So far, it seems as though Blizzard has rather randomly assigned caster weapons to be either "Main hand" or "One-hand." I'm not aware of any ilvl implications of the assignment either way. Until now, no caster has been able to dual wield, so it didn't matter.

In the TBC, you could potentially spec 0/31/30 as a Shaman, retaining good healing spec and picking up the ability to Dual Wield. This means that with current gear, you could equip Scepter of the False Prophet and The Widow's Embrace and then enchant both for +458 healing. By comparison, examine various versions of Atiesh: http://www.wowwiki.com/Atiesh

Obviously, of course, the "upgrade" here is slightly less than what I have shown since Shamans can already equip "held in off-hand" and shields with +healing.

Does anyone else see this as a problem? Should all caster one-hands be changed to 'Main Hand'? While dual wielding caster weapons is a creative way to increase stats, it seems it would scale FAR too well (since you're operating on two ilvl curves instead of one) and the arguable intent of the Enhancement tree is for DPS, not for improving healing ability.

If not, why? Are Nature's Blessing, Imp Chain Heal, and Earth Shield so good that we shouldn't worry about this? Is it obviously the intent of the designers to let dual wielding shamans use twice the healing weapons? Do Shamans need this to compete for other reasons?

Aren't the stat allocation budgets still 100% for 2h'rs and only like 42% for 1h weps? That's at least how it works for warriors / rogues.

Yes, but the exponential component to budgeting gets in the way of that. You can get more +dam out of two separate weapons with 84% of the raw budget of a single two-hander. (Put differently, +50 damage on one weapon and +50 damage on the other is far cheaper than +100 damage on a single weapon.)

Good point, I'd kinda forgotten that many of the caster 1h weapons are all ~40 DPS. I guess they have no need to 'pay' for that stat, and any increases in ilvl go straight to +dam/healing/stats.

This is faulty math. The problem is not that you are operating on "two curves instead of one", , raising it to the 2/3 power fixes that.

The "problem" is that 1h weapons get pretty good when you sacrifice about 30 or so DPS. It looks like the staffs are only sacrificing 15-20. In addition, weapon enchants (and oils) are way better then those for casting shields.

We'll just have to wait and see how good earth shield is.

Sorry, but you are incorrect.

If I have an ilvl 100 staff and two ilvl 100 1h maces, and I fill both with +healing, then I will get more +healing out of the maces, even if no weapon sacrifices any DPS in exchange for more ilvl value.

Untrue, according to the Hyzenthlei formulas that I think everybody accepts.

A level 90 epic staff will have a ivalue of 159, a 1h will have 42% of that or 67.

If the weapons are straight spell damage, with no DPS reduction, you can have

Staff: 82 damage - ((82* 192)^3/2)^2/3 / 100 = 157

Mace: 34 damage - ((34* 192)^3/2)^2/3 / 100 = 67

82 * .42 = 34

Adding other stats just makes the math harder to type. Try and see if you aren't convinced. The key is that 2/3 coefficient at the end restores balance.

The difference is a two weapon combo has two items to subtract DPS from. And two (useful) enchant slots. And that as of yet, they haven't made shields which trade armor/block for caster stats.

Nevermind the fact that you're giving up massive talents in Restoration or Elemental to get down to Dual Wield, and there's no way that DW alone will offset these losses.

Frankly, I love the idea of having to manage which two weapons I'm using and whether or not I should be only 31, or 40, or 41 points in Resto if I want to use two weapons. Do I just go for Dual Wield to get more AP procs? Do I get the extra 10% hit for more JoW? Is Shamanistic Rage a better talent for my playstyle than Nature's Swiftness? Do I try and maximize my personal DPS or do I focus on just supplying the buff? Should I just put my shield on for this encounter? There's a lot of big, new questions at the bottom of the tree that was previously reserved as a pure PVP build and it's viable because of the new use of one-hand caster weapons.

Shield from KT = 6 mana and 59 heals. Mace from KT = 8 mana and 239 heals.

No, but weapon totems and unleashed rage are enough to make you think about it.

I really think in the expansion that unless the earth shield talent is completely awesome that you can't NOT get deep enhancement as a shaman since it gives you so many of your best buffs. In a 9 class, 25 man setting, most of the shamans are going to end up in either tank or melee dps groups, and thus being able to buff your best melee totems is going to give them a really big boost, as well as the bonus from the rage talent. If you can do respectable dps on top of that, all the better imo.

This is kind of simple, really.

Will an Enhancement shaman with two healing weapons be a better healer than a Resto shaman? No.

When an Enhancement shaman needs to heal, however, does it offer a potential benefit, the helps narrow that gap, in situations where melee damage isn't a concern? Yes.