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| [WotLK] Resto Shaman Healing guide
Well, this site eats up plenty of my time while at work, and I'm glad. So I thought I would give something back to the DSLR community. This is a guide for resto shams that I am working on for my guild.
I am actually an ele sham
Tempesthell, Champion of the Frozen Wastes
Proudmoore
(feel free to armory :-D, and yes I know my 3v3 is nubcaek, I was just helping a friend)
However, I've healed many many instances and raids. I raided resto all through vanilla, and healed all of MC, BWL, and a good chunk of AQ40. I raided ele in tbc (cleared kara, gruul, mag, ssc, tk, mh, bt, and 1/9 SWP all PRE-NERFBAT patch, and we killed brut post patch on our last raid, since we stopped raiding that week, until wotlk), but I respecced a few times to help out and have healed most all of the instances that I cleared as ele. I have raided ALL wotlk content, as both ele and resto.
Here is a link to my guild's website, and the thread with my guide, which I will continue to update there: »mythical-guild.com/forum/viewtop···61#27561
And here is the guide in it's current unfinished form. Feel free to shoot your opinons this way  .
Work in progress:
to do list (for me)
Table of Contents...and put in order
Totem guide
spreadsheets for various heals and their efficiency...or shamelessly steal one off EJ
cleansing
stats, and stat priority
5 man healing
talents
gear guide... at least basic, and a lootrank link
Well... I have nothing to do at work, and I've healed a raid myself now. So I figure, now is as good a time as any to write a healing guide for shaman.
step one: hotkey chain heal to at least 8 buttons
step two: hotkey riptide to at least 8 buttons
step three: roll face across keyboard
win
=p
No but seriously, it is pretty simple.
The healing style now, is still very very similiar to the resto shaman of the past, depending on your spec. And I'll go over some of the cookie cutter specs later, as well as some of the more outlandish, but possibly viable specs too.
Healing in a raid now basically consists of: Keeping your totems down and maximizing your utility (Being a shaman means you are a utility class...so you have plenty of utility, especially as resto), Using your heals smart and effectively while: keeping earth shield on your designated target (usually a tank), keeping tidal waves up, and keeping your water shield up.
The priority of your healing spells to be used is probably going to end up something like: Chain Heal, Rip Tide, Lesser Healing wave, Healing Wave.
The reason? Well chain heal is surprisingly efficient. Its efficient for the following reasons: It can hit up to 4 targets (if glyphed for it), it can put earthliving weapon on every target, and it can put ancestral fortitude on every target. Chain Heal also jumps smartly to all targets within it's range, meaning that it will make it's first jump to the player missing the most health within it's range, then the second jump with go to the target missing the second most health etc etc. Chain Heal also procs tidal waves, a buff that needs to always be up(I'll go more into detail about it later). Even in it's worst case scenario, with it only hitting one target, you still end up with more heal per mana than a lesser healing wave. (Chain Heal= ~5.23 healing per 1 mana, LHW=5.14 healing per 1 mana (this is assuming rip tide isn't on the target CH is hitting, and Tidal Waves is not up, so worst case for both spells))
-----A smart way to use this spell is to take advantage of groupings. If you know many people around a specific person are taking, or have taken damage, then using this spell on that person is a great idea. An example would be hitting melee with this on about 80% of all encounters, as there is a good chance that they are going to be taking some kind of damage, and they are usually grouped together. Other reasons it's great for melee...well right now 3.08 hasn't been released, so CoH is just that...circle of hax, which pretty much means that any CoH priest is going to have the handle on keeping the ranged raid up without a problem, but melee might be behind the mob, and out of range of a coh, but in range of bounces of ch. After 3.08 is released, CH will be great for melee as coh will probably be a bit mroe situational, and probably used on the ranged raid, rather than...well everyone all the time. Also, every crit of CH puts the ancestral healing buff on the target (25% more armor) and who better to have an armor buff than melee right? Chain heal is also a great spell to use in any aoe situation, and will be even better once CoH gets hit with the nerf bat a few times.
(bug=when healing yourself with chain heal, it will only jump once)
Healing done by chain heal=
2.5/3.5 = 0.7143 (coefficient)
so healing done by CH is base+ (spell power x 0.72) to main target, then reduce the base by 30% and add the spell power+coefficient for jump number 1, then reduce teh base by 30% and add sp, so on and so forth for each jump.
As for rip tide, another great spell...as it should be, considering it's a 51 pt talent. Rip Tide is basically an instant regrowth; Its a heal, that's both a direct heal and a heal over time. The HoT is also a buff consumable by chain heal, which increases the effect of the chain heal by 25%. It also procs Tidal Waves.
----Smart ways to use rip tide include: Shooting the tank an instant heal, while also hotting him up, topping someone off a lock, while also giving them the opportunity to continue life tapping with the rolling hot. Or prepping someone taking damage for a big CH, an example of this would be throwing riptide on a hateful strike tank, using the 2 Tidal Wave boosted HWs or LHWs on the MT, then chain healing the hateful strike tank, as the hot would have had a chance to to tick a few times and still be rolling, so the CH would get the boost, and the bounces would still hit melee/the MT.
Lesser Healing Wave/ Healing wave are basically your bread and butter healing spells. They have a cast time, and they are direct heals. Un-talented, they do nothing special. With talents, they get a bit more flare: when they crit they slap a 25% armor buff on the target, heal the raid or party member with the lowest health within 40 yds, for 30% of the amount healed (excluding overheal,) and eat a water shield orb (giving you ~420 mana). The flares that these spells have, is why you want ~20% crit...which is not hard to get. Also, when the tidal waves buff is up these spells become hasted (cast 30% faster), and get 10%/20% (lhw/hw) more bonus from your +healing, which is why you want tidal waves up 100%, of the time. This spell is also exponentially better for tank healing if you have it glyphed, and an es on the tank.
---Tips to use this smartly= KEEP TIDAL WAVES UP @_@, if someone is taking a lot of steady damage, use Healing wave when they are missing about as much health as it's going to end up healing, or if you know they are going to be missing that much within the time it takes for the spell to land, or use it to take advantage of the FSR, an example would be casting a spell then waiting 3 seconds, then casting a healing wave, by doing this you get 0.5 sec outside the fsr, if someone is taking bursty damage, then use lesser healing wave. If you don't already know how to smartly use these spells, or what the FSR is... I don't know what to say.
(bug=if you have earthliving weapon on, when chain casting LHW, if ELW procs, it will interrupt your cast)
Healing Wave = 3.0/3.5 = 0.8571
Lesser Healing Wave = 1.5/3.5 = 0.4286
so healing done for HW= base+(sp x 0.86)
healing done for LHW=base+(sp x 0.43)
Cleansing
If you're a resto sham, then you have the new 31pt talent, cleanse spirit. If you don't have this talent...then you're specced wrong for raiding.
The days of spamming /cast random cure posion, cure disease are gone Very Happy, as this wonderful talent now gets rid of 1 disease, 1 poison, and 1 curse for every target you use it one.
Cleansing is pretty straight forward, if someone in your party has a disease or a poison that needs cleansing, drop the appropriate totem. Why drop the totem you ask? A few reasons, 1 the totem is actually cheaper... go figure, 2, all our totems have a gcd of only 1 second, 3, chances are that someone else in your party is going to get poisoned/diseased again. When a new poison or disease debuff is applied, redrop the totem, unless the debuff disappears before you have a chance to.
Use cleanse spirit if: The target is outside your totem range, has a poison+disease+curse on him, or any combination of the 2, or is not in your group.
The only thing of slight difficulty regarding cleansing is knowing when it's smarter to interupt your heal in order to cleanse. This just comes with knowing the encounter...and yes there are many occasions where this is necessary, with poisons such as the necrotic poison in naxx.
Totems
The awful signature of our class... Keep them down ALWAYS, this is what separates the good shaman from the ok. It's surprisingly easy to do...yet so many don't just because it's annoying, and it takes up 4 seconds. Well annoying or not, these are HUGE buffs, so get use to dropping totems before fights, after fights, during fights, while running, whenever, and wherever you can. The key is to use your time wisely so you don't end up losing your totems mid battle when you're loaded down, chain casting and can't spare the gcd. You should already know what totems to drop and when...but in case you don't I'll touch on it briefly.
Earth
Str- this gives quite the buff to any physical dps class... 155 str and agi is quite a lot. If no enh sham, or DK is present drop this.
Otherwise, use stoneskin or tremor at your discretion.
Fire
Flametongue- 144 spell damage/healing, drop this if no ele sham, or demo lock is present
If an ele sham, or demo lock is present, make your best effort to drop your dps totems to max effect, searing, nova, magma... etc etc
Water
Mana Tide to be used to restore your mana battery, as well as your groups Smile: Restores 24% of a player’s mana over 12 seconds. 5-minute cooldown.
Mana spring for any fight with any length. Restores 106 mp5 with talents or 85 mp5 untalented at Level 80.
Healing stream for shorter fights where a lot of people are taking a lot of damage: Amount healing depends your +spell power.
Talents boost the amount healed by 25%. A (useless)glyph boosts the amount another 20%
Poison cleansing, or disease cleansing totem: refer to cleansing section.
Both mana spring, and healing stream totem, now stack.
Air:
Windfurry: 5% melee haste if no frost dk is present
other wise Wrath of air: 5% spell haste.
Stats: stats...stats, and their various healing efficiency value for resto shams are kind of up in the air right now. So I'm just gonna briefly overview some useful tidbits here while the theorycrafters work their magic...
so until that magic is worked, some basic stuff=
1 int, when properly speced=
1.1 int
0.6 mp5
0.33 crit rating
and 0.18 spell power
As you can see, int is just full of goodies. As a resto sham you're going to want to have a decent amount of stam, so you don't get one or two shotted and can survive the encounter and keep others up. You're also going to want a good amount of int with a lot of spell power, and snag as much mp5 as you can without gimping your int and sp, as both those stats outweigh mp5 atm. To what extent int outweighs mp5... I don't know just yet, but i will find out Smile
5 man healing
All of the 5 mans are pretty easy to heal with a competent tank as a resto sham, so it's not really an uphill battle or anything.
For 5 man healing, your healing spell priority is something along the lines of riptide, HW, LHW, and CH if there is aoe dmg and everyone is closish together.
With a decently geared tank ES and rolling riptides will keep them up for most all of the trash, so don't expect to be doing a whole lot for most of the 5 mans. However, this slow pace gives you a great opportunity to practice honing some of your utility skills: cleansing, totems, keeping tidal waves up, and it gives you a chance to experiment with staying out of the fsr etc etc. Of course, with super trash, or a poorly geared tank, this is not quite the case, as you will actually have to do a decent amount of healing.
If the tank is taking steady damage, and has a decent hp pool, healing wave is your best bet. This is because it's one of the most efficient heals you have. (second only to chain heal hitting 2+ targets w/o overheal) Also, if you crit with it, and none of it is overheal, then someone is also going to get a big ancestral awakening heal.
If the tank is taking spuratic bursty damage then lesser heal wave is your best bet. This is also true if your party is taking lots of bursty damage. Unless they are semi-closely grouped, and you have time to get a chain heal off. Otherwise relying on rip tide/lhw with ancestral awakening is a safe bet.
Talents-
Required
Restoration
I
Imp Healing Wave 5/5
makes your healing wave useful, a static ~17% haste for it.
II
Ancestral Healing 3/3
With our high crit rates, it basically gives everyone you heal 25% more armor, works great with chain heal bouncing to all the melee as well
III
None of the tier 3 talents are required, but 3/3 imp water shield is very helpful, as is 3/3 healing focus, and tidal force is very nice to use in conjunction with NS, since they share the same length cooldown.
IV
Restorative Totems 5/5 -pre req for mana tide, also substantially boosts the mp5 from mana spring, and the healing from healing stream. Your mana spring goes from 85mp5 to 106mp5 with talents.
V
Nature's Swiftness 1/1
Your insta heal. A great OS button for saving tanks or whoever, that should be macrod in conjunction with tidal force.
VI
Purification 5/5
Boosts healing by 10%, 'nuff said.
VII
Mana Tide 1/1
A great asset to you and your group, its one of the main reason resto shams go into the healer group.
Cleanse spirit 1/1
Your decurse/cleanse poison/cleanse disease all in one.
VIII
Imp Chain heal 2/2
makes your haxor CH even more hax
Nature's Blessing 3/3 *unless your going to try dw CH spam, then you would go 2/3 here and 1/2 blessing of the eternals
Boosts your healing by 15% of your int, making int awesomesauce
IX
Earth Shield 1/1
A great asset, and it gives you that much more of a buffer for tank healing.
Imp Earth Shield 2/2
Makes your ES even stronger, and makes it eaier to multi task while keeping this on someone.
X
Tidal Waves 5/5
You need this. This is a proc you rely on a lot, and its what makes LHW and HW worth using.
XI
Riptide 1/1
An insta regrowth basically. Great ofr fights that involve movement, and good to use as a hot, also procs imp watershield if you have it, and tidal waves.
Enhancement
Required
I
Ancestral Knowledge 5/5
Boosts your int by 10%, makes int even better.
The rest can be used to your discretion. The build I liked when 25 man resto healing was: »www.wow-tools.org/talent-calcula···22331251
There are plenty of variations, and I'll let you do what you want with the rest of your points assuming it works.
Glyphs Required-
Major-Glyph of chain heal
Minor-Glyph of water shield
Recommended others for raiding=
Major-Glyph of earthliving weapon
Major-Glyph of water mastery
Major-Glyph of lesser healing wave
Major-Glyph of mana tide
Minor-Glyph of Rebirth
DW CH spam spec
If you want to try this, you better be geared/chanted to the teeth, and know how to play it. Yes you will be spamming CH, but that doesn't mean you get to neglect your other shaman responsibilities, cleansing, totem dropping etc etc
This is the spec I would recommend if you want to try this
»www.wow-tools.org/talent-calcula···12200000
though we could talk about others
To be noted with DW CH spam spec:
shamelessly stolen from EJ
"Dual Wielding as Resto
Resto shaman have the ability to dual wield weapons by putting 30 points in the Enhancement tree (0-31-40). This allows us to enchant two weapons with spellpower and apply Earth Living Weapon to both weapons -- nearly doubling our chance to proc ELW. However, we must sacrifice the deeper talents in the Resto tree and give up Earth Shield, Tidal Wave and Riptide. At this point, we do not know if this is a viable spec for raiding at Level 80. If shaman end up spamming Chain Heal 90% of the time, it could be an option.
* Heal Power bonus stacks from dual wielding with ELW
* ELW on both weapons is increased by 30% with 3/3 Elemenal Weapons.
* Earthliving proc does NOT stack. Buff is refreshed.
* With the glyph, proc chance rises to 43.75%
Weapons to use in off-hand:
[Librarian's Paper Cutter]"
Glyphs to be used while CH spam spec
Major- Chain heal
Major- Earthliving
Major- Water Mastery
Minor- Water Shield | |
At_work
@pacbell.net | eh as for the work in progress as the top, the lines running through what i already finished didn't show up, so eh yea lol. | |
fireballin
join:2008-11-11
Auburn, WA
| Whats up with the Librarian's Paper Cutter for OH? A joke, or to use for the crit bonus from it?
I know that no top lvl(blues or purps) spell power things are one-hand, but i think that there are a few green quality that are one hand weaps, could be wrong tho, great post btw | |
At_work
@pacbell.net | You don't see offhand with spell stats, even greens. The librarians cutter is probably the best with both crit and haste, though there are other options, including greens of intellect etc etc. | |
fireballin
join:2008-11-11
Auburn, WA | then would the haste/crit from LPC outweigh even some of the mediocre offhand items then? | |
At_work
@pacbell.net
| The whole point of trying the debated 0/31/40 spec is for dual wielding. There are countless better offhands/shields that are far superior to that dagger.
The bonus you get from dual wielding is: It allows you to put eathliving weapon on both weapons (~600sp) and put 63 sp chant on both weapons, (126sp) having earthliving weapon on both weapons also brings the earthliving proc rate to 43.75% with the glyph.
I'm pretty sure all this info is in there though.
That, and as pointed out in the guide, the 0/31/40 spec's usefulness is debatable. I just threw it in there to get full coverage over the resto spectrum. | |
Don69Fire
Premium
join:2006-12-28
Danville, WV | thanks man. this changed they way i looked at healing on shamans. this explained a lot for me. thanks so much... | |
Mystic95Z
join:2005-05-10
Sellersburg, IN
| reply to At_work
Interesting post, thanks. The DW spec is intresting I might just have to give it a try out. See my current spec and gear below.
»www.wowarmory.com/character-shee···&n=Zeuhl | |
Don69Fire
Premium
join:2006-12-28
Danville, WV
| i noticed that you didn't put any points in healing grace. how is your threat without it??? do you ever have trouble not pulling aggro. i noticed that when i done some healing with my shaman it made a huge difference putting trhe 3 points in it. whats your thought on it... | |
AMDGamer
join:2003-10-15
Warren, MI
| IMHO Healing Grace is not worth it anymore. With threat worked out for tanks, I've never specced into it post-wrath. Pre-wrath it was needed because the threat from CH was insane, I was always riding the coattails of tanks in threat.
--
| |
Don69Fire
Premium
join:2006-12-28
Danville, WV | sweet. i have not healed since the x-pac. i am glad they changed it. thanks man. greatly appreciated. | |
Mystic95Z
join:2005-05-10
Sellersburg, IN | reply to Don69Fire
Yeah, I dont have any problem with aggro at all without it. Like the previous poster said it's pretty much a waste of points these days. | |
Don69Fire
Premium
join:2006-12-28
Danville, WV | what about not putting 2 more points in healing way to get the +18% healing??? | |
At_work
@pacbell.net
| Mystic-
Your gear is fine to attempt the 0/31/40 spec. Just be aware of all that you are giving up to basically become a ch spam bot. Its a spec that will shine on fights where everyone is taking a ton of dmg, sarth +2 or 3 comes to mind. Though it might be lackluster on plenty of other fights. If you try it, just be sure that your raid leader knows, so you will appropriately be placed on keeping the raid up.
With this you're going to want to stack haste, crit, and int.
Don-
Healing grace is no longer required for raiding, assuming you have competent tanks. For pug heroics, where you might not have the luxury of competent tanks, I can see it having a use; but waiting for the tank to drop to ~50% then landing a big heal on him should still give even the crappiest tank plenty of time to build aggro without you having to worry much about it.
As for healing way, 1 pt still gives you the 18% bonus to healing, you just only have a 33% chance for the buff to be applied to the target. In 3.08 they also made it so that only 1 stack is required to get the full 18%, instead of 3 stacks. So even with only a 33% chance to be proced, it should always be up on a target that you're spamming HW on. | |
Mystic95Z
join:2005-05-10
Sellersburg, IN | Crap after looking at the other maces I have in my inventory they are all MH maces /grr. What would be a good OH to go after to give this a try? | |
Brazbit
Randomness Personified
Premium
join:2003-10-22
Port Orchard, WA
 ·wavebroadband
| reply to Don69Fire
said by Don69Fire  :i noticed that you didn't put any points in healing grace. how is your threat without it??? do you ever have trouble not pulling aggro. i noticed that when i done some healing with my shaman it made a huge difference putting trhe 3 points in it. whats your thought on it... I intentionally don't pick this talent up for two reasons. First tanks rarely if ever loose in a threat race with me. Secondly I tend to raid with an awesome healing priest and we both are very close in healing threat when I have the talent. By my not having the talent on the rare occasion a mob gets loose it comes and bashes his face against my shield for a second or two until a tank picks it up rather than having the priest for a snack.
--
And so it goes in life.... one minute everything is coming up roses the next you are being torn apart amongst the thorns. | |
At_work
@pacbell.net
| reply to Mystic95Z
As posted earlier in this thread, and in the guide; all the spell power greens blues and epics are mainhand only. Your best bet for trying the 0/31/40 would be the librarians paper cutter boe blue dagger, since it has haste/crit on it, or any number of assorted greens of blues of intellect, as int=mp5, mana, and spell power. | |
pwrtoppl
C-C-C-Combo Breaker
join:2008-11-21
Broomfield, CO
clubs: | reply to At_work
nice guide, saw this shammy in my guild heal for 9300 without crits on a chain heal...it was sick | |
At_work
@pacbell.net
| That's a pretty large CH w/o a crit, assuming he had a trinket going and the CH consumed a riptide.
To be noted, I'm also working on an ele guide, if there's interest i'll post it also. Its a bit more in dept, it includes links to wmo and wws to show various comparisons of my various runs and tests on different encounters. | |
Tehuno
join:2005-01-18
Bartlesville, OK
| i wouldnt want to do the DW spec i dont think, i use riptide, es, and take advantage of tidal waves way too often to just mindelessly spam CH. you may gain a whopping 250 SP( 63 sp chant, and 185 from earthliving), vs losing 8k armor, other stats such as int and haste/crit would be nullified by a good shield in place of a OH. not worth the survivability hit.
i would LOVE to have the threat talents on fights like sarth + 3, but shamans just cant afford to give up any more output for it.
I also dont like not taking 3/3 healing way. Unless its patchwerk, the chances you are spamming HW are slim to none. And also with 3/3, you can keep the buff up on multiple people at the same time, and not have to hope that you get that 33% proc chance.
Also may want to suggest glyph of healing wave, its very nice to heal yourself for 20% when you and your tank are low, but you know you have to heal him or he dies(another sarth/3 reference lol) | |
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