Why I want to focus on healing in Wrath

I have to be brutally honest here. I'm not a very good hunter. It's something I was thinking about while running Ramps today on my shaman.

Oh, I'm not a bad hunter. I know the theory, I know the basics. I can chain trap. I turn growl off in instances and PVP. I love my pets and feel like a team with them. I know what a shot rotation is. And I love it, I really do.

But something about it doesn't quite click with me. In PVP, for example, I'm really bad about remembering to use Intimidation. My timing is bad with Bestial Wrath — I blow it too soon or too late. I am just now — after having it on my toolbar for the entire time I leveled — remembering to use Wingclip, and it took weeks of farming warbeads in Nagrand to do that. It took me forever to get the hang of kiting, and it's still hit or miss. I waste mana because I use the wrong stings and the wrong shots. I keep working on these things, and I definitely intend to — it's still my favorite class and definitely the most fun for me to solo with. But I just don't get that zen feeling Pike describes.

I think that's one of the reasons I do love the class so much — it's a huge challenge. But it's something that I really have to work at, and again, while it's definitely something I intend to do (hell, I wouldn't be leveling more hunters if I didn't), when I do instances and when, hopefully, I begin raiding, I want to bring my best to the table. I want to bring a class and a role where I don't have to think about what I am doing but where it's second nature to me. Unlike battleground PVP and soloing, people are setting aside part of their day and bringing their very best when they raid, and if I don't do that, I'm wasting their time.

I want to bring that zen.

When I first rolled Ahami, my entire goal was to try classes other than hunters. She survived because I had tried a shaman before and liked it fine. I decided to go resto primarily because everyone said not to, and I'm stubborn. And to be honest, healing really didn't interest me at first. Yeah, I liked it, it was new and different, but I was soloing so I didn't much care — I really only wanted to heal PVP because no one else seemed to and I thought it would be a nice change whenever I wasn't in the mood to bring the DPS.

And then I went into Scarlet Monastery with a guildmate and Arathi Basin on my own, and my God was it fun. I can't really explain how I know when to chain heal, when to use healing wave, when to drop totems (actually, I'm really lazy about dropping totems — but I've never had to think about which one to drop like I do hunter traps). It's just instinctual. The first time I went into Alterac Valley, I hit that zen state, where I was just sitting and healing, and healing, and healing. And it was so satisfying.

I'm better at it, too. My reaction time as a hunter kind of sucks. My reaction time as a shaman — shoot, half the time I've done what I needed to before I even thought about it.

Don't get me wrong — soloing as a healer spec SUCKS. A lot. And I really do have much more fun romping around Azeroth and Outland with Ideale and Cinnamon. I think I like both classes pretty equally for PVP. But for PVE, especially raiding, when you need the reaction time and instinctual ability to play your role ... I think I'm going to have to take my shaman into that, if I want to bring my best to the table. And if I'm going to bother with that PVE thing at all, I'm going to bring it.

I feel kind of disloyal to Ideale to say this at all — I've been fighting it for a while. But I think I have to admit that I'm just a better healer than a hunter, and why would I give my guild my second-best effort?