The Spirit Realm

Modern shm are well capable of mainhealing in nearly all single group content, but there's a difference in the healing model from what people are used to. The goal of all healers is to be as efficient as possible without letting folks die, but shm healing tools are different than cle/dru.

When a full heal is coming, a tank can choose his armor to take damage a little faster, if the hp pool he gets in exchange means the same timing between heals. Otherwise said, if you're going to get your pool filled up, it doesn't matter which way you take 40sec dropping to 40%; it can be by resisting a lot of damage, or just soaking up the extra damage on your inflated hp pool. This is the basis of tank arguements about AC or shielding being "equal" to some amount of hp.

Since we use HoTs so extensively, it's most efficient to keep your tanks & party members below full hp, so that the primary tool continues to work. We use spot heals to keep the "holding level" high, but the goal is to heal the middle of someone's hp bar, getting maximum efficiency from each cast, not to heal the top, where healing power gets cut off. Shaman don't have the very large "complete" heal spells that vary in efficiency depending on how big someone's pool of hp is. When being healed by a shm, it's *all* about the rate of incoming damage.

The tradeoff has no apparent bounds. There is, from the perspective of the partial healing model, no practical point of "enough" defensive ability. As long as your heals fit comfortably inside the hp bar, any adjustment that raises AC, avoid, shielding, dodge, or parry (and, content contexually, resists, spell shielding, and dot shielding) is worth any amount of hp. Anecdotally, even on the high end, the difference very clear healing my own guild tanks. No one in SR runs around in ghetto gear, but its much easier for me to heal instead of . In content ranging from the highest end to that absurdly trivial to both, Subb takes less damage (numerically) over time.

Bottom line, every AC aug you camp for your tank makes you a better healer.