Of offspec healers and threat (Shadow Labs)
So, from 69-70 I've been pushing my characters through Shadow Labs for my Kara attunement key. Suvega and I both hit the mind control boss ("TIME for FUN!") and I proceeded to wipe while he solo'ed the guy down with his uber geared priest and prot warrior.
This is where I learned one key thing: Shaman vs Shaman is ROUGH.
Step 1: Try it by yourself
At 69, I was running with my 70 prot paladin and 4x69 elemental (41/0/19) shaman. I was guaranteed to lose one, if not all shaman, after the VERY FIRST mind control. They would literally stand on top of each other, melee, and take turns chain lightning'ing each other (with lightning overload, earth shocking each others' heals, etc). Meanwhile, the pally would blow all her mana on max rank consecrates, max rank holy lights, etc.
I would end up with 1 or 2 shaman left with almost no health, and a oom paladin who is blowing every mana pot cooldown trying to rebuild her threat. And, of course, since she's taking damage, the heals from the elemental shaman on the tank or themselves would pull aggro. Total wipefest.
I tried everything. De-equiping my weapons. Laying stoneclaw totems (that helped, fyi. It was hilarious). Using earth elementals after MC phases to pick up aggro. Potting. Judgement of wisdom. Rank1 Holy Shield/Righteousness when oom. Grounding totem (FYI, doesn't work -- totems turn red during MC). Blessing of Wis. Salv. Kings. High burst ASAP. High regen/longevity. My shaman would get pwned every single time.
Step 2: Bring a friend
After the massacre which took me to 0% durability not once, but twice... I decided to beg Suvega for help. I was sure my prot pally was not generating enough threat due to being oom, and having a warrior tank would be better. Nada. The shaman obliterated each other once more during the first MC, and while the warrior was tanking admirably, the shaman would go oom on heals and eventually die during MC phases.
So we grabbed Suvega's priest and warrior, with my 3 shaman for dps (after all, I just needed to get past this one boss). Most of the shaman still died, but the dps during the MC phase wasn't as bad with 3 dps, 1 healer, 1 tank rather than 4 dps, 1 tank. I ended up losing a shaman during the MC, but we completed the boss and moved on. I then proceeded to wipe on Vorpil. I left the instance to train my 70 skills (HEROISM!!) thinking that the extra burst from heroism/bloodlust would help me kill him. When I got back in the instance, everything had respawned. >.<
Step 3: Be stubborn as hell
So come Sunday, got a loan from Suvega for the last bit of gold to buy flying mounts (I earned it all back within 2 days from dailies/daily pre-quests) and I'm looking at Shadow Labs again. Suvega had offered to bring his warrior and priest in again to clear the MC boss, but I was stubborn. I had xfered my main 70 resto shaman to a 6th account (I wanted to rotate out the dps shaman in instances, and she had been sharing the tanking pally's account) and I decided to try her out.
My concern? Earth shield. I needed mana BADLY on the MC boss fight and from what I remembered, paladins did not get mana through spiritual attunement with Earth Shield because ES heals counted as the paladin healing herself, not as the shaman healing the paladin. Good for threat, bad for mana efficiency. I made myself a dps-esque set with lower defense and mitigation and the sporeggar lichen shield and swapped out some defensive trinkets for spelldmg. I scoured the maintankadin site and eventually (i.e. it took FOREVER) found a post from Sept that confirmed that ES/Lifebloom/ProM had been fixed to give pally tanks mana when it heals.
So, after totally obliterating my resto shaman's keybindings and macros, I had her set up and ready to take over healing, and I had set up the ele shaman to cease healing as long as the resto shaman was in the party. (i.e. /stopmacro [combat,target=velani,help,nodead] preceding each healing macro -- velani is my resto shaman)
The moment I started pulling trash I was astonished. My shaman had been riding my pally's ASS in threat ever since the mid-60's. I had assumed it was because the shammies had high spell damage and my pally was losing some +spelldmg gear for mitigation (480 def so far, 160 +spelldmg in mitigation gear). My paladin was now doubling the shaman's threat even when I wasn't consecrating/judging. I put my mitigation set back on, and she was still uber high on omen. The only difference between this run and previous runs was earth shield and the elemental shaman not stopping to heal. The resto shaman had points in the -threat on healing spells in the resto tree, plus with the improved restorative totems (26? mp2 on mana spring totem)...
In the trash pulls, it was very easy to pace myself. Instead of reactively healing myself and going through spurts of oom ness with bursts of mana when the ele shammies landed big heals, I set the resto shaman to spam rank1 healing wave on myself to proc ancestral healing/healing wave and earth shield was covering the rest minus some spot heals on big pulls. The earth shield procs were keeping me topped off on easy trash and I never had any mana problems.
Insert MC boss. The ele shammies survived three MC's before succumbing to the inevitable shammy vs shammy death. Between earth shield, low threat heals, restorative totems (mana spring), rebuffing blessing of wis instead of kings mid-fight, 2 mana tide's, and 4 mana pots, the resto shaman and the paladin were able to solo him down. Blackheart the Inciter was defeated. Similarly, Vorpil was downed with a 1-way hallway kite, drop fire elementals during the teleport, then quick burst to down him while FS/Earthbinding the blueberries near the platform. Cleared Murmur's room, booted the resto shammy, and summoned in the ele shammies to finish off Murmur and get my kara keys on the 4 ele shammies and prot pally.
Moral of the story
MC sucks. Bigtime. When you bring 4 dps classes, it doesn't matter if they can heal themselves. They won't. They'll obliterate each other. High burst damage is bad. Swap in some regen gear so it slows down your damage, spec one healing for the high regen and low healing threat, and take it slow and easy. IMO, don't bother blowing heroism - the heroism lasts long enough that you're going to have 5 heroism'ed characters going at it during the MC phase. If they heroism during the MC, only one will have the haste buff rather than 5. Hope that they earth shock the dps spells. Hope that they don't earth shock the heals. If worse comes to worse, duo it tank & healer.
And if you're having threat problems with a 1 pally 4x shaman group, try a specced healer. Ele shammy heals are not mana efficient and add to the already high elemental threat. Earth shield alone will make a huge difference in pally threat since they get both healing and mana on earth shield procs. It's like thorns. Every little bit helps.
Last but not least, bring pots. Alot of pots. Bandages too (go train first aid!).
