R Shaman or R Druid

[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.