It shouldn’t be necessary to point out things like this, but sadly I’ve never (or rarely) been in a raid where not at least 1 guy “forgot” to update all add-ons
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That’s one of Mek’s posts about the state of resto shaman healing an Vixin’s response. Good stuff to read.

The first guy who was really vocal about this problem was Mek from Ensidia. His main argument was this: I’m an excellent player. But Priests/Druids/Paladins do a better job at healing than I do. I have some viability as RT/LHW spammer, but Resto has forced me more or less to go elemental.

I understand Mek’s concerns. But (and this is a huge BUT) Mek is in a raiding guild with exceptional players. So, if we take truly excellent players with perfect hardware/internet connection and let them heal, yeah, maybe Priests, Druids and Paladins have a slight advantage over us resto shamans in a hard mode environment. For 95% of us normal players skill outweighs class balancing by a large margin.

While I understand Mek’s concerns and his frustration, I don’t think he knew what impact his statements would have on the shaman community. Raid leaders started doubting if shamans are the right pick for their healing team. Resto shamans started doubting their healing abilities. It was, and to some extent still is, horrible. Because healing classes ARE BALANCED at this point. You can take the player and don’t have to take the class. Unless you’re in a top 50 guild. And even there, I see many resto shaman still doing fine.

The mobility issue is really not an as big deal as it seems. Just learn the fights and maximize your output in high mobility encounters. Caster DPS have spells with cast time as well. If running around from time to time would absolutely cripple their DPS, I wouldn’t be seeing the numbers I’m seeing now.

The analogy in real life would be this: You have a nice wife. But next door, there’s this juicy good looking neighbor. We’ll, drooling over that girl will surely fuck up your relationship. Start working on yourself and don’t look at the greener grass over there. Unless you’re really unhappy with what’s going on.

I chose to play a shaman because I like orcs and bloodlust. I enjoy both DPS specs. Yeah, maybe I’d be a marginally better healer if I rerolled priest, but I don’t enjoy shadow so I’d be stuck at healing. Yeah maybe I’d be a better raid healer as druid, but I don’t enjoy the pace and style of druid healing as much as I enjoy resto shaman.

Concentrate on what you like about shamans and shaman healing. Work with the tools you have and never ever be self-content. Be excellent. Be a pro-active healer. If you feel like you’re slow, learn to see where the damage is going to land. And most important: don’t start an encounter with that slight feeling of inferiority towards other healing classes. If you do that, you will fail.

What it boils down to I guess, is that I feel that priests and druids might be a better choice for a raid doing the hardest content, without losing much by replacing a shaman. Paladins have their tank healing niche that they rule at even if they have to move. Now, i’m not “emotionally” worried about this, as it might have seemed from my other comment. But I wanted to raise the question if our lack of mobility might become a bigger problem as ICC opens up. And if so, how to deal with it, and how to be more effective in those fights.

Doh! Another wall. Damn you keyboard

If you aren’t happy with your healing output, don’t look at healing meters. Healing meters don’t tell you anything. They give a tiny bit of information, if you compare 2 players of same class, spec and healing assignment.

But you can’t compare druid priest and shaman healing through healing meters. That’s just not viable due to healing mechanics.

Example: My HPS is proportional to how much I use Chain Heal. In many situations, RT/LHW is a much better choice though. So I could spam chain heal to make my HPS look good or I could pick the right spells for the right situations to help the raid.

I feel like I’m a strong asset to our healing team. CH is still great to heal tanks/melees and the raid (if not spread out). RT/LHW is a just an awesome combo to heal specific debuffs and people dropping low. RT/HW is insane burst HPS.

Shamans aren’t very mobile. But same goes for holy paladins and many caster DPS. If that’s annoying to a resto shaman, I wonder if he picked the right class. We aren’t that mobile, but that’s just something we have to accept and make the best out of it: Know encounters: be sure to know every possibility to squeeze an LHW in, even during fights with a lot of running. Don’t go idle during movement, recast ES/WS, RT.

Whats your thoughts on resto shams on this encounter? Both me and the other resto in our guild we’re lagging way behind the priests and druids. Might be that we’re sniping eachothers targets, but i suspect there to be a trend in the new encounters that heavy raid damage=a lot of movement fight, wich favour the trees and the priests. On saurfang, im almost out of a job until theres 3 marks in the raid because of all the hotting and shielding of the predictable raiddamage.

Halp! I feel i’m not really getting the most out of my spot here.

My guild eventually downed him on ten man in ‘normal mode’, after spending 2 – 3 hours wiping attempting the achievement. We were two healing for the achieve and my god is that ever some craziness once he’s below 30% health. We almost got it too, got him to 6% and wiped, then had to call it due to a bad DC and the fact that it was 5 am. Great fun though and quite difficult – I can see the nerfbat coming.