*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.
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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.
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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.
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Recommended Enchants:
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Head: Arcanum Of Blissful Mending: 30 SP/ 10 Mp5 (Wyrmrest Accord Revered is required.)
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Shoulder: Greater Inscription Of The Crag-24 SP/8 Mp5 (Sons Of Hodir Exalted is required.)
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Back: Enchant Cloak-Greater Speed: Provides +23 haste.
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Gloves: Enchant Gloves-Exceptional Spell power: +28 SP
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Chest: Either of these enchants are fine.
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Greater Mana Restoration: 10 Mp5
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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.
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Waist: Eternal Belt Buckle Provides An Extra Gem Slot. This will allow you the use of an additional gem slot known as prismatic.
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Legs: Sapphire Spellthread: 50 SP/30 Sta.
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Boots: Enchant Boots-Greater Vitality: 7 Mp5/ 5 Hp5
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Weapon: Enchant Weapon-Exceptional Spellpower: +50 SP
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Offhand: Enchant Shield-Greater Intellect: +25 Intellect
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Glyphs:
The recommended glyphs that should be used by any raiding Restro Shaman are:
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Glyph Of Earth Shield: This actually accounts for more of your overall healing than you may expect.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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Tanks
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Healers
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Special Roles: IE someone assigned to spell steal or purge and with out could cause a wipe
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Popularity: 12% [?]
Worst guide ever. You are just cutting and pasting all over without explaining anything.
Your explanation of Healing in Mobile fights reduces to “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.” explains nothing at all.
Crit heals from Chain and HW procs Improved water shield, you don’t explain that at all, and just put crit down that low.
Worst guide ever.
No mention of haste at all.
Recommendation to use a Nightmare Tear as resto shaman.
I stopped there. You have no clue at all how to play resto, and you should not be giving advice to anyone.
*Writers Comments*
High mobility fights are difficult to totally explain as they vary so much from boss to boss considering ToTC as an example. Although you are right I neglected the haste section and that has been corrected.
Reguarding Genkos post bud you obviously are not in high in raiding or you would not say that considering how mana intensive ToTC is the extra stats you gain allowing for a small addition to your health and mana pools play an invaluable role in staying alive and not running out of mana.
Please keep posts constructive when leaving feedback as constructive feedback both positive and negative is welcome.
Again to the first poster thankyou for bringing this to my attention and the necessary corrections have been fixed.
Dude, you glossed over haste which is THE most important stat in high end raiding. 500 haste shaves your global cooldown from 1.5 seconds to 1, and lowers your spell cast speed by .2 seconds. Couple that with the 4 piece set bonus you have a chain heal landing in 2.6 seconds from cast to cast, and that doesn't even add in Heroism which reduces it another .2 seconds. If you are still packing the Egg of Mortal Essence like I am, you have a chance for an extra 500 haste, knocking .2 more seconds for 10 seconds. Haste is THE biggest stat imo.
However haste is important, without spellpower your heal will be so small compared to actual damage output that it really won't mathmatically compare.. Other thing to consider is if you do not have the mp5 to back up all your haste all you will end up doing is running out of mana half way thru the battle also.
Just a few other things you may want to chew on for a bit.
Haste should be one stat of a resto shamans least concern. MP5 with a lot of haste do not mix well and, as jason said, you will run out of mana even with a high mana pool. SP, MP5, Crit and then haste should be not of any resto shamans concern. yes it is very beneficial at times, but I would rather keep my mana a whole fight than run out about half way then having to use my mana tide totem, which also doensn't help out all that much. with the right haste trinket procs, however, a resto shaman can be very effective.
Shammys are having a hard time getting into end game runs right now for the very reason, aoe casts compared to equal skill equal geared druid/priest are poor.
I wont be stopping till my gear has 900-1000 haste on it and thats fact, mana regain is important but if your so stacked up with mana and now quickness to use it every heal you do with FAIL.
400-460 base mp5 is about where most are at right now.
if your spamming heals though then:
A your not doing your job right,
B Your raid isnt either.
get around the 30% crit mark to again higher crits mean not only mana back if you have talented it right , but bigger heals etc.
2661 Spell Power
768 MP5
762 Haste
While I do not have a problem getting casts off quickly or running out of mana,I would have to say that an increase in Spell Power, say around 3k would probably keep me in tehg reen. I average only around 4.5k heals in 25 and around 4k in 10 man ICC atm.
I actually like this guide. Since I already know how to play a Shaman what I really was looking for was the short list of gear & enchantment suggestions. Adding a list of recommended gems would be a good addition.
On the whole, if you’re a level 80 Shaman & you haven’t figured out the basics of your class, you probably need to re-roll. The hardest part of playing a Shaman is the mobility. Totems don’t move with you (sadly). Placement can be critical in open spaces & in order to control my mobility, I sometimes need to follow my tank closer to a boss than I would prefer BUT, the totems are a MUST & optimal coverage saves time & mana.
Thanks for the short course.
.-= Mangilo´s last blog ..Festergut Down =-.
Quote: Healbot
” when you start doing 25 man I would say its almost a required mod for a healer.”
Laughed so hard i pee’d a little XD
If you havent used a keyboard before, and is blind on both eyes, then yeah i guess Healbot will up your performance, but otherwise, no.
Haste numero uno, most shamans i know successfully healing endgame content stack nothing but haste. the idea of heals being too small is not valid since a shaman relys on successfully getting chain heals out BEFORE ppl die. if it takes too long then it doesnt matter how hard it hits, your target will be dead. Hence haste takes priority over any other stat. After haste cap is reached at 1034 or something(cant remember exactly) spell power and mp5 can then be split as mana regen is always important but if you know how to manage your cds and casts then it shouldnt be and can stack spellpower. also a nightmare tear is necessary to activate meta gems typically.
As the original author of this post, I will reenforce the fact that all haste however now with Icecrown is one of the most important stats, will not always work. Let me explain, Having all haste will allow quicker spells correct, but if you do not have a very high dps group then you will go OOM before the battle is over. Then without mana you are useless to the raid, only with a high dps party of 8k+ dps (and this is a low ball considering many high in guilds run 10-12k+ dps)would you run all haste. With this group dps yes haste would become the dominant stat.
If you would like proof of what i’m saying try pugging a group with 5-7k dps and watch how long your mana will last. You will be called a horrid healer for going OOM in an expansion where that does not happen but rarely.
Also please note nothing was cut and pasted what so ever, everything was original in how I worded it. As to healbot yeah well you must never have tried to heal a 40 man raid before.
As an end game raider running 25man hc icc as a resto shaman, Haste is the most important stat untill you hit the cap of 1200 haste. You get more than enough spell power and other stats from the gear your aquire. Shamans should also never gem mp5 its a written rule.
32670 mana
3246 spell power
1234 haste
768mp5
40.04% crit chance
Always gem haste untill cap is reached, Spell power and crit next. End of.
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