Only Several Months Late

I kind of got sucked into reading far too many healing blogs recently (I stumbled upon Tamarind being awesome somewhere on the internet and it spiralled out of control), and whilst reading backlogs found this questionnaire dealy. From October last year, making it least thirty seven years old in internet terms. Not one to be deterred by mere complete irrelevance, and more importantly finding both the questions and several sets of answers rather intriguing, I'm going to fill it out now. I will avoid impertinently tapping any other bloggers with this necro-not-a-meme.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Oomjin, shaman, restoration.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Ten-man raids, normal and occasionally hard modes. Elemental for PvP, pew-pew!

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
This was actually really hard to answer because I honestly have a lot of love for every healing spell, but equally they all have downsides. Except one, of course, and when I realised this it took me by surprise.

Earth Shield.

Sure, it may look like a tiny malignant flying dung-golem orbiting the tank, it's not at the top of my healing breakdown, it's not flashy in any way. It's just there, easy to keep up, buffering the hits, being amazingly time- and mana-efficient for me. I heart poopshield.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Hmm. Tricky. I probably mis-time Mana Tide a lot more than I should, that's an area I'm trying to improve on. But recently I don't think I've been giving the practically-synonymous-with-shaman Chain Heal enough of an outing. It just feels slow right now, but it is amazing when used correctly.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Given my predilection for smaller raids, it has to be the versatility. I can raid heal, or keep a tank up, or share those duties. I can fling out fast, efficient heals to scattered damage across the raid, bomb a single target with (relatively) high throughput big heals, or keep a cluster of people alive with my bouncing love-beams. I can deal with a few nasty debuffs either directly or via totems. I can also help offensively dispel, ground or interrupt, albeit unreliably. This last can be very helpful, especially on trash/5-mans or when the assigned interrupt monkey elects to take a dirt nap. On fire.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Two things frequently bite me. The first is movement. In common with paladins, we don't have many options on the hoof - Riptide and maybe a Nature's Swiftness, and perhaps hoping Earth Shield will crit. On the whole, though annoying, it's not a huge deal on most fights.

More generally, the lack of an external mitigation cooldown for tanks (or DPS that do reaaaally silly things occasionally). Shaman provide many things, but our mitigation is very low key and entirely passive - Stoneskin Totem and the 10% physical damage reduction from Ancestral Healing. I'm far from unhappy with the tools we have, but I couldn't help but sigh wistfully when reading OS+3 strategies from the mists of prehistory and seeing constant mention of Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Divine Sacrifice (avec bubble, naturally). Being able to do something about damage before it even arrives is a powerful tool, so hug a disc priest for their mastery.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
I dislike 25 man raiding in the extreme. My laptop is slow and creaky, everything takes longer, the sense of personal responsibility and investment feels lower to me, and (because any 25 mans I do invariably involve a lot of pugging) there's a far greater chance of running into rampant douchebags.

I also dislike healing assignments. I like healing people I know, with other healers I know, where we just Do What Needs Doing. Being told to babysit a given person/group doesn't sit well with me, and those (thankfully rare) healers that absolve responsibility for anything other than their assignment and let wipes happen whilst overhealing their targets mindlessly... well. Less said the better.

That said, I'm a loot whore. I've pugged a fair number of TotC-25 groups in the recent past (Solace never even dropped, let alone had the basic decency to fall into my grubby troll-paws). I'm happiest when stuck on the raid, and end up just healing whoever needs it.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Until Icecrown rolled around, our healing team was essentially me and a holy priest. Seems to work well, and I can't wait to get back to two-healing everything once the fights are familiar enough to do so (three healers is cheating, somehow). That's probably more to do with healing styles and habits though. My most successful TotGC attempt was with pug, where my healing partner was an awesome disc priest. Some of our Ulduar hard modes were with a tree.

Mechanically, the answer has to be restoration druids. They complement my relatively immobile healing perfectly, have enormous healing output, and all the health bars sloooow riiiight doooown. Perfect for dumping those big ol' chain heals where they're needed without the painful internal process of "that person is very low on health, they may die before chain heal lands and waste the entire cast, but there's too much of an overall health deficit to waste a GCD on riptide argh argh argh I'll target someone else and hope it bounces argh argh they're dead and I'm terrible"

But really, it's more about the player than the class. Healing is healing, the colour of the name in Grid is largely irrelevant if your healing styles are complementary.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Resto shaman. Some I know well and are awesome, but in pugs I always seem to end up with people overwriting my poopshields (you said you'd shield the other tank, argh!), dropping a talented Mana Spring even though I spent ages begging for a Blessing of Wisdom off the retadin so we can drop the cleansing/healing/resistance totems preferable to the fight mechanics, dropping non-stacking redundant totems despite carefully arranging against this before the pull... I just don't think most shaman spend long enough working with other shaman, especially of the same spec. Maybe I'm unlucky. We don't stack particularly brilliantly, although at least we don't have Weakened Soul to contend with. /comfort the bubblers.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
I have many bad healing habits. Needlessly overwriting Riptide HoTs, or bouncing Chain Heals through fresh riptides when there are equally viable targets nearby, is something I'm trying to improve on currently.

But my worst habit is flinging a sad, non-bouncy Chain Heal out to some lonely soul on the fringe of the raid. It happens a lot when I'm not thinking. Having it fail to bounce because all the nearby damage was mopped up by other healers whilst casting is acceptable (still makes me wince) but my heal-beams grounding on a mage I knew was miles away from anyone else is dumb, dumb, dumb.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
"FFS I NED HEELZ!" Is, thankfully, becoming rarer even in pugs these days. My current largest complain would probably have to be... people not helping dispel. Some healers need to learn to do more than just heal. /grump

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Yup. Although I'm sloooowly levelling healers of the other classes, I love my shammies.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
World of Logs is very good for in-depth analysis, especially over multi-phase or particularly heterogeneous fights where an overall average HPS figure isn't as useful. I do use recount to compare my performance over time (eHPS and overhealing, basically) especially after picking up significant upgrades or changing my gearing strategy, or on repeated wipes to see if I'm dishing out more healing or getting relatively worse as the night wears on. At the end of the day the various different assignments, gear, talents and strategy tend to render comparisons between healers a bit meaningless.

I also take deaths - any deaths - as a sign I'm doing something wrong. Even if it was a DPS doing something really stupid involving fire or cleaving mobs, if it wasn't a one-shot I could have done something. Often stupid to think so, but whatever. No wipes, no deaths is my primary success metric. If that's the case, I work on reducing the number of times my 'ohshit' macro comes out during a fight. And once that's been minimised... the place is probably on farm and uninteresting.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Probably the "faceroll brain heal" thing. Chain Heal is very good indeed, but if that's all you use you're doin it rong. A shaman's various heals are all lovely, use them.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Totems, totems, totems. As resto, there's less to track and a lower chance of the dreaded Totem Pull than an enhancement shammy, but you still have to deal with the things. Making sure the appropriate ones are down and covering enough of the raid, pre-emptively placing tremor and cleansing if needed, avoiding excess redundancy with other shaman/similar buffs.

If you're already used to managing our buffsticks, the only other complication might be managing the Tidal Waves effect. It's absolutely key to a lot of fun shaman healing.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Of course it varies by fight, but generally a fairly hefty raw output and mid-to-large overhealing. I don't worry too much about the latter unless I'm actively trying to improve my time-to-OoM.

Haste or Crit and why?
Haste all the way! Shaman get a fair whack of base crit from talents, a crit-increasing cooldown, and extra crit on Lesser Healing Wave from the Tidal Waves buff. But until I get under the GCD cap, I can never have enough haste. In particular the enormous cast time on Chain Heal means it benefits wonderfully from haste stacking, but quite weakly from crit.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Priests, of either spec. I swear there're just too many options there. PoM, PW:S, Renew, CoH, PoH, the Hymns, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Holy Nova, Penance... I've probably missed a load. Anyway, they confuse me deeply with all those heals. I've no idea where most of them come from, how they interact, or when you'd use them.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid (with the HoT and raid debuff addons) and Clique are my main standbys. I have a macro for activating Nature's Swiftness and Tidal Force together with any on-use trinkets (but no healing spell inside the macro - I do that bit manually afterwards. Sometimes an instant Chain Heal is just what the raid-doctor ordered).

Oh, and of course a macro for "/y I have a snobold on mah face!". It doesn't actually work in ToC pugs, but I feel better for using it.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Haste all the way! Drawing close to 1k now, so just a few hundred more to find from somewhere and I'll be the happiest healspammer there ever was. Although I do tend to pick up socket bonuses (more often than I should) with Haste/SP and Haste/MP5 gems, the first question I ask of a potential upgrade is "How much haste do I gain? /dribble".

I value crit and MP5 about equally and try to acquire options with both as additional stats (after HasteHasteHasteHaste) for all sensible gear slots so I can tweak throughput and longevity for more tricky fights (such as when the raid includes no replenishment /sadface). The haste/crit gear has the advantage that it'll also be more useful if I ever change my dual spec back to PvE Elemental.

Haste is delicious. Have I mentioned haste yet?

Spellpower seems to convert almost directly to overhealing at this gear level so I don't feel the need to gem for it, likewise crits are often overheal (although talents provide some nice benefits from a crit regardless). But I have yet to complain about a heal landing earlier or being able to spam faster when things go wrong. Sensible use of Mana Tide, potions, and maybe a whinge for an Innervate from one of our friendly laser chickens are generally enough to avoid going OoM on a given fight with my current haste-to-excess gearing, but it is getting closer in Icecrown. Maybe I'll start picking up some intellect gems after I get my Lesser Healing Waves down to the mystical one second.