Quote:EDIT: While I don't have a high-end Restoration Shaman (she's either Elemental or Enhancement, depending on my mood), a good friend of mine does, and he talks about talented Chain Heal like it's god's gift to shamans. I guess it's not as swank as Prayer of Mending or having a true HoT, but it does fill a niche role - healing multiple people at the same time. I guess Priests can do that too, with Circle of Healing, but I haven't seen any deep Holy Priests in PvP for a very long time.Yes, talented chain heal is damned nice. I've never said it isn't nice to have. It's also really freaking far down in the tree. Untalented chain heal is just rather meh when you get folks with some real hitpoints. I do miss it sometimes when I'm on the priest though, but I can either slap a renew on folks, prayer of mending (if it's not just a one time damage shot to those three people), binding heal if I'm one of the three hurt (although I usually don't unless I need to be quick), or just a prayer of healing. If I really need to push out the HPS on multiple folks for a somewhat sustained time frame, I can pop Power Infusion, get prayer of healing casting faster and taking less mana as a Holy DPS spec priest so I can pour on the healing oomph if I really need to. There are simply more options available to a priest because of the skills available to the class, not gearing, not spec, but built in. I'm simply hoping for more options for the shaman coming up in WotLK so it's not so damned boring while having to pay more attention at the same time. Although I really don't know how they'd manage it. :)
Edit: And no, I don't want them to take options away from the priest. The flexibility is part of the fun of the class. I just remember being able to be flexible with my role during a fight on my shaman too. That's what I'm missing. During any single fight I could melee, cast or heal and still be able to contribute. Now since the numbers (player health, mob health, player DPS) have gotten so huge, you have to choose a specialization in order to be able to keep up while some of the "pure" classes (although there really aren't many pure classes in WoW) and not be a liability.
Intolerant monkey.