My second shaman was kind of weird. She started out elemental, and was until 44. At 44, I respec’d enhance, and leveled that way until 66. I’ve been resto ever since. At lower levels, enhance is going to level very fast, especially once you have WF and can dual wield. Eventually, however, I find that survivability becomes an issue, and this time, instead of pressing on, I respeced, and the time I saved from corpse runs more than made up the time I lost leveling.

So, effective healing. Ultimately, it really depends on what you’re doing. It’s not single button like Paladin healing is. Chain Heal is your staple heal, backed up by Earth Shield, usually on the main tank to provide a small amount of buffer to his/her healer. Occasionally, Lesser Healing Wave will go out to a person who can’t wait for Healing Wave/Chain Heal, but will otherwise rarely be used. Healing Stream doesn’t come into its own until you have a decent amount of +heal; My 18/2 second healing stream @ 70 is good for 118/2 seconds. So, yes. LHW is a panic button for when someone doesn’t have the time to wait. When you have Chain Heal available, that is your bread and butter for group healing, although Healing Wave is preferred when Chain Heal won’t bounce at all.

I went resto for BRD 55-56. Then back to enhancement till 59. Ramparts(3x) as resto, Even as full resto and brd healing blues I had difficulty keeping a 59 tank with level 50 sheild alive in Ramparts. But level 60 brought new ranks of spells and it was a lot easier.

20g for a respec(at 60) isnt to bad compared to spending 20 seconds longer to solo a mob.