Should I Make One of My Shammies a Healer?

[-silencer-]

I have one of my shaman set as a healer already at 14. It sure makes things a lot less....painful.

Honestly, you'll be cruising so easily through quests and instances, I'd hold off on spec'ing a Shaman as resto until they have some good talents available. At level 20, there's not a lot of benefit to having a resto shaman over the extra dps of fire totems through the improved fire totem damage talent at level 15-17. If you want to respec resto early on, I wouldn't do it any earlier than lvl 30. That's when you'll get Nature's Swiftness.. and can throw down the emergency heals.

You'll realize when your paladin hits 20 that you won't need a dedicated healer when all 4 of your shaman can throw down heals. And when your paladin hits 30, you'll get Seal of Light, which makes it even easier for the pally to keep up the hp. I wouldn't respec resto until you feel you need it. My paladin/4xshaman team is still in prot/4xdps spec at level 56, and through all the instance runs, I've never felt like I needed a dedicated healer yet. That may change when I start running Ramparts, but I'm waiting until I need one. (spec'd improved Magma Totem / Elemental Fury / Elemental Mastery / Lightning Overload / Totem of Wrath x4 *is* that good.)

[Sajuuk]

All my shaman are Elemental. I just have one not throwing lightning bolts all the time. And yes, I'm sure I will realize that.

[Oswyn]

I'll have to agree with Silencer. I've completed ramps and bf since my original post. So far, I haven't had the need to respec a shammy to heal.

My problem was in how I healed my pally. I had been using a macro where all of the shammies cast lesser healing on me at the same time. I found it better to have just one shammy throw a bigger heal on me, while the other shammies continue throwing lightning bolts. Every time I press the key, a different shammy would heal so the mana usage would be balanaced out. I would use the all shaman heal in emergencies.