All the priests are shadow...

OK, that may not be quite true, but for some reason it certainly doesn't seem too hard to get a main healing spot these days as a resto shaman.

I've healed Shadow Labs once (while still level 69) and Steamvaults twice, and so far had no problem with mana or keeping people alive. This seems to be pretty promising for my intended route as a healer in the end game, especially as I still have 4 or 5 pieces of my "starting" healing gear to collect.

The runs may have been helped by decent groups (two PUGs and a guild group), so I may be being over optimistic, but the changes to the restoration tree with Burning Crusade (especially the addition of Earth Shield) certainly seem to have made resto shaman very viable. My main problem at the moment seems to be that the ranged DPS all tend to spread out, so Chain Heal can't really be used. I'd also really love an aggro dump, but lacking that the options seem to be to whip out my earth elemental really quickly (hoping that the 20 cooldown is up), or die (since I when I do get aggro, I seem to get 2 or 3 mobs at once).

In the process of these healing runs I've collected 2/3 of my Karazhan key, and reached Revered with Cenarion Expedition, so that's a couple of goals ticked off. I still need to get a heap of mp5, and a slightly larger mana pool, before I'm ready for Karazhan though.