Chain Healers Anonymous

For the sake of the readers I am going to try to keep this short and sweet.

I currently go by Spinel but I have gone by several names over my tenner in World of Warcraft some of which are Amethess, Whissler, Saffire, Topaz, Dawnstone, and a few others.

I've been playing since right after the original release. I've raided extensively as a Hunter, Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, and Protection Paladin, even dabbled in raiding as a holy priest.

I've recently switched my main again to a Resto Shaman.

I had decided after spending most of BC as a protection Paladin that I wanted to heal again. I had already spent a good deal of my time as a protection paladin in healing gear on bosses so I wanted to be all I could be if I was going to have to heal.

The reasons I choose to play a resto shaman over the other healing classes available to me where quite simple.

I never really enjoyed the act of healing on my paladin. I can't specifically say why and maybe its mostly because what I really wanted to do was tank bosses, but while I could perform on par as other holy paladins in my guild in holy gear as prot spec, I never enjoyed the act itself. The few times I speced holy to help out, I enjoyed it even less because my heart was in tanking and I wanted to tank. Not to just be a tank, to actually tank. But alas thats a different post.

I've always enjoyed healing on my druid. I've since the very early days been extremely good at it. I always liked the concept of pre-emptive healing versus reactive healing. I was seriously torn between my druid and my recently minted level 70 shaman for my new main at the end.

But at the end of the day the following factors were the tie breakers.

My wife was going to be playing a feral druid in WotLK and that meant if I played my druid the tank I would be grouped with 85% of the time outside 25 man raids would lead to us having the same group buffs.

The variety of buffs the Shaman brings to the table in general to any group is much more beneficial than those of a druid. As a shaman we can buff any resistance, clear disease, poison, and curse, we can buff str, agi, spell power, haste, mana and health regen, etc. Druids bring three buffs to the table MoW, Thorns, Tree Aura.

I really like the appeal of Reincarnation over Rebirth. I've been sorta tarred and feathered for this observation but I feel its accurate and true. As healers we are responsible for what we bring to the table and items like reincarnate or rebirth are tools we are stewards of for raids. Rebirth becomes somewhat of a responsibility for druids, namely to to pay special attention to staying alive if they have it available because if they die with it up, they really have cost the raid two lives. Theirs and whomever they couldn't rez because they died early. Where as with reincarnate it empowers the shaman to take more risks. If the reincarnate is up, we can more easily choose self sacrifice to save a tank if we know we have the tool up and available.

The shaman earth shield is also a favorite tool of mine that druids have nothing relative to compare with.

Lastly, there is the direction Blizzard seemed to be taking with nerfing lifebloom and strengthening regrowth and healing touch. It appeared that either as a bi-product of pvp or by intent they were moving towards pushing druids into a more reactive healing role.

So there you have it.

I'm now playing a shaman and experiencing yet another facet of healing in WoW.