swirly,Feb 26 2006, 05:59 AM Wrote:I'll tell you that I believe +healing gear is the way to go on a shaman as well. Its what I went with my shaman and I haven't regretted it at all. I sometimes wonder if this is why my shaman experiences and Treesh's experiences differ some. I seem to feel like shaman healing isn't as tough as she feels it is. There are lots of other factors in this too though like I usually had alot of CC going on, the players in my group knew each other very well (played from 0-60 together for several of us), and other such things. I do wonder if her liking +int over +healing (judging from her first post where I didn't notice +healing at all and her saying that +int is the way to go) has a decent part in things.I did actually mention +healing at the end, but I'm not at all happy with my comments on gear and didn't mention that what I did mention was for growing up (when there isn't as much +healing gear that also has stats) rather than for cap. That was rushed and not well thought out and has to be redone since I don't agree with it. ;)
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Mogo has 4 different sets of gear - casting gear, healing gear, hybrid gear and melee gear. The healing gear has as much +healing (with other stats) as I can get my grubby little hands on. If I'm main or solo healer, that's what I wear. If I'm backup healer (or in a fight where there's a lot of magic AoE being thrown around by the critters so if I go melee I'll be a drain on the other healers), I'm in my casting gear (high int, then stamina and well, spirit seems to get thrown in with that mix frequently but I don't actually look for it). If I'm duoing with Marn in Silithus playing with elites or we're in a raid where I don't have to heal much, I'm in my hybrid gear (stamina, some int, some +healing, some strength, some agility). If we're grinding together or I'm soloing, I'm in my melee gear (stamina, strength with some int thrown in by lucky drops).
About the totems, I used to rarely drop them growing up. It was more cost effective to just heal through instead of "waste" the mana dropping them. The closer I got to the cap (and now that we're raiding in ZG frequently), I drop them a lot in parties. If the fights aren't going to last long, I don't bother dropping them. If it's longer fights, they get plopped all the time. However, I do still stand by using totems as helping healing, even using strength of earth and windfury. If the critters die faster, less healing taken. :) In 20 man raids, I put them down all the time simply because I've got the mana, I'm not main healing so I may as well use it. :)
I actually think the differences you and I saw in healing difficulty Swirly are because I didn't even have 5 mans in the 5 man instances until Zul'Farrak (I think that was the first full 5 man I healed with Mogo). We did it with just Marn (Tauren Hunter) and I or sometimes threw in one or two other people for the "tough" ones. I also had pets as main tanks more often than anything else. I didn't get to really heal warriors as my tanks in front of me until Uldaman (I think that was the first warrior tank I had. Durambar may have to correct me on that one ;) ). It was pet tanking all the way. :) Healing a pet tank (before the hunter changes that made pet tanks more viable) is more difficult than healing a warrior tank. We also usually didn't have much in the way of crowd control beyond freezing traps. Having a mage along was a rare, rare luxury and having a rogue for sap or a warlock for seduce/voidwalker offtank was unheard of for the longest time. It was Meowry tanking everything but what was in a freezing trap (and then beating on Marn when Spirit Bond was awesome ;) ). I grew up healing in much less than ideal circumstances, but it was damned fun and challenging. :)
Edit: Oh, and I also had the issue of seeing just how much easier most of the encounters were to heal as a priest. :)
Intolerant monkey.