The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Raid Healing Roles : Part 5 : Job Descriptions : Hybrid Healers
by Vonya
A continuation of the Raid Healing Roles series. Previously, I introduced the idea that healing in a raid is different than healing in a regular instance. I also discussed some of the core philosophies of a Tank Healer, Raid Healer, and Backup Healer as well as some tips for filling those roles as a priest.
Hybrid Healers
The hybrid healer should be treated as a Big Red Button. The sincere hope is that they are, 99% of the time, allowed to focus on dps. Whether they are a boomkin, an elemental shaman, a shadow priest…pick your favorite hybrid, it really doesn’t matter.
Most of the time, they should be another dpser. If you need them to heal more than 40% of the time, then you need another healer, not a hybrid. Either that, or you don’t get the right to judge them on their dps, since their spec and gearing is probably nonstandard.
So what is a “Hybrid Healer”?
A Hybrid Healer is someone who primarily fills another role, but is able to pick up healing if something goes terribly wrong. They are not expected to have the healing power of a dedicated healer, but they can very easily mean the difference between a successful boss kill and a wipe.
The “best” hybrid healers are those whose primary role is that of a caster. The reason for this is simple - gear and spec. A Boomkin is not going to be as good at healing as a treedruid (for very obvious reasons) but they will be a more prepared pinch healer than a cat druid. Their gear is already spell damage and crit-centric, which means their heals are going to be magnified by their gear. The cat druid’s strength and agility may allow them to dish out some crazy awesome damage…but it really doesn’t help them in healing.
Does this mean that cats can’t be your hybrid healers? No, it just means they’ll be incredibly inefficient and will probably run out of mana after just a few heals. They may still save the day, but it’ll be more like hitching your broken wagon to a miniature donkey instead an that old plowhorse. (For completeness, a dedicated healer would be like hiring superman to fly the broken wagon into town with you and having him show up with a steaming mug of white chocolate mocha to boot).
So, now that we know what a hybrid healer IS, let’s talk a little about when you’d use them. Picture this *holds hands up with thumbs splayed, making a box through which she peers as though she can actually see the fight described*
You’re in Karazhan, fighing Illhoof. You’ve got two healers, a tree and a priest. The priest is sending frisbees out, fast and furious. The druid’s keeping the warlock hotted up as he tanks the random imps and padding the tanks on Illhoof and Kil’rek to make the priest’s job easier. The mage gets sacrificed and immediately turns into an ice sculpture - the raid rejoices and drops the big imp and then pulls out the big guns on his master. Things are going great, and then the priest gets sacrificed. The dps shifts over to the chains immediately, but the tree druid hits a lag pocket and isn’t able to keep the priest alive before the priest’s dry cleaning bill just got a whole lot worse.
What should you do? The druid can battle rez, but they are your only druid and your only remaining healer. If they battle rez NOW, the tanks will probably die while they’re distracted. Add to that the fact that the chains just appeared - this means that the healing has been concentrating on the sacrificed target (and for this example, half of the healing was missing for the chains, being somewhat preoccupied with praying fervently not to die).
I’ll tell you exactly what happens. The priest ignored the mockery of her peers and specc’d for Improved Death (Spirit of Redemption) and is now happily riding the line between death and life. A greater heal to the tanks, a couple of hots to add padding, and a frisbee kicked off just before the Spirit Healer form wears off and death folds her into his welcoming arms.
During that time the shadow priest in the group popped out of shadowform and started healing the tanks. The druid cast a few hots to pad the tanks (and warlock). When Spirit of Redemption wears off, they’re ready with their battle rez. The priest accepts the rez and immediately casts Binding Heal on the person with the lowest health, bringing herself and them up to full health. The shadow priest smirks slightly at a job well done and pops back into shadowform. The priest pops a mana potion or sends the shadowfiend in for some delicious mana regen, she and the tree share a quick victory high five, and then they both go back to their healing roles.
*wipes away a tear* It’s…it’s such a beautiful thing.
That’s just one example. Things get hairy in Aran? Your Hybrid healer can toss some heals around and help out. Prince fight nearly over, but you had one incautious paladin healer get fried by an unlucky enfeeble/infernal combination? Your Hybrid healer dons their superhero cape and saves the day.
A Few Things to Note
I have never been a hybrid healer, so I can’t give many tips. For the hybrid priest, I imagine frisbees and hots are more mana efficient than doing big heals, but I’m really just guessing.
However, a hybrid healer can be any of a number of classes. Your raid leader should talk to you if you are eligible to be a hybrid healer so that you are prepared for a smothered-panic shout to pop out and heal.
Your raid and healers should always act and play as though they do not have hybrid healers. NEVER assume that it’s okay to be sloppy because “the shadow priest can just pop out and start healing.” You say that to me and I will loose upon you the combined wrath of my entire raiding team. Yes, the shadow priest CAN pop out and start healing. But guess what? They are already DOING an important job. DPS and utility, which they will have to STOP DOING in order to send out very inefficient heals.
Hybrid healers cannot swap gear mid-fight. If they start the fight in their healing gear, anticipating a possible need for their healing services, then their dps will suffer. Add to that the fact that their spec isn’t likely to be a healer spec, and you’ve just taken away half of their usefulness, on a whim. They should be wearing their dps gear unless the raid is beginning a fight that they already know will require an extra healer. In that case, the Hybrid healer is actually hybrid no longer. They’d be assigned to one of the many primary healing roles.
Tanks, you can’t be Hybrid Healers. I’m sorry. I don’t care if you’re a beartank who has the BEST healing set in the game and you’ve even found a spec that allows you to tank AND spiff up your heals. NEVER EVER expect your pally tanks or beartanks to “pop out and heal”. The laughability of that situation should be obvious, but sometimes it’s a good idea to state the obvious. Saying “we have a druid” doesn’t mean you have a hybrid healer if that druid is your primary tank.
Never surprise someone with Hybrid healer duties. If the first time your elemental shaman is approached about possibly having to provide heals in the case of an emergency is when the raid leader is screaming at them “WHY AREN’T YOU HEALING?!” — you’ve probably just lost yourself a shaman. A lot of dps hybrids probably dislike the thought of being asked to heal in a raid. After all, what part of Dee Pee Ess didn’t you understand?
But most people will be open to a conversation about the necessity of AS RARELY AS POSSIBLE swooping in and saving the raid from doom. Everybody wants to be a hero. And if they’re prepared ahead of time, they can even have their red cape neatly pressed and dry cleaned before the raid starts.
January 3rd, 2008
Good post. As someone with several hybrid classes, I’ve found myself in those kinds of situations a lot (though more in 5-mans than raids). I prefer my ele shammy over shadow priest for backup healing. There aren’t the same opportunities for +nature as +shadow damage, so the result is a more rounded +spell and healing figure. He’s also much more mana efficient when healing — mana spring and water shield still work, unlike vampiric touch, and with a higher crit rate you get more bang for your buck. I also have a mental block about dropping shadow form, although it’s much easier now it drops automatically for holy spells and I don’t have to wait for the global cooldown. I wonder if boomkins feel the same way?
January 3rd, 2008
An excellent, most enjoyable read. I honestly don’t think I could have written or expressed the hybrid healer any better. It’s good to see that there are some primary healers out there that understand us Moonkins, Elemental Shamans, and Shadow Priests.
Oftentimes I think no one even notices what just happened, oh the Moonkin popped out and started healing when the healers were bone dry on mana and the boss was as 3%. Most of the time I think that kind of stuff goes unnoticed; I’m glad to see it’s not. Cheers!
January 3rd, 2008
I’m a enhance sham (and former ele sham and shadow priest, not having a heal makes me feel naked), and my point of view every hybrid should assume that they might be called on to heal. It’s in your spell book, you shouldn’t need advance warning to have in on your bars. That said, the best thing you can do for a hybrid healer is to let them know when you need them, if you can give us 10-15s warning before you actually need us is even better. Most hybrids are already worrying about a number of things, dps rotations, buff cycles, dodging whatever godawful abilities a boss is throwing around, we’re not looking closely at a tank’s health, and we’re really not looking at healer health/mana. Giving us a “Oh crap, I’m about to bite it, start healing!” shout before you actually go down gives us a chance to get out from danger, retarget, and maybe even swap in healing weapons. At the very least it lets us start winding up what are often untalented long cast time heals.
January 3rd, 2008
I have never seen a shadow priest act as an emergency healer if a couple key healers go down and it’s an emergency. Granted, we have 0 in my guild right now so there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity, but for some reason they just don’t do it when I’ve run with them. They’ll say something stupid like, “I can’t heal in shadowform.” Well, yeah… pop out of it.
Conversely, the moonkins I’ve run with have been great on emergency healing. I remember leading a Kara run awhile back, and one of the healers took a dive on a boss. Brez was gone, so I called out for the moonkin to please help heal. Then I realized he was already doing it. Now that they pop out of moonkin form when they start to cast a heal automatically, it’s even easier for them.
Whenever I play my shaman as elemental, I feel it’s kind of my job to also be focused on people’s health. It’s not nearly the same as a real resto shaman, but if I can see the healer is overwhelmed, I will toss out chain heals or something. It can make a big difference. I’ve never played as enhancement, but I imagine they aren’t that good for emergency healing… Their gear has no +healing on it and I imagine they don’t have as many talents in the resto tree as an ele shaman would.
January 3rd, 2008
My lowly Shaman is still enhance spec, but even so, the spell bonus from Mental Quickness means they aren’t quite as up a creek as feral druids are if they are required to do some emergency healing, but I agree with Ego that a caster generally makes a better pinch healer than anything else.
Great series btw. As a DPS warlock I have found new respect for healers since stumbling onto your blog. Keep them frisbees flying.
January 3rd, 2008
I love the little Kara story, I’ve actually done that before. I’ve got a fun little macro/addon combo set up so that with the click of a button I can swap my actions bars to healy-mode and put on my healing mace, Off-hand, and Wand and heal it up if needed. I loves it.
Being able to clinch-heal is really fun, listening to people cry that only one healer is left alive and Leo is at 4% while I spam my healy button and run over to the ‘lock tank and spam GHeal on him for a few seconds while the raid finishes the boss off is one of the most satisfying things possible.
Especially ’cause he dropped the defender glove token and the rest of my guild let me have first dibs. =P
January 3rd, 2008
I’m a Shadow Priest and I do this fairly often. When I think healing will help the raid avoid a wipe over my DPS then I’ll pop out of shadow and heal. I have a macro that switches out my weapons and trinkets for healing ones and puts a Frisbee and Renew on my target. The healers are usually chanting “Go Vladvin, Go” over vent when this happens. Everyone is so used to priest-tards that don’t think they exist out of Shadowform that they are suprised to find one that is willing and able to effctivley fill in when the stuff hits the fan.
Great article Ego!
January 3rd, 2008
Tanks, you can’t be Hybrid Healers.
Hey! I’ll have you know, Ego, that I can slap on those heavy netherweave bangages like nobody’s business! Well, yeah, okay, there is that issue about not getting hit during the process, but still.
/humph
Otherwise, is good article.
January 3rd, 2008
A tank who’s working on a boss where they aren’t required to hold aggro can be expected to heal ina pinch, and better. For example, a prot paladin on Gruul where there’s already a main and off-tank still up. These are very rare, but tanks with healing spells should realize that on fights where their sole job is DPS, they need to be ready to step up and throw heals if things go south.
January 3rd, 2008
*stands behind Ego*
*peers over her shoulder at the miniature scene*
*squeezes index finger and thumb together over Illhoof*
*squeals* “I squeesh your head!”
The next installment will be about which classes are best suited for which jobs, right? Looking forward to it. I have my highly educated opinions, of course, but I’ll withhold those until after you’ve got it all right.
January 4th, 2008
Wish I could find me some decent hybrid healing Shaman specs somewhere. I can’t seem to find a proper build for my Shaman. The only thing she’s good for is being pure resto. I wouldn’t mind tossing out a few lightning bolts once in a while.
January 4th, 2008
As a shadow priest, if I’m popping out to heal in raid, it usually means we’re fucked five ways to Sunday. Especially in 25-man raids. In a 10-man raid like Kara or ZA, I’ve popped out to heal when needed, though that’s pretty rare if I’m going in as shadow.
When I say that the raid is (usually) screwed when I’m having to pop out to heal, it’s because of the following:
- My heals are inefficient. They cost more mana than holy priests (who have talents for that). My big heals take too long to go off. Holy priests have a talent that shaves 0.5 seconds off a greater heal cast. I’m not wearing healing gear, so my heals (which cost a lot of mana for me) are healing for less.
- I run out of mana quickly. Shadow priests simply are not geared with MP5 or the spirit for healing. I have about 80 MP5 raid buffed, and that’s good for a shadow priest, as we don’t usually spec for it. This means that I can heal for about 10-15 seconds before I run out of mana to do anything else. Basically, when I pop out and heal, don’t expect me to be able to go back into shadowform (that’s 835 mana right there) and DPS, because usually, I have the choice between DPSing out of shadowform, or going into shadowform and not having the mana to do much else the rest of the fight.
That said, if you need a hybrid to pick up the slack, yell it out in vent. Most hybrids are busy dealing with the intricacies of DPS. In my case, I’m watching my spell cooldowns, my mana, my dot timers, the threat meters and oh, yeah, whatever abilities the boss might have that could potentially kill me. I don’t have the time to watch tank health and healer mana, especially in a 25 man raid. As well, sometimes, I end up in a run full of hybrids. The enhancement shaman, the elemental shaman, the boomkin, the kitty druid… calling out “SOMEBODY HEAL” isn’t good. Pick a person, any person, so you don’t have 5 DPSers dropping everything and healing. Generally, if I see healers dying in a 10-man run, I will say, “dropping to heal” in vent, so people know that I’m picking up the slack, or attempting to. That way, the other hybrids can continue eating boss face.
That said, when I drop to heal, the Very First Heal that I always use is PoM. Throw one out to the tank if I see he’s not got one, or the OT or a melee I know is taking a lot of damage so there’s a heal flying out in the raid. The second heal I drop is renew, because it’s an instant cast and gives me a buffer of some kind on the person I’m healing (usually the tank). Only then do I bother casting a GHeal. I always cast max rank GHeal, because my heals heal for so little, and I rarely cancel heals, because my heals take so long to cast. Usually, if I cancel a greater heal, the tank’s pretty much dead, because I won’t be able to get the next heal off in time. Generally. If I can, I try to swap out my DPS weapon and offhand for my healing weapon and offhand to give my +heal and mana regen a boost, but most of the time, I don’t have that luxury.
All that said, if my heals are not covering the last 5% of a boss fight, but rather the middle 50% while a brez is going out, don’t expect much in the way of DPS after I’ve gone back to nuking. All the heals I’ve done has probably wiped out most of my mana, if not all of it, and even after potting (if I hadn’t already done that so I could heal) and using my shadowfiend, chances are, that I’m going to be on my light DPS cycle for the rest of the fight. While I’m healing, obviously, there will be no mana regen for my group, because I’m busy trying to keep the tank alive, casters will lose the shadow debuff and the misery debuff on the mob, so caster DPS as a whole will probably drop slightly until I get back into pew pewing.
I will admit that I have twice (successfully) healed boss fights in Kara as shadow (and I knew I was going to do that going into the fights). The first time was on Illhoof. It was a suboptimal raid make up, and our healers were a feral druid, a shadow priest (me!) and a holy paladin. I was in a heal set cobbled together from Kara leftovers and quest blues, and the feral druid was healing in level 60 raid epics. Both of us were OOM by the time Illhoof was at 40%. This was after chain potting, inner focus, shadowfiend and an innervate.
The second time was sort of on a lark. Half our Karazhan team hadn’t shown up, and we were bored… so we decided to go in and 7-man Attumen. On alts. We needed at least one more healer, though I didn’t want to respec for a 7-man Kara. The other healer was a holy priest in PMC and T-5 equivalent gear. We killed him, but I don’t ever recommend 7-manning him the way we did.
January 6th, 2008
There’s only one case I can think of when a bear should be popping out to heal - and that’s on Gruul when they’re tank #2 and there’s a tank #3. Straight after a ground slam, I almost always throw a lifebloom on everyone nearby as I run back in - not only does it save the real healers a bit of mana, but it means that tank #3 can get a couple of hateful blows to help them out with rage and threat gen.
Another place that feral druids should always be tossing a couple of heals is Aran when he does his explosion - when you’re running for the wall, shift out and throw some HoTs around. Or if he’s started casting flame wreath and you’re out of position for some reason - shift out (BEFORE he finishes casting, or BOOM!) and heal for the duration of the flame wreath.
January 7th, 2008
I am ashamed to say that have only seen this done well, and ending in success a handful of times, and almost always by the same druid (Hi Swifty).
We simply don’t ever expect our ‘hybrids’ to heal, and when we do they always feel horrible when they can’t do the trick.
Maybe if there was an expectation of them to be ready to do this if they had to, it would be less painful.
January 8th, 2008
As one of the shadow priests (1200+ dmg) in my guild - which is currently clearing Kara without any big problems while gearing up more peeps for 25-mans - my healing role is limited to boss-almost-down-but-healers-are-oom-or-dead scenarios. We have a couple of healers that have/had mana problems in for example the Nightbane fight, and I have on a couple of occasions popped out to save the day by spamming gheals on the tank. Personally Im usually quite good on mana at this time unless I have been sloppy in timing my fiending/potting - so even my less-than-perfect healing skills combined with worse mp5 is enough for this. And this is with my shadow set with 950 +healing - I usually dont bring my 1400+ healing set with me - which I probably should btw.
Of course, healing most normal 5-mans with a good healing set as a shadow priest is not that hard either with a good group - so that’s another reason to have that healing set ready for the times you need to help out friends/guildies with those 5-man-missing-healer runs. Heroics is a completely different thing - I have healed heroic mech with a +1100 healing set as shadow, and it is possible, but it has to be a smooth run with a *good* group, and even that will see the occasional death/wipe. So I don’t to do it with anyone else than very desperate friends/guildies with the willingness to pay repair bills.
January 8th, 2008
I’m gonna have to protest the druid bear tank not being able to heal. >.> Mostly because ours gets bored and does so. His healing gear makes healers starting in Kara cry, but he grabbed it when no one else needed specifically for those fights where it was better for him to heal. He completely heals the Prince fight (we let our pally tank tank him usually), and leaves our two healing spec’d healers to heal the tank while he takes care of all DPS and healers during all 3 phases of prince. He is the king of lifebloom stacking even in full tank gear when needed, he just can’t do it forever (obviously). So don’t doubt your hybrid tank!
I will say I have LOVED this series of yours. As a hunter who’s wanting to take her priest alt into Kara, all the tips and advice have been wonderful.
January 10th, 2008
Shad priests FTW! I can’t count how many times my boyfriend has popped out of shad form during Moroes to save someone from Garoutte or the like. He has held together many runs where the sh!t hit the fan and the MH’s weren’t ready for something.
January 15th, 2008
Heh, I call it ‘Emergency Healing’ and I do it all the time. A couple weeks ago my Holy Paladin friend kicked the bucket about 5 seconds into the Prince fight in Kara. Don’t ask me why, I was far too busy switching my weapons and throwing PoM/renew on the tank to figure it out. Sure, Shadow Priest healing isn’t mana-efficient and it certainly isn’t optimal, but we can save the day.
That said, any Mana Battery that isn’t willing to hop out of Shadowform to emergency heal when things get hairy deserves to be slapped. There is no I in TEAM.