Party Strategy Guide

[Brista]

I believe overly specific jobs increases the effectiveness of a party as described in "The Reason for Roles".  I also don't understand how your assignment of healers is any different than mine.  Could you expand a bit?

I guess it comes from spending a lot of time in really bad parties. Some people, most often when using hybrids (druids, shamans, paladins) will let the healers run out of mana, watch the tank drop, watch the healer go next, and watch the rest drop one by one in a close fight, despite having a full mana bar. If challenged after they say something like "why didn't you tell me I needed to heal?" If the group has 3 healers I prefer all of them to look at the lifebars and mana bars. If you appoint them main healer, secondary healer and secondary tank some players will play it as main healer, someone who stands around not doing much waiting for the healer to run out of mana and someone who never heals under any circumstances

I'm a big fan of the hybrid role in a tactical sense. A player who can spot when he/she needs to heal, can dish out damage and can round up loose mobs and is tough enough to get pounded on for a while after taking aggro and steering them to the main tank. Essentially hybrids are the group's flexibility, allowing it to change from a tank + healer + 3 dps set-up to a tank + dps + 3 healer set-up or a 2 tanks + dps + 2 healer set up as required by the situation

If you tell people that they are "secondary healer" or "secondary tank" I think some people would take that as licence to be a lot less effective than a well-played hybrid. Maybe I've just met a lot of tactically naive players. But in any event my concern is that if you tell a hybrid to do one task and not the others you relegate them to simply being a bad specialist if the person takes you too literally. If all your Druid is going to do during your run is tank in bear-form, why not get a second Warrior instead?

I don't think the ability to heal your minion makes you a healer.  It's not a very strong heal and has no ability to handle rule #1 situations.  I would sooner mention that anyone with a stack of linen bandages could be primary healer.

I think you under-estimate the effectiveness. If all the damage goes to the pet and you can cope then you are healing all the damage the party is taking. Our priest left us in Uldaman and our 4 man group could operate like this without being over-levelled. It's a reasonably strong heal and you handle rule #1 by having the pet Growl. In any event it allowed us to continue with content that we couldn't have possibly soloed or done without some kind of healing. It certainly beats bandages

Still, I think within any definition of the term "healer", hunters don't really count. We can't heal player tanks. It is a useful string to our bow though. In groups where we have one main healer and no secondary healer the hunter can help the group through tough fights by drawing some of the aggro onto the pet and healing the pet, effectively acting as an extra healer without gaining the ability to heal the tank. In other words if you're not going to get through the fight with just one healer, the hunter's ability to do this should not be dismissed

I've looked for warlock healing skills and not found any.  Are you referring to the minion healing skills here too?

Heh, this is even more extreme, I basically meant trading them healthstones during the fight. Plus the pet heal.