After a couple of days of nice relaxing holiday, yesterday it was time to make up for some Wow time. My Shaman, Balindah, is now level 72 and the queue times as dps seem to have skyrocketed, so I decided to buy her a second spec and try out healing.
I had been picking up a few bits and pieces of off-spec spellpower gear through the early Northrend quests and it turned out I almost have a complete set of spellpower kit, even if some of it is leather or cloth. As you can see in the picture, she looks like a bit of a clown in it, but there's time.
I had a quick crash course in Shaman healing from my husband, who played a Resto Shaman in a previous incarnation, and dived into Utgarde Keep. No-one died which was nice, but my goodness, isn't mana a problem! I remember having mana problems early on with my druid, but I don't think it was this bad. Thankfully the tank noticed when I needed mana so I was able to stop and drink, but the next dungeon I tried healing was Azjol Nerub and I ended up using Mana Tide totem every time it was available.
Perhaps I've become used to the one-second GCD and Nourish casts on my Druid but the Shaman just seemed a lot... slower. Chain Heal, which is the only AOE heal Shamans have, takes forever to cast at 2.5 seconds, especially when there's party damage.
I am enjoying trying out healing on a different class, but are there any Resto Shaman out there who might offer some advice on how to be more mana efficient?
The rest of the day was made less stressful by playing with some baby murlocs. Squee!
