(Resto) Scared in cata.

[Voltigeuse]

Since when did topping the charts matter? I am a resto shaman. In my guild I heal with 2 druids. We don't even look at the charts. Who cares? If I really wanted to top them all I need is a lot of haste and spam CH on any fight where people are taking a lot of damage. iWin. Anyways.

When we first started ICC on 10 man. If one of us died then the others still had trouble healing and keeping everyone up. That went for them as well as for me. Cata is NOT out yet. There will be even more changes by the time it does come out. So chill.

You may not be looking at the meters but I can guarantee you that there are others in your raid that are. On that note I acknowledge that HOT's are incredibly powerful as atm between earth shield, earthliving procs, the 4 piece t-10 proc and Riptide I am seeing about 50% of my healing from hot's on damage aura fights.

[Seriss]

Drakthin, thank you. I've been fretting over just that last night again.

TL;DR version is at the bottom.



Allow me to start at the beginning. The beginning was Ulduar. The source where my fears stem from.

I've been through this in my old raid that broke apart a few months ago. During BC it was top 100 in Sunwell; in WotLK it was still in the top 500, on some bosses significantly higher than that.

Only I was benched loads during Ulduar. The first few IDs were worst. Later on it got better, but still I got the impression that they only took me in because of lack of anything else (people tend to discover they have a real life when wiping might occur!). It was terrible. "Resto shaman can't heal Thorim, Hodir; they suck at Freya, are useless at Mimiron - except for their mana tide maaaaaybe - and have no reason to attend Algalon tries".

That was the general gist that I've got for months; and it got just barely better in TotGC because resto shamy reputation was already ruined, and raid leader as well as anybody of importance had set their opinions in stone that resto shamy sucked in general and that I sucked specifically, the only resto left in the entire raid, a relic from Sunwell times when shamans weren't considered useless yet. My raid leader positively LOVED disc priests. Not even priests in general, but only disc. New and fancy mysterious disc that seemed so overpowered and worth stacking like crazy. Pain sup rotation on tanks, here we go. Sometimes my friend who plays a priest would be allowed to spec holy, but very rarely. He loves playing holy priest, but almost always had to go disc, even though he didn't see any great use in it, seeing as there were 2 other discs in the raid sometimes even. The healer leader promoted disc like woah, as if it was the absolutely best thing. Discs and paladins were awesome to them, druids were fine, shamans... well, we'd rather pass on those for as long as we have a DPS providing heroism/lust.

It was awful. I think there wasn't a single Ulduar raid during which I wasn't crying because I felt like I didn't belong there. I couldn't heal the spread-out raid properly with chainheal because it just wouldn't jump (it got buffed later on to its current bounce range), and single-target didn't cut it in most cases when you could just as well have put a real group healer on the job who completed that job better, safer and more quickly. They wouldn't let me heal the tank; that was paladin and disc's job. I was sad, I was angry, I was furious, I felt so helpless. I only stayed because of a handful of people who kept trying to cheer me up or at least offer a shoulder to cry on. Unfortunately none of them was someone who was of significance; none of them could change anything. Besides, where should I have gone to? For all I knew, everyone thought that shamies were useless unless the shaman was the raid leader in command. Healing is the only thing that I've been good at ever since I threw away my warlock and decided that I wanted to be a shaman.

I could never quite forgive my ex-raid for this treatment. My healer leader once even asked me "What can you do that the other healers can't do the same or better than you?" and I didn't know what to say. I was struggling, trying to find something that was worth mentioning. But I couldn't find anything that couldn't be covered just the same by any healing team that didn't have me. It's an unfair question. The audacity. There is nothing my class can do better than the other healers. No healer is supposed to be better than the other 4 healing specs. Can you imagine how that makes a person feel? Can you imagine what that sort of treatment can do to a person who has been pouring her soul into a guild since BC? Asking a question that is practically forcing you to throw into your own face the fact that you're worthless?

I hold a grudge so deep and ugly that you can't imagine. You just don't just forget months of being treated as though you were the resident idiot.

I'm stupid, I know. I can tell you the exact moment and incident that should have had me type in /gquit and disappear from the server. But I didn't. I stayed till the end, till the raid broke apart.

So... this is my background. This is why I've clicked on this thread title. This is why I'm "(resto) scared in cata".

I am now in a different guild and raid (currently somewhere in the top 150, I believe), and everything seems fine from what the other resto shamies have told me about their experiences in that guild during past tier raids, and I specifically asked about things in Ulduar so as to be able to tell if it's a good place to be in the case that push comes to shove, but still I'm starting to get really frightened. What if history repeats itself all over again?

I seem to be in a constant state of panic due to the things I've been through in my old guild.

It may seem ridiculous to some of you. It's just a game, after all.

But it is a game that I like playing. And raiding at a high level is something that I love. I take pride in being good at what I'm doing, no matter if it's this game or my real life job. I wish to excel in every part of my life. And I'm scared that I will no longer be able to compete, unable to pull my weight, no matter how hard I try for the sole reason that my class might not be suited to the tasks presented in Cata.



TL;DR: I've been through it once already that shamans were considered inadequate, and it was such a horrible time for me that it was unbearable. And I can relate very well to how the OP feels when he hears all the stories about raiding in Cata. Because I don't want to go through this hell again. But I still love my shamy, so I will have to go through hell again if things don't change for the better. I don't want to end up as yet another healer forced to play DPS as soon as content gets halfway challenging.

[Alhoon]

There seems no point to even start a conversation about this topic on this forum. People don't read OP or use their brain.

OP said he specially means top end guilds, competitive ones. That moots the comments about "I can always have raid spot because I'm a good healer/good person". In top end guilds, everyone is a good player, otherwise you're not in a top end guild. As for good person, well, it doesn't matter as long as you're not an utter ass and can co operate.

OP also said he means cataclysm. Cataclysm is not 4.0.1. The fact that shamans may be competitive now, which they are not, is in no way related to the fact that they utterly suck in Cataclysm (4.0.3).

[Kralljin]

Comparing the current situation to Cata raids is wrong, in Beta you can't jump around and hot everyone in your raid, which means that a druid that plays like in Wotlk will scream "oom innervate CD" while the boss is at 60%.

[Shoridayo]

Is anyone else who raid heals for a top 1000 guild scared there gonna get benched because of our heals?

ATM the only reason i'm brought to ICC is for bloodlust, druids are just blowing the meters apart and no one ever gets low because there hot's are so OP. Had a druid in a group who solo healed the whole LK fight from start to finsh because the priest forgot to dispell me. I can barely get a HS off on the tank before he's back to 100%.

I'm a good player from what i've been told and before this i was brought not just for bloodlust.

The problem i'm seeing right now if that resto shamans aren't even going to raids in the beta. Paragon hasn't taken a shaman healer to the last 3 25 man raids they've done. This is scaring me because atm i can't transfer any toons due to money issues.

Seeing as shamans were originally created as AE healers and now we suck at it due to the CH nerf and the fact that pallies and druids have much better AE heals what's the point in my GM taking me to a raid as a healer?

Yes i know this is a rant just had to get this off my chest.

First off. No one cares. You're not getting replaced because Shamans are still OP as crap, so hush. If it's such a big deal, respec. Also, friend of mine is a resto shaman in a top 300 US guild and they brought him to beta raids because he doesn't suck and can still heal AND he gives RABBLERABBLE. You're not going to have to change, you'll be fine. Who cares what Paragon chose to do? Your guild could be different! OHNO, DIVERSITY?!

---------- Post added 2010-11-10 at 03:56 PM ----------

You may not be looking at the meters but I can guarantee you that there are others in your raid that are. On that note I acknowledge that HOT's are incredibly powerful as atm between earth shield, earthliving procs, the 4 piece t-10 proc and Riptide I am seeing about 50% of my healing from hot's on damage aura fights.

I can't think of anyone I know that looks at healing meters other than to beat others on healing. No one cares about meters. If everyone is alive and you down the boss, no one gives a shit. It was success.

[zaneosak]

Resto shamans are the only beta healers that have very few changes and adjustments because they are just fine where they are at. Paragon uses them in some of their beta videos. I've raided 9 of the 14-15 encounters on 10man and had no problems keeping up with Healing competitively or from a mana pool stand point.

I think you've got the wrong idea. You just have to adapt to the changes. You wont be using Chain heal as much as we did before until they incorporate it into a nice 2 or 4 piece in future tier sets. But it still has its uses and does decent. Riptide with glyph is doing a ton of my overall healing on a boss fight in cata raiding. Any fight where you have to group up together Healing Rain + Chain Heal + riptide every cd works nice (although they did just nerf healing rain a build ago to diminish)

Its just different, as it is for everybody, we're gonna be fine. You just need to adjust and adapt and figure out what play style to use to reach full potential playing. If you arent on the beta you won't understand until you see it. At lvl 80 we can do whatever we want because Mana is infinite.

[TheDrednaught]

ALSO just pointing out... If your in a raid currently and you guys are doing fine... Your not wiping and people arent dying then your healing isnt an issue and more then likely you will have a spot in cata. If your bad and people die that you could of saved and just didnt have the reaction time or skill then you should roll a different class and quit worrying about getting replaced.

[Razac]

you will be *muppet nod* you WILL be O_O

[Deleted]

I'm in a guild where my friend is the guild master so I have almost no worries about being benched, plus he knows I will not reroll. I'm only under pressure because if the class sucks come raid time, I'll be mocked into oblivion

My greatest fear for resto shamans is that there will not be enough visible difference between a mediocre shaman and a good one, if both are equally geared.

The vast majority of our healing tools are passive or are very simple to grasp as a concept.
i.e. ancestral healing, ancestral awakening, earthliving HoT as passive and one simple buff to keep up- tidal waves.
(although a clever shaman may be able to make use of focused insight)

We have 2 short cooldown spells- riptide and Unleash Elements that buff spells slightly. Plus one longer one to make our next heal an instant cast.

With these tools, the difference between the good and the mediocre may not be very noticeable imo

We need more to think about, and fewer passive mechanics

[Sabbie]

I wouldn't compare healing now to healing in cataclysm. I have not participated in the beta yet but from what I heard healing has changed a lot. Players health pools have increased around 300%, while healing output has increased to about 30%. If someone can confirm this, that would be great.