The change the Devastate talent got me thinking. Making it into a weapon-speed attack with both weapons (akin to Stormstrike) is a cool change, in that (intuitively) it allows Protection Warriors to do significantly more damage on their own (when they are not tanking). Combined with One-handed Specialization, Protection Warriors could with the right gear put out some decent damage while soloing. I don't know how well this works out in practice on the PTR, but that's not really important.

What IS important is this: why don't all non-DPS specs/classes get something like this? As a Resto Shaman since the launch of WoW, being unable to kill things on my own in any decent time (regardless of the DPS gear I'm able to put together) has long been a personal beef of mine. The same goes for Resto Druids, Holy Paladins, Holy Priests, Prot Warriors...tons of players in tons of classes. The Devastate change is cool because it provides a significant chunk of DPS while not compromising the Warrior's tanking talents, and not making that Warrior overpowered in a PvE situation. It's just a nice solo-play side benefit on top of the group benefits the talents carry. So, why not extend this benefit to the other non-damage-dealing players to make their soloing lives easier?

To use my own class as an example, what if Earth Shield conferred 400 AP to the casting Shaman while it was on him? I would be able to kill non-elite world mobs a lot more quickly, and I would be considerably more effective in duels. But my PvE role would stay exactly the same. I don't bust out a 2-hander and melee in groups....it's as ridiculous an idea as an MT dual-wielding to hold aggro on a mob. What if the Treeform talent also conferred a substantial AP bonus to the Druid's catform?

I think talent changes like this, applied to the non-damage-dealing classes, would make them a lot more enjoyable to play, remove a lot of the necessity to have a DPS alt for farming, and wouldn't upset the balance of either the raiding or arena games.

Well, Holy Paladins gain Holy Shock, plus a talent garnering well over 100 spell damage, in addition to 5% crit on Holy spells. Shamans gain 3% spell/melee hit, 5% Lightning Bolt crit, Nature's Swiftness for burst, and a similar talent garnering spell damage. The shallow-to-middle parts of the Holy Priest tree are chock full of Smite-boosting talents and other Holy damage stuff, and middle Discipline has some more damage talents, leading to PI if you were so inclined.

The better question would be, "Why don't Druids gain any offensive capability from a Resto spec?", but Druids can construct a Dreamstate Healing Touch spec that includes Moonkin form at a marginal sacrifice.

Honestly, the simple answer is that if optimal healing specs also provided equal DPS, then DPS-only classes would be obsolete.

The particular Devastate changes don't really matter, even if it was rescinded. This is a normative statement. And talents like Nature's Blessing are a step in the right direction, though I don't think they go far enough. I've yet to see a full Resto Shaman spec Nature's Guidance, it's more of a hybrid option.

I don't think anyone is asking for equal dps or even anything close to it, just "endurable solo grinding dps" and there's a pretty big difference.

I never had an issue farming as a resto shaman - I either got my elem gear + ES out or I specced with 2H weapons and went to town in my enhancement gear.

I was under the impression that sunder was only required for the bonus threat of devastate. Is this not the case?

Honestly, when I need to solo grind I just put on some of my Ret-oriented blues and whip out my Hammer of the Naaru - I found it to be more effecient, both in terms of DPS and in terms of downtime, than stacking holy damage and going to holy shock route.

It's still agonizingly slow, however, and really makes me not want to solo grind any factions or items. I think that Blizzard needs to implement each faction in a way such that the non-DPS classes are able to have a solo ability to grind the factions out (either a repeatable solo quest that favors healing/tanking classes, or something similar). Otherwise the more important reputation continues to be, the more behind I feel in terms of being able to fully develop my character.

The tooltip is fairly misleading that way. It does no extra inherent threat per sunder application, but it does extra threat via damage for each sunder. (specifically, 35 damage per sunder)

I tried that, but I seem to get better results from Seal/Judgement of Righteousness, Holy Shock, and continuous Consecration (Rank 1). I wear mainly Elemental Shaman gear, running around 600 +dmg with about 25% crit to my holy spells (including talents), and most of my "grinding" gear is not enchanted, because I put all my gold into my tanking and healing sets.

I've completed well over 95% of the quests in Outland, having specced Holy at 61 when I realized that I might need a bit of an edge to heal instances. Arriving in Outland with "healing gear" consisting of 40s blues with int on them will do that. I will openly acknowledge that Floria, my Warlock ex-main will grind circles around Kaiserin, but by no means is grinding or farming difficult or tedious on my paladin. It does help to pick your targets; I wouldn't grind fear-immune or shadow/magic resistant mobs on a warlock, and similarly I pick undead/demon mobs on my paladin, as well as low HP mobs that can be burst down.

I thought the devastate change was an excellent move and I was disappointed that they gave up on it so fast rather than just tune it down a little (since the issue was deep prot out-damaging deep fury).

Holy/resto/prot builds can farm, but given that the object of farming is to get what you need (primals, rep, whatever) while spending as little time as possible doing an activity that is mind-numbingly boring (i.e., farming), doing this activity at half speed is hardly an appealing option.

I suspect a lot of the inertia in this area comes from the PvP balancing aspect, and to this end I wish they'd use the "PvE only" tag a bit more (the precedent is there with curse of doom). You gain 50% of your +heal effects as +holy damage against PvE targets only. Etc.

I personally loved escort quests while leveling for that reason. While escort NPCs don't do that much damage compared to a normal player, it did increase the speed at which stuff died quite a bit, and they were quite enjoyable to do simply because I could 'tank' the groups of mobs you tend to encounter during them.

Of course, the issue with most current escort quests is that you can't heal the Escort NPCs (Or they're vulnerable opposite faction ganking, especially that Mag'har Prisoner is amazing, on a PvE server he attacks non-PvP enabled Alliance as well if they pass by him. Very annoying.)