Shamanistic Healing

As a birthday present to me, my wonderful husband put aside his dislike of the leveling grind and he leveled two levels with me to get my shaman to 70.

I have been a restoration shaman since Hellfire. During that time, I discovered that ... I could hardly be killed. Earth Shield + Totems = Longest Fight Ever but at the end.. I'm alive, have mana and life, and you don't. I win. And by that I mean I'd regularly pull four or five things and just plug away at it.

Was it the fastest ever? No. Was it as slow as leveling my holy/disc priest? No.

I discovered I could keep someone alive and we could duo at level 59-60 the Drillmaster.

I discovered that I could keep someone alive and we could duo the Colossals.

As I started to instance, I discovered that shaman healing is ... kind of boring. *yawn* Until the fit hits the shan, then it's crazy healing time.

When the patch hit, I discovered that shaman healing is ... even more boring. Riptide, the healing weapon enchant whose name I cannot remember at this time, improved Earth Shield.

However, I am enjoying myself. You may be saying... 'but you just said it was boring!'.

Well. Yeah. But so is healing in general as anything but a paladin or druid. Paladins are almost always casting, due to the nature of their method of healing. Druids are also almost always casting, due to the nature of their method of healing.

Disc/Holy priests aren't always casting. At least not anymore thanks to the nerf of downranking. And neither are Resto Shaman. So I have two healers that spend a lot of time wondering if maybe they shouldn't do some DPSing instead.

This suits my personality just fine. :) I likey the DPSy.

And for the people out there who tell me to respec my ret paladin as something 'useful'. Shut your faces.

I have two tanks. Two healers. Multiple DPS.

So shut it. And let me play.

Er, but that was a bit of a sidetrack!

My leveling fight! It was epic. It was grand! I was trying to find Ashgar, in SMV. I knew where he was and I was hoping I could just zerg through the undead and find him, have most of them reset and be able to just kill him, maybe one or two more.

I wound up fighting EIGHT at once. I started with four, because you hit a mountain wall and can't reset them, stupid mountain. And then I got feared into another group. After that, I put down a tremor totem.

And Ashgar healed himself three times because my cooldown was always up because I was usually just done healing myself.

But I downed him. And then I downed another. And another. Searing Totem = Love. Mana Totem = Love. Earth Shield = UberLove.

I was running low on mana, needing to keep Earth Shield up rather than Water Shield. But I persevered. And you'd think that sometime between kill #1 and kill #8 I'd have leveled, since I was really THAT CLOSE. But no...

#8 dies, with me at no mana, and half life and what do I see? DING. Full mana and life bars. Because it couldn't have come EARLIER.

And then I went and healed Steamvaults. The only problem I had was with the first naga boss. I lost two of our three DPS to the elementals and the lightning storm that none of them moved out of. But I kept the tank up (barely in some cases) and we survived.

The other shaman I was with who shall remain nameless... didn't have any ankhs, so couldn't reincarnate. He was teased mercilessly for that.

After that, it was a cakewalk. The only time it got close to losing someone else was when I the mage pyroblasted herself (or something else that took half her life) on Kalithresh.

My current conundrum is, with as rarely as I cast Healing Wave, is it better to just use Lesser Healing Wave as needed? The buff Healing Wave gives to future healing waves doesn't last long enough for me to wait to get another heal in. It hardly seems worth it. What with Riptide and Earthshield...

I use Riptide on the tank because this way, splash damage to the other melee can be quickly healed with a boosted chain heal.

But, my shaman looks COOL too. I mean, seriously cool. As in droolworthy cool.

As does Kikidas, who is wearing the Robes of the Sin'Dorei and has a new 'do, though she kept her red tresses. But she looks less like she has helmet hair and more like she's a runway model. Heehee.