I say as long as you get the job done it doesn't matter if you're a pally, priest, druid or shaman. And I just mentioned some of the benefits by having a shaman MT healing. And seriously, if you keep AH up on the tank, you can't really be as efficient as raid healer. And don't forget, not all guilds can find precisly the healers they need and might have to look at a nonstandard way of doing it.

Oh, so I'm the one doing it wrong yet I've done every fight in the game and have made small changes accordingly for each encounter and gotten them done successfully and efficiently (with some of the highest parsed HPS while doing so?)

My point is you cannot base healing off of math. If you're in a guild that doesn't have the necessary classes to fill a proper healing roster, then sure, we can fill in as MT healers. In an optimal setting, assuming 2/2/2/2 or 2/2/2/1 (not counting fights where may be parsing for WWS i.e. Teron, Brut, PW, etc.), then a shaman's best role is on the raid.

CH didn't need talents to be successful. LHW and HW needed help to even make them viable. That doesn't automatically mean CH is bad and is no longer our bread and butter.

Get out of heroics and into an actual cutting edge raid scene and you won't see misappropriated shaman solo healing MTs.

*edit*

I'm not trying to be a total douche here, but everyone posting these ideal rotations and 'napkin math' to figure out which heal will give the most HPM vs. HPS and where to place classes haven't even done anything remotely difficult in this expansion or probably even the last. I'm clicking around on profiles and you're speaking from the experience of heroics (barely) and 10 mans.

I'm not saying that it's bad to figure up the math on things. I browse these forums for the rare tidbit of information that I may have overlook in my own personal calculations on things like gear, gemming, speccing, specific fight healing strats, etc. But more often than not people post these complicated algorithms that serve no real applicable purpose in a reactionary raid environment.

You do realize that good healers do not need math at all. They just have a good sense of judgment. They use the heal that gets the job done on a given scenario. Time and time again the rule stays true. You cannot mathematically compute max healing on a broad spectrum. On each individual boss fight you can semi calculate your healing efficiency, but then again you would have to have every other healer in your team doing a cookie cutter computation to improve efficiency and to make sure there is no cross healing and/or overhealing. However, good healers always cross heal.

Healing is an art. Not something you can figure with math.

Like real life, nothing goes according to plan. We all have those idiots who stand in fire//stand in front of a boss when they cleave. This is where your math counts for nothing.

That's basically all I've been trying to say. You can't teach someone reaction time and proper decision making on a napkin using an algorithm.

Well then post some WWS of you applying your knowledge of proper healing placement as a shaman in a raid environment so that maybe we can learn from your actual experience of healing in the style that you're stating. Until you show that your method is actually more efficient in hands on use, you don't actually have any more of a leg to stand on than I do when it comes backing up any statements being made.

To everybody:

If you don't have hard data to back up your claims, shut the fuck up.

It's in the positioning of the tanks - the melee doesn't take Ch bounces and I effectively heal the hateful tank while topping off the MT at the same time (not to mention keep Ancestral Healing up on 2 to 3 targets at a time). Our melee (if they even still do) don't really need to step in the slime anyways (that's not even how the mechanic truly works). We keep the hateful tank topped off pretty fast - fast enough to keep a stray hateful from hitting a melee anyways.

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You can scroll to the bottom and see the breakdown of who my heals hit.

650k to first target (tank), 120k to the second (tank) and 28k to the third (tank/dps - just in case we're slow on our hateful tank). Every target after that is 6k or less, so my chains aren't hitting anyone but the tanks.

Hateful strike valid targets are only 2nd and 3rd person on threat list in melee range. If noone else is melee range it can be also used against main tank. It also give threath to three highest person on list. Melee will never eat those if they don't overagro. Slime is only for stupid people who don't understand mechanics well enough. It reduce all stats not just hp.
It's very good idea spam chain heal. There is three tank and it almoust certain that least two isn't topped. We put all three tank to same spot at front and melee step behind after first hatefull strike. This way chain heal can't even reach melee. Best part is that single shaman can give high uptime for armor buff to all three tanks.

As far as the CH discussion goes, my personal experience in naxx25man so far has been that its extremely innefficient i end up with 50%+ overheals on nearly every fight. Reason is we roll with 2 holy COH spammers and a druid spamming WG. In the 2.1 seconds it takes me to fire up chain heal 2WG ticks and 4 COH's have already gone off leaving me with almost nothing to heal and tons of overheal. we have a disc priest on MT healing, and he does the job very well, between ES PW:S and his penance spam i get a few LHW's off now and then but not much to speak of. Sapphiron and Grobbulus seem to be the only fights where i can ge in some good heals before everyones topped off. I use Riptide constantly because i can sneak it in before people are topped off, and TW'd LHW because i can sneak it in in 0.9 sec.

I predict that the CoH and WG CD will allow me to use CH more freely and effectively, since they will be able to pump out about half the healing in those 2.1 seconds leaving me more to heal. This will make CH more effective than it is now, for me anyway.

I'm finding the same thing as TeKniciaN. On any given night our CoH priests and resto druids are pulling down 10M healing with upwards of 40% over heals, while the resto shaman and paladins are lucky to hit 3. This will undoutedly change when the CD hits for those spells, and I think will change the healing dynamics of many raids.

However I was assigned to heal one of the back tanks on the Horsemen fight last night and was very pleased to find that I was more then adequate to fulfill that role. With ES, LHW glyph, Tidal Force, and all of our other tools single target healing seems like it's becoming one of our strong points. In general I like the changes so far to our healing utility, and I'm looking forward to see how things develop when the CD hits for CoH and WG.

To Teknician and Zajeri:

First of all you need to compare your amount of healer with the amount pitbuller or sixthy is running patchwerk.
Of course you will land into an high amount of overheal, if you are running with 6-7 healer.
But the intention of spamming chainheal is also because of you have an high uptime of your 25% armor buff and together with your CoH priests (if inspiration specc) you will have nearly an 100% uptime.
While you are sad about your high overheal, i wouldnt worry, because the conclusion for me is:
you topped every tank in max. 2 seconds.
If you want to run with a high effectiv hps, you will be better with a single target heal like lesser healing wave, if you have an high amount of healer in your raid.
If you are running with 3-4 healer you will hit a higher hps with chainheal.
So ask yourself what you want: #1 at your healmeter or killing patchwerk in a smooth way.