So my shammy was given a chance to play last night. Some impressions/experiances:
Chain Heal is about 30x more awesome than I thought it was. There just aren't words.
Earth Shield and Riptide are pretty darn amazing.
Ruune I lied to you. Kinda. Glyph of Wildgrowth is handy in raids... but WG already hits 5 people so a 6th is kinda overkill for fivemans unless you really really like pets. Glyph of rejuvy, glyph of swiftmend and glyph of nourish is what I would use at 80.
I kept forgetting to use totems. Its been so long. I'd skip like 5-6 fights before remembering to drop them again... and I'd wander off and forget to use the give me mana back spell.
Mana Tide totem is -not- innervate. It is very shiny I'm sure but I need to use it more often and to remember that it won't return practically all of my mana.
I wish lesser healing wave was faster. Getting used to having to stop to cast... is odd. But on the plus side when I went back to my druid... everything felt really zen. For the first time in ages I looked around and stared at things and thought huh why is it so easy all of a sudden. Going from ~800 spellpower to ~1900 spellpower and from ~125? mp5 to ~400+.... yeah its loverly.
The best thing last night?
When my level 70 shaman SOLOED THE LAST BOSS IN UK*.
*Okay that's a bit of an exaggeration.**
**A lot of one.***
***See what happened was......
The warrior charged in grabbing the Valkyrul's full attention quickly. Right behind him a Paladin, Rogue, and Hunter roared towards the giant. Following them was Jioay, the shaman.
As the fight started Jioay covered everyone in healing magic keeping everyone up. The giant died...and then was resurrected again... now an undead he suddenly was throwing out more damage than before. The warrior fought bravely but fell due to a small gap in the healing magic. Small but enough to result in his death. The Paladin quickly jumped between the giant and the healer... only to die mere seconds later. The rogue and hunter tried to hamper his path towards the healer. The shaman panicked and threw down an Earth Elemental totem and let loose a chain of healing magic on the hunter... the healing gave him 5 seconds instead of 1 but he died anyways. The rogue died a moment afterwards despite the concentrated healing. And the shaman? The shaman knew it was useless to run... and started to try and heal the elemental ...when the undead giant suddenly fell. Leaving the battlefield to Jioay.
A few Resurrection spells later everyone was on their feet.
SO....... yeah that was the -best- way ever to end an instance. Despite the fact that it took I swear like 2 hours(I have no clue it felt like forever) because of lack of dps.
By lack I don't mean lack of bodies.
Let me give you a... rough chart of the dps meter for each fight:
Warrior Tank: 800+
Paladin Ret: 550?
Rogue something: 300?
Hunter ????: 250ish
to put this in perspective if you somehow don't know the numbers for dps at level 70:
My shaman... in healing gear... healing specced... does about 300 dps while soloing.... with a bad rotation and half asleep.
Fay's warrior alt(the tank) should be putting out about 500... 800 is -good- according to Khourschetface the brother who pugs all the time levels 20-80 with a million different toons.
Yeah that was special.
But fun. So very fun. And bad pugs are the best places to learn to heal... because you are learning in the -worst- environment... so when you get a good party... you are like holy crap these guys are awesome.
Comments
#1 was a Mage who pulled over 1400dps and replaced the DK who quit after the first Boss.
#2 was a Boomkin who did approx. 1100dps.
#4 was the Death Knight who quit,
and #5 was the Hunter who did (IIRC) less than 500dps.
After the Run I really started to appreciate the effort that has gone into Recount when I discovered it tracked a multitude of information, right down to all the different spells/abilities you used and how much used them. To my surprise I discovered my most used/most damaging spell was Hammer of the Righteous, with Consecrate coming in at #2 (I forget the exact percentages), while my Retribution Aura comprised just 6% of my DPS.
When I looked at the Hunter I saw Steady Shot made up about 5% of their total damage, and they'd never used Volley, at all. Not even once.
Hello! Paladin Tank here! That means it's AoE time, which is why the Frost Mage pulled darn close to 1500dps.
But the Huntard (yes, the Huntard, and this is from a Hunter) never used Volley at all.
Sad. Very, very sad.