Originally Posted by
Endus
90% of the complaints about Resto will link to Raidbots HPS measures and say "OMG we're like 20% behind everyone, we're broken". The point GC was making is that HPS is a really, really terrible measure of healer value.
That doesn't mean there's no problem and Resto is fine, but you need to look beyond the HPS numbers. They're a part of the equation, but using those numbers without considering the other factors is not just fallacious, it's misleading. In particular, Resto Shaman are a very responsive healer. We have a lot of "smart" healing that automatically targets those who need it most, and our Mastery is similarly ideally suited to snatching people back up from the brink of death. Some healers blanket heals on everyone, Shaman generally do less healing, but it's better targeted healing.
If you want to see healing in comparative terms to DPS, you need to turn things around. You need to see 10/25 adds, all with moderately high health pools, and they're getting constant uneven heals. Being able to throw down a lot of broad-spectrum AoE on everything is useful, but arguably not as useful as being able to burst a single add that gets dangerously low, to kill it early. Think of a fight like the Faction Champions in ToC; you generally didn't try and beat that by AoEing them all down, you beat it by bursting one down and killing them, and going in order. Pushing your personal DPS higher by spamming AoEs on them doesn't necessarily help beat the event, if that AoE is getting healed back.
Healing works the same way, to a large extent. Spamming big HPS AoE heals is useful; it provides a buffer against death, but it doesn't react to circumstances. Shaman healing does that targeting. It's not about providing the most brute-force healing, it's about providing the most critical healing.
That's something that simply doesn't show up on metrics you can pull from a log parse. It's a lot more complicated.
None of this means "Resto is fine, L2P". Resto may indeed be lagging behind. But you can't use the HPS results as the sole proof of that. That's the point.