This weeks “Topic of the Week” continues the look at healers in the game that was started by Aurael. While her topic was about which class heals best and why, this one is all about which should heal best. You may want to head back to last weeks and check out the comments to get an idea of what everyone things the best healing class is and why, but then come back here to check out who should be the best. You can find last weeks topic here: What Class Heals Best?

Ok, so you know the basics now of who does what and how well (or at least how well players think they do), now how about who should heal best and why. I'll describe what I see each class as and then to simplify it at the end, I'm going to give each class a rating out of 100% as to how well I think they should heal. Ok, Let's start from the bottom up...

Let's start with Shaman. Shaman don't do anything all that well, yet, I'm going to pick on them some more, if for no other reason than I can! While shaman are cool and everything, I see them as more in tune with nature and healing the land. While Dwarf and Tauren tanks can be as wide as a state, they still don't count as land, therefore shaman shouldn't be healing them.

Shaman are sort of like witch doctors in my books, and while that does mean some healing, I envision it as slow and over time. Either HoT (Heal over Time) spells or long cast heals with big cool down timers. Another cool idea that fits with my image of a shaman would be very good heals, but only usable outside of combat. Either way, they should never be a groups main healer, PERIOD.

Here's another one that's going to be unpopular, but oh well! Druids are the opposite of Shaman in that they do everything they do well. They can be a caster in moonkin form and do some amazing damage. They can go feral and either tank or DPS, tanking almost as well as a warrior and DPS'ing almost as well as a rogue. Then they can go tree form and heal almost as well as any other class! Come on man, where's the down side.

I see druids in a similar way to shaman, in that they are more involved in nature than people. While I agree that they should be able to heal, I don't see that they should significantly better than a shaman in their healing ability. It just doesn't fit with everything else they can do. I mean come on, they tank in Pooh bear form, isn't that enough?

I'm prepared for more screaming on this one too... Paladins are the knight in shining armor in the game, they are there to protect and serve. I have a far easier time imagining a holy knight healing than the previous two classes. After all a Paladin reminds me of an armored cleric, devout and wise.

Many players scream "But a healer in plate is too good!". To this I say, bull$%*&! A paladin has very little damage output, even given the buffs they got when BC was released. They are still the lowest DPS class in the game. Sure, they can now tank better, but they should have been able to to begin with, that's part of the whole protection thing I mentioned earlier.

Well, I guess you saw this one coming, right? A priest should be the #1 healer in the game, bar none. No one else should be even close to a Priest. A priests whole role in the game is as a healer, period. No matter the spec, a priest should be the best healer available. That's right, even shadow priests should be better than any other class at healing.

How can I justify this statement. Easily, shadow priests specialize in the health of the body just as much as a holy priest, they just focus on destroying that health. It doesn't mean they don't know the healing side, it just means they specialize in the "removing life" side. To counter this power, they are very squishy, wearing just cloth.

I like diversity in the game, and I do want other healers, despite what I state above. I just want it to be really hard on other healers. If you go with a group without a priest, it should be harder than with one. Now onto how I think the classes SHOULD stackup to one another in healing. All numbers are based on the class, not the spec of the character. If specialized in healing (IE: Holy priest or pally, resto druid) then that character should should heal about 20% better.

Currently it's almost better to take a Druid or Paladin to heal, than to take a Priest. This is just wrong on so many levels. A Priest is meant to be "THE" healing class in any game. For some reason that hasn't been the case in WoW and it should be.

The Messiah has spoken, now its you turn...