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I never said Shaman were bad healers. I said they were worse tank healers than the other three classes.
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).
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You're missing the point entirely. When objectively comparing the four classes capable of healing, Shaman are not as adept at single-target maintainance as Paladins and Druids, and are about even with Priests. And since five-man content is almost entirely single-target healing (as no one other than your tank should be getting hit 90% of the time), yes, that does make them less qualified.
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