I tried to respec my druid from boomkin to healer at level 59 and after about a dozen totally failed randoms I decided that, at this point in time, I don't like to play a healer.
My guild insists the 10man ICC runs has 1 shammy heal in there so that class must do something good. *shrug*
From a tank's point of view .... I hate, let me stress that again, H A T E pally healers. About one out of every 15 is worth their weight. Even that one is no where near as good as the other healing classes. I will say out of many many randoms there was one run I was glad to have a pally healer. On the last boss in heroic FoS the DPSers did not listen to "stop attacking" causing all three to die. The fight took a long time but we two-manned Devourer of Souls. The shammy seems to do an OK job keeping me alive and if they are trigger happy they seem to hold up better against a hit or two. My absolute favorite are tree heals. When I see a tree in the party I know it is an easy run. My tanking and their healing ... we can have three crappy DPS and still finish without a wipe. IMHO a 4600GS tree is as good as a 5000GS shammy/priest/pally.
My guild insists the 10man ICC runs has 1 shammy heal in there so that class must do something good. *shrug*
From a tank's point of view .... I hate, let me stress that again, H A T E pally healers. About one out of every 15 is worth their weight. Even that one is no where near as good as the other healing classes. I will say out of many many randoms there was one run I was glad to have a pally healer. On the last boss in heroic FoS the DPSers did not listen to "stop attacking" causing all three to die. The fight took a long time but we two-manned Devourer of Souls. The shammy seems to do an OK job keeping me alive and if they are trigger happy they seem to hold up better against a hit or two. My absolute favorite are tree heals. When I see a tree in the party I know it is an easy run. My tanking and their healing ... we can have three crappy DPS and still finish without a wipe. IMHO a 4600GS tree is as good as a 5000GS shammy/priest/pally.
Granted, SP will come inherently with gear, but you never want to gem for it. Always gem for Int. unless you need to activate your meta. MP5 is a solid stat, but your main source of mana regen will actually come from your melee swings. ALWAYS run with seal of wisdom and auto attack the boss, your spellcasts won't remove you from auto-attacking so in the split seconds in between your heals you'll hit with a weak attack (who cares) but you'll gain a percentage of your maximum mana; since Int. increases the amount of mana you have seal of wisdom becomes much more efficient. On movement-heavy fights MP5 is your best bet, so keep some of that too, I'm just saying that pallies should never run out of mana if you're playing them correctly.
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