Shaman Chain Healing

Those days there are a great amount of misconceptions going around about the Shaman in Wrath of the Lich King. One of them is that Shamans totems are their greatest strength. However, if you ask any experienced Shaman in the game, they are all going to tell you the same thing you want to know. It is not the totems that make a Shaman, it is their weapon imbuement. At present, there are four weapons such as Flametongue, Frostbrand, Windfury and Earthliving. What many don't realize is that each imbuement in itself is more powerful than any enchant in the game. Due to this, Shamans can cut back on certain talents and make up for them with imbuement.
   Let's take an example for you. It is the dual wield chain heal restoration talent specialization before you scoff consider this. Now Torch of Holy Flame is the best main hand/shield combo for a restoration Shaman. The Shaman restoration weapon imbuement Earth-living weapon adds 195 healing and has a 25% chance if your using Earth-living glyph to apply the Earth-living heal over time affect to the recipient of the heal, which heals for 642 over 12 seconds.
As you can see this imbuement alone is going to do more for you than the shield. Now below tier 8 talents in the restoration tree there are no "chains heal" talents. So if you only go as far down as Improved Chain Heal and Natures Blessing, dump the rest of your points into Enhancement to receive the Duel Wield ability you can now have two Earth-livings active at the same time (0/31/40). Of course there are no spell power off-hand weapons so your best bet is to go with a weapon with as much haste or critical strike rating as possible.
So an off-hand enchanted with 63 spell power and Earth-living will give 187 spell power plus whatever haste or crit the weapon you are using already has, which will benefit your talents much more than any shield. When using the glyph of chain heal, your chain heal will jump to four different targets, as the percentages of EL do stack you will now have approximately 45% chance of applying the EL heal over time.
   We have played with this spec through several 25 man raids and found that not only am I able to keep up with the Heal over Time crazy Druids, but we can top the charts with very little effort.
For instance, taking no damage is the last downing of Heroic patchwork with this spec, a fight where the raid itself. We were capable of keeping the EL hot up on all three tanks for 87% of the fight and out of six heals we were responsible for 37% of total healing done by simply spamming chain heal on my target tank.
   But for this spec, the biggest drawback is that besides chain heal your only heal that you will be speced into will be Haling Wave which has a much longer cast time and healing potential than lesser healing wave. This will call for a bit more guess work and over healing (Glyph of Healing Wave will be your best bet for single target healing in this spec). Bear in mind this is a pure raid talent spec, in five man content and arena the more widely accepted lesser healing wave spam spec is far superior.
   One talent spec is becoming less and less dominant over another with the game changes we find. Owing to this fact, most of the players have the ability to adapt and take advantage of these changes first are the ones that will truly dominate. You can start studying up on those patch notes, experiments and most of all, which keep the game fun.