go feral and resto - I have my current gear-gathering for resto, and a set of feral blues in the bank, a gift you might say. Now I am glad I can do both, and use the feral gear in the future. I may go feral tank, as it seems more beneficial, and thus be the resto tank dual of the druid.
Doobles Apr 17th 2009 8:31PM
Suprized I haven't really seen more people mention the possiblity of having multiple specs within the same primary tree. For example, I am a resto shammy, and I plan on having dual resto specs, one spec/glyph set for pulls with large amounts of raid damage which will maximize my ability to raid heal with talents like Imp. Chain Heal, and another for pulls where i might be tasked to single target heal, taking advantage of talents like, Healing Way and Imp. Water Sheild. I'm not terribly certain how this would work with other classes, but Im sure shaman are not the only ones with that ability.