Ask the devs: Healing

Q: I spend a lot of my time in raids keeping Water Shield up, which I rely on to maintain enough mana. There have been times I've neglected to heal someone because I had to refresh Water Shield. Why are shaman healers less effective compared to other healing classes? – Epistemology (NA), Ерз (EU-RU)

A: We’d like to be more consistent about what does and doesn’t trigger Water Shield. Having the shield trigger when taking direct damage, and consume an orb, is consistent with how all shaman shields work. On some encounters though, constant pulsing damage probably burns through those charges too quickly and doesn’t need to do so – that said, if you’re having to refresh Water Shield often, that also generally means that you’re getting a large amount of extra mana from all those procs that are burning through it. A situational glyph (like we have for Lightning Shield) could help with this issue, and that may be something we consider in the future.