Originally Posted by
tibbee
Well, on live, we are terrible across the board at everything, so dominating stacked healing, getting major cooldown (HTT plus AG) buffs so that we should be back to having the best cooldowns (which we were before the buffs to Tranq, etc), as well as buffs to spread healing (CH buff, CH glyph buff, option to take the new RS talent) is a huge improvement over what we have now.
The stacked healing niche thing is just Blizzard's concept for the spec, and something they are adamant on, so the best that we can do for this PTR cycle is ask to be competitive overall (which we should be with these buffs), and to actually be the best and not bottom of the barrel in that niche (which we are on live). The idea of getting rid of the stacked healing niche and being more well rounded healers is a battle to fight over the beta for the next expansion. If anything, Shaman are probably the class most in need of a warlock style revamp. The class has just so many mechanics that feel archaic and out of date that it probably needs to be reworked completely.