So you want to be a Healer ... which type? Part I

Say you like being a healer... what type of healer do you want to be?

Blizzard tries to force us into making choices. Guess what? They succeed. Unless you read the forums and swallow what someone claims to be the latest cookie-cutting build, you'll have to make choices. Tough ones, too.

Paladin

A healing paladin will naturally spend a bunch of talent points in Holy. However, he can choose to focus on PVP or PVE talents.

• PVP talents: Unyielding Faith, Improved Concentration Aura, Pure of Heart, Blessed Hands, Blessed Life, Sacred Cleansing.


• PVE talents? Improved Lay on Hands, to a certain extent Improved Blessing of Wisdom. Most other also helps PVP.

After those choices have been made, said paladin has to decide whether to put the rest of the talents into Protection or Retribution.

Protection contains many talents useful for PVP, but not exclusively. Improved Devotion Aura, Divine Guardian, (Improved) Blessing of Kings and Guardian's Favor can all be useful for PVE healing. In addition, Stoicism, Improved Righteous Fury, Tougness and Improved Hammer of Justice are very handy in PVP.

Retribution helps PVE healing, but also aids PVP. Benediction, Conviction, Improved Judgements, Heart of the Crusader, Improved Blessing of Might and Sanctified Seals are all useful in a raid setting. For PVP, Pursuit of Justice and Eye for an Eye are neat talents.

Shaman

Unlike Paladins, shamans don't have to choose which non-healing tree to spend the rest of his or her talent choices in. Enhancement is the obvious choice for almost all purposes. With that said, there are three different types of healing styles the restoration tree supports; PVP, PVE single target and PVE multi-target healing (semi-AoE). Or most likely, a mix of the latter two if you're raiding.

Multi-target healing talents: Improved Chain Heal. Not a very long list. However, the list of talents which does not affect Chain Heal is longer.

Single-target healing talents: Improved Healing Wave, Improved Water Shield, Healing Way and Ancestral Awakening.

In addition, Improved Reincarnation is a raid-healing talent.

PVP-healing talents: Healing Grace, Focused Mind, Nature's Guardian, Earth's Grasp, Guardian Totems, Improved Ghost Wolf, Anticipation and Toughness. To a lesser extent Shamanistic Focus, since this talent is so cheap that many PVE healers also will pick it up.