*Please Note: This was all accurate as of the 3.2 Patch On Live as of the date written. (09-15-09)-JC

(Written by Jason Cox) (Write for us!)

Most people think that healing as a Restoration Shaman is nothing more than spamming chain heal which is incorrect. Chain heal actually only should be accounting for depending on the fight around 50-60% of your total healing. I’ll touch on this a bit more later.

1. Basic Healing Information:

Healing as a shaman is not as difficult as many may imagine. One of the most difficult parts I have personally found is high mobility fights as we are turret healers. Meaning we need to be standing still to do any healing other than riptide, which even with the T9 bonuses still isn’t the greatest.

Healing in high mobility fights is one of the biggest challenges you will face healing as a shaman as the only instant heals we have are Gift of the Naaru on a 3 minute cooldown and Riptide on a six second cooldown of which generally is not enough to keep someone alive by itself. Make sure to keep your tanks at full life along with as many others as you can. The basic strategy for high mobility fights tend to be difficult to explain as the fights will vary tremendously. Just make sure to listen to your raid leader and just make sure you know the bosses. You want to make sure this is done before you actually go into a raid where you will be fighting them for your first time.

1. Gear Choices:

You are able to get multiple high end pieces just from heroics so this would be the best place to start. With that in mind you actually can get two pieces of Tier 8-Item Level 226 gear directly from the badges. The cost is 58 badges of Conquest each, this includes the helm and chest. The set bonuses themselves for Tier 8 are not all that (Two pieces gets you a 1 second reduction on your Riptide cool down) great but when coupled with 2 pieces of Tier 8 and two pieces of Tier 9 (20% increased effects of Riptide) it becomes much more effective.

Your primary stats as a healer are:

Spell Power: This is what will determine the amount of each heal. This is also known as SP

MP5: This is very important as well as this is how much mana you will regen both in and out of combat every 5 seconds.

Haste: Just as important as others will speed up your cast time of your spells. This will be much more useful in later Tiers of raid content.

Intellect: Increases your max mana pool,this is abbreviated as Int or Intell

Critical Strike Rating: However one of the lower stats however the passive heals you will give due to the talent Ancestral Awakening. This is also known as Crit. Crit will also allow the ability to proc your water shield and returning mana to you.

Stamina: Increases your life, you do not want to die to a mass area of effect that you would have lived through had you had the appropriate amount of life to sustain the damage. This is abbreviated as Int.

1. Recommended Enchants:

• Head: Arcanum Of Blissful Mending: 30 SP/ 10 Mp5 (Wyrmrest Accord Revered is required.)

• Shoulder: Greater Inscription Of The Crag-24 SP/8 Mp5 (Sons Of Hodir Exalted is required.)

• Back: Enchant Cloak-Greater Speed: Provides +23 haste.

• Gloves: Enchant Gloves-Exceptional Spell power: +28 SP

• Chest: Either of these enchants are fine.

  • • Greater Mana Restoration: 10 Mp5

    • Powerful Stats: +10 To All Stats (Some like and dislike this however consider also it will increase your total max health and mana pools which will help out when you begin into ToTC where that extra mana and health will actually play a key in your survival and ability to not go totally out of mana.
      

• Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle Provides An Extra Gem Slot. This will allow you the use of an additional gem slot known as prismatic.

• Legs: Sapphire Spellthread: 50 SP/30 Sta.

• Boots: Enchant Boots-Greater Vitality: 7 Mp5/ 5 Hp5

• Weapon: Enchant Weapon-Exceptional Spellpower: +50 SP

• Offhand: Enchant Shield-Greater Intellect: +25 Intellect

1. Glyphs:

The recommended glyphs that should be used by any raiding Restro Shaman are:

• Glyph Of Earth Shield: This actually accounts for more of your overall healing than you may expect.

• Glyph Of Chain Heal: Since the recent patch changes this actually has a lower reduction per jump with an increase in how far it can jump per target making the extra jump worth it.

• Glyph Of Lesser Healing Wave,or Glyph of Riptide, Or Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. All are good totems, Lesser Healing Wave is nice as it adds 10% to your heals if your target has earth shield on it. This is great for 5 mans. For Raiding however your best bet will be to stick with healing stream or riptide either is fine and each have their own unique benefits.

1. Talent Distribution:

Here is the general cookie cutter Resto Shaman Build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#f9wAjXVnDIz52,-RtOHR,10433

There are a few variations in which you could use as some prefer the spell knock back however this is still one of the most viable and useful raid specs to date.

1. Healing Priority:

This is not something all healers do although they should be. Healing Priority meaning your a raid healer and you see a healer and a dps about to die. You have to prioritize and heal the healer first as an example..The order in which I would put priority on is:

• Tanks

• Healers

• Special Roles: IE someone assigned to spell steal or purge and with out could cause a wipe

• DPS

Healing In High Mobility Fights: Recommended Mods:

The only recommended mods some of which is recommended for all classes. One of these mods you will want being a healer. The links listed below are from a very well trusted site called Curse which I would say provides most every WoW user with the Mods he or she may need. You can find them at http://www.curse.com

• Healbot: One of the most important Mods a healer can have. It has the ability to click a persons name in a box and perform a heal with the combo of left click,middle click,right click. You also can set it perform other spells with Shift+ Ones listed above and Alt+ ones listed above. It will show you many buffs when they wear off on you or a tank, show threat and many other features you will want as a healer. This is the ultimate healing mod. 10 man content you can get away without this but when you start doing 25 man I would say its almost a required mod for a healer.

  http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heal-bot-continued.aspx

• Deadlyboss Mods: This will aid you by showing you timers on special boss abilities which are vital to know so as to avoid them if possible.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/deadly-boss-mods.aspx

• Omen Threat Meter: You do not want to surpass the tank in threat however rare since the threat reworking blizzard did in WOTLK it is still possible. This is also good to have so that if you have a dps who may surpass a tanks threat your able to prepare to heal them or HOT them up to keep them alive if they do end up pulling threat.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx

1. Conclusion:

Being a healer is a very demanding and a very stressful job however it has many rewards of its own. Some enjoy healing while others do not. Generally if your good as a healer you will be invited by many people for other raids outside your guild along with other heroics and such which aids in attaining your gearing faster and becoming more experienced.

For the purpose of gaining experience in being a raid healer prior to entering a raid I would highly suggest spending a couple days in Battle Grounds with your healbot. This or Wintergrasp will work also. Doing a little PVP will provide you invaluable raid healing experience where as raid healing is a bit different with coordinated fights and such it will at least provide you the basic feeling of what it is like to be a raid healer. It will also aid you in fine tuning your spell rotations to maximize your healing per second (HPS).

Article Written By Jason Cox-Kaynwinters/Dalaran