Restoration Druid v Shadow Priests

[russ]

Excuse me? I wonder where everyone got the idea that shadow priests are inexperienced at healing.

Because if you take the same sample size as I have, you'll find that a massive amount of shadow priests do suck at healing. I have leveled three characters to 50 or higher, and until around the mid to late 50s, enough priests out there simply don't know the basics of how to heal. You'll find this on both PvP and PvE servers. There's the rare shadow priests that knows what they're doing, but a vast majority don't know jack.

Not just small stuff like not knowing how to maximize spirit regen or becoming an expert at dealing with a mage or warlock's AoE habits. I'm talking basic stuff like renewing a warrior at the start of each fight, or other stupid stuff. Using Prayer of Healing early into a pull, for example, when only two members were injured so far.

I have been in many situations where I have not been the healer in an instance. I have played the role of main tank, of damage dealer, and of utility class (hunter in druid-healer-run of Scholomance). Does that necessarily mean that I've had less experience than you? Seems like it, except for one major problem.

Druids have to be healers out of groups too. Even a balance or feral druid will already have discovered all the tricks needed for basic healing in a group.
Having a spare set of equipment, check. There's mobs you simply don't want to fight in form as early as 1k Needles. You wear feral gear against them and you'll still be toast, even if you do caster crap.
Having several ranks of each sort of heal, check. My feral druid had three ranks up at once at level 42, simply because there were mobs that it wasn't worth wasting a massive amount of mana to heal after, no reason to add extra downtime.
Knowing when to choice a quick heal or a big heal, check. That's something any druid has to figure out damn fast or they'll never survive a double pull.

I've seen shadow priests level. It's simple killing mobs, there's no need to heal since you'll run out of mana before you're even near having health problems. There's no difficult choices of effiency.

I've seen priests that make it to the end of Sunken Temple wearing obviously solo gear simply cause they can't think of a single reason to have spirit. I've seen priests that spam Flash Heal in situations it is fairly obvious that you could get a good Greater Heal off... over and over through an instance. I've certainly found priests that PW:S mages after aggro's been pulled off them, and those that had no idea that they could dispell magic on friendly targets, that was fun to explain in BRS. I've had the misfortune of running Dire Maul with a priest that still hadn't figured out what this thing called a debuff bar is, and what "Mortal Strike" does.

Simply put, I trust my own ability to heal much more than I trust a strangers. In guild groups, I'm more willing to throw innervate to other people, but you don't have many guild-only runs at level 40.

As for who gets the Innervate, I'm strongly of the opinion that the Priest should get it. Most Priests that I know keep a lot of +Spirit equipment around. Yes, even Shadow Priests - Druids are not the only characters that carry multiple sets of equipment for different situations, every lv 60 Shadow Priest I know does the same. We keep one suit of equipment with +STA and +Shadow Damage, and one suit of equipment with +INT and +SPI. Right now I have 13 slots out of a 14 slot bag devoted to alternate equipment at all times. With my "healing" equipment I have around 280 Spirit, giving me a mana regeneration slightly over 83 per tick - which is worth 3320 Mana over 20 seconds of Innervate. I'm not sure how much Spirit a Resto Druid has, because I've never played one, but that should give you an idea of how much benefit Innervate gives to a Priest.

In my druid's healing equipment, I have 284 spirit at level 56. It's not much for my level, but I have crappy gear. I carry Gizzard Gum, but those are temporary buffs that are quite irritating to farm for, so let's ignore them for now. I get 72 mana per tick, and that equals 2880 mana.

Who wants to bet my heals are efficent enough to break that difference?