I got tagged for the big healer survey by the nameless proprietor of HolyPaladin.net. That was several days ago, I’m afraid, and I missed it until now. Shame on me. Here goes.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
I play Llyra, a Resto Shaman on Shandris.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
I am currently on break from it, but raid healing has been my primary focus. I have a fair bit of 5-man instance experience. Little PvP.
What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Have to go with the party line here and pick Chain Heal. Shamans don’t have a lot of healing spells — 4 active and 2 passive. Of the active spells, Chain Heal has the greatest depth. Between timing, target selection, and taking advantage of procs, there is a lot of variability in how effective the spell can be.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Healing Wave. The game moves too fast for a base 3 second single-target heal to be very useful.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
My favorite aspect of Shaman healing is that the small number of healing tools at our disposal cover so many situations! We are quick and powerful, survivable and flexible. I find most classes in the game overwhelmed by the sheer number of buttons available. A well-played Warrior boggles my mind. Shamans, more than any other class, imbue great depth in a small number of spells.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
There are 2 main deficiencies in Shaman healing. First is a lack of clutch healing abilities. Every single heal we have is reactive. Even knowing that the big hit is coming, there’s nothing we can really do about it.
And of course, healing on the move. I have 2 instant heals, one on a 6 second cooldown and one on a 2 minute cooldown. With as many fights that require frequent or constant movement, this is a crippling limitation. That 4 Horsemen fight in Naxxramas was my bane. The Twin Valkyr are similarly challenging.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Raid heals. I’ve seen remarks to the effect that Shamans are now the game’s best tank healers. I honestly don’t know what they’re looking at when they say that. And I do think that we are the best raid healers, bellyaching about Priests and Druids notwithstanding.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Probably Priests, whether Discipline or Holy. Mostly this has to do with my own familiarity with that class. Because I know what they can do, I can best accommodate their strengths into my own strategy. I know significantly less about Druids and Paladins.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Other Shamans, because the more of them there are the more I feel obliged to start managing. Juggling totems and earth shields around a heterogenous group of Shamans is tedious.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
The easy answer here would be to say Chain Healing a single target. But I honestly don’t feel particularly bad about that. Chain Heal is the Shaman version of a protective heal. If someone near that target takes damage, it will splash to them.
Probably my greatest liability as a Shaman healer is not developing different builds for different fights or phases. I could be planning out different groupings of totems for phases 1 and 2, different relics for single-target heavy sections, different gear sets for Mimiron versus Yogg.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Healers complaining about other healers. Or pointing and laughing. Healing is a team effort, and that sort of thing is needlessly destructive.
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Sure. In the early days of Ulduar I felt disadvantaged. A combination of low mana, instant kill abilities around the raid, constant required movement, and the dependence on the near-super-powered Prayer of Healing was pretty discouraging. Melee-raid-healing was really too small a niche for 1 of the 4 healing classes. Things have been tuned since, though, and I feel good about where Resto Shamans are right now.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
I’m all about the tools. I use Recount in game, and am not above silently preening when I have a commanding lead over the other healers, despite the meaninglessness of that. I’ve used 3 different web-based log parsers at different times, depending on the guild I’m with. Shaman_hep’s log analysis tool is invaluable. And I write some of my own tools, including GridStatusChainWho and the forthcoming HealingDummy.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
I suppose I haven’t run into many problems of the sort others report. Lodur’s experience recently with being rejected from healing a heroic 5-man because “Shamans can’t heal heroics” was baffling. I’ve been stunned at how well-rounded Shamans are healing in 5-man groups. Ultimately that’s why I’m healing!
When it came time to raid heal, I found Shaman healers were a rarity, and many doors were open to me. While the capabilities I brought to the table were not always known by the raid leaders, I had no trouble convincing them of my worth.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Learning to properly manage the totem buffs, taking into account specifics of a fight, presence of other Shamans, Group- and Raid-scoped effects, positioning, and avoiding redundancy due to non-stacking effects. It can be a lot of juggle.
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)?
Aggressive Chain Healing with moderately low overheal. Riptide and Earth Shield are my primary single target heals these days.
Haste or Crit and why?
In general I prefer crit. Like Paladins, crit feeds my mana in addition to pumping up the power of the spells. I’ll take either, depending on what gear drops. I’m not picky. It just so happens that Ulduar was extremely crit-heavy. My current gear ranking strongly favors haste, however, to make up for the unbalanced nature of what Ulduar did to my stats.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. Partly because I have had limited exposure to them as healers, and partly because my own attempts at leveling a druid always bog down in the early 20s.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid and Clique are the anchors of my healing setup. I’m not shy with the plugins to Grid: GridStatusHealingReduced, GridStatusRaidDebuff, GridStatusChainWho, GridManaBars, GridStatusHots, GridStatusRes. PowerAuras and TotemTimers are key for keeping abreast of situational developments. Depending on how broadly we interpret “aid in healing”, I should also include things like DBM, BossNotes, Aloft, Loggerhead, MSBT, oUF, Recount, Outfitter, Pawn, TipTac, and SmartRes.
I also run with about a dozen macros, generally to hook trinkets, Tidal Waves, or Nature’s Swiftness to a heal, or prevent myself from firing Heroism outside of combat.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Strive for balance. In the early days I was all Int/MP5 because I was paranoid about running out of mana. Before the big MP5 boost, those choices made sense. I was constantly struggling against the bottom of my barrel. Since the buff, a more balanced approach among all 4 stats is the most sensible.
Finally, a parting thought. This circle of healers thing that’s so big in the WoW blogger community? This is probably going on in other languages all over the world. As for tagging others, I’m going to nominate some of my Shandris buddies. Solo, Cadowin, Hypo — do it in the comments.
Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 7:02PM | 
