I'm blending in and becoming a unique snowflake!

I've taken it upon myself to make a frost/unholy DK! gasp. One side tanks, the other side dpses.

Now the typical arrangement would be unholy dps, frost tank, and you would be right, but clever titles imply that you should know better!

I'm frost DPS, and unholy tank. Frost DPS reminds me of a pure distilled version of enhancement DPS. Icy touch/plague strike are my shocks, obliterate is storm strike, and blood strike is lava lash, and hey killing machine reminds me a lot of this talent called maelstrom weapons. I dual wield, I provide the 20% melee bonus, I give 155 agi/str. I've stated before I hated DKs (or if I haven't I'm sure its leaked into my rantings) and that is precisely the reason why, because they COPIED my class.

Now I'm all for classes being similar as long as they're intrinsically different, but the similarities are just too close here, so it tends to bother me. On the other hand, it's like a second class I can play, and get away with DPSing, and still provide all the buffs I'm used to providing.

However the tanking thing I haven't started yet. I wasted the money, and put full talent investment into a "tanking" spec for unholy (which basically consist of points into boneshield/AMS+AMZ plus the default 5/8/5 build all good dks use.) I need to make a lot of startattack macros and bind runestrike to everything (is there ever a reason to not do this?) Just a few levels and I can start the rep grind for starter gear.

I'm hoping I can encourage a little diversity in the guild (currently, I'm the only shaman. We have tons of dks and not so curiously none of them are frost DPS or unholy tanks) It's getting tiring to see the most cookie cutter stuff I can possibly see. The only chance I'm seeing of "unique" is a mage trying to be arcane, not liking it, since they leveled frost, and being frost. I can deal with it, but jesus, it's like no one else even tries other specs. FOTM club, this group is. Weird thing, is that everyones stuck like 4 patches ago, with destruction running rampant, blood is everywhere!

And I mean the specs.

Anyone else a fan of these "not as common specs?"

Give 70% effort!

I've been very unenthusiastic about my role in raids. I just heal all the time. I'm growing tired of it. I'm leveling a DK, so that maybe, I'll have a shot at what I want to do. ( i won't! but I can dream)

When I'm playing my character, and I'm not playing for myself, but for the group, thats fine. However if others aren't putting forth the effort to maximize their efforts, why should I?

I pointed out to my guild that in order to kill festergut (or was it rotgut? who cares!) we'd essentially have to be doing 5k dps each, without accounting for the tanks, without accounting for movement. A few people asked if I was serious, and I said I absolutely was. I guess it wasn't enough of a wake up call though. Effectively all I've done, is made our best geared member, more concerned about her dps because shes a clicker (pst: best geared doesn't mean best dps by ANY stretch of the imagination) and thats pretty much it. Everyone else seems content to do sub 3k on training dummies in full t9.

At the very least my co-healer is falling into his groove, and is finally starting to even out my healing numbers.

I think I should transfer.

Old Healer Survey

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Wouldn't you like to know? Resto, with a mix of enh for pve and ele for pvp.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

10 man raids and 5 man heriocs.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Riptide. I like the water. I also like that it's pretty much my only mobile spell.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Lesser Healing Wave. tends to not heal enough, and tidal waves has healing wave be about same length.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Flexiblity. Druids are raid healers. Disc is single target. Holy is raid. Pally's are tank healers. Us shammys? We can do whatever we want.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Mobility. We have none of it. If you want healing on the move call someone else.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

For me specifically? Put me in the tanks group, let healing stream do whatever it wants, and put me on chain spam duty.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I personally like disc best. Their bubbles interact nicely with shaman. See bubble spam tends to stop damage, and shaman are particularly good at fixing "oh crap" moments. It gives a nice few moments to triage properly.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Probably Holy Paladins. Sure they can handle the tanks all by their lonesome, but that leaves me with 7 other people I have to take care of. I can do it, but I don't like it. If I can three heal, I'm at my happiest.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

Knowing when to use my cool downs. Nature's swiftness tends to be very no-brainer for me, but tidal force is far more complicated to know when to use. The only encounter I've gotton used to it, is during marrowgar. I tend to burn NS pretty quickly there, so TF acts as my second "I"M FALLING BEHIND ON HEALING" cool down.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Ranged that spread out, in an encounter that requires no spreading out. Way to gimp my performance for no reason whatsoever.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Personally I think we're sort of unfair. Other classes are pretty pigeonholed into their roles. Shaman can be a little too flexible on pretty much stationary fights.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I briefly glance at recount to see what % of healing I've done. If I've done about 40-50% in a two healer encounter I'm good. Mostly I just want to see if I'm being carried or I'm carrying. or (heaven forbid) my partner(s) are doing their job.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

I feel like people there is a very "you are an AOE healer" mentality. If I was to list where I thought classes were in terms of a "Tank to Raid" ratio, Druids are 15:85, Pallys are 85:15, Holy Preists are 25:75, Disc is 60:40, and we're floating around 35:65 I'm not saying we're fantastic at tank healing, but given a 3 healer scenario I think we do best in a "floating" position, where we take care of damage that the "raid" and the "tank" healer cannot do themselves.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

That given our flexibility, gemming and glyph for us, is pretty much arbitrary. Not that there isn't a good way to do it, it's just that it's meant to mesh with your play style. Need more mp5? Gem for it. Want haste and sp? Gem for that instead. Do you have reflexes like an old dog? Go ahead and gem for the 3% +crit heals meta. They'll actually do just fine.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

Healing Wave > Riptide > Earth shield > Chain Heal > Healing stream. Fairly low overhealing. Maybe 20% I'll probably be clocking in at about 3500 HPS. My activity will probably be fairly low. I'm pretty twitch-healer oriented. I don't think about where damage comes from, I just heal it, unless it's super obvious (oh look sally's standing in the death and decay. Time to heal!)

Haste or Crit and why?

I prefer haste just because of the nature of style. I react to damage as it happens so I need higher amounts of haste to compensate. I'm very lax about haste/crit gear though. I'm pretty sure mine is pretty balanced, if not actually crit heavy.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Paladins. I've played preists enough to get the gist of how they function. Druids I'm a little fuzzy on, but nothing is terribly complicated about stacking hots, in specific ways to get healing accomplished. Paladins I understand have 3 heals, but its the support structure proping it up I don't understand. Talent trees are generally pretty clear on what something does, but the holy tree is oddly devoid of that information. I don't know what sacred shield does. I don't know how divine plea works. Or what hands can be used on who. Stuff like that. It easy enough to get "flash of light, holy light, holy shock" but the rest is when it goes to hell.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Chain heal is bound to 3. Healing Wave is bound to 4. If I hold shift and push either of those buttons, I have natures swiftness bound to it. Shift3 for CH; Shift4 for HW. Shift+E happens to be trinket+tidal force.

I'm learning how to use grid. Mostly I'm using it in the same way I used xperl. As a means to track where my earth shield and riptide are, and who has aggro. Aggro is clearer on grid, but ES and riptide were easier to track on xperl. I wish squares had more corners, ya know? :P I just want to know every heal on a person if at all possible.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

I balance the crap out of my stats. It's taken literally having my guild carve out 2 +20 haste gems for me, before I even changed my sp/haste gems out.

Logic

People love to min-max things. They love the ability to quantify how much something is worth. I, for one, am okay with cookie cutter.

I hate, however, when someone tries to tell me whats the best usage of "wiggle room" i have outside of my cookie cutter builds.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xxZx0ezIeoxkrIRt:ZcMm This is the most cookie cutter "base" of the resto shaman. I even included minor glyphs for your viewing pleasure.

Now, heres the thing. I intentionally left the glyphs open. Other classes tend to have what I like to call "BiS glyphs" That are without a doubt better than anything else the class offers. Some of them aren't even hard decisions (shadow priest! fire mages!) Resto shamans have what I call the play style oriented glyphs slots available.

25 mans will completely disagree and override you. Chain heal is awesome, they say.

10 man logic will always tell you, no, you hate chain heal. Stop trying to use it, cause there simply is a good time to.

actually my logic will tell you that. I do most of the healing in any attempt now anyways, and it's exactly what I mean. I've glyphed Riptide, Healing Stream, and Healing Wave. I actually intend to get rid of riptide as well, and probably go for water mastery or earth shield.

Here's the thing. I don't notice riptide's extra duration doing anything. If I cast it on the tank, I'll probably be overriding it again anyways. If I cast it on a dps, they'll be at full for most of the ticks. All it allows me is a launching point for chain heal, and I can assure you I rarely have that luxury. I am primarily a tank healer. As I've said before, I do most of the healing on a given attempt.

Let me illustrate a picture of our recent ICC raid.

We have me; Resto shammy. Then Holy paly, tree druid, Prot paly, bear druid, DK, Rogue, Warlock, Hunter, and wild card A. (actually dk should be wild card B, but its always a dk. ALWAYS)

during trash I healed far less than tree and paly. I was still trying to figure out grid, and had it set up as my baby druid. Therefore I had it set to track rejuv, life bloom, and regrowth. I cannot tell you how comfortable I was healing that day. I saw rejuvs on everyone. I never had to wonder "hey, does this person need help?" Never. I pretty much sat there and riptide'd when I got bored, and CH if someone was getting low. I was my most comfortable ever during ICC.

During marrowgar this changed quickly. I'm the raid leader so this is how the group was set up. Ranged away. Melee inside hitbox. Everyone on spike duty (because we're not 25 man, we don't have the fun of "LET THE RANGED GET IT") Tree on raid. Paly on tanks. I'll mop up your mistakes.

Boy did I ever mop. We never got marrow below 50%. I however manged to pull of 70% of the healing, which means my healers are either terrible, or I'm the most cruel heal sniper in the world.

This is literally what I have to deal with. Me essentially single healing any encounter with a gimped healer at best. I had a lovely 60/40 on ony, probably the messiest attempt ever (all ranged but 1 died before phase 2 started. That one ranged got ony down on his own, then proceeded to fall over with my healer partner, It was then a one heal, one dps, two tank affair with me dying MOMENTS before the kill, woo!)

So I have to shift. I originally had glyphs, CH, LHW and Riptide. I did this because I had a great shammy partner, and we 2healed pretty much everything together. It's not so much now. I'm not the "sort of raid heals" guy I used to be, and I can't depend on anyone to keep me alive either, LEAST of all myself. I get to choose who goes where, what groups are around, so I shove tanks and those void zone abusers in my group and hopefully let healing stream take care of them as it can.

Anyways, back to the talents. Elemental weapons are so worth it!....?

That's DISGUSTING. I would rather put enhancing totems, guardian totems, I'd say I might even go with healing focus over them. everyone takes improves shields anyways, I don't even know why anyone wouldn't, but hey, my ex-co healer didn't and she glyphed water mastery too. I don't argue with results. I just hate that people are willing to quantify the wiggle room. They don't much change throughput, and don't effect mana regen, so I've never understood the love for 60ish sp. I like enhancing totems. 23 extra str/agi is nice. 20 sp is also nice. Having it applied RAID WIDE makes it amazing. Plus it lets me override horn of winter, which is always a plus.

Blue posts and the world debates.

Theres a lot of concern for the state of stats for tanks, and healers and changes that will come cataclysm.

I think many people are freaking out about nothing. The gear simplification means there is LESS of a chance to have gear that doesn't match up to what you want. Resto and Ele will want the same pieces, since they'll actually want the same stats. No longer will look at gear with a distaste in your mouth going "ew mp5", you'll be thinking "sweet more hit!"

I'm pretty positive after the clunkiness of the few seconds of having less than ideal gear, questing, and getting better optimized gear. We'll all be screaming to the blizzard gods, thanks for the gear simplification.

Runeforging worries me however. That's spreadsheets waiting to happen. Mastery however excites me. Maybe I'll be able to get a rogue with a delicious high energy regen rate, thats individual abilities don't do much damage.

Mostly I'm just excited about the simplifications. Every change makes sense to me, and I see the reasons for them.

I have jumped on the pvp bandwagon

and I am loving not playing my main specs.

I've hated elemental for a long time. Simplicity isn't something I particularly like. The ease of keep flame shock up, and spam lightning bolt until lava burst comes off cool down, is as far as i know, the easiest rotation in the game. Enhancement is far more complicated and its great to preform your rotation well, to get applause from simply being your spec.

However pvp doesn't reward complicated. Trying to maintain a decent rotation while improv-ing based on posititioning is AWFUL. So I went with elemental, and I like the simplicity. It's very cat and mouse. If someone closes in, you create gaps, and get back to range. Charge? TS. Intercept? Root with earthbind. Hamstringed and they trinket out of earthbind? Frost shock and wolf away.

I love that kind of thinking. Enhancement isn't conducive to my style of thinking in that respect (although I'm having a hell of time staffing warriors to death by accident on occasion. Imagine how it makes them feel)

Also just as a note, I do not dislike warriors by any measure. I just seem to have a lot that pick on me.

However its very difficult to get pvp gear. As of now I've only got a necklace, a cloak and a totem. The totem is neglible from any elemental totem, thankfully the necklace and cloak DO make a sizable difference as I already don't die from a rogue deciding to hit me till i die.

Oh and this goes without saying, but a PVP spec helps SOOOOOOO much. :P

Raid leading, and destruction.

I am a core raider in my guild. Everyone knows this. There are a total of two good healers. One is me, the other has been here forever. She decided to transfer because she was probably tired of being limited by the rest of the group. She re-rolled her character same name, same class and all, for what appears to be 3 reasons to me. Guilt, Friendship and Community. I know she enjoys healing and enjoys us.

This brings me into a difficult position because currently, I have no viable healer other than myself. Our lead dps has a heal alt, but he stepped down as raid leading, probably because of said difficult.

Oh yeah ps: I got drafted into leading raids, because I said I wanted to do ulduar? So apparently, because of my good job at explaining and taking feelings into consideration, thats my job now. Sucks!

Basically my guild is dwindling. There are transfers from the younger players out. Older members are throwing the towel in. we have a revolving door of genuinely bad players, its very disappointing. It's not an issue of gear, because in general my gear isn't particularly good but I show very decent numbers, but some of our most geared players floating around 5.2kgs aren't able to pull 4k dps single target patchwerk. I don't like basically single healing anything with other healers.

Should I jump ship too? hmm