Time to roll out your rogue again?

[Modern Angel]

I only got my hunter to 53 so never got SS. Does it share a cooldown with Multi?

[Calantus]

The only problem with EJ is they follow the Something Awful philosophy of long-ass threads with fairly wide scope so it takes forever to catch back up to speed whenever you haven't been keeping up. Want to know the latest and greatest hunter rotation? It's somewhere in that 20 page hunter mechanics thread, have at it! There's also a hell of a lot more posters there now then when I last played... makes for really fast moving threads sometimes and a lot of "EDIT: beaten" all over the place.

[Chenghiz]

I only got my hunter to 53 so never got SS. Does it share a cooldown with Multi?

Steady Shot has no cooldown and a 1.5 second cast time.

[Modern Angel]

So why wouldn't you go AS, MS, SS?

I know the answer to the question, I think: mana, like you said. And now you have the beginnings of why consumables are a problem. The above would have to up your dps over steady shot-auto shot only. So bosses are tuned for X dps before they enrage or become unbeatable or your healers run out of mana. BUT X dps is only gotten through burning through your mana bar four times in eight minutes, meaning you better have a stack of super mana pots and some mana regen... maybe a few dps pots to hedge your bets.

That's what bosses are in BC. You can't halfass it. There's no Lucifron... hell there's no Ragnaros. You go apeshit on these dps races or you lose and the only way to squeeze out the required dps (since there aren't any upgrades) is to pot up.

[Merusk]

Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers.

Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact.  Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence.  So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums.  :-D

I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot.

Assuming you have a single target and aren't going to bust up your CC why wouldn't you Multi? Dump some mana for higher dps in your shot rotation. Setting aside whether you give a fuck about dps or not it boosts your dps considerably over not using it.

The quick response - to which I'll elaborate more later if I have time at lunch:

I do use multi & arcane, but not the way the EJ folks are saying to do it.  They are insisting that you hit them every time the cooldown is up.  That's foolishness.  Not only is arcane far, far less mana efficient than steady, it does a LOT less damage at the RAP people are now hitting.  It's like they figured things at 60, with 60 stats and then ignored what they have at their disposal now.

At 1950 RAP, arcane R9 does 663 damage for 230 mana, Steady Shot does 735 for 110 (no efficiency).   Arcane should ONLY be used if you don't have the 1.5 secs to stand still and cast steady, or armor mitigation is so great that your steadys are doing jack squat.

Multi is so mana-inefficient on single-targets that unless you need the burst, just don't use it.  I'll weave it in once in a while, but not if I can stand there plinking.

 In long fights Damage/ Mana > than straight DPS, and Steady blows multishot AND arcane shot away on that front. It's no wonder the high-end hunters are complaining of mana problems, they're playing w/o metagaming in EQ style against EQ designers.  If consumables get nerfed, it's something they're going to HAVE to consider.

I regard the whole thing kind of like priests who only use flash-heal because G-heal 'takes too long to cast'.

[Merusk]

So why wouldn't you go AS, MS, SS?

I know the answer to the question, I think: mana, like you said. And now you have the beginnings of why consumables are a problem. The above would have to up your dps over steady shot-auto shot only. So bosses are tuned for X dps before they enrage or become unbeatable or your healers run out of mana. BUT X dps is only gotten through burning through your mana bar four times in eight minutes, meaning you better have a stack of super mana pots and some mana regen... maybe a few dps pots to hedge your bets.

That's what bosses are in BC. You can't halfass it. There's no Lucifron... hell there's no Ragnaros. You go apeshit on these dps races or you lose and the only way to squeeze out the required dps (since there aren't any upgrades) is to pot up.

Quickie again, since nobody's responded so far.  :-D

As I mentioned above AS is horrible, outside of a few specific times you WANT to use it.  It just doesn't do the damage that SS does, so there's no real point in using it.  Some people continue to insist on doing so, however.  (Formula for R9 AS is RAP*.2+273,  SS is RAP*.3+150)

I haven't recalced my MS damage recently, but its formula is (Ammo * Range Weapon Speed)+((RAP/14)*2.8)+150)*(1+(Mortal Shots)+(Barrage)+(Ranged Weapon Specialization)+(Humanoid Slaying)+(Giantstalker's 8 Piece Bonus))) at level 60.  Just looked up the 67 multi on Wowhead and it does 205 dam instad of 150.

  Clearly this is a shot that relies on talent spec and a lot of other factors.  When I last crunched it, it was prior to BC, but I was doing ~795.6 damage on average at a cost (then) of 345. 

When I examined things at 60 I found that Multi was 2.31 dam/mana.   Arcane did 2.47 dam/ mana and steady (if available at 60) would have done 4.77 dam/ mana.  (using Rhok, the 2.0 patch ammo and GS with a RAP of 1250)  Since a hunter w/o mana is useless, the choice was (to me) clear.. fuck the other shots on the long-haul and just use steady.    If burst DPS is an issue, weave-in Multi as you need it but otherwise it's no good as it's just a mana-hog.


Hunter burst damage, in itself, is pretty much gone anyway.  Crit % are in the shitter, and those I've seen whose Crit isn't and still have a decent RAP have all been using equipment most folks won't see anymore (AQ40 & Naxx).   The best you can do to increase your DPS is to pump your RAP, since AGI is so damn item-budget expensive, and crit seems to be nearly as expensive.

Tapping that multishot every time it's up might help you in the last minute or so of a fight (so I can see the advantage there, particulalry with improved barrage for the extra crit) but it'll drain you faster than your potion timer, and feign + drink vs 'just fucking steady-auto-steady' has proven (for me) to be a lot less damage over the course of a fight.

 It's not about 'halfassing it' but knowing what the design philosophy of the class as it exsists NOW is. That would be, to be steady, even, low-maint DPS with the ability to shed all aggro and do some CC.  It's not going to get to the burst of a rogue who has to stand in melee and be healed or a mage, who has no ac or hps and dev-blinders about mana issues and aggro-reduction.

[Llava]

Re-enacting lamaros:

 hmnmn bjkjm h nhb

[Chenghiz]

Tapping that multishot every time it's up might help you in the last minute or so of a fight (so I can see the advantage there, particulalry with improved barrage for the extra crit) but it'll drain you faster than your potion timer, and feign + drink vs 'just fucking steady-auto-steady' has proven (for me) to be a lot less damage over the course of a fight.

From what I understand (my hunter alt is only 62) is that most hunters do the AS/MS/SS thing fulltime until they hit bottom and then just pop aspect of the viper and SS mores slowly until they're at full again.

[lamaros]

Re-enacting lamaros:

 hmnmn bjkjm h nhb

Heya Bigot, who are we dumping on today?

[Teleku]

The posted a preview of the proffession changes comming.  Not all the changes, but some they say:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=93032551&sid=1

Nothing to bad for alchemy so far....

Alchemy

Elixirs now stack in two categories, Battle (Offensive) and Guardian (Defensive) Elixirs. You can only have one of each type of Elixir up at a time. As a result Elixirs now stack with class abilities such as "Arcane Intellect."

Four new defensive elixirs have been added. Two are on trainers, one is in Halaa and one is in Cenarion Expedition.

"Flask of Petrification" can no longer be turned off during its duration, but it now will clear all threat from all monsters for the duration of the effect. Though monsters may reaquire you after the effect ends.

The cost to purchase Imbued Vials has been reduced.

Edit:
And this is fucking awsome.  I`ve been bitching about this since release.

"Seaforium" now opens locked chests as well as locked doors

[Merusk]

Edit:
And this is fucking awsome.  I`ve been bitching about this since release.

"Seaforium" now opens locked chests as well as locked doors

woo, motherfucking HOO.   Of course now I have to lose ANOTHER inventory slot.  Hrm, elation now tempered.

11 new epic goggles have been introduced at 350 engineering skill and are available from the trainer. They range from cloth to plate, and have a variety of stats to appeal to most talent specs.

That's really nice, though.  I was kind of pissed at not even wanting to bother making my professions 'epic equip' (which also wasn't epic) because it was worthless to hunters, the class that traditionally has had engineering.

# The fishing timer has been reduced from 30 to 20 seconds and it now takes less time to fish.
# The fishing timer can no longer run through its duration without a fish biting.

These are 

[Dren]

Oh, I missed that fishing one...sweet.  I had been ignoring that skill from the pure boredom.  I'll have to try it again.

[Morfiend]

More leaked notes.

Funny thing. I came up with the idea to have hunter pets be immune to AE in raids, to help hunters with dps. Passed the idea along to my friend who works there, and look what shows up in the notes.

Should be released shortly but a few of the changes but several changes involving all classes that aren't including in this list (as well more for those in the list). Also most changes are paraphrased

Druid
-Bear Mangle damage increased by +15% but bonus threat has been reduced so threat should be the same
-Omen of Clarity no longer castable in Moonkin or Tree
-Swiftmend will now properly penalize +healing benefits for casting low rank Rejuvs or Regrowths
-Barkskin now reduces all damage taken, duration reduced to 12 second with cooldown reduced to 1 minute, Tooltip changed to say it can be used while frozen, incapacitated, cowering in fear (functionality always present but wasn't in the tooltip)
-Cyclone will no longer work on hunters with "The Beast Within" active or hunter pets wtih "Bestial Wrath" active
-Epic Flight Form quest opened up similar in nature to Paladin/Warlock epic mount quests. Also adds a new boss to Sethikk Halls

Hunters
-New avoidance ability for pets reducing damage from AOE spells & abilities
-New cobra reflexes ability for pets that increases atk spd but reduces damage
-Entrapment duration reduced to 4 seconds and now subject to diminishing returns in PvP
-Expose weakness changed so triggers with 33/66/100% chance at 1/2/3 talent points
-Hunter's Mark now becomes stronger each time the target is struck by a ranged attack
-Survival Instincts now also increase atk pwr by 2%/4%
-Pet mending changed somehow

Paladins
-Illumination only gives 50% of the mana cost of crit heals also returns correct mana amount when used with rank 4 or 5 of Holy Shock
-Seal of Righteousness no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger
-Seal of Blood no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger
-Stoicism should now properly affect all magic effects cast by a paladin and will no longer apply double its benefit to Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom
-Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield can't be used together anymore (they are fixing how forbearance works for these apparently)

Priests
-Binding Heal mana cost has been reduced by 32%
-Circle of Healing effect increased
-Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds
-Pain Suppression now reduces damage taken by 65% and increase dispel resistance by 65% for the duration

Shaman
-Windfury Weapon, mixing 2 ranks while dual wielding will no longer increase the number of windfury procs
-Frostbrand Weapon, now properly receives increased effect from spell damage

Warlock
-Spell Lock duration reduced to 5 seconds (Rank 1) and 6 seconds (Rank 2), cooldown reduced to 24 seconds

Warrior
-Flurry has had atk spd increases reduced to 5/10/15/20/25% from 10/15/20/25/30
-Death Wish and Enrage no longer stack
-Commanding Shout now increases your max health but your health stays a constant percentage

Item Changes
-All items of Tier 5 and above quality have been upgraded to reflect their intended power
-Armor: All items that spent part of their budget on increased armor have been reevaluated. Some have added armor while others have gained additional bonuses.
-Heroic instances will now always drop epic loot off the end boss and all heroic bosses have a chance for epic gems
-Additional darkmoon cards can now be found on high level outland creatures. They can be turned in to the darkmoon faire to make powerful new darkmoon card trinkets. Look for Lunacy, Storms, Furies and Blessings cards.
-Alcohol Stam buffs no longer stack with stam buffs from other foods

SSC Changes
-Trash before Hydross and around Lurker (Blizzard calls them the six pumping stations) have had respawn timer increased from 45 minutes to 2 hours
-Trash no longer respawns if the boss nearby has been killed
-Lady Vashj will no longer use Persuasion
-Tidewalker Lurkers no longer call for help from nearby creatures
-Greyheart Technicians are now easier to kill and deal less damage
-Coilfang Priesttesses may now be polymorphed.
-Morogrim Tidewalker's Earthquake can no longer be LOS'ed

[WayAbvPar]

Paladins
-Illumination only gives 50% of the mana cost of crit heals also returns correct mana amount when used with rank 4 or 5 of Holy Shock
-Seal of Righteousness no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger
-Seal of Blood no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger
-Stoicism should now properly affect all magic effects cast by a paladin and will no longer apply double its benefit to Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom
-Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield can't be used together anymore (they are fixing how forbearance works for these apparently)

I don't play a pally, but two of the folks I group with regularly do. How big a nerf is this?

[Merusk]

Hunter's Mark now becomes stronger each time the target is struck by a ranged attack

Wow, that could be huge.  Even moreso if it works with Improved Hunter's Mark (5/5 applies 100% of HM attack power to melee hits as well as ranged hits) Leave hunters out now, and you ignore the free 110+ AP and-up for every physical damage dealer.

I think the biggest nerf in the pally list is the Illumination change, Way.  There were folks saying that Pallies never ran out of mana, so long as they were in a group with a shadow priest using Vampiric Touch and the SP had 1100+ damage. (Which is why Shadow Priests are now referred to as "mana batteries".  Welcome to EQ Necro-hood.)

[MrHat]

Haha morph, like you were the first person to have that idea.

[SurfD]

Its a pretty big hit to paladins:

5/5 Illumination = 100% chance to gain FULL base cost of spell back every time you crit a heal
Divine Illumination (41pt talent) = reduce cost of spells by 50% for 15 sec.

Basicly, with a high crit rate (most heal pallies i know run with anywhere from 25-30%+ crit rate), paladins got a LOT of free heals.
Add in Divine Illumination, and coupled with a crazy crit rate allowed them to actually GAIN mana while healing.  Include fairly mana efficient heals, the paladin ability that gives them a % of all healing done to them by another player back as mana, and a shadowpriest DPSing with vamp embrace, and a paladin / shadowpriest combo were litterally the most obscenely effective Main / offhealer combo you could dream of.  PvE spec shadowpriests with Vamp Touch were just icing on the cake.

[Teleku]

-Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds

Blizzard really needs to release a single patch that doesn't have at least some kind of nerf to priest in it, no matter how small.  The community has already been on meltdown for awhile now.  They also said in the forums a little bit ago that they were looking closely at priest (again) to try and fix problems.  I really hope there is alot more in the patch than these few notes.  The only thing semi-usefull was the the 32% reduction to binding heal, and thats pretty much only for pvp and certain pve situations.

[Teleku]

Oh, they released a clarification post concerning the alchemy changes:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=94161512&sid=1

In an upcoming patch we will be changing the way elixirs function, allowing a player to only have two elixirs on them at any one time. The change will allow you to use one offensive elixir, and one defensive elixir. All elixirs will be set into one of these two categories. This also means that although elixirs of the same type cannot be used at the same time, they will now stack with class buffs.

We’re making this change for a number of reasons.




By allowing players to use any number of elixirs it was necessary that we balance raid and dungeon encounters with the idea that all players in the group had the potential of having all available elixirs on them. In many cases this resulted in the spectrum of elixirs being necessary for dungeon and raid attempts as they were balanced to be more difficult. This put a large strain on guild alchemists and their need of materials for the elixirs they would then distribute throughout the guild. With fewer elixirs being allowed, fewer elixirs will be expected on raids, and less herb and material collection will be needed when attempting raid or dungeon encounters. In turn this change allows us to design and balance encounters around it, keeping the difficulty in line with a clearer limitation of what each group member has at their disposal.


Since the number of elixirs is now limited, we can also now allow them to stack with class buffs, so intellect elixirs will actually matter since they will now stack with arcane intellect. As mentioned previously we’ll be introducing some new recipes that would have simply been left unused before as they wouldn’t have been allowed to stack with class buffs.


We’ve seen many requests for new recipes, and to some extent it was necessary that we limit how and when we introduce new recipes as any new elixir added in-turn resulted in a potential power increase for every member of a raid or group. With the number of elixirs on any one player now limited we can add more recipes than we would have been able to in the past.


Flasks will work in this new system by taking up both the offensive and defensive elixir slots. We of course recognize this as a reduction of total effect of flasks, but as mentioned we will be balancing to take into account the use of a single flask on each player in an encounter.


Potions (rather than elixirs) will not be affected at all by this system.



This change will generally not impact solo players who currently already only use one or two elixirs at a time, but will certainly be a restriction for players who tend to use a lot of elixirs simultaneously. In the case of raid and small group parties the change is a clear benefit. The need for herbs and materials, and thus the strain on a guild or individual alchemist to collect these items is lowered substantially, in combination with the encounters being tuned with the limitation in mind. This change to elixirs and flasks also allows us to improve and expand the alchemy profession in new ways, and removes the need to design and balance encounters around the potential use of all possible elixirs. We’re currently planning to implement this change in a future patch and we’ll release further details as well as information on the new recipes as soon as we’re able.

The part about Flask's taking up both elixir slots is a big kick in the nuts.  Going to hurt the usefulness (and, more importantly for me, the demand) of elixirs big time.  I knew they were going to fuck me over as soon as I chose my mastery.    Ah well, maybe I'll get REALLY lucky and actually discover one of the few usefull flasks.

[Paelos]

-Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds

Blizzard really needs to release a single patch that doesn't have at least some kind of nerf to priest in it, no matter how small.  The community has already been on meltdown for awhile now.  They also said in the forums a little bit ago that they were looking closely at priest (again) to try and fix problems.  I really hope there is alot more in the patch than these few notes.  The only thing semi-usefull was the the 32% reduction to binding heal, and thats pretty much only for pvp and certain pve situations.

I'm not clear on exactly what is wrong with priests. Please clarify.

[Miasma]

It's not so much that there is anything wrong with priests they are just really upset that paladins are now far and away the best healers in the game, especially when teamed up with a shadow priest.  Holy priest talents kind of suck and you always need to blow lots of points in Disc to be a better healer.  I kind of hope those patch notes are fake because the holy priests on the boards always come up with contemptuous potential upgrades when they think we might get looked at.  Stuff like "lightwell now has a new graphic" and "circle of healing is now slightly less useless" and those notes are actually in line with the sarcasm.  The 31 and 41 holy point talents are mostly worthless.

Knowing blizzard they will probably nerf paladin healing instead of buffing holy priest though...

[Chenghiz]

I was always under the impression that paladins were really only good at single-target healing. They don't have HoTs either... isn't that a bit important?

[Merusk]

Depends on what you're doing, and what encounter it is.   In oldschool raids, single-target healing was where it was at.  Even in 5-mans you can generally get away with single-target heals, and in fact I've had better experiences with pallies healing for the group than druids, shaman or priests.  Of course, that might have to do with priests not using their AOE heals, because they're mana hogs.

  I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff, where group vs single doesn't matter so much since the mob's usually dead or the adds are already CC'd.   Do we even have any high-end healers reading this board anymore?  I think (like the game itself) most of us are DPS w/ a few tanks.  :-D

[WayAbvPar]

  I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff,

The last boss in Underbog is pretty nasty- his static charge DOT will keep a healer on his toes. Or his party on their deathbeds  :-D

[Merusk]

What, the Black Stalker?  I guess I didn't realize that was an AOE.. then again I also never had any problems with her in any groups.  The exploding mushrooms on Hungerfen were always the problem.

[WayAbvPar]

I think it jumps from player to player like Chain Lightning. Either that, or I was always the lucky target.

[Morfiend]

Haha morph, like you were the first person to have that idea.

Definitely not. But it makes me feel good that I came up with it on my own, and then passed it along to the dev team, and then it shows up in the very next patch notes.

[Miasma]

I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff, where group vs single doesn't matter so much since the mob's usually dead or the adds are already CC'd.   Do we even have any high-end healers reading this board anymore?  I think (like the game itself) most of us are DPS w/ a few tanks.  :-D

I've never raided so all I know is that the holy priests on the boards are always screaming "I lost my raid spot to a Pally" or "I've been told to go shadow" and that they always point out the top two raid guilds run with paladins for healing and priests in shadow form so that the pallys never go oom and the ve is used for a degree of group healing - they might bring along one holy priest for fort/spirit buffs and AoE heals.

Of course if everything complained about on the boards were true the game would suck so bad no one would play it, take their complaints with a grain of salt.  My impression is that they are just ticked that they don't get instant spots in groups and a slew of guaranteed raid spots anymore.

[bhodi]

I *was* holy -- I went shadow. The top tier talents are a huge letdown, especially circle of healing. Pallies CAN heal better, now. I pretty much quit since my two classes (rogue, priest) got shat upon, plus the fact I'm pretty bored of the grind.

[Teleku]

Yeah, what they said.  Priests have basically not had anything really done to the class since we got our overhaul.  While that did add in some nice things, the holy tree still remained shitty.  Spirit of redemption is basically useless unless they give it a longer time, and lightwell IS completly useless in every way imaginable.  Then BC hits, priest get some decent new spells and talents, but holy basically gets shafted again, as nobody ever uses circle of healing.  So again, just as even before the talent review, nobody really specs full holy.  After a long time of not getting touched, blizzard just threw a bunch of nerfs at priests last patch, for no real good reason.  Priest were already pissed, and this just put the whole community into meltdown.  Because really, I cant think of any other class more undeserving of nerfs than god damn priests at this point.  Paladins are better healers and get to wear fucking platemail, and Druids are pretty damn close (and they get all the other added utility that comes along with the class, such as DPS, Stealth, Tanking, and Sky lasers.  We just get to die alot).

And now I look at the new patch notes just released, and they did throw in some new shadow nerfs, and basically gave us nothing of real note (though Ill have to play with it to see).  Circle of healing has had its `potency` increased.  Woopdy shit.

[Calantus]

Holy tree pisses me off whenever I think about it. It's not terrible in that we can just put points in disc but it's so insulting that the tree is so bad and has been since the history of time.

[Miasma]

In addition to a better holy tree I really wish they would add in some way to make farming/questing less painful as a holy priest.  That's the main reason I haven't specced holy.  There is some dragon you have to kill for a quest in blade's edge and it seemed completely immune to shadow so I had to resort to smite/holy fire, my God that was painful.  Maybe they could add a buff that boosts your non shadow damage spells so long as you aren't grouped and the target isn't another player.  As it stands now if I want to switch and stay holy I'll have to level up a hunter or something for farming.  I do not look forward to having to quest in Azeroth again.

I haven't played many other classes very high but if there are other healers who are basically useless solo they should also have some viable way to farm that won't work in groups/PvP.  I don't know if protection warriors have the same problem.

[Dren]

Yeah, Holy Priests are not solo friendly.  I always spec Shadow until I max lvl, then go to Holy for my guild.  The only way a Holy spec could make is to do a LOT of instances with friends and do the harder quests with groups.  Even then, I'd just skip a lot of the quests and go for pure instance farming.

The good part would be that you could probably get into a lot of PUG's if you hung out around the stones.  Just my guess though.  I hear Druids and Pally's heal better anyway, so that may not be the case. 

[Rasix]

Holy priest in my guild (bunch of casuals) is probably the best healer I've worked with recently.  He does rather well, but he's got great gear (he does a lot of instances) which has him working with a huge mana pool with a lot of +healing.  The huge heals are great for a bear tank. He does bitch quite a bit about how bad his DPS is.

Grouped with a paladin the other day doing Shattered Halls and well.. damn.  Those guys nearly never run out of mana.  The holy priest in our group decided to DPS and play backup healer. Would have been nice if that priest was shadow in that instance.

Haven't been impressed with shadow priests as main healers though.  Had one that couldn't keep me up at the end of Black Morass.  It was probably more of a player skill thing though.  Guy just couldn't heal worth shit though the damage spikes had trouble dealing with the time lapse.

[ajax34i]

I've levelled a priest as holy to 60, but this was a long time ago (my first priest), and basically what I had to do was double-up on zones (did the quests for 2 starter zones, and I always did the quests for 2 zones at the same time) so that I could keep quests and mobs below my level.  That, and a good wand.

I did group a lot and heal a lot, did instances and levelled up while helping others do their quests.  The biggest thing required for healing as a shadow priest IMO is the talent that reduces healing aggro (so 10 points in discipline).  Then you just need more int on your gear, and you burn through mana potions a lot (compared to a holy/disc priest), so your costs increase.