Alright,

This should be an open discussion because I'm curious what you all are thinking.

Recently, I was in a group for Sunken Temple...and our last member was matched up through the LFG thing. He just -happened- to be a resto druid. Now mind you, I play a holy spec'd priest who seriously does VERY little damage. My primary function is to heal, I don't even target baddies..my focus is completely on the party and their health.

So I ask him..his spec and he tells me. And we're trying to decide how to work this, I'm thinking.. Okay, he has cat and bear form..he can do more damage than I could. So, politely I mention.." Being holy, I do no real damage worth counting." And he replied with.." Being resto, I do the equivalent of holy priest damage." Now, I was certain this couldn't be entirely true. So I asked a Druid friend of mine who also said, he's BSing. He can dmg deal.

So throughout the entire instance, he's healing overtop me. He'd cast rejuv as I was casting off a heal..and his rejuv would fill up the health just as my heal was coming off..which was wasting my mana and pissing me off. One time he even commented.." Wow, all of you have no mana and I have a full bar." And I'm thinking.." Shouldn't that tell you something?"

Now, my thoughts are.. Druids who are resto spec'd should secondary heal against a holy/disc priest. If I'm out of mana, please..heal the party we don't want deaths! But, fight when you can fight..it'll help the group. Am I wrong to think this? Needless to say, we had no deaths! And got out of a few VERY sticky situations.

Your friend id right. If a resto druid is telling you that he can't do all that much damage is isn't all there in the head. Granted that he may not have any talents put into feral, but reguardless he can still do dameage. He still gets the bonous to armor in bear form and the bonus to attack power in cat just not as much as a feral would. As far as his healing goes and saying that he cant do all that much damage, still full of shit, there are balance talents that give you bonus to damage. I myself a primaily a feral druid went and puts some of my talents into resto and all of the ones that give damage are the first three lines in the tree. I would recomend that you NEVER attampt to party up with that person again. He will get the party killed if you tell him to go and be a secondary DPS/Healer. He eather dosnt know what he is talking about or he is just talking out his ass cuz he just dosnt want to be stuck doing something that he dosn't want to do. AKA: hes a bitch and wants the loot from the instance.

Dasz

But a Holy Priest can also deal damage when they want to. Just ask some of the milliions of monsters and assorted baddies that my two Holy Priests have encountered over their lives

I think the key here is to decide one way or the other at the start of the Instance who will do what. Then the one who is not prime healer can do the best they can damage wise while keeping a sharp eye out for too low health bars or when you get way to many monsters attacking holding back and stepping in when the prime healer gets swamped by monsters and can no longer heal properly.

It is 100% in the hands of the players how things work out. The situation described above where the Druid was over healing party members and causing the Priest to waste mana, it was not clear if a decision was ever reached as to who was to be prime healer. With my priests I would have backed off and allowed the Druid to be main healer but kept a plentiful supply of mana for the inevitable probelms that will arise.

My priests love their wands - not too much damage but enough to matter and most of it bypases armor so way better than smacking them with the Staff and you can do it from further away while keeping an eye on the eb and flow of the battle.

wow, I amost don't know where to begin. But/so this may ramble a bit -

First, I think that properly specced & geared healers are ALMOST all equivalent, both in healing & damage. A Holy Priest, Resto Druid, healing shaman, and healing pally don't have so many differences, if all/most of their talent points ar in the healing tree.

That being said, on to your problem: the group setting.

I don't know how you all were set up (I don't know the other 2 classes and roles), but I would GENERALLY put the Priest on the main tank (and possibly the OT, if there is one), and I would GENERALLY assign the Resto druid to a balanced role of DoT/HoT/debuff on the rest of the party.

If the person is PRIMARILY resto specced, at that level, he/she probably has a backup set of feral gear (cat, bear, or in between), but very probably few or no points in the tree, and little experience in a feral role.

Sometimes, like with the Priestess in Blackrock, you will actually PREFER a druid to tank (because of being immune to polymorph), but generally, a hybrid class should preform their primary function, and scatter in secondary stuff when possible.

Taking your situation above, I would have had the Priest on the MT (and OT, as well, if the person feels comfortable and capable, and the OT is a class that can't really self-heal), and the druid alternating between whatever roles are needed - heals for the other party, crowd control, debuffs, HoT dps, etc.

I've mentioned before, I'm Balance-Resto, but I am a pretty powerful BACKUP healer. You really don't want me as the main healer, but I can & will heal effectively for boss fights, or pop out of Doomkin, barkskin, and throw out a tranquility or combat rez that can otherwise save a wipe.

As both Das and Tag said, I think it is VERY important to define roles up frot, and also discuss strat before any boss fight.

~Darq~

LOL....Resto druid doing damage....YOU try questing or killing with a resto druid and see how you like it. I once got pulled into a group through LFG for Slabs, and I was like, is it a problem that i'm resto, and they said "we have a healer" i said, ok, i can put on cat gear...well, my dps was horribly low...like below the tank low. We didn't make it to the second boss and all our gear was red.

I also got pulled into a group for sethekk halls as resto but group already had a healer, this time i tried cat gear for a while, but said screw it and eventually went to my caster gear. My dps was AGAIN, below the tanks, but Fwiw, I did do quite a bit of healing since their current healer was under geared.