Post by Onijitsu
Most skill and better gear/gemming/enchants.
Which brings up a really important point. I have an 80 Resto Shaman (
Dinged yesterday!) and right now the mantra from the Resto Gurus is, "Haste,
Haste,
HASTE!"
Come Cataclysm, Mana will be in a much more short supply. And, everyone will have much more HP, with the expectation (stated by Blizzard) that we will probably keep most of our group around half-health instead of trying to top everyone off.
What does this mean for all of us, as Healers?
Well, taking a shot at it, I'd say that Spell Power, Int (Which Spell Power will derive directly from) and Mana Regeneration (Spirit, for all Healers in Cataclysm) will all become much more important.
Spell PowerSince most of our patients will hover around half-health, overhealing will become largely a thing of the past. (And probably, a VERY dirty word) And, with increased spellpower, we Healers will get much, much more bang for our buck (or mana) on each healing. The better-healed our teams will be, the safer they will be from death. And, the less attention that most will need when we are turning our attention to someone who is getting clobbered.
IntellectIntellect will mean a bigger mana pool, more spell power, and bigger, more frequent crits. Crits will be really useful, because they'll mean you really don't have to heal that person for awhile. (Like I said... overhealing will be much less likely)
Mana Regeneration (aka, Spirit)MP/5 will be disappearing. In fact, the 5-second wait to regen mana will be disappearing. Spirit will replace this stat for all of the healer classes... even, those who don't currently use it. (Like Shamans) The better your mana regeneration, the more "ammo" you will have to dish out the healing when you really need to.
tl;dr: My prediction is that there will be a LOT of re-gemming and re-enchanting going on, and we Healers (especially Shamans) will be dumping a lot of our Haste for other stats which produce bigger (but slower) heals.