I think that Shamans on the whole tend to look back at the TBC days wistfully, watching themselves pad meters and rule the healing roost, so to speak, without paying much to attention to healing as a whole. While I'm not of the opinion that there's a reason to bring a Resto Shaman if you have a Ele and Enhance Shaman in the raid, I also don't think things are necessarily so bad as to drop a decent Resto Shaman for a moderate player of another class. As far as class balance goes, I think that's about the best you can hope for.

My gear is somewhat bizarrely set up for haste, though I'm transitioning to a slightly more longevity based gearset. I generally have no problems topping every non-Druid on healing meters, if that's your thing. A lot of it has to do with exactly what your raid needs, and Shamans can generally fill multiple roles better than most classes.

Most of the time, I take some stock of our healers, and figure out exactly what it is we need. We normally have two Disc Priests, some amount of Resto Druids, and the occasional other Resto Shaman or Holy Paladin. As such, most of the time, I'm raid healing, and generally, I'm focused on burst damage. While burst damage is more random in Ulduar than it has been in the past, it's not impossible to foresee, and thus, land a Chain Heal very quickly after it hits. While the days of spamming the melee for obscene numbers are gone, I don't think it's difficult to maintain an effective role in the raid, even if you aren't tops on your meters.

On the rare occasion when we have 3+ Resto Shaman, or a Holy Priest or two, I generally am not relegated to main tank healing (as our Disc Priests have excellent attendance), so I mostly resort to single targetting anything that takes a big hit. This particular role also allows me to provide a lot more utility, such as maneuvering totems into range on movement intensive fights, odd crowd control where it's necessary, and the occasional Lightning Bolt if we're really safe. In those situations, I generally assume the other raid healers can take care of the big pops in raid damage from Tantrum or Frozen Blows. Instead, I try to smooth over mistakes from other things, such as people low when Tantrum starts, or people getting hit in the head by falling ice. Tidal Waved Healing Waves with AA procs are terrific for pure speed output. If you absolutely have to heal massively quickly, you can very easily approximate a burst AOE simply with single targets: Tidal Force, NS, HW, Riptide, HW, HW, on three different targets, with AA procs, you can generate 60K+ healing with a little luck in the time it takes most Shamans to fire two Chain Heals.

It's a niche role, but the Shaman has the tools to convert to another form of healing when that niche is covered. I would love to see the Shaman get some more attention, but it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon.

I've said this time and time again, if you're a good player, regardless of being a shaman, you can still perform very well and get the job done. Will you be able to keep up with a druid or priest of the same skill? In a lot of situations, probably not - in others, probably so! But if you're falling behind 'meters' wise, or feel like you aren't keeping up, then maybe you should look at your healing style - define your own personal role within your guild (because it's going to vary from guild to guild - a "social science" as it was so eloquently put).

Here's our Freya hard mode kill - extreme burst throughout the entire raid - raid wide burst damage, huge gib potential. This has got to be one of the more exciting fights to heal that I've seen because it really let's us use our full arsenal.

Healer standings:



My breakdown:



Now if you look at my breakdown, you'll see what I mean by this fight letting us use our full arsenal. My personal healing style in most raids is as follows:

I look to save the gibs at all times, meaning I'm not a chain heal spammer. I try to let our druids and priests do the big raid healing as I find it more consistent - but where they lack (in my opinion) is speed for burst recovery. So I constantly roll riptides through the waves - a big mistake that other shaman make (I think) is that they specifically hold Riptide to heal a burst if there's nothing going on. If my mana can handle it, and it almost always can, then I keep my riptide rolling on targets that will eventually take damage. I try to keep it up on the MT at all times for two reasons - 1) a constant mediocre hot but more importantly 2) ancestral fortitude from the crits. ES is always up on the MT and I spot heal the MT at all times with LHW - once again for AF and also to proactively proc AA to keep bursty raid healing flowing. In between rolling Riptides around the raid I will burn my 2 TW procs EVERYTIME before Riptide comes back up - this basically means 2 LHW's at the very minimum every Riptide CD (5 seconds) - sometimes I'll cast the non TW'd LHW (which is like 1.2) just to keep healing rolling. I *do not* use HW on the raid - it's not my style, I don't enjoy it and I don't find it to be as efficient as everyone preaches it to be.

I avoid CH on most fights, but a fight like Freya really opens up the potential for it. I use my RT/LHW raid healing method for most of the add waves but will switch over to CH if I'm getting nervous about multiple targets being low before a tremor - so you'll notice in the breakdown I cast around the same amount of CH as I do RT, but LHW destroys it all. I obviously gem pure Int and keep crit high for this (but I actually don't neglect my haste to the levels of other shaman that use this healing method - I maintain mid 500's).

I do read Meka's blog on occasion and I can't help but feel like some of this community whining is coming from it. I respect Meka and what he does in Ensidia - I glyph like he does, gem like he does, etc. I'm pretty sure I fill the same roles as he does in raids as well, but I will never whine like he does. I've always felt (especially in wotlk) that if you're a good healer, regardless of class, that you can find a role in a raid. I personally think Premo is a damn respectable guild in the PvE world and they have 3 of the best resto shamans around - I highly doubt two are being sat on every fight so that the shaman can fill their "one viable role."

Just find a role and stick to it - if you're a good player you can still succeed. Resto shamans aren't even in a bad state right now - I just can't for the life of me agree that we're still not in a good place healing wise. I even think CH is still a viable raid heal if utilized properly through gems / gearing / glyphing - it's just not what I enjoy doing. I have great situational and raid awareness - I can make quick decisions on the fly and I make smart heal choices - if you have those qualities, then no other class can touch the burst healing potential of a shaman in my opinion.

While I have not done any hard modes yet and cannot comment on that side of the conversation, I will say that I do see the difference in playstyle and have embraced it. right now very few classes have the ability to reactively heal burst like shaman do.

On fights like Razor, Mimi, or Auri the ability to top off a 18k-20k hit in 2 GCD's is quite powerful. And being able to switch to CH spam for Frozen blows, etc makes us amazingly versatile. But is that power/versatility enough to justify spots in hard modes? I am asking this from ignorance. We have a skilled set of healers. We usually run healer heavy (its a style thing) but as I understand it, that is not an option for most hardmode fights. So when we start cutting healers, will the resto shaman be 1st? Im not asking out of a sense of entitlement but as a way to address the issue.

My 2 cents:
currently a big part of the 'problem' with Shaman right now is lack of understanding. The shaman community itself is trying to figure out where we are at in the post 3.1 landscape. If thats the case, you cant expect the officers in yor guild to really understand the dynamic yet. And because of this, perhaps sitting a shaman looks like the best option when in reality it is only the best given the current raid configuration/strat setup. With another setup/style Shaman may be much more appealing.

What we need to do is define our role better (which people have been trying to do for a couple of pages) and then get that information out to the leadership of our guilds. If they know where shaman shine in 3.1 they can better utilize us for any given fight. Education will help.


But is it enough? Honestly, even with such an effort I wonder if the lack of specialization for Shaman will be our undoing. I only say that because I saw what happened to priest, pally, and druid raid spots when guilds were learning Sunwell and stacking shaman was the best idea. People will ALWAYS optimize when learning a fight. Why cripple yourself if you dont have too. If you have 8 healers of equal skill, 2 of each class, and you can only take 4 to a fight, aren't you always going to default to the one best suited for the role they will fill in that fight? And since roles tend to be specialized, why take a Shaman over say a Pally for MT healing or a holy priest for raid healing? How many hard modes give you the leeway of using a 'swing' healer like a shaman.

Once again Im not complaining, Im trying to help understand what I need to do to keep my healing raid spot. Or if I should just acknowledge that i will be elemental for hard mode fights and go with that.

Like I've said before, it's hard to say for certain which class should or shouldn't be in for hard mode encounters as it's completely dependent on personal skill and guild comp. I feel like shaman are more than capable of pulling their weight in hard modes. I've personally been in for every hard mode kill we have - solo tank healed Hodir, 1 of 2 on Thorim and Freya, I might have been alone for Steelbreaker (but I think we had 2) and I'm sure I'll be in for Mim. We tried Vez for a few attempts last night and I see myself keeping my raid spot for that as well.

I just don't understand this 'shaman out for hard modes' mantra that's trickling around the community lately.

I think the concern that Shaman are losing our raid spot stems from not being a 'niche' healer. We're versatile, sure, but we're not a master of anything- so we will fall behind when your tank healer is doing his job and the aoe healer is doing theirs.

We have tools/talents to be both a competent tank healer (but not as good as a paladin or disc-priest) and a competent aoe healer (but simply not as strong in the current raid environment as a holy-priest or druid)...

When it comes down to having to cut a healer to bring more dps in- you cut the healer that doesn't fill a necessary role.
Hence, the shaman panic.

Good players will always have a raid spot over mediocre players.
I'm not in danger of losing my spot, even in hard modes...
But I think the room exists for shaman to be cut in other guilds because Chain Heal doesn't measure up to the other aoe healing capability of druids/priests and our single-target heals don't quite measure up to a paladin or disc-priest.

I'd like to say that it's all unfounded panic, but the current raid environment is telling me otherwise.


As for trying to maximize your effectiveness as a resto-shaman in Ulduar, some of the efficiency is all in player positioning.
My guild was originally spreading out on XT, then we realized that stacking the melee and the ranged in placement would ease up the healing and just force our dps to be more aware...
We were also trying to spread out too much on Razorscale, we bunched up in formation a bit better so that chain heal would have some use but the fire wouldn't catch the whole raid.
--> If your raid leader starts pointing fingers, ask them to also consider raid positioning during the fight... if he raid is spreading out when it doesn't need to, then yes- you're not going to be as strong as the holy priest.

I see the issue as that there is no reason to bring a resto shaman to any hard mode. Some classes bring tank saving CDs. Others bring burst AoE healing or better HoTs or utility like Battle Res. While I don't know of any shaman that has been sat out, I think the potential is there when guilds start stacking raids for hard modes.

An extreme example. Suppose a fight needs 3 healer CDs and 3 burst AoE heals, maximum of five healers. You bring a Pally(CD), Holy Priest(CD/Burst), Holy Priest(CD/Burst), Druid(Burst). One spot left MAX for the Shaman to compete for. And if the raid decides to try it with 4 healers, the shaman will be the first to go.

A DPS shaman and a DK cover just about everything a resto shaman can bring to the raid. Our unique abilities are Mana Tide and Earth Shield.

Folks,
The conclusion of the last few pages comes down to this question...
(Looking for some unbiased opinion please.)

If you're a raid leader and have too many *equally capable" healers on, would you cut the resto shaman from a progression raid?

*edit... assuming Bloodlust can be provided by a different shaman spec

Assuming equally capable healers, I'd say the answer has to be yes at this point. You won't really gain anything but mana tide and earth shield, which really isn't worth bringing the shaman for. Shaman are also one of the worst on the move.

I think the better a raiding guild is, the less the actual class/spec you're playing matters and the more players with good skills can shine. And the worse a raiding guild is, the more officers/raid leaders pick up silly trends like looking at shamans as inferior healers to paladins/priests.

I'm in a guild as well, where 4 raidspots go to priest/paladins and the last 1-2 raidspots to druid/shaman. In my opinion shamans could still need a slight tweaking, but in respect to other classes we're pretty balanced, our strengths just aren't as obvious as CoH burst healing or a Guardian spirit or even the still strong and spammy paladin MT healing.

That's spot on. Adapting your healing style for every encounter, picking up a lot of single target healing assignments are an excellent way to pull your weight. But raid spots are just tougher to earn for a resto shaman in WotLK, that might be the raiding reality for a lot of semi-hardcore raiding shamans. Of course a raid lineup is also very much dependent on lineup-"traditions" and the social position of a raider, most of the time even more than short living class trends.

Last thing: Sixthy seems to do a splendid job at healing hard modes. So I guess the discussion if shamans are viable hard mode healers is pointless. The only thing I'm curious about, do you feel like you'd do a better hard-mode healing job if you were let's say a priest, Sixthy? I personally would surely get more raiding time, but I don't think I'd do a significantly better job, but e better job nonetheless.

I don't really think I'd want to be any other class for most of these hard modes. I'm sure I could put out amazing numbers as a priest or druid, but honestly I think I'd end up playing a priest as disc because I personally like being the guy that uses smart heal choices for quick saves, etc. while someone else plays the mindless spam role. I'd always want a shaman in a raid with me that had the ability to quickly top someone off, help with burst, spot a tank, get a crucial NS off, etc. Is there room for 2 shaman? Well obviously because every hard mode we've done minus Hodir had 2 resto shaman so it's obviously viable - but is it the most efficient? Probably not. I'd imagine a solid 2 druid, 2 priest, 1 pally, 1 shaman setup is pretty beast, and that's the setup I'd really like to be running in the most optimal of situations on these hard modes. But we take what we have and we've been successful so far.

On the topic of gems - are you gemming for Int because you are really running out of mana on hard modes or because you get the best bang for your buck with it?

Right, it does. Obviously if you are not actually running out of mana though, the first 2 are of no use and +sp would grant more throughput than the crit and sp you get from +int. I only ask because my guild has not yet begun doing any serious hard mode encounters and I was curious as far as mana regen needs.

disregard

I know what you are referring to (guilds which or whoms Raidleader really suck ) and in some point of view your right, but on the other hand, I'd say it's rather the complete opposite. The better/more succesfull a guild is the less the skills of the players differ. The worse a guild is, the bigger the difference in skill between will be. For example, if u set up the "perfect player" with 100% skill, most of Ensidia will be about 98-100% (biggest difference of 2%) In my guild, which is just an average guild and nothing special there are a lot of more differences and bigger gaps in terms of skill. So maybe the spectrum will be something about from 80%-40%(biggest difference ist 40%).

So while Ensidia will most likely bench the shaman, as they have just healers of "equal" skill, I for myself don't have any worries about beeing benched since I'm on of the top healers in my guild and there are enough Priests, Palas and Droods, that would get benched earlier than me. I just hope that difference will be still big enough when we will come down to hard modes finally

I'm in Nebuk's situation: by dint of sheer effort (I won't say skill), I'm usually one of our top healers, so I won't be sat anytime soon. But I've been watching with some interest our shifting roles in raids, and I'll say that I've been one of the slow ones to adapt since BC. CH still accounts for more than 50% of my healing, which I'm starting to become convinced (especially after watching this thread develop) is a mistake. I've got the highest uptime of any healer in our raid (typically running neck and neck with our lone druid), but my HPS is extremely low, and I feel my efficiency/use - a much more personal measurement - has been suffering. We run with multiple holy pallies/priests, sometimes the druid, sometime another restosham, and me.

My gemming/enchanting has changed recently from SP/haste to a melange of SP/int (with a touch of mp5 in one slot where the hep numbers work to match a socket bonus), which seems to be working okay. But I'm faced with some important decisions based entirely on playstyle: do I give up my 4pcT7.5 for 2pcT8? And what the heck do I do with talents? Right now I've been experimenting with AA and like it (armory), but I don't have Healing Way and I'm only at 3/5 TW (a nod to my CH-spam past).

I confess that when it comes to talents, especially, I'm confused. If I were to experiment with a RT/HW/HW alternating with CH/HW/HW rotation (depending on damage/grouping), where should I be stealing the extra 5 points? Thoughts?

(For what it's worth, I know the obvious candidates for three of the five are Shamanistic Focus and Ghost Wolf, but be gentle - I play a major interrupt role in our raids and PvP on the weekends.)

I apologize that my gear is probably in enhance mode for questing in the armory. Link to a more-or-less accurate model of my resto gear here.

Edited to correct typo and add character model link.

Sixthy said "I think the better a raiding guild is, the less the actual class/spec you're playing matters and the more players with good skills can shine." Look at Sunwell. Guilds stacked classes, not players with good skills. No amount of skill would help the Holy Paladin earn his keep. Very skilled players were benched for shaman that could drop four totems and spam CH.

Blizz has balanced the classes much better in Wrath. It will never be like in Sunwell. But I do feel that Shaman are at the bottom, and need a few tweaks to even things up.

Warcrafter Sandbox -- test away


Gem'ing for int gives your more SP through talents, more crit, and you get more mana back from replenishment.



On the topic of hard modes, can anyone who has a lot of work in with freya hard mode (25) comment on spec changes and glyphs?

I am planning on trying out glyph of stoneclaw totem as well as dropping talents in weapons and imp chain heal for nature's guardian for more survivability. The stam talents in the enhancement tree are a bit out of reach.

I just answered a question like this in a PM and I'll sort of sum up what I said again. It's going to depend on the exact strategy your guild ends up using, but I'd imagine that with a fight like Freya there won't be too many differences from guild to guild.

What I personally found as far as survival goes (and I think shaman are really gimped in that department compared to other classes, but whatever, adapt to it) is that it's best to just really learn the encounter and boost your HP. A few specific tricks:

1) Detonators. These guys reset their aggro every 3 seconds or something (I don't for sure, but it's a tight little window) and they seem to like to go to the person furthest away from the 'clump.' So if you aren't standing in the clump (if you aren't clumping for these then disregard) - then absolutely DO NOT CAST anything as more often than not they'll come over to you and will each melee you once - and if they all do it during a tremor or something, it's a gib.

2) Elementals. When these guys spawn make sure you aren't standing anywhere near the spawn point as you'll be one rounded. Try to hold back heals if possible until they're picked up (which shouldn't take longer than a second or two.

3) Conservator. This phase just comes down to repetition for learning it correctly - not killing yourselves and each other etc.

Make sure you're insanely vocal in vent about things like being rooted outside of a mushroom, or being rooted + nature's fury - and if you're rooted in a beam in any phase, it's definitely survivable if you're vocal about it and get heals on you + dps on your roots to get you out.

The first night we started working on the fight I dabbled with NG and the 6% damage reduction - I never really tried the stoneclaw thing. I personally found that I was either out right gibbed, or that the damage I took was completely healable. The biggest 'trick' for me in the fight was my HP - I ran attempts at 25.7k, 26.2, and finally 27.1k I found with 27.1k I had the least problems and that's what I ran on the kill. Everyone in the raid needs to be over 26k (imo) via imp commanding, stoneblood flask, monarch crab / ruby hare, etc. Whatever it takes. Regem old gear, etc.

I don't recall saying that as I don't really think that the overall skill of a guild would in any way whatsoever relate to the skill if individual healers - it's sort of arbitrary really.

My big argument here is that people are saying that shamans will be dropped "when it comes time for guilds to start stacking for hard modes..." - that makes zero sense to me. It sounds like hard modes are some far off future event that isn't quite on the horizon yet when one obvious guild is on Algalon in 25 with quite a few US guilds one kill away from being on Algalon - my guild included. I've seen the hard modes - the time to "stack for them" has already come and gone and I've been on every single kill - not only have I been on every single kill, but our other shaman has been on all of them but 1 - so we've done these hard modes with 2 shaman when people are trying to argue that shaman don't have a place at all on them.

We aren't the number 1 guild in the US by any means, but our pace has been pretty good - as for stacking, that's not going to happen as we have a 29 person raiding roster. There's only so much "stacking" we can do. So my entire argument throughout the last page or two of this thread has simply been that shaman are more than viable to complete the current hard modes in the game. Are we the most efficient? I never once said we're the best / most efficient healers - I simply said we're capable in the hands of a good player.

I also agree, however, that 2 druids, 2 priests, 1 pally, 1 shaman is just about the strongest healing comp you can run. I also feel that doing something like 2 druids, 3 priests, 1 paladin is *not* as strong - I would always want the burst healing of a shaman, the ES, the AF on the tanks - the AA healing the low targets in the raid while spot healing, etc. We bring a lot to the table in the grand scheme of things, and I've always thought variety is a pretty important element to healing as well. That's not to say that something like, 1 druid, 2 priests, 2 shaman, 1 pally or any other combination of 6 healers isn't just as viable. In the cases where you drop to 5 healers, I (once again) don't think dropping a class is the answer, and instead should double up on 1 and use 1 of the others. The only fight where we've dropped to anything under 5/6 is Hodir - and for that we ran Shaman / Priest / Druid - with me on the tank.

As others have pointed out int has many benefits, as to which is better sp or int it depends how much mp5 is worth to you. If 1 mp5 is worth 2 spell power or more to you int tends to come out on top, if its less than spell power tends to be best. I tend to put int in yellow sockets, and spell spell/int or power/mp5 in red or blue sockets, but it really is up to what you need for your raid situation. Gemming for spell power isn't wrong but you may find in hard modes you need more regen. Of course as hard modes get easier over time you may find you don't need as much mana anymore so pay attention to what you need most and choose accordingly.

While I think you have much more experience, I have too disagree that 2 druids, 3 priests and 1 paladin isn't as effective. Especially if you take into account the priests being divided into 2 holy priests and 1 disc priest. Disc priests are taken for granted when it comes to pure HPS, because "meters" don't take into account shields. However, their mitgation is 2nd to none and in the hands of a strong player provide as much EHPS as any class avail. 2 Holy priests provide far more EHPS then a shaman does, especially if they divide up their tasks correctly.

I will agree, shaman have become the priests of BC. We are the versatile healer that you can bring if you are missing a core class. Disc priest or paladin gone, we can heal a tank, but not as well, nor with the same HPS. Druid or Holy priest gone, we can raid heal, but we can't match their on the flight healing. Instant heals have become the norm for raid healing.

I did a chart the other day of the top 20 HPS/EHPS for all 25 man fights for all classes currently. In all but the basic fights, shaman were behind in both. I tried to get it formatted to post here, but it seems to mess up.

[Edit: I think Vuldunobetra did a much better job presenting the current state of Ulduar healing than I did. So I am editing out my post.]

Here's the link to your post and my follow up.
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Shaman Status - Where do we stand?

Here is the average eHPS for each class across all bosses:
3985 eHPS - Druid (123%)
3850 eHPS - Priest (119%)
3422 eHPS - Paladin (106%)
3238 eHPS - Shaman (100%)

Shaman eHPS is behind all other healers on eight fights, and beat only the pally on the other four (Vezax, Yogg, Freya, Assembly). Here's a chart comparing Shaman, Priests, Druids.