Healing in 5-mans. What do you like?

[ARogers]

I'm going to start healing on my shammy and am gathering gear. Those of you who have run a lot of heroics and 5-mans, how do you feel about healers and their gearing? I know that skill > gear, and I can't heal well from healing here and there on my pally. I don't want to try to step into heroics too fast though. I'm on a mission to gear up in pugs ASAP and get into kara. Most items can come from quests, but about 5-6 need to be from 5-mans and heroics.

As it stands right now, I am going to try to go into kara at 1500+. I know I was comfortable in the harder heroics with a 1400+ shammy healer. However, I always preferred trees in lower 5-mans when i started at 70. Think a 1200+ shammy can heal the easier heroics until I hit some better gear from normal magt?

I don't want to hop in too early.

[solina]

I generally recommend 1000-1100 to start heroics/kara (about equal difficulty for a healer), and I've seen it done well with less. These days everyone likes to demand more, because most everyone is overgeared - this being the end of the TBC cycle and all. But if you have 2/5 of your dungeon blue set (or equiv, if your set sucks) and mostly blues otherwise, you're generally good to go.

N.B.: If you're going to run a 2-healer Kara, not a 3-healer, then 1500 is a good number to shoot for.

[Grehn|Skipjack]

In heroics, I tend to care more about the healer's regen than raw +heal. Since I always aoe tank everything, dps may take a long time to burn through everything and the healer's got to be able to last a while.

[Vacalline]

In heroics, I tend to care more about the healer's regen than raw +heal. Since I always aoe tank everything, dps may take a long time to burn through everything and the healer's got to be able to last a while.

[Origon]

If you're running with a lot of aoe dps, you might want to do the opposite and focus more on a healer's +heal, that way you can pull a huge pack and ensure that the heals will be strong enough to keep you alive, because you know the mobs won't last long

(2mages + 1lock + hSH = fun times)

[ARogers]

I generally recommend 1000-1100 to start heroics/kara (about equal difficulty for a healer), and I've seen it done well with less. These days everyone likes to demand more, because most everyone is overgeared - this being the end of the TBC cycle and all. But if you have 2/5 of your dungeon blue set (or equiv, if your set sucks) and mostly blues otherwise, you're generally good to go.

N.B.: If you're going to run a 2-healer Kara, not a 3-healer, then 1500 is a good number to shoot for.

That's along what I was thinking. We currently 2-heal kara with our group. Each of our main healers has about 1700+ healing. I figured it up, and with a lot of questies and a couple magt runs, I should get to 1450+ pretty easily.

Although, healing for the friends I run kara with is much easier than healing for the people in pugs. My friends are much more forgiving, so I don't want to jump in too soon. Luckily, we ahve 2 other guild pally tanks.... which I am biased to of course!

[Pizbit]

I started kara way back on my shaman(raid resto) with 1k+heal, yeah probably get a bit more now with enchants/easier access to BoEs etc.
You can easily 2 heal kara with someone else if they have good gear. Especially now that your tanks are likely well geared.

Heroics, after a few karas, just choose the easier ones first, SP, Bot, Shattered Halls(yes really).