Pally vs. Shaman

[Holylife 0]

Good Day

  I hate to open this can of worms but I need some advice.  I've always played horde but have been interested in trying Alliance and I'll be rolling on the fresh server.

  Knowing I want to play a healer and have already raided as a priest and druid it's about time I try out another, but which one is the question?  I feel like only ever playing horde is limiting my experience with the game and I should really give alliance side a shot even though it slow down my leveling because I'm not familure with FP, quests etc.

In regards to end game raiding, the questions are:

1: Who puts out moreraw heals, Shammy or Pally

2: Who's buffs are more desirable  (i.e. Salvation / kings > wf?)

3: Gear scaling differences btw the two.

 

Any insight from experianced would be great.  Thanks 

[Bonucci 0]

Druid

[gotmilk0112 10]

Why even compare them? It's not like you can play both on the same faction.

 

Both are great heals, both have tons of desirable buffs, and both scale pretty well with gear.

[Holkan 13]

Paladin in my opinion comes out far far ahead of shaman in pve and pvp. Windfury is amazing, but salvation and kings comes out ahead in pve ( human racial working for both rogues and warriors compounds on this too). Pvp paladin by far being able to remove magic debuffs have uninterrupted invunerable healing for 12 seconds and being able to put sacrifice on unlimited targets to be unccable by any cc that breaks on damage is just broken. Paladins are pretty hard to run oom as well. Blessing of protection and blessing of freedom are insane utility both removable by purge / dispel magic, but sometimes all it takes is 1 or 2 seconds of them to completely turn a battle. Honestly if more paladins healed in pvp instead of playing ret alliance would be the dominant pvp faction even with horde having WoTF warstomp and orc stun resist (to be fair gnome racial is great for melee and stoneform isn't too bad either + fear ward).

[Rafale 6]

One answer when you ask what is best:

http://realmplayers.com/RaidStats/Ranking.aspx?Bosses=00010203040506070809&realm=All

[Crowley 8]

1 hour ago, gotmilk0112 said:

Why even compare them? It's not like you can play both on the same faction.

 

Both are great heals, both have tons of desirable buffs, and both scale pretty well with gear.

Maybe his question is because he is torn between classes, not factions.  There's no reason to be condescending to people asking questions on a forum.  It's a big part of what a forum is for.

[Holylife 0]

Thanks for the responses all.  Crow is correct, I've played them both to 20ish and love them both.  Just can't decide.  

[Nymis 12]

I'd say to go for Alliance because you've probably missed out half this game by playing Horde only. 

[gotmilk0112 10]

3 hours ago, Crowley said:

There's no reason to be condescending

Nice projection

[Stormhart 12]

I rolled alliance on a another private server project. I hadn't played alliance in years and the levelling experience was refreshing and great. As for shaman vs. Paladin, both have pros and cons. Mostly comes down too personal opinion and preference.

[Maxvla 0]

Ignoring the actual healing performed for a moment, the ability for 1 paladin to buff 40 people alone makes him superior to the 1 shaman buffing 4 people. This leads to other positive effects like better group stacking. Using 1 of 5 slots in a party for a healer when you could have another rogue in the group with battle shout and trueshot is just not good. On Alliance side, the only time you spread your paladins out is for resistance aura, which is only a handful of fights. 1 paladin in the tank group for devotion aura (maybe two for ret/resistance aura), then the others can go wherever is empty.

The 20% tranquil air totem vs 30% salvation buff is huge as well, and if you have to use tranquil air totem instead of windfury, your dps is really low, and then what is the point...

Blessing of Wisdom is stronger than Mana Spring. The balance is supposed to come from mana tide, but typically this is used while the shaman is in a melee group, so the value is greatly reduced.

Judgements are something shamans have no answer for. Judgement of light is tons of small heals that add up to an impressive figure that costs almost nothing (except a debuff slot). Dual wielding melee can often keep themselves alive through periodic aoe splash damage without healing from anyone. Healing stream totem is total garbage, and mana spring would be used instead anyway. Judgement of Wisdom is incredible for long fights like Nefarian, C'Thun, and basically all of Naxx.

Regarding the healing now, due to the polar opposite healing style and typical assignment, I'd say they are both great in their task, but Paladin will scale better, and be better overall. Paladin is purely single target, while shaman should be assigned to purely multi-target. Shaman single target healing is pretty bad. Paladins scale better because they are so efficient, once you are in Naxx gear, you can literally flash of light forever and do reasonable healing. If you need to step up the output, Holy Light is still fantastic. Shaman's chain heal does have a good coefficient, but due to the nature of a fairly high base mana cost, it will never scale with gear as well as a paladin. As a shaman gains gear, you simply can afford a higher rank of chain heal for a little longer. It heals a bit more and you can heal a few more times, but you will always oom, and fairly quickly.

There are also all the utility spells Paladins have that shamans just don't. BoP, Divine Shield, Sacrifice, Freedom, dispelling 3 different debuffs with a single cast (including magic, shaman can only poison and disease), seal of wisdom -> smack boss for more mana between heals, and more.

The only major things shamans have is that their main heal (chain heal) is the only smart heal in vanilla. It will always seek a damaged player to heal. The other is the dispelling totems, that dispel the entire party, and without further global cooldowns.

 

With so many different buffs and abilities being tied to the same 4 totems, and the group composition problem, shaman is a compromise class. Paladin has basically no compromises.

[Holylife 0]

Thank you Maxvla for the response.  Very well thought out. Makes the decision easier for me.

Appreciate it all, Pally it is.

[Rayaleith 2]

I think tranquil totem was not a thing at vanilla. Only alliance has access to threat reducing bless/buff 

[Zawa 1]

Pally is better by a lot. Shaman is more fun by a lot.