World of Warcraft®

I am planning on levelling a new toon in Cataclysm and really want to do a healer. I know there are concerns about healing right now, but I'm sure that the situation will eventually stabilize.

I would like to get the communities impressions regarding the playstyles and roles of the different healers. I will dual spec so that I have a solo spec and a healing spec, if necessary.

I am pretty familiar with all of the healing classes, in general. But, how do they all compare right now?

This is a good time to bring something up and actually saves me from posting another thread.

I'm wondering why there is such a difference between resto shamans and holy paladins at level 85. I'm in almost identical quality gear as my holy paladin guildmate, but his numbers vs mine seem very very off.



These are the similar spells of efficent-large-expensive for shaman and paladin

Healing wave - 1.9k mana - heals for 5-6k non crit
Holy light - 2.1k mana - heals for 8-9k non crit

Greater Healing wave - 6.6k mana -heals for 15-16k non crit
Divine Light - 7k mana - heals for 21-22k non crit

Healing surge- 5.9k - heals for 11-12k non crit
Flash of Light - 6.3k - heals for 14-15k non crit



I've healed heroics while he dps'd and vice-verse, and the differences in output and therefore efficiency are very pronounced. You might say "but you have other tools that give you specialties in other areas" but I would say that paladins have enough tools themselves to negate that (such as there absorb shield mastery).

Basically what I'm wondering is; is there something I'm missing? I've played Resto for 3 years now so healing is not something new to me. Is this intended because of some way shamans eventually reach stat thresholds with gear increases? Or should I expect to be underpowered for an entire raiding tier like 3.1 again?

This isn't crying about the difficulty, I love the difficulty. Even if shamans are in fact worse healers than paladins and the others, I'm still finding the content completable. I'm worried as a min-maxer who will be doing raids and heroic raids in the coming weeks that I'll be handicapped by my class/spec.