Back to the healing side of the fence I go...

Yes, I believe I am once again throwing my hat into the ring as more of a full-time resto. I leveled this shaman when my old raid guild was starting in TK back in Burning Crusade. All of those trash pulls were just a metric ton of raid-wide AOE damage, and back in those days resto shamans were the solution. Unfortunatly, on the alliance side on my server you would find a Unicorn before a Resto Shaman. So I decided to slowly phase out my Warlock and take on the role of the lone bringer of the pewpewlazorheals. I joined Symbiosis after Critical Mass fell apart and stayed resto all through TK, SSC, Hyjal, and BT. I always felt I was making a huge impact on our raids with the raw healing I brought to the table.

Then along comes WotLK. Looking through all the new talents and spells, I was worried. Where are the Chain Heal toys? We get nothing?! I soldiered on and healed through our first clears in Naxx, but I was never satisfied. CH was in a sorry state and had fallen behind all the other pretty instant smart targeting AOE heals that priests and druids were tossing around. Meanwhile I am standing still, slowly ramping up a cast only to have it be sniped by someone else. Eventually, I all but abandoned CH in favor of Riptides and LHW to snipe what I could. Once it became clear how easy Naxx was and how I felt my healing was no longer making an impact to the raid, I volunteered to swap to Elemental. I quickly climbed to the top of our damage charts and felt like I was making more of a difference again. But that was not to last.

Going into Ulduar I immediatly felt behind. I kept getting gear upgrades, but my DPS was not really climbing like everyone else. Yes, I still was pulling over 5k, which in Naxx was top of the charts, but now everyone else was as well. In fact, as Ulduar was farmed and more people geared up, they continued to pass me. I pride myself on keeping my tight rotation and using all of my cooldowns and movement time as efficiently as possible...so what was wrong? It mainly comes down to the fact that Blizzard decided we would be the only DPS spec without a talent that gear scales. What I mean is, we have nothing that converts one stat (Int, Spi, etc..) into DPS unlike everyone else. So as we get gear upgrades, we are only getting a very minor spellpower boost. Everyone else gets the spellpower boost, AND the stat conversion boost. Also, our self-buffs (Flametongue weapon, ToW) do not scale at all either. So in the end this means we hit our peak very early in Naxx gear, and pretty much stagnate. Everyone else continues to improve.

So now I am back where I no longer feel like I am making a huge impact on the raid. I am just another of the "good DPS" that we have. I feel I am about as good of an ele shaman as possible, but that is not enough to make me stand out from the crowd. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say I must top the meters at all times. But my unique buff is no longer unique and is passed by the Warlock version. So in the end, I just contribute nothing more than solid DPS to the group. I want to do more.

This brings me all the way back around to resto. I had healed the new 10-man and some heroics, but had yet to really spend a full night healing again to get a good handle on my performance. Well this week I got the opportunity to heal all of Ulduar so far, and I once again felt the thrill of making a difference. Chain Heal is back to being an amazing spell, and I felt I was making a large impact with the amount of healing throughput I could deliver. I spoke to the other officers and indicated that I would be declaring resto as my main spec once again. I look forward to seeing some of the ToC hard modes and hopefully helping us get through. I will still of course build my ele set when I can, but I think gear will be much slower to get with the unified tokens. In the past it was easy once my token group all had main spec of a certain item, I could nab it cheap. Now, everyone will have to get every slot filled before I will have a shot at an offset item.