Yeah, boosting chain heal seems key to me. I try to make good use of my hots to heal the raid but the yellow lasers almost always beat me.

Gone are the days of fights where it's just one dude taking damage. And usually the people taking damage are going to be relatively clumped up, so chain heal shines.

On Gruul, use it on melee for cave-in and Shatter damage.
On Magtheridon, it's handy for shadow bolt volley damage, but not that useful after that.
On Hydross, use it at the start of each phase to bounce among all the add tanks and MT. Also on Water Tomb.
On Morogrim, top off people after Earthquake.
On Lurker, use on DPS after a Geyser/Whirl, or to top off people on a platform dealing with an Ambusher.
On Karathress, use on people taking Spitfire/Water Bolt damage.
On Leotheras, not that useful but still good for Whirlwinded melee.
On Vashj, good for topping melee off after someone got Static Charge near her, and for Forked Lightning healing.
On Al'ar, bounce it all over after Flame Buffets occur on transitions.
Void Reaver couldn't have been better made for Chain Heal.
On Solarian, use it after her AoE and on the Agent stack.

It speaks for itself, really.

In terms of raiding, if you have 5 points in Ancestral Knowledge then you're wasting points imo.
I have three myself, but that's only because I don't think Nature's Guardian is of any use to me.

Also, I don't think there's really any space for hybrid builds in raid environments these days. Either spec full elemental, or full resto.

Also, note that Purification affects your heals after +heal, and that Healing Way comes in after this as well. With the recent fix to HW, I'm now getting ~5.2k heals with a full stack & ~1700 heal.

Chain Heal is the reason I switched back to a Shaman after playing a Paladin. I simply could not stand only having single target heals. Either Gurg's spec or 0/11/50 are outstanding specs at any level of gear.

I like Elemental Warding but I find it precludes having EVERYTHING I want in the Resto tree. I'm 0/5/56 right now, and while I also love Improved Ghost Wolf (and the points in Healing Focus, and to a lesser extent Tidal Mastery are negotiable) I also like Focused Mind. It's mostly a PvP talent but there are a number of trash mobs (and Gruul!) who have silences. There are also a number of Heroic mobs with interrupts, and my groups/tanks have been saved a number of times by Focused Mind coming up huge. Elemental Warding is more reliable, I just chalk it up to playstyle. As for Nature's Guardian, I thought it sucked (from the tooltip) until I did some testing, and now I really like it. It procs off DOT ticks, if you're DOTed at low health you're practically guaranteed a proc. It takes Purification, scales with gear...it's just a good talent, though at 5 points that deep in the tree I can see why some have reservations.

As for hybrid builds, I think 30/0/31 is an overrated travesty. You have to make so many compromises in both trees that you end up short-changing yourself at any role you pick. I raided as a 36/0/25 spec for a long time after BC came out, and depending on how you spend your time in-game it can work out really well. With a hybrid spec you REALLY have to make sure all your talent points are paying big dividends, and 30/0/31 just forces you to spend points where you don't want to (Improved Restorative Totems or whatever it's called) and skip things you DO really want (Storm Reach, Elemental Precision, can't have 5/5 of both Unrelenting Storm and Lightning Mastery unless you are insane and don't spec Elemental Fury). Ultimately, you're trading a TON of healing viability (Purification, Imp. Chain Heal, the list goes on) for some mediocre DPS and Unrelenting Storm. Maybe that's okay with you, but it just wasn't enough for me once we were into SSC.

0/0/61, or 0/5/56, or 8/0/53 is the only pure healing speccs, I am myself 61 restoration, simply because I prefer cheaper heals/totem more then 5% more mana(aka 500 more mana)

I mean, why specc 0/11/50? not like you will use a 2hander in pve, I suggest gathering elemental gear if you want to farm as elemental!

Hi Lanuran!

Content:
Are you getting put with a shadow priest? If so, is mana really a constant issue? Flasked? If not, why aren't you getting grouped with a shadow priest?

I raid as enhancement, so any raid I'm on does have the luxury of putting resto shamans in mana-using groups

I'm running 11/0/50 ( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GE0zZZEcMtAeotcd ) although to be fair the points in elemental and the two points in nature's guidance are mostly because I currently have no alts on my shaman's realm (transferred a bit over a month ago) and they're of some use farming with elemental gear to me.

I'd have to agree with most people here that you simply cannot ever understate the usefulness of imp CH. I can't imagine raiding as a healer without it.

shadowpriest? well, i might start to make a push for shamans to get them from their mana problem. I never needed one even with the longest fights when spec'd for unrelenting storm

Flask? of course, along with food and mana oil + demonic runes + chain chugging mana pots
^^ currently e-shield spec and downed hydross last night, i was rolling REALLY low on mana tho in the end

I "believe" I read a while ago that Rank 4 CH is the most effective heal we have, in terms of MPH. I might be wrong but I couldn't seem to dig up the thread anymore. My trash gear consists of normal gear + 3 peice t2 + Scarab, with using a combination of rank 4 and 5. Bosses I will pretty much stay on rank 4 chain heal with rank 10 Healing wave as an alternative.