Palantir

Greetings! My guild recently did a merge/re-strategizing of our raid force and my old main is not as needed as he used to be.

So I've been tasked to become a chain healer (I was a Fury), and my first question is which one? I'd be the chain healer in the OT group, and we already have a Defiler in the MT group. I know little about chain healers atm, but I'll be reading and studying a lot in the next few weeks as I grind one up.

So....what is the State of the Defiler atm, and what do we know about the next expansion? Are we the really as strong as the relative population levels between chain healers suggests? If you had no myth and no masters...would you betray to Mystic or would you stay where you are?

Thanks for the info

Grue

Well thankfully tso has quite a few "two tanks required" mobs otherwise you'd be horribly bored as a defiler in the ot group. Defilers are geared towards healing one target. What gives us an edge over mystics? I've no clue never played one. But I heard they don't have deathward nor soulward, one of these is an extra ward the other is a kick ass thing to hit when/if the tank or whoever else ever gets into the red hitpoint area and you can't stop it with normal wards/heals in time.

I wouldn't betray to a mystic, I would rather level up a new one. If I wasn't lazy that is. Anyways a defiler is a kick ass healer, I heard mystics have more buffs that benefit dps and slightly less hp buffs. Again no clue about that but I can count the times I've been beaten on the heal parse by a mystic when he/she was in the Mt group instead of me on one hand, and I know they don't/didn't suck so it's my oppinion it must be in the class description.

However ot group? I dunno it's hard to say you might be too bored as a defiler. Le shrug. I ussually consider being in the ot group as punishment. If the mob doesn't need two tanks, I'd rather be in the mage dps group honestly. Not that anyone ever puts me there - basically the mystic might give you more choices on what groups you get put in. They do have bigger wards I guess they protect the squishies better. But this is mostly speculation and sorry about the wall of text :|

Tukk

I have both.

The Mystic is easier to level up, especially if you'll need to do a lot of it solo. In early raiding, the Mystic is a great fit for the OT group, and brings more to the table than a Defiler. Ditto for groups where you have two healers.

For 1-healer groups, and for serious end-game raiding, the Defiler has an edge. There are many end-game scenarios where the OT takes as much butt-whooping as the MT, and Defilers handle that a wee bit better. Our raid force runs two Defilers if at all possible, and sometimes three.

So, if it was me, I'd create a Mystic and level it to 80. If your raid force is still doing content that allows you to excel with one Defiler, stay on the Mystic. When you start taking on the harder stuff, betray to Defiler.

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Palantir

Thanks for the early replies and the new data.

FYI for those who might want to post it, I am using the search function and i am reading other threads, I'm just doing the belt-and-suspenders approach of searching and asking concurrently.

Thanks again for the data.

We are raiding the first areas of TSO at the moment, trying to pass the Naga in TOMC and the Gatekeeper in POTAO, if that helps pin things down a bit.

Torrent

I'd definitely roll as a mystic for leveling up. The melee lines can't be beat for solo questing. Plus, the good/neutral races are more likely to have healer friendly packages.

I recently betrayed from Mystic to Defiler. Although, with a mythical, Mystic wards are bigger, Defilers do seem to have more overall healing power, once you learn how to use it. (LOL I haven't fully adapted yet, but my healing numbers seem roughly the same going from Mystic to Defiler.) Mystics cast faster, though, especially before you get some key pieces of your TSO tier 4 set. Which makes it easier for them to react quickly in an OT/DPS group.

You didn't mention if your raid force has a Mystic yet. IMO every raid force should have at least one of each shaman for the debuff variety, and to get the most stacking wards on the MT when needed. Mystic's Torpor line, and Bolster can be cast out of group and stack with everything Defilers have.

Honestly, with how easy it is to reach diminishing returns for stats, I'm not seeing a huge "utility" gap between Mystics and Defilers. The Mystic mythical DA proc is nice, but so many scouts can reach the cap on DA these days, even without the super high end stuff.