Let me now go down the list of healers (when fully speced to heal) to explain my point of view.
Shaman
- Improved Chain Heal is amazing for group healing, and then there's Nature's Swiftness for the emergency heal moments. Adding Earth Shield, which with +healing gear heals the target for substantial amounts and a very powerful 1.5 sec cast heal in Lesser Healing Wave, and you have quite the well rounded healer, especially in an arena setting. Further defense from Grounding Totem, which has a relatively short cooldown and Earth Shock to disrupt enemy casters or opposing healers (also short cooldown). Mana problems during the fight? No problem toss down a Mana Spring/Tide Totem somewhere not in plain view and you can regen a healthy amount of mana to continue to heal.
- Renew, Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal. A lengthy list of heals and defensive spells that all do a wonderful job of keeping one or many targets alive. Many are instant and fill the role of a buffer to incoming damage while the priest is either preparing a heal or needs to buy time to avoid an interrupt. While these instants are good, the priest still needs to direct heal and thankfully they have a very powerful 1.5 second cast in Flash Heal to do the job. Shadow Fiend also helps after running OOM for various reasons, while Mana Burn helps deal with enemy healers.
- Druids while they have direct healing spells rely on their assortment of instant heal over time spells to remain mobile while healing. Which coupled with Nature's Swiftness, Swiftmend, and Lifebloom (which enacts a penalty when removed), the druid is on par with the sheer number of methods available as the priest to buffer damage allowing for time to land a casted heal. Also by letting the HoT spells work and remaining in a form the druid isn't susceptible to interrupts (not casting direct heals) nor mana draining abilities, or polymorph. Also their defenses expand beyond just being highly mobile, as they can cyclone targets intelligently to prevent healing or to stop healing on a target (cyclone rotation), all while numerous HoT spells work and can be bursted thanks to Swiftmend. When under focus fire and unable to get away, the druid also can shift into Dire Bear form to effectively tank the damage while using Frenzied Rejuvenation, another uninterrupted heal in their arsenal. To top it off all druids have Innervate which will regen a good portion of their mana when speced as a healer.
- As I mentioned we have strong endurance healing, from the mana efficient Flash of Light and our Illumination (even in its nerfed state) talent, but in Arenas it is hardly adequate considering the incoming damage dwarfs its capabilities. Our bread and butter is Holy Light with Light's Grace, making it a powerful 2 second cast heal with a high chance to crit (returning mana and healing for more). We also have Holy Shock as our only means of healing on the run, but it hardly heals for enough to make a dent against damage the person is taking, not to mention its bad mana effeciency, short range (20 yards) and global cooldown that takes our other heals a second or so longer to cast after a Holy Shock. We have Blessing of Wisdom as our mana regen as well as Divine Illumination but we lack any form of burst regen like the other healers get, maybe because we are designed to be endurance healers it was deemed overkill. We have virtually no means of buffering a target to be ready for our long casted heal and being nothing but a casted healer we are always open to being locked out of every spell we have even our "Ultimate" Divine Shield, which thanks to priests is removed in short order. We have cleanse to help alleviate damage taken from damage over time spells but while cleansing we aren't healing and people are dying. We also have Hammer of Justice, but thanks to the PvP trinket/stun resist gear and talents/long cooldown it's difficult to get excited about it. Versatility just isn't there and the class itself is very much a one trick pony, as it were and every other class has seen the trick and know exactly how to shut it down. There are no surprises when fighting a Holy Paladin or a team that has one, they will always fight the same way because we have so few tools to do anything meaningful with.
Now enter Line of Sight (LoS), first experienced in PvE in BWL during Firemaw I thought it was the worst concept in any boss fight I've ever seen in any game period. Now in arena play it is also considered a strategy to work with the game environment to bend the rules of combat even though channeled spells and certain pets don't obey line of sight rules. I'm having a hard time adapting to this playstyle and as such it will take a few weeks to feel comfortable with it. Basically I run around avoiding damage or other negative effects by hiding behind objects in the arena and popping out to heal my team members. The problem is that with so few options to help smooth out the spikes (Blessing of Sacrifice is about it, which in 2.2 will have a 1 minute cooldown) on a focused teammate chances are my "surgery" might fail because my heals are too slow, or my fast heal isn't healing for enough. Oh but you have an instant heal in Holy Shock! While, this is true but it doesn't do enough to warrant wasting a global cooldown cycle, especially when the target has wound poison/mortal strike. It's a gamble no matter how you look at it, but the other healing classes have better odds on nearly every front as I described above, save mana effeciency, but it doesn't matter much when your healing target is dead.
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