Resto shaman as healer?

[Fuzzyboy]

I tried having a resto shaman as a healer back in 3.0/3.1, which I found to suck immensely because of lack of AE healing (or rather, the need to target chain heal instead of just spamming the PoH / CoH / Growth / whatever-button).

However, the synergy of a group consisting of:

Unholy DK tank (spell dmg debuff)
Resto shaman (tremor, cleanse, heroism, spell dmg buff)
3 x arcane mage (arcane blast spam, nice AoE)

Would be something near the ideal group to do heroics with in terms of dps and buff synergy (assuming use of drums and runescroll) - assuming the healing can be sufficient as a resto healer. Are there any groups with resto shaman (as the only healer) who would care to share some info?

The alternative would be:

Unholy DK tank
Priest healer
2 x arcane mage
1 x elemental shaman

This is a bit less ideal, since the spell damage from ToW (compared to flametongue) and elemental "aura" doesn't make up for the dps loss of converting one arcane mage to one elemental shaman (at the moment my mage outdps'es my shaman by 4-5k using an AB x 3 + AM macro), but on the plus side it doesn't require my third mage to level from 70 to 80 :P

Any thoughts?

[Khatovar]

I Love my resto. She's awesome in a melee team, as she can throw Earth Shield on the tank and roll Riptides on the DPS. Between that and healing stream, I have very little to worry about when it comes to random AOE on the DPS. If I need more AOE healing, I can hit chain heal, which is glyphed to 4 targets.

Really, the only lacking healer out there, IMO, is the holy paladin. Any other healer has plenty of tools to take care of AOE.

[Fuzzyboy]

I Love my resto. She's awesome in a melee team, as she can throw Earth Shield on the tank and roll Riptides on the DPS. Between that and healing stream, I have very little to worry about when it comes to random AOE on the DPS. If I need more AOE healing, I can hit chain heal, which is glyphed to 4 targets.

Really, the only lacking healer out there, IMO, is the holy paladin. Any other healer has plenty of tools to take care of AOE.

What do you do on the heavy AE heal fights? I'm thinking mostly of ICC5 here where there's a fair bit of AE healing - do you just manually target the heals (usually I use mousewheel down for AE heals, but I guess with a resto shaman you'd have to either press a dedicated hotkey (for me 1-5) or use some sort of region mapping?).

I have no doubts that resto shaman are capable healers in heroics, I just worry if the extra micro management is worth the dps gain

[Khatovar]

I use mouseover healing in HKN. Heavy AOE is just chain heals on the lowest HP, which boosts 4 toons at a time.

[Fuzzyboy]

I guess it's worth another shot - can always revert to priest healing if need be - thanks for the info :-)

[ragawaga]

What do you do on the heavy AE heal fights? I'm thinking mostly of ICC5 here where there's a fair bit of AE healing - do you just manually target the heals (usually I use mousewheel down for AE heals, but I guess with a resto shaman you'd have to either press a dedicated hotkey (for me 1-5) or use some sort of region mapping?).

I have no doubts that resto shaman are capable healers in heroics, I just worry if the extra micro management is worth the dps gain

I had some success using mouse repeater regons and the vhudu addon (sorting the frames by name order so it's identicle on both the tank and healer screen). I use a logitech G13 so had some buttons mapped that were only for the healer. Took the hassle out of targetting as I made macros for mousover. You can also configure vhudo for spells on mouse clicks...like decursing or the likes.

[Fuzzyboy]

I had some success using mouse repeater regons and the vhudu addon (sorting the frames by name order so it's identicle on both the tank and healer screen). I use a logitech G13 so had some buttons mapped that were only for the healer. Took the hassle out of targetting as I made macros for mousover. You can also configure vhudo for spells on mouse clicks...like decursing or the likes.

I have a simpler version I use for decursing and the like. I use grid with a custom layout for the char sorting and HKN for area overlays, so when I click on a screen area (which would be the unitframe of the player I wish to decurse) HKN simply sends a keypress to my mage (Ctrl Shift 1-5) who casts a remove curse on the person in question :-)

[ragawaga]

I have a simpler version I use for decursing and the like. I use grid with a custom layout for the char sorting and HKN for area overlays, so when I click on a screen area (which would be the unitframe of the player I wish to decurse) HKN simply sends a keypress to my mage (Ctrl Shift 1-5) who casts a remove curse on the person in question :-)

That's essentially the same thing.

Just do something similiar with the shaman.