jmfmb wrote:
Honestly if you keep up in gear and have some mana pots handy you can probably heal instances without respecing, resto does make healing easier but pre 70 you can be any spec and heal with gear and knowledge of the instance your running.
other then that it is preference, do you want to be a warrior with lower armor and heals or do you want to be a mage with higher armor and heals but no aoe and cc.
It's my healing alt. I have every intention of going full resto. And I've heard that argument for shadow priests as well but that doesn't mean I want to heal with one. The only reason to respec back and forth is for soloing quests. Sure I can solo it as resto but it's slower. Eventually it might get to the point where it's acceptable for me, just like my prot warrior that I never respec. The biggest problem I have with soloing as resto isn't so much the killing speed but being more mana dependent, which killing speed can increase that dependency. That's also why I'm leaning towards enh instead of ele.
Here are most of my toons:
70 Warrior - tank
70 Rogue - melee dps
70 Spriest - dps/util
62 Hunter - ranged dps
60 Shaman - heal
40 Mage - ranged magic dps
I've already gotten used to carrying around extra gear sets with my warrior and priest. It doesn't bother me. Also they're adding in extra gear sets in the future, possibly wotlk, so bag space isn't an issue anyways. Money on respeccing isn't an issue either. All of my 70's have a netherdrake. My 3rd 70 had her flying epic as soon as she dinged.
With this range of classes I'll have dps/cc/heals/tank for whichever the group needs at the moment. That and I love the different play styles.
When WOTLK comes out it'll be the best time ever to be a healer. There's going to be so many DK's for dps and tanking that healers will be begged to come along, and nobody will be competing for your gear drops (minus pally plate).