Maybe you should read the last paragraph again.

All I could do was LOL. You got an idea in your head fromt he start of this article and didn't bother to read the entire thing and see the caveats that were forwarded from the beginning. I'm not always in a guild run so those times I can help, I'm gonna do it. I know for a fact my heals has saved me and my teammates time again for whatever circumstances or RNG. I've saved from wiping by healing the last few seconds of a bosses life when the healer goes down.

TLDR; There's a time and a place for everything.

Nice reading comprehension there Yada. Did you skip over the last paragraph in your nerdrage induced haste to post a comment? If you can't be bothered to cast an important heal 1% of the time to save the raid, then you shouldn't have rolled a class with a mana bar and healing spells.

I'm going to use an analogy to perhaps get the point across a bit better.


Lets say as a Boss you are hiring a janitor. His job is to clean. You pay him to clean, and nothing else.

Well, one day, he's cleaning, and he walks into a room and OH NO IT'S ON FIRE.

Here are the choices.

A: The Janitors job is to clean. He's going to clean even if it means walking through that fire to do it.
B: Call the Fire department, then resume cleaning.
C: Use his DIRTY MOP WATER(MW procs of the janitorial world) to put out the fire.

The fire isn't anything big, just a small fire probably caused by somebody throwing a cigarette into the trash can while it's lit, and then leaving.

Which one do you think is the smartest.

A is what you are proposing. A dps's job is to DPs, and nothing more. If he does something other than DPS, he deserves to lose his "job".

B is the equivalent of calling for a heal. Ideally the "fire department" would be able to come and fix the problem.

C. Is the smartest option. Sure, the Janitor is wasting his mop water, but he's doing it for a good cause. Sure he could have called the fire department, but he saved everybody alot of time, and you a lot of money, by doing it himself.

People forget that the point of raiding isn't to do "your job" the best, it's to kill the boss. If your tank is going to die it is better for you to do less dps and keep the tank alive. If your heal makes you lose 5000 damage but keeps a rouge from dying 1/2 way through the fight are you hurting the raid? You need to be thinking in terms of the raid instead of just yourself

@jasonkidd1234:

QFT.

How much damage do you do when you're dead? That's in the very beginning of the article, you didn't even have to read to the end.

Well I did read the caveat, and my opinion as an Enhancement player for 4+ years is that an emergency heal from an Enhancement Shaman CAN make a difference in arena or 5-man groups, but in raids our heals are a drop in the bucket.

In the best-case scenario, an extremely well-timed heal can buy a second for a primary healer or keep a kiter, off-tank or other crucial raid member topped off.

But overall, if you're in a raid and your tanks are dying, the healing situation is likely the problem, and Enhancement (or any off-spec) heals are not going to make a difference.

I say this as the king of the "Warstomp and MW 5-stack Healing Wave" combo in small groups and PvP play, and it's a shame we can't finesse like that in raids because those mobs tend to be immune to things like Warstomp across the board. I've had many a pugger thank me for saving their ass in a 5-man by stunning the mob that's attacking them and tossing them an 8k heal, and it's nice to be useful for things other than damage.

But yeah...in situations where I find myself having to toss off-heals, and not just once or twice in an extreme emergency, I know there's a tanking or healing issue and trying to turn that around with my underpowered contribution is not going to make much difference.

If Blizzard is going to stick to their "hybrid penalty" mindset, they should look at this kind of utility -- Enhancement and Feral could never take over for a dedicated, specced healer, but it would be sweet if those specs had a specific emergency ability to amplify their heals (not overall spell damage) for 10 seconds or so. That wouldn't put anyone out of work, but it would add more utility, more options, and a tool players can put to great use if they use it wisely.

lol @yada

If you never come across a situation where your healers don't get overwhelmed in a raid either your group is over geared and shouldn't be there or your dreaming.

Your a hybrid, which is something you obviously don't understand. Your never going to do more damage then the pure classes unless they're completely screwing their role up. Your always going to be bogged down by the hybrid tax, so why not use the reason for being gimp and throw a heal every once in a while when its desperately needed? Don't roll a utility class (and theres not bigger utility class then Shaman) and not plan to pull your weight with your toolbox of abilites.

And Its not like Rich is telling us to stand there and hit things just to gain the proc to heal.

As an Elemental Shaman I'm not above throwing out a heal if it will save/help a group. I'm not trying to steal a healers spot but if the moment arises when I think people are really going to see some pain it's better to drop dps to keep those people alive and in the fight. As long as your not about to hit the end of the enrage timer there's no reason not to since you'll be even less likely to down the encounter with less people. And if you are hitting the enrage timer then, well, you were going to die any way and there's more problems with the group then you dropping out to throw one or 2 heals.

As Rich pointed out there may just be better opportunity for Enhancement Shaman to do this then Elementals. Maelstrom weapon is the #1 reason but one of the others is the fact that a lot of Enhancement Shaman have a lot more spellpower from the different conversions they have then many Elemental Shaman. Mix that with their naturally high crit, the aforementioned MW5 and a self targeted chain heal* and you've got yourself amazing melee healing in clutch situation.

So really, if your not doing this, if its even needed at all, your really not pulling your weight.

*Not sure if it ever got fixed but self targeting the chain heal might be more important then just never having to leave target. There's a bug (or was?) that doesn't get talked about a lot where the "smart heal" system backfires. If you targeted someone with a chain heal it has the possibility of jumping back to you at some point, whether you needed the healing it or not, and just stopping the chain dead. So you might heal your, have it jump to yourself and not seeing it flow over to another person, wasting the 3rd heal in the chain. Sure with chaining yourself first your still healing yourself but most of those times when you'd even consider it you're probably in need of it any way, you still don't want to waste the other 2 in the chain.

Lol, well I wouldn't have you in my raid either, so at least we agree in something.
A raid is a team, and requires teamwork, if you have tools to contribute in different ways to the team, use them. Its about the group success, not your own only. Its like a mage decursing, a rogue interrupting, a druid using a CC or you changing your totem setup to make the group stronger. Simple