Beta Healing questions

[spookyspooky]

I've been a heroic raider for a few years now, and normally I have no trouble healing most content. Having said that, I am having a helluva time healing dungeons in WoD. Is anyone else having this trouble, and if not can you just throw me some quick pointers as to what has changed that I can't really pick up on. I feel like I've tried tons of combinations, but just can't help feeling like my heals are largely ineffective. Thanks in advance friends.

[Forsedar]

It comes down to a few things.

1. Most damage is avoidable, so if you feel that people are taking too much damage- its probably because they're standing in something (or not interrupting, etc).
2. 5-man healing is more single target than AoE, except you still do keep down healing rain if you are somewhat stacking. Outside of that, you will be doing a fair amount of Healing Surge and Healing Wave. Make sure you glyph for Healing Wave as that 20% heal that goes to yourself helps enough that you almost can ignore your own damage taken.
3. My setup was pretty haste heavy. I used the vendor to make sure I had all of the appropriate haste pieces for every slot, enchants and of course flask. It seemed to fair a lot better than Mastery in the Heroics.

Source: I do not know if I am 100% or even 90% efficient, but I have done all of the current Heroic 5-mans plus the Normal 5-mans.

[spookyspooky]

Ah ok. That answered my question. It felt like there were a ton of things that could be interrupted that weren't being done and people standing in things. I guess I'm just used to being able to recover the group easily and it's not really that way anymore. Thanks for your help.

[Shockeye]

Fortunately Shaman can at least cover a lot of interrupts (or has Wind Shear changed?). Herding people to stand where they're supposed to however is a different story. It's always hard coming off of end game-level content where people are used to just ignoring everything and powering through with healers that can keep the group standing through everything.

I can understand Haste being more valuable than Mastery in heroics, though it's Mastery that's better for raids, yes?

[Forsedar]

I did the first bit of raid testing going for a Mastery build, and the most recent testing with Haste. I personally am preferring haste, but I do want to try being Multi-Strike heavy as well and see how that fairs. Its weird right now since Haste isn't working like it should be, so when its finally fixed it will be stronger than what I'm used to. Overall, my performance with a Haste build was exceptional so I do not think its a bad route. For the most part, me and the 2 other shamans seemed to be nearly identical in performance with 3 different builds.

[Shockeye]

That's good to know. A Haste build probably feels a bit more natural in how it plays, too. That the different secondary stats balance out is also good news in the face of not having a choice of which stats to favour.