Thank you for watching FLAAAME WOOOORZZ! We now continue with our feature presentation, "Timely Consideration of Counterbalanced Expenditures".
(I'm prolly a couple of posts late with that, but I was on the phone for a bit.)
The shaman Purge and priest Dispel are great tools in the right circumstances, and have their restrictions as well. Getting a feel for these restrictions (as the caster, the teammate, and the opponent) will make any twink a better player.
The shaman purge can remove buffs and HoTs from enemy players, and uses 8% base mana per cast. The priest Dispel can do that (I'm pretty sure), and also remove DoTs and debuffs from treammates, at 14% base mana per cast. So functionally speaking, dispel works as a "counterheal", nullifying the damage of DoTs for the same mana cost. That's the strength of Dispel.
Purge is meant strictly for offensive use, since it only works on enemies, and the 43% lower mana cost helps tremendously for shamans who already have potentially the best mana regeneration in the bracket if they use the water shield.
In essence, Dispel and Purge play to the strengths of priests and shamans: defensive and offensive healing strategies, respectively.
Now, as to the best or worst healers of the bracket, I'd say it came down to those who played their class the best (or worst). Seriously, a lot of you might argue that certain classes just suck or just excel in this bracket, but all it takes is one counterexample, and I'm sold on the potential of that class.
I played with a healadin who never died, but had no sense of timing or of nearby teammates. He couldn't prioritize who got what heal, and kept gravitating toward battle. So while he didn't do badly, he couldn't provide the continued support we needed for us to get more than halfway across WSG. By contrast, another healadin was the ultimate escort, and not just of the FC. That healadin figured out which players would make the most difference in a particular match, then anchored his heals on them. By taking the pressure off these two players, they in turn did a phenomenal job supporting the whole team, and we handily beat better-geared opponents.
One priest had powerful heals, but she had no sense of position. She threw a renew onto anyone who needed it, and used her fear to escape situations now and then, but died half of the time because she drew a lot of attention to herself and she stayed too far on the fringes of battle to get support when an enemy focused on her. Her playstyle tended to fragment us. Contrast this with a priest that loved playing "reverse zone defense". She made it a point to constantly position herself in such a way that anyone who came after her would have to cross the path of a teammate and come under fire. Anticipation was the name of her game, and when she saw opportunity, she could plant herself in the right position to belt off a couple of heals and leave 'em with a renew, or finish with a grand slam group heal if she had good support. What a sight to behold.
Some druids like to "carpet bomb" HoTs all over teammates, then try and hit a couple of big heals, then die quickly when they flee from one enemy and run smack into another. If good priests are all about position, then good druids are all about flow. I played with a resto druid who treated healing like a game of freeze-tag. She kept a good eye on enemies, and when her heals finally got their attention, she proactively led them around obstacles, teammates, whatever it took to get them tangled up, both figuratively and literally. She saw which enemies were where, and anticipated the best place to go to continue the chase. The instant they broke off the chase, she was back to healing. Not even a resto shaman can frustrate enemies like a good resto druid. A good resto druid can stack heals and annoyances into a strong team that seems to have luck go their way.
Resto shamans.... I could write a whole post by itself (and have) on my favorite healing class. I've seen resto shamans who don't bother messing with the complexity of totems, or purging. They switch back and forth between their fast, powerful heals, and their shocks. More often, they get a lot of attention for a moment, then end up sapped, hamstrung, feared, dazed, and finally dead. But a good resto shaman...it's like having all your stats tripled. You're dying...and then you're not. Then your opponent starts to walk at half speed. The rogue you fight gets close to dying, vanishes just as a flame shock lands, before you can finish him, then reappears when the flame shock HoT pulls him out of stealth. A mad, angry group is this close to chasing you down, then they all fall to half speed as you run by a green neon totem that appeared by your side. A huge melee breaks out in the flag room and all the enemies catch fire at once! Repeatedly! Enemy cast time increases, and confusion reigns for just a moment until someone puts out the totem. Then a warlock throws down a Fear as a tremor totem lands an instant before. Your whole team runs in chaos for a split second, then they're back in action, and the warlock who started to drain your life suddenly takes a shock that stops the drain, and the gleam on your hammer matches the gleam in your eye. A paladin spies you from across the field and charges toward you with more buffs than a Chippendale conga line, but by the time the pally reaches you, he's only got two, and didn't notice the loss.
I've seen them all succeed. I do believe that certain classes with certain non-healing specs have a disadvantage in the 29 bracket. But for all healers, the 29 bracket is a great place to shine.
Bwappo
