Healing questionaire

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Selacia, a resto Shaman

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
I mostly raid heal in 10 mans, occasionally 25 mans. I do a lot of heroics helping people get geared and I occasionally pvp. Though I range between healing people and attacking people there.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
Riptide because it's the only instant cast we truly have and it heals over time.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
I tend to not have one that I don't like. They are all useful, I just like riptide the most. But we only have four heals with our passive earth shield.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
I love the fact that even though I'm set up to tank heal, I can raid heal like mad as well. We are set up to do either, no matter what.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
I'd love to have slightly smaller cooldowns on the spells instead of having to stack haste all the time. I think that Blizzard could change this and affect how we gear entirely.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
As I said above, I can raid heal or tank heal. I love doing either. It doesn't really matter much.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
I love healing with druids and paladins. I haven't healed much with priests, so can't say much about them. But either paladins or druids allow me to focus on only the tanks or the raid. It makes it easier if I can pretty much stick to one, aside from the Saurfang fight.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
I don't really like healing with shamans. It feels like we are fighting over who gets to heal who, at least if there is a tank healer or a raid healer already, and there are the two of us trying to raid the other.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
In heroics, I get bored and start zoning if everyone is well geared. Sometimes it takes me a little while to realize when people are taking a lot of damage. In a raid, my worst habit is overhealing just to make sure that people are ok and don't die.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
I hate when people ask me to rez someone. I'm already on it, I know what my job is, you don't have to tell me. It would be like me saying to the tank, "make sure you get that one over there. He will pat over." I also hate when dps think they need to tank something and end up dying, then blame me for it, like I wasn't healing anyone.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
I think we all are designed differently so we can work well with others. I think that as a shaman, I can heal just as well as the rest of them, just in a different way.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
Well, of course if people don't die, that's a great thing. I like to use recount only to see where I rank with other healers and if I'm in a 25 man, I like to compare my spells used with someone else's.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
I really haven't heard many people say anything about shamans in the groups I've been in. I suppose some might think that shamans are better at raid healing, but we can do it all.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
I think people have a hard time using healing wave. Lesser healing wave has a smaller cooldown while chain heal will heal three (or more with the glyph) for the same cooldown as healing wave. Also, first time shaman healers might not use riptide as much in the beginning until they learn more about it. Finally, new shaman healers probably forget about nature's swiftness and tidal force. These are essential to healing well.

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)?
Shamans don't really have a ton of overhealing, but they aren't low on that either. And they will typically be toward the top of the charts for healing a tank, but a bit lower when healing the raid.

Haste or Crit and why?
Haste is the all-important one to gear for. Crit comes on a lot of the gear, and with tidal force, there is no need to go out of your way for crit. Also, spell power comes on most of the gear, so there isn't as much need to get that on either. Haste is the most important part for shamans.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
I don't understand druids entirely, but that is due to the fact that I really couldn't get past level 20 with mine, and when death knights came out, I killed her off to create the new class. I understand they have a lot of instant casts and hots, but a friend mentioned that they have a lot more spells. I only really have 4.

Also, I don't know much about priests, but I'm going to work on that. My baby priest is now level 12 and I'm thinking I want to dual spec her asap, when she gets to that level, so I can try the dungeon finder and level by healing.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I use a very special macro that I made up, only when necessary. It yells out "adds on healer!" and I use it if it seems like the tank hasn't noticed and I'm spending more time healing myself than anyone else. I use Xperl for the frames and bartender for the bars. I don't use healbot or grid. I find the raid frames in Xperl work just fine. And the reason I use Xperl and bartender is to make everything a little more customizable and to make more room by putting things in the corners more than the regular UI allows.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I mostly worry about haste and spell power, due to the things I mentioned above. Mana regen is not a worry for me, as I have my water shield to help out, and most raids give enough buffs for that as well.

Catching up!

I've seen many people who write their blogs posting that they will not be updating their blogs anymore. While this saddens me, it also has encouraged me to write a little more often. Things have been hectic around here with school and getting my shaman to 80. She has been dual specced and is now primarily healing, rather than dpsing. I still haven't been able to get her hit capped, but I also find healing to be less stressful than dpsing. So maybe that means I found where I was meant to be.

So she has healed all the raids now except Ulduar and ToGC. I'm feeling pretty confident about it all, and am really anxious to see the Lich King drop. The group I've been running with has reliably killed the first four bosses and a couple of weeks ago we managed to get Festergut down. I'd really love to try the dragon fight, where you get to heal her up, but I can't seem to convince my group that it would be a great thing to just try. Maybe this week!

She has her tier 10 2 piece set bonus, and I'm working on her thrid piece, but at 95 emblems, that is a long way to go, even with running ICC10, the weekly raid and some of the randoms to get the 2 frost emblems a day. Especially when I have other things that keep me from those randoms some times. I've also been trying to get a new dagger from the gunship battle, but have lost the rolls and now it hasn't dropped lately. Such is my luck. I'm just glad she finally got the 245 caster shield from ToC25. That took a lot of runs through there.

I know I've grown a lot in my healing. I actually use my trinkets more often now and have learned a lot about the different spells to use. If the tank is getting low and I'm getting beat up some, I can use healing wave for the extra healing on me because of my glyph.

So overall, I feel like I'm catching up. My goal, currently, is to down the Lich King before Cataclysm hits.