I've gotten kicked from a group because I kept popping out of shadowform to heal the party, as the toc25 geared tree couldn't keep up with HHoS's damage and dps kept dying. The next day for my daily random, I decided to disable my party frames so I could concentrate on only doing damage and wiped endlessly in HPoS.

That was the last time I did a heroic Shadow specced. Disc all the way baby.

I play a boomkin and completely agree (I'm still working on my shadow priesty goodness, but will likely reroll for a worgen shadowform O.o). Since my offspec is resto I watch all the health bars out of habit (especially if we have an undergeared healer).

The bad part is healing is so thankless. If the group gets low and then gets healed up, the healer did his job. If the group gets low and a dps jumps in and heals the group (thank you tranquility and rebirth) they are considered a hero of the group. I much prefer the latter.

I firmly believe that someone with healing spells should have their preferred healing addon open. I do on all my characters, including the pally I'm lvling as tank (a click-heal addon makes Righteous Defense SUPER easy to use! who knew!) Its how I keep track of whether my healer is getting their face ripped off while tanking. It's also useful so on my shaman main if the healer goes down I can go back to doing my usual role, healing. I will not let the tank die until I myself am dead or OOM or going down kicking and screaming

I always run healbot on my shammy even when I'm DPSing as enhance. I've saved many a disastrous 5 man heroic run with well-timed insta-heals when the actual healer went down. Thank (insert troll loa of choice) for Maelstrom Weapon!

I just don't get hybrids who refuse to heal in emergencies...my main is a mage and when I'm on my shammy or priest I *LOVE* to pitch in like that, it makes me feel useful.

I learned to pick-up heal on my shammy, and i now carry that over on my spriest as well.* It's happened a lot up to the 60's lvls, but as i got into Northrend instances, it's much rarer.

With regards to DKs tanking in HFP: ungh. They should NOT tank until lvl 62. That's when they get Death & Decay. Until they get D&D, aggro will be quite a problem. I've never seen one able to tank successfully without that.


*Successfully saving from wipes a number of times is what got me interested in healing, so i dual specced my shammy. Might try the same with my spriest.