WC-Larry

Might be a little slow, but theres probably nothing that duo couldnt end up taking out as far as small instanced heroic and solo content is concerned.

grandmasterub

From a tanks perspective the reason mystics are considered "better" persay is that mystics do preventative healing while a warden does reactive healing.

With preventative healing the tanks HP should always be in the green which keeps us tanks less worried. The problem with that is if the mob is AoEing a lot or if you have a poor tank or dps that cant manage agro, the mystic has trouble keeping the other group members up.

With a warden the tanks HP is constantly fluctuating (most of the time) which makes it harder for the tank to judge when defensive temps are needed. BUT if AoE's are going out or dps is pulling agro back and forth, its a lot easier for the warden to handle the group healing.

Personally as a tank I dont prefer any class over another but If I'm going to run a tough zone and I get a tell from a mystic and a warden, with only one spot open I'd take the mystic. However I'd prefer both... us zerkers just love instinct.

PS I'm only in here cause my next toon is gonna be a warden.

Stupid Druid

Personally, I prefer my warden over mystic any day primarily due to cast times. As a warden your longest heal spell is the group HOT which takes 3 seconds unmodded to cast. With gear and good group setups your able to stack on your hot's and still manage some attacks in between. Otoh a mystic you start casting a ward get up grab a cup of coffee come back hit your next ward and go get a snack come back and debuff then start the cycle over. A bit of an exageration I know but I just don't have the patience for those long cast times.

Everyone is right that most groups will just grab a mystic over a warden every time. In a group where there is a second healer as a warden I prefer to have a shaman over a cleric though. If you can get in a rhythm with the shaman you'll be hitting your HOTS just as the wards fail giving time to reapply the wards. May just be a personal preference but imo it's easier.

The heal parse comparison is a bit lopsided and any shaman should be topping it if they can half play their toon. Reason being, wards absorb damage so unless they time out they get 100% counted toward the parse every time. With our HOTs once the targets reach 100% health the rest of our heals are lost.

Desna

Yeah, when they actually land >.< other night was trying to root a mob with an M1 root, resisted me 6 times....but that's more of roots in general being an irritation through all classes and not wardens in specific.

I've played my warden as my main for some time, and tried a mystic once...and promptly decided mystic just isn't for me. As some have said, cast times is a big deal...my group heals can just be spammed in between casting my HOT on the tank and pushing him up with my faster single targets, taking AEs in stride. There's very little I can't solo heal on my warden, even with poor tanks that cause aggro to jump a bit (so long as they keep me alive at least).

Mystic seemed to be much less forgiving of disheveled groups, with cast times that took eons and not much time to switch from target to target. That said I only played one up to 30s or so, so I barely tasted what a mystic can do and didn't have any gear that reduced cast time.

The low gearing for wardens can be a bit annoying, as there's less to pick from than shammys who get to pick over various scout gear; I usually just prayed for brawler drops or stuck to healer leathers and DPS jewelry til I hit t8. Thankfully TSO seems to balance leather-wearing healer gear better now for both DPS and heals; just look at our sets.

My biggest complaints about wardens are the slow DPS (especially at t8 on pvp servers) and the lack of viable raid buffs. The dps isn't that big an issue as much as the raiding...the only thing we really get for raids is a 15% crit mit buff at the end of our TSO tree, and it's only in-group...so unless they throw in a warden into the MT group, we're spot healers in group X or benchwarming. It also doesn't help that (again, at least on PvP servers) there seems to be 100 druids to each shaman...so I tend to see ""group looking for non-druid healer" rather often.

Blaiz

HoTs vs Wards Yes the shaman wards will take effect first but you can make your self more desirable as a player for solo healing by just keeping your 2 big HoTs on the whole fight whether the tank is taking damage or not. Cast single target on pull unless you have a trigger happy mage or scout then use group, and just make sure that a heal is on tank and or group the whole time. By keeping the big regens going the whole fight they kinda act like wards in the fact that as soon as he takes damage he is getting healed. I solo heal alot of instances and folks trust me to do so, now my dps might suck a little cause at these moments i am wearing straight healing gear but if I am solo healing I bet we have plenty of dps.

Ranx

first off, wtf do people keep talking about parses in reference to a mystic solo healing a group versus a warden solo healing a group? you can only heal as much damage as the tank and the group take. so comparing a zonewide heal parse between two healers who solo healed a group is pointless because its really just a parse of how much damage the tank took.

in a duo? the mystic will outparse the warden like WHOA. the reason is that when a mob hits a tank, it eats the WARDS FIRST so the warden wont even show up on the parse until the mystics individual AND group wards have been hit through.

Xendo

I'm biased towards the warden.

But yeah in a group with a mystic healing (or soloing as a mystic) You'll likely take less damage and as such require less healing. Due to superior mit armor and or debuffs to the mob.

Wards do an alright amount of Damage absorbtion but they'll never equal the heal from a HoT. It was purposely set up that way HoTs by design are gonna be wasted. Whether a ward absorbed it first or a reactive healed it first or the recipent just didn't need any heals at the time of the tick.

Group Heals strongly favor wardens It's our biggest asset. We can literally heal an amount nearly equivelent to our single target HoT to everyone in the group simultanously. Group Wards and Reactives don't even come close.

A downside to the HoT is its very short lived (10 secs at most) so you'll usually cast them more frequently unless you are confident enough to gamble letting the rotation slide a bit for efficiency. With the epic efficiency and concerns over power is not an issue. Where as wards and reactives will hold potential to heal if needed for much longer. Unless the mob is just hitting that hard or that frequent. If the mob is hitting the tank for enough dps the mystic can be overwhelmed and in the same situation the warden will be more effective as each tick has a strong likelyhood of being needed. When you boil right down to it IF (and that if is big but when you're solo healing is far more likely) the whole heal is used the HoT will outheal wards and reactives everytime.

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.....Why won't this damn hammer port me?.....

Eerie

I have both an 80 mystic and warden. I hate solo healing on the mystic, love it on the warden.
Wards kick ass, wards will pwn the your hots on the parse, however once your ward is chewed up and it comes down to healing.. it gets tricky. Shamans have slow ass heals, and slower recovery times. I find my warden far superior for keeping a group in the green solo.
While playing a dps class and putting a group together, there are only a small handful of shamans I can think of off the top of my head that I feel comfortable with inviting as a single healer.
Shamans are awesome but a really hard class to play exceptionally well.

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Angela Treehugger
RIP Eerietwo
**Wardens do it Doggystyle**

kxizm

heal parses dont matter. ever. a player doesnt determine a heal parse. the game mechanics of how heals work do.
wards > reactives > HoT
that list /might/ reverse itself on a very long (15+ min) fight, but it still doesnt mean anything about player skill. its still just mechanics.

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