Originally Posted by
Amana
Chain Heal is a gorgeous spell to watch. I just love seeing how it jumps and makes numbers everywhere (yes I know I am a bit retarded, planning on fixing brain).
On a more strategic and cartesian point of view, shaman heal is becoming a very, very versatile healer, which (that's my opinion) is fun to play:
You don't have a as much spells as a holy priest (and I must say I really like playing my holy priest, but it's just not the same), but you have everything you need (i.e. yes, the priest Binding heal IS useful and saved my ass several times, but you can live without it): a good flash heal (ESPECIALLY if glyphed and used on the ES target), a now very good greater heal (and no need for the target to be at -50% health for full efficiency), an instant (as I use T9 2p, it's quiet gorgeous), the Earth Shield which was the reason I was top healer on Vezax (gotta love the glyph) and, of course, the Queen of Healing spells (yeah, healing spells are feminine, go figure why), Chain Heal, which is insanely powerful, hell even if you just hit one target it's not worthless. It has a quiet low cost, a long cast time (and I love long casts as a healer), and a very very VERY high efficiency. I think it really is the most useful healing spell in the whole game.
On the downside, shamans lack a very important spell in my point of view: an emergency "don't worry, this will save your life" spell as the priest and paladin both have. This was really problematic when running Sartharion 3D as we HAD to save the ass of a tank which was going to get one-shot whatever the avoidance was. And both Nature Swiftness and Tidal Force can't be used on a dead target, eh.
Anyway, my 2 cents: try it. Get in Archavon as healer, do some hero, go figure. Personally I really prefer going on 25 men as healer, that's where you really benefit from using Chain Heal.