Using two big stat-heavy weapons helps to offset that loss in situations where you aren't meleeing for DPS reasons (like say cleave spam), or where you just don't care about your own damage and are just trying to boost the group's AP. I don't disagree that a deep Resto spec is superior from a healing perspective but it's far from the only answer.

Nature's Swiftness. :(

it will be like ls today. Today i think you can get 1 proc per 2-3 seconds and the interrupt thing should be active the whole time.

Sham. Rage is a good grinding talent but for raids it isnt that great. My problem is how do i spend the last points in Enhance?
max out weapon dmg or max out to hit?

That's how I read it as well, but at a cost of 600 mana whoever's responsible for keeping it up probably won't be responsible for too much else. If it's scaled to be really worth having on your MT, some poor sap gets to be the Earth Shield bitch who can't even get as far as elemental fury or improved windfury and thus has no role in any raid besides Earth Shield bitch and Mana Tide and whatever healing they can spare the mana for. And having to keep up with level 70s in pvp or soloing will be horrible for that person, a current mana tide shaman taking 10 more points in resto will have little more ability for anything besides healing than he did at level 60. It's not even an interactive ability to use, just fire and forget.

The ability looks pretty nice depending on how it works, it's more that the deeper you go into the resto tree, the more you're doing it for one or two gimmick abilities (mana tide, earth shield) and there's a huge opportunity cost involved. A deep resto shaman just has no flexibility, mostly because all the really good shaman stuff in every tree is past that 20 point line. That includes resto. A pally can stop at 20 points in holy and still have +10% int, +12% healing (for 3 points!), and Illumination. A pally who goes all the way gets even better and still gets some stuff to support dps and/or tanking, and there's a number of good things early in both their other trees to support non-healing duties. A shaman who stops at 20 points in resto has stopped just short of all the good stuff, same for all the other trees (the only talent point before 20 which makes a considerable difference in either elem or enh is 2h weapons, and I'd say 90% of the resto shamans I know ended up with 11 or 13 points in enh just for that and perhaps improved SoE/GoA, as I've done myself).

I enjoy healing, been mana tide for 12 months with no regrets, but I enjoy my flexibility too or I'd play a priest or druid. Doing the same thing as I've been doing for 12 months but now with earth shield casts every 10-15 seconds or whatever does not strike me as either fun or creative.

That lack of flexibility also means that the deep resto shaman is purely competing with a healing-spec priest or druid for a raid spot without any pretensions to switching between being DPS and healing. That, or it's going to be a deep resto's earth shield and bigger chain heals vs an elemental/resto's DPS and better mana regen (and perhaps crit totem) or an enhancement/resto's DPS and better melee buffs.

Elemental/Restoration builds will be the better healers. Either the mana/5 talent or Earth Shield will push them over the top. The question is if dual-wielding the 2nd 1-hander will push a 40/21 Enhancement shaman into a competent raid healer for situations that demand it. It's the difference between being a portable totem for the melee groups vs being a true hybrid.

Depends on what you're going for I suppose. My shaman are looking at this from the viewpoint that healing will be priest/druid/paladin for the most part so the shamans will be DPSing and enhancing DPS in groups. When a healer dies we'll stop DPS and pick up the slack, or when a paly has to tank we'll swap gear for the encounter and heal. I'm willing to pass up NS for the incredible benefit we'll be bringing.

What you have to take into consideration is boost we are getting in raiding situations having both Paladins and Shaman in same raid. Using lvl 60 skills caster will have 58/5 mana (untalented) from mana spring and BoW. Shaman chaincasting rank 10 Lightning Bolt would spend 441mana/5, while getting back another 49/5 mana from Judgement of Wisdom. Now assuming mana pool of 3k, it would take shaman about 45 seconds to run out of mana. And that is assuming no talents, no gear (and that my math is correct :) ).

I don't know actual numbers what kind of mana pool and mana/5 high end elemental shaman would have at lvl 60 (still stuck at lvl 30 something with mine) , but I don't think mana is going to be nearly as a big issue to DPS shamans casters as it is now.

Blessing of Wisdom is a wash since all Horde casters will get it that didn't have it previously, so it's really just a flat rate added to what we've been getting by with. Your point about JoW is quite valid however, I had not really taken into account the potential frenzy of mana from a JoW + Dual Wield + Flurry Shaman.

I think that if your shaman are not even considering healing that they will have little value to your raid. Stopping to heal someone who is going to die will result in much more dps raid wide than mindlessly spamming stormstrike while watching tv in the background. The only shaman that will ever dominate dps meters are the bad ones, I strongly believe this.

But I said nowhere that we were expecting to dominate meters. Meters are for selfish people, damage is damage. Thats my take. And I never said we weren't considering healing at all - just that we are finally able to expand our role on a raid some. And yes, stopping to heal someone that's dying is exactly what we'd be doing.

Shamanistic Rage will be worthless due to the presence of Blessing and Judgement of Wisdom. If you are still running out of mana in prolonged encounters that's what consumables are for.

Well I think you need to avoid the mindset that Pri/Dru/Pal are healers and Shaman are dps support. Shaman are still healers even if they are not assigned the role. Just make sure you do not create an environment where the Shaman has little/no responsibility.

Improved Wrath of Air totem would be pretty hot.

Meters may be for selfish people, but it is the most visible standard for judging effectiveness. All those min/max people will see a mage doing 1.3X or more damage than a shaman going full DPS and say "WTF, we should have another mage instead of his gimp ass!". At the same time, we can frequently top effective healing in full resto mode, but we have a LOT less mana than the other classes in a short time either way. The min/max crowd can't measure utility effectively and as such we have to use subjective and anecdotal evidence to suggest that a utility talent/ability + our healing or damage is better than adding X class instead. Since the heals stand out more, we are asked to heal.

I think a mixture of healing and damage is great fun, but raid leaders rarely seem to have justification for a non-specialist. What's your current warlock/mage ratio?

Well ultimately it comes to individual guild choice, and when the shaman talents got leaked (along with Blizzard saying that their design movement for shamans was more DPS oriented now) my guild pretty readily accepted that they were going to lose a lot of resto shaman. We're still maintaining healing gear, nobody has any plans to remove our 3 heals from their action bars, but our casters and melee are very excited by what the enhance and elemental trees are going to bring to the fight.

If you have a 25 man raid and you want, say 9 healers in that. I'd be happy for those to be 3 priests, 3 druids, 2 paladins and maybe a resto shaman. I'd also be happy to have 1-2 OTHER shaman with the 41 pt ele/enh talents as dps/dps buffers, NOT taking up 'healing' raid slots.

Yes, on the meters the shaman may only do 80% of a mage or rogues dps. But I don't doubt that they'll be contributing more than the 20% lost dps in terms of buffs to their group (wrath of air, bloodlust, etc. etc.). Plus the added advantage they can step in as emergency healers should a few go down.

If raids keep thinking of ALL shaman specs as primary healers, it won't be a good day. It's completely obvious Blizzard would love some NON-NS specced Shaman to be useful in raiding, so lets just hope they make the 41pt talents good enough to justify that.

I really believe that our raid utility is being expanded with these talents. Keep in mind with smaller raid sizes you may not have the luxury of Fury Warrs doing mad dps and that dps loss will need to be added in somewhere. With three distintive air totems to buff different people we can be put in just about any group and still add value. Enhance is not nearly as self serving as it was before since we can buff the entire group with up to 10% increased AP + Bloodlust. The benefit is obvious for rogues and warriors in a group with a shaman.

My personal, unsubstantiated opionion is that a full restoration spec'd shaman (as I am now) isn't going to be adding nearly as much RAIDWIDE value as an enhance or even elemental shaman. Standing in one spot spamming LHW and CH in these fights may not be the best utility for our class in the expansion. And it's not as if our heals get taken away from us if we go enhance. I'll be VERY interested to see how the numbers play out once the beta goes up. Also, all of this will fly out the window if we find out that blizzard 'forgets' to itemize for enhance and/or elemental shaman at level 70. Here's to hoping!

On another note, time to start collecting melee 1h'rs. EoC, MSA, HoD, etc!

And finally: Any bets on whether we'll ever get to use 1h swords? ;)

Yes, don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not saying that there is no room for restoration shaman in raids anymore. Just that it would be a terrible waste to to have ONLY restoration shaman in raids.

As for 5-10 man content you are likely dead on. The value of a restoration shaman increases dramatically as the group size decreases. With the right spec and right gear a restoration shaman, as those of us who play that role know, can be exceptional.

I totally overlooked this. If that's how it's going to work, that's a really, really nice talent. I wonder how aggro will work though. I'm going to assume that the healer gets credit, similar to HoT ticks.

First off, it has 10 charges, and there's a cooldown on expending those charges. If something is autoattacking you, how long does it take to go through 10 lightning shield charges? That's how long I'd expect an Earth Shield to last. That's a pretty long while. I don't see how that makes anyone an "Earth Shield bitch." So you cast one really useful spell on the MT every 40sec or so, and otherwise play as normal? A 41 Resto shaman in TBC seems like it'll play much like a 30+ resto shaman does today, with a few more tricks available. Useless in raids? Hardly. A shaman who specs that way is one who wants to spend most of his time healing. My raiding spec will probably be 0/20/41, with Toughness and Earth Shield. Not too different from what I have now. Just a better healer.

I do, however, think that DPS support class is a very viable alternate role for shamans who want to spec that way. Something like 0/43/18 where you are in there full-time with a group of rogues and warriors, healing when needed but otherwise contributing, directly or indirectly, an incredible amount of DPS.

More mana regen is never uselss as long as you can spend it as fast as you're generating it, and a stormstrike shaman who is also utilizing shocks and doing some healing will be able to spend every bit of it.

I believe that lightning shield and presumably water/earthen shields all have the same 1.5 second global cooldown that we do. The uncertainty is in that it waits for the next hit after the cooldown to act again which is an uncontrolled value. I think 2-2.5 seconds on average per charge is probably a very safe estimate.

600 mana every 25 seconds is not that much of a burden.

Yes and like Malan says, never underestimate the shamans ability to spend mana.

I'm in TS and EF and I have 7200 mana and 61 m/5 with 400 or so +healing. That's probably closer to the low end than the high end for this forum, but fairly reasonable for the average shaman.