R Shaman or R Druid

[Ellay]

It still needs some toggling but on my isboxer spam macro I have it also include the lightning bolt button with no stop casting after 7 seconds and to last for 1.5 seconds. A full stack seems to be up usually every 7 ish.

[Ualaa]

I usually set up toggles like this:

a) Main spam mapped key, that calls the other pieces via 'Do Mapped Key' actions (with Target: Current Window).
b) Several other pieces, each their own mapped key (with Target: Whatever)
(Only want one thing deciding the target, either the calling mapped key or the called piece).

So you could have a priority or a two-step or whatever.
Each as their own 'B' step, called from the main spam key.
You could include IWT, if you want.

If you sometimes want Lightning Bolt, but not always.
Make that a mapped key, with whatever parameters you want.
You could have step 1, not advance to the next step for 7 seconds and then step 2 to not advance for 1.5 seconds (or the reverse)... with the keybind for Lightning Bolt, on the step that you want it to fire off on.
Check the box, to not load the mapped key initially.

Then create a toggle key.
It will need a hotkey, and should be two steps.
Keymap Actions > New Mapped Key State Action.
Do the opposite action on the second step.
I often include a Pop Up Text Action, to let me know the current 'Mode'.

Toggle it on, when you want.
And off, when you don't want it.
You can really go crazy, and turn stuff on and other stuff off on alternating steps.
Step 1: Enable A, Disable B.
Step 2: Enable B, Disable A.
Etc..

[Ellay]

I think the pop up text action idea is great, especially when you have that many options.

Personally, getting the DPS rotation down for maximum output with the least amount of options is best case scenario.

[Ellay]

I'm still stuck on this!

Almost leaning towards the Druid because it's "easier" for PvP. I think I need to PvP more with the group but my mind almost freezes up when I use the resto Shaman, I think due to there being so many hard casts.
So this is the data I pulled.

I had 5 players in a group standing on each other, which I figure I can calculate into the data since we always stack.
Healing Tide Totem and Tranquility healed for almost the same, so negligible there.
Both characters would cast Riptide/Rej on the entire party, Shaman would unleash elements, drop healing stream totem and then spam greater healing wave.
Druid would spam Swiftmend / Wild Growth and a triple stack of Lifebloom on a specific target.
The Shaman would spam heal a target with Earthshield up for the extra 20% healing.
These are my findings..
The druid overall healing was massive to the tune of double using the same amount of mana. I thought to myself hey it must be because of all that AoE, the single target must be terrible. They weren't, using this method the single target heals were also double. I could of added Healing Rain into the mix as well, that's actually quite a bit of aoe healing but the problem is it's a 2 second cast. More hard casting

AoE heals = Druid easy winner.
Single Target heals = Druid appears the winner.\
Utility = Shaman

Final choice? I still don't know
Tremor totem just by itself is a massive thing for PvP, but if I can't even get heals off in the first place whats the point?

[Chivalrous]

You're not asking me but I love my enhance shaman. I have 1 button for rotation and 2 buttons just for maelstrom procs.

i tried doing the procs on same button but it didn't work.

[Chivalrous]

Ellay I pve with a warrior, hunter, shaman, paladin and Druid. They are my only level 90s. I was healing on the paladin but The lack of mobility was tough for me on some heroic fights, and I never much liked the Druid tank. So, I was left to decide who I wanted to heal, and who I wanted to tank. I finally decided on Paladin tanking and Druid healing. I would like the shaman healing but it boiled down to the shaman, for me, was better off dpsing than the Druid would have been. Surprisingly though, the Druid isn't a bad 5 man pve healer. With my teams off heals from the paladin and shaman, the Druids hots keep me up better than the paladin did.

So, for shaman heals vs Druid heals I think it's situational. The shaman is probably better, but 5.2 it might change since Druid is being buffed across the board http://i.wow.joystiq.com/2013/01/15/...-15-bonuses-o/

[Ellay]

Thanks for the info Chivalrous, going to give my Druid a strong try and see how it goes. If I need another fear break I can pick up the last tier talent on the DK's to offset.

[Khatovar]

Healing Tide Totem and Tranquility healed for almost the same, so negligible there.
Both characters would cast Riptide/Rej on the entire party, Shaman would unleash elements, drop healing stream totem and then spam greater healing wave.
Druid would spam Swiftmend / Wild Growth and a triple stack of Lifebloom on a specific target.
The Shaman would spam heal a target with Earthshield up for the extra 20% healing.
These are my findings..
The druid overall healing was massive to the tune of double using the same amount of mana. I thought to myself hey it must be because of all that AoE, the single target must be terrible. They weren't, using this method the single target heals were also double. I could of added Healing Rain into the mix as well, that's actually quite a bit of aoe healing but the problem is it's a 2 second cast. More hard casting

AoE heals = Druid easy winner.
Single Target heals = Druid appears the winner.\
Utility = Shaman

Final choice? I still don't know
Tremor totem just by itself is a massive thing for PvP, but if I can't even get heals off in the first place whats the point?

Just some things I was looking for/at -

Shaman healers shine with their mastery {Deep Healing}, which increases the healing done the lower on health a target is, while the druid's {Harmony} only requires that a direct heal has gone off, so if you're healing at full health, the Shaman's healing isn't going to compare.

You're not getting any healing off Earth Shield on a toon that's not getting hit.

Tranquility is a long cooldown {8m} and channeled {8s} while Healing Rain is a short cooldown {10s} and cast {2s}, making HR spammable. HR can also be made instant every 90s with Ancestral Swiftness and haste will reduce it's cast time.

Chain Heal? Even in PvE that's a large part of my healing for AOE.

Is Earthliving being counted in there?

Of course, I know that the mobile healing and instant-cast nature of the druid is a big pull for PvP, no way I can discount that as I used to play Druid for arena waaaay back in the day. I'm a long, long time out of the PvP world and I've never been an expert by a long shot, so all I've got is speculation from the PoV of one class, obviously. I just wanted to point out that your healing numbers comparison may not reflect the same in a combat environment.

[heyaz]

I play both resto druid and resto shaman solo in PVP as well as sometimes healing my melee group (5x DK)

My thoughts:

Resto Druid:
Resto druids' mobility is amazing and they have the ability to kite, shift out of roots, and teleport out of tight situations, or go bear form and have 500k+ hp and 20% dmg reduction. Most of their healing is instant and mobility is important in all situations but especially if you're healing a boxing group. As for healing:
- Rejuv has a small initial tick (20-25k, like riptide) and has a reduced GCD making it easy to apply to a group
- Regrowth is a quick cast, faster than healing surge due to haste and has about a 75% crit chance unlike shaman spells
- Swiftmend has a short cooldown and is a quick 50-75k (non-crit) to anyone with a standard HoT already on them
- NS is a 1 min cooldown, about the only time you'll be casting your one big heal in PVP - it's somewhere between healing surge and greater healing wave in potency
- Lifebloom with the glyph blooms in 10 seconds and is a 125k heal non crit, stack it up before hand and with the other glyph you can move it to another toon with all 3 stacks. If no one is taking damage, appling another tick prevents the bloom and refreshes its 10 seconds
- And then there's tree of life, I don't think Ascendance even compares to it. Instant regrowth is your big one here, with nature's vigil this is a 130k heal insta cast over and over 75% crit. Lifebloom can be stacked on multiple targets. Tranquility hits like nothing else. I don't know of a more powerful healing cooldown in the game, when I solo play I keep 5+ people alive against all hell breaking lose in BGs, or tank 4+ people on myself.
- You also have typhoon and an aoe disorient or bash if you prefer, good CDs. and a spammable cc.
- Less mana issues than just about anything else other than holy paladin maybe.

Downsides: No significant party/raid wide buffs, no big passive healing cooldowns, no spammable big heal when you need it (when people are really dying fast, regrowth often doesn't cut it). Other than that, not much else.

I've seen top arena/RBG players stack either mastery or haste, there doesn't seem to be a consensus. edit: correction about mastery: it's a bit complicated and needs timing: direct heals are increased by X percent and casting a direct heal then increases the healing over time by the same X percent.

Resto Shaman:
- Hard hitting, spammable heals
- Chain heal
- More group/raid wide buffs than other healers. They become less interesting when you aren't stacking them though (I run with 4x shaman so I have virtually unlimited use of them unless the fight lasts an eternity)
- Passive healing that can't be interrupted or stopped after you start it (unless they totem stomp), including one of the most powerful CD's in the game which is spirit link totem.
- Ascendance duplicates all healing across the raid, direct or passive
- Greater healing wave, with trinket easy pushes 350k. Can be instant if you want. Duplicate that with ascendance
- Crit heals increase the target's health temporarily - a big deal if you spam heals or get a big crit on something like GHW

Downsides: Exceedingly prone to CC, easy to lock down, no way to escape anything, the only oh sh*t tools you have are basically one time life savers along the lines of lay on hands (whereas druid tree form, assuming not chain CC'd, is like a 20 second long oh sh*t cooldown). They hard cast a lot. Once you're focused, you either get peels or you die, there's no getting away.

As far as PVP you are going to be stacking crit and spirit. Mastery is less good than it sounds because it doesn't do a whole damn lot until people get low. You may think but that's when you heal people... well, crit also comes in handy there and you do have cooldowns. Crit is what you'd reforge, along with spirit if crit is already there. Spirit is what you're going to gem, because resto shaman mana efficiency sucks.

Personally if I only had one healer out of the two, I'd go druid. A lot of people go holy paladin because they can get out of certain death, deep freeze combos and chaos bolts and multiple melee - with divine shield. Neither shaman nor druids can survive that really, but they offer other benefits over holy paladins.

EDIT:
As far as stats go, the gem/reforge priority I listed above is based on single players. A lot of it still applies to multiboxing, but sometimes things change. Since I box shaman I made some changes based on my play style - I don't stack resilience - going from 60-67% reduction seems pointless when there are 4 of me. I went Very heavy on the spirit due to chain heal being expensive and the most effective way for me to spread out heals with 4x shaman. Everything else, if it already had spirit, I went with crit. Mastery isn't something I'm interested in because I'm overhealing the crap out of everyone anyway and I have little use for extra healing when players get low because they're going to get bombed by 4x healing surge or insta greater healing wave for 500k - 1 million anyway.

That being said as a solo healer for a boxing group you'll have to see whether you can avoid damage and/or peel with your group or if you'll be stacking resilience like you're doing 3v3 arena.

[Ellay]

So I made the plunge and moved my Druid over to my resto shaman account to get a better idea on the situation. Ran a heroic instance I downed with my Shaman almost a week ago. It was extremely difficult and as far as PvE goes the Resto Shaman is the clear winner.

The real issue which I didn't even consider the entire time... the Shaman group buffs Mastery and spell power are Massive! not a little bit, but massive. On the tooltip I gain 26% frost damage without a Shaman and 38% with. My team was doing roughly 30k dps each on the Frost DK's. Swap in a Shaman instead and they now pump out 40k dps. Tack on Heroism and a stormlash totem for boss fights and it was night and day.

The only way the comp would work properly for PvE with a Druid healing in my opinion is mixing it up further. Would require an enhancement shaman for the extra buffs.

It appears Paladins also get Mastery too, via Blessing of Kings, and also get the stats modifier as well. For some reason I keep writing them off as a healer when I know they are amazing, frankly I just don't want to level one.