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Our job here isn't to effect change in the classes. When you sit down to write a post with that in mind, the likelihood that you will end up disappointed is many orders of magnitude higher than the likelihood that you won't. Your real job here is to tell the devs things you like and things you don't like about the game, and about proposed changes. They then take that feedback and use it to inform their decisions. This is our function here.

You can approach that function in many ways. Personally, I approach things in a very layered approach, stretching from the most detailed to the most abstract. So, my approach is generally like so:
1) Explain things I do/don't like
2) Try to explain why at a low level (e.g., specific mechanical issues)
3) Try to explain at a higher level (e.g., "I'm frustrated with the lack of connection between elem gameplay and the elem name/image/theme/kit.")
4) Try to provide explanations of my feelings that apply to intuition (e.g., the oft-used "Basically, elem feels too much like 'improved shaman', and that makes it very hard to identify with the kit")
5) Lastly, provide suggested fixes to the problems I outline in 1-4. Difference is, I do this not to give the devs ideas (though if that happens, great). Ideas are easy to come by. I provide suggestions because it shows another angle of what the problem exactly is, by saying what I though would ameliorate the problem.

Another style of post I do which is a bit tangential to the above is trying to discuss things with others, so that I may better understand their issues, and then provide the above suite of post styles to help them articulate it. I also try to get it to go the other way, and see if other players have the same issues I do, because that provides me with a sense of what I need to try and explain most fervently.

As a result, I can't really ever feel that my time here is wasted. I provide 31 flavors of feedback and try to facilitate community discussion. If I came here trying to get my pet solutions implemented, I would be extremely disappointed every day, because the list of things I would have on my plate as a dev of this game would be very long indeed. (Not that the current path is so bad, just that different devs have different views)

So tl;dr: Maybe re-think why you post here, and figure out if it's just going to frustrate you forever.

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its fairly easy to be discouraged as a DK right now considering most other classes have had extensive work done, and id like to keep this thread free from QQ.

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While GC posts do bring trolls into decent threads occasionally, no dev response at all to reasonable shaman posts when other reasonable posts get responses leads to a group of people who love their class and want it fixed, but don't see any positive influence from the devs towards their thoughts and discussions. Which in turn, mounts further bitterness atop an already large pile... nay, mountain of depression that shaman feel.

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I have 3 healing main characters in Live (Shaman, Druid, Priest). In the beta, I've only tried healing instances on my druid and it is a HORRIBLE experience. It's worse than pre-BC. I understand the intent is to make us more aware of our mana, and that mana is not an unending resource, and that we need to better manage that resource. But going OOM after 2 trash packs is annoying. So, not only do our healing spells cost a crap-ton of mana, but they don't heal for anymore than they did at 80, and everybody in the group is now taking TONS more damage and has 2 to 3 times the hit points they had in WOTLK.

If you really expect people to enjoy healing why would you basically force them to sit and drink for up to 30 seconds, effectively "stopping their flow of gameplay"? What was fun about healing in WOTLK and BC was that you were constantly doing something, whether it be healing or helping DPS on easy trash. But now we have to juggle between all these healing spells while watching our mana like a hawk. Make a few wrong decisions and youre OOM. There's not much room for error.

I cannot see myself playing a healer when Cata comes out if healing will be like it currently is. Sure, I will still play WoW, but I will be DPS'ing...something that is much less stressful (shouldn't be any stress in a game). I'm fine with that, but Blizz is making all these changes to the game to make it easier for newcomers to pick up and play....well, nothin easy about healing as it currently stands. I can only guess healers will become even MORE of a commodity than they currently are as people get annoyed/fed up and just play something else, whether its a diff. class/spec, or game.

ok, /rant off. But There is some constructive feedback in there...healing is stressful/annoying due to constant mana watching and requiring "too much" thought to pick the right spell for the right situation.