Heroicly bad resto issueFollow

/initiate rant sequence

First off, my gear is good enough. 1500 SP and I'm always forgeting what mana even is.

I'm doing great in early raids and MOST heroics.... save Nexus and Gundrak. I feel that that last boss in Nexus and the second boss in Gundrak (heroic in both) were made without thinking about resto shams (or holy pallys for that matter). Both require you to move. You stop, you take buttloads of damage. Nexus isn't so bad due to the fact that the AoE is pretty low. But the second boss in Gundrak is basiclly this, everyone takes lots of damage but if you move... you just take a little less.

If your a priest or druid then you saying, "Yeah??? And your issue is??". Well, as a sham I have two HoTs. One only has a chance to heal on a hit and can only be on one person, and the other has a six second CD, heals for as much as a mageweave bandage, and takes a GCD. My only AoE heal is good for maybe two people, requires them to be somewhat close to eachother, and needs 2.3 seconds to cast.

I've tried every rotaion I can think of, but needing to spend 1 sec moving and even 1 sec to cast a LHW on me every other heal or every two heals still comes down to luck on crits and range.

Now I know it can be done, I've done it, but Blizz needs to think about it's boss mechanics and how they will effect different classes, especially healers and tanks due to every group having one. Somthing that is pretty damn easy for one healer/tank class shouldn't be insanly hard for another.


/rant

Our resto druid still envies my chain heal, but it seems Blizz just wants resto to be chain heal spammers, which is limited fun. The Keristraza fight cited above is a great example of how resto shammies are really screwed in some boss fights; conversely, there are few non-raid boss fights that require chain heal.

I'd say shamans remain the best 5-man healers, since their buffs, BL and elementals make an enormous difference, and it's not too difficult to heal 5-mans nowadays (barring the two fights noted above). Plus, they are the only healing class now with top-end cc (hex) at 80. But I do keep wishing I rolled a holy/disc priest. CH spam is losing its novelty.

So is resto still good and demanded at 80? I loved how "needed" we were for raids at 70. Back then it was better to take a shaman than have 2 priests in Kara (this was after the shackle nerf). And even more so in the 25 mans. In fact I felt our guild worked best with one priest, one resto shammy, and one holy pally. The above posts kinda scare me in that most guilds would be content to bring another priest along instead of have a resto shammy.

I already got mine to 79, I'd have to have to abandon and move to a different more needed class.

Edited, Dec 2nd 2008 11:36am by thrashering

PvE is so simple now any healer will do in any situation. So just as a resto shaman isn't needed, it's unlikely they'll be passed up, either. I imagine most serious raids will want at least one shaman for BL and, frankly, there should be two or three per larger raid for the widest array of totems (and a second BL on bosses that run over 5 mins).