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Nerd jokes. This is how the internet dies.

Black Dragonscale was the king of Old Azeroth. At least for Hunters.

I really don't see how shaman would be any less qualified for a 5 man instance, earthen shield has really brought the shaman class up to par with other healing classes as far as 5 man instances go. Depending on the situation the strength of our chain heal spell is amazing as well. The only bad healers in 5 mans are players that suck, or are heavily under geared for the instance they are trying to heal.

It was bad for raiding? I saw a lot of Hunters enter Molten Core in that gear and come out in shiny epics. With all the fire resistance on it (and you needed it back then), it was pretty much the Molten Core rookie gear.

How far do you go back?

Isn't Earth Shield pretty useful for single-target maintenance?

Yes, Earth Shield and Healing Way are both useful. Hopefully nobody is bad enough here to buy into the idea that shamans can't mainheal any 5-man instance (heroic or otherwise) with ease. We can.

Furthermore, 5-mans are easy. Most of the time taking the "worst" single-target healer who brings awesome DPS buffs is preferable to taking the best single-target healer who barely accelerates his party's DPS at all. The only exception to this is when the entire group is undergeared. (the other exception is when the group is terribad)

It's concerning to hear people overlook some of the issues other healers face for 5-mans. Druids have no OOC rez! That's pretty huge. Paladins have weak (nonexistant) AOE healing capabilities. That's also significant. Priests...well...I think priests are pretty amazing for 5-mans tbh, and cloth armor is probably their weakest trait as a 5-man healer (if fade or fear doesn't get the mob off them, they're in far worse shape than a mail-wearing shaman healer with his constant supply of slows.)

A lot of 5-man bosses have AoE effects that can deal high damage to other party members. Keeping DPS up is important on a fight like that, and it's a PAIN with single target heals only.

A drawback to being a resto shaman is many people think that healing as a resto shaman is "Ez mode". So even though I always top heals in raids (which is why I'm the "Main healer" for our guild and have earned a high rank) some of the newer members disagree with it.

I actually think this is ... kind of wrong.

If you spec in resto SPECIFICALLY for being able to main-tank heal, you can do it just as well. Healing Grace only procs off of Healing Wave (which is generally never cast in raids, which is why quite a few raid specs leave it out). If you are main tank healing, that's a +18% healing (which also only procs on healing wave) which can make Healing Wave rather beefy. If you use the +healing to healing wave totem from Heroic SP or UB (I forget which one I got it from), you can do just as well as other classes at main tank healing. I've had 7.8k crit healing waves.. and my gear isn't even THAT impressive. I'm probably the 4th best geared resto shammy in my guild because I get unlucky kara runs and still sport 3 blues.

This being said, we are amazing raid healers. So, use your arguably best raid healer to main-tank heal... or let your healers who don't raid heal well main-tank heal? Shamans aren't given the opportunity to main-tank heal often because of the fact others aren't as good at raid healing. Pallies are probably the worst raid healers (I think very few people would argue with that). CoH priests can be good raid healers, but not all spec for it due to supposed mana-efficiency. Druids are probably better raid healers on some boss fights where you are very mobile and spread out (Void Reaver comes to mind for the ranged dps). But "fast" raid heals are rarely beat from Shamans (melee heals on Void Reaver for instance) where you have to heal them fast between poundings.

The only problem with the other specs is that there are a limited number of spots in a raid. Generally have 1 healing group, 1 tank group and then 3 dps groups (generally 1 melee, 1 hunter/ranged, and 1 caster group). You will probably never have more than 5 shamans in a raid, which I would say is an over-estimation. Two or three resto shamans can do amazing things with raid heals since chain heal is auto-jump to who needs healing. It's faster at deciding than any healer can think. You'd put an elemental shaman with the caster group. And 1 or MAYBE 2 enhancement shamans with the melee or hunter/ranged dps groups.

I love my shaman. I've always been resto, but I've played it as a resto/enhancement hybrid and put out some impressive numbers (was #2 [close to #1]) dps in a mana tombs run back then. I carried an elemental set of gear too. Though my dps wasn't amazing because I never spec'ed into it, I carried my own decently enough. I will say if you want to be effective end-game, you will have to decide. Truly hybrid specs do not work (only real exception is for elemental to get NS).



I actually HATE pally healers in 5 mans. They have no AOE whatsoever. You say that "you only really heal the tank." -.- Every boss I know has AOE damage. Either through adds or random charge or whatever. There is always aoe damage. Pallies are great at keeping one person alive. As soon as aoe happens, they have to start spamming FoL all around and the tank can go down fast when their attention is divided. Shammy can just center Chain heal on the tank and heal up the group... then go back to healing waves. There are very few times on my shaman where I wished I was another class to heal. The only recent experience was heroic BM and we still had no one die the entire time. The final boss has this retarded huge aoe stun. All I could do was sit and watch the tank fall lower and lower while I spammed my heals hoping to come out of stun. But again, keeping ES on him helped him from dying and giving me time to top him off again.

Earth Shield alone can heal a good tank in most instances on trash. On bosses, healing wave + chain heal is more than sufficient. If things get dicey, pop heroism and your heals are going off much faster... dps is going faster for a shorter fight. Throw out fire elemental and you've got a 6th party member doing some good dps. Shaman has quite a few things going for it as a healer for 5 and 10 man content that you seem to like to overlook.

Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 1:22pm by Jiade

you really need to transfer to my server DP. ill show you things you never knew your class was capable of.

I raided in MC, BWL, AQ, and briefly in Naxx.

Here's some of the retro gear I had.

Of course, I had Crusader on my CTS for a while, but when I replaced it I put Fiery on it for the lulz.

All of that gear is gone now, though. I needed bank space.

I just discovered healbot...which is pretty damn awesome.