Shaman build discussion

[Treesh]

So I have a shaman who I play with a warlock friend of mine.  I find myself being the main healer and main tank in ALOT of situations.  We often end up with a group of shaman, warlock, mage, rogue, rogue.  I'm not sure we have ever grouped with a warrior, druid, or priest. :blink: I'm hoping this changes because I don't know how many more instances we can do with me being both tank and healer.  (we are around 28 currently)  I pretty much end up shocking a mob a few times and chain healing myself while everyone else beats up on mobs.  This seems to keep me alive and keep the mobs on me instead of them attacking the other people.
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For what it's worth, for Mogo and Marn, the pet is the closest thing to a main tank that we have and Mogo is main healer for the group. The way we work it (and I'm sure there are better ways to do it) is that we spread aggro around. If I'm getting too hurt and having my heals stuttered too much, either GG pseudo tanks for a bit (go mail armor, agility and aspect of the monkey!) or the pet does. Usually we start off with the pet being tank and then I take aggro off of it if the pet is starting to get overwhelmed. Then if my heals are being stuttered just too much, aggro goes back to the pet or to Marn if the pet isn't healthy enough yet. When there are more people with us, it's actually easier because things die quicker so the pet doesn't get hurt as badly and I don't have to play tank too often that way. But earlier on, I was the tank and the healer for everything. I don't remember just when I stopped that though because it was just too tough to heal and tank at the same time with the long cast heals. Is the warlock using the voidwalker or an imp/succubus? If it's usually warlock, mage, rogue, rogue in your group you can probably get away with having the voidwalker up and have it tank for a bit so you can get your heals in and then you can take aggro back when you're healed up and ready to go, although torment does seem to be a bit weaker than growl on hunters' pets.

And for some help on keeping mobs off other people, don't underestimate stoneclaw totem. It has gotten a bit of an aggro buff in one of the recent patches so if you know you're getting more adds than can be crowdcontrolled in a normal fashion, slap down the stoneclaw totem (preferably away from where the mages are AoEing), let the things beat on that for the short bit and then when they kill the totem they'll more than likely come to you anyway if they weren't being hit by AoEs while beating on the totem. Sometimes the critters will just head towards the closest body from the totem though so if you notice the health about to expire, head towards the totem, chain lightning them (when you are a high enough level for it), shock the nastiest looking one so it won't head towards your squishies, throw on rockbiter quick and hit each critter quickly. This will keep things off your mages a little bit better. Can make it a bit scary for you sometimes, but it'll give your DPS monkeys a bit more time to do their thing before critters peel.