Here will just be some notes and tips that I have learned while playing the shaman class.
Please note that this version is now outdated, please refer to the new shaman notes for the most updated information.
Gear Choices
Shamans have a /5 spirit ratio and have no innate means to have spirit regen within the 5SR, therefore it’s quite easy to deduct that we will need a healthy amount of Mana/5s to keep up with our Mana needs.
My personal preference for gear is Mana/5s > Healing > Int > Stam. Which, of course, is subject to my baseline requirements in each which is something like 1k +Heal, 100mp/5, 6k Health and 9k Mana. I had lower stats then that when I first specced resto and had little problems solo-healing most Heroics. Basically if you stick to mail healing peices and avoid spirit healing items (ala Karazhan rep healing ring), you should be fine, for starters the 70 quest rewards that give you mail pieces with Sta, Int, superb MP/5 and sockets are very good until you get heroic/epic replacements.
As for enchants it’s pretty straight forward, with preference to 6mp/5 on chest and bracers, +healing on gloves and rings (if you’re enchanter), Boar’s Speed on boots, Intellect on shield. The area for debate is your weapon enchant, where I very much prefer spellsurge over +81 healing, since I’ve found that most of the time I am OOM rather than my heals not catching up to the mob’s damage (mind you we run Karazhan with Pally, Shaman, Shadow Priest, Feral Druid).
For trinkets I also prefer ones that enhance mana endurance, and since I’m a JC there’s not better choice than the Talasite Owl. (More on trinket choices after patch 2.1)
Royal Nightseye (9Heal, 2MP/5) are the preferred gems. And Insightful Earthstorm Diamond for your meta socket. But that one has a very harsh color requirement where you need 8 other sockets for it to work (3 Royal Nightseyes, 3 Dazzling Talasites, and 2 Luminous Noble Topazes), but the bonus is worth it. If you’re short on sockets or don’t want to go through the pain, the +18sta meta with Royal Nightseye stuffed in every socket will do fine.
MP5 vs INT vs Healing
Actually, I prefer to only compare MP5 vs INT because it’s the easier to quantify. In terms of +healing the only way to compare it to MP5 is when you are sure your +healing is enough that you can down rank a heal to cover your healing needs, then used the mana saved via the down-ranking to calculate an over all gain in mana. I’m too lazy to do such an analysis.
MP5 and INT are directly related. The only difference is that MP5 is a linear mana gain, and regardless of the fight it provides the same benefit throughout. INT on the other hand is a front-loaded mana gain (with a slight exception, explained later): the longer the fight, the less useful INT is. One INT equals 15 mana, whereas 1 MP5 equates to 15 mana after 15 ticks, or 75 seconds; therefore, in a fight shorter than 75 seconds (trash, 5 mans), 1 int is going to provide you with far more benefits than 1 MP5.
On the other hand, WoW itemization is not based around the 1mp5:1INT ratio. According to socketing rules, 4 int is equivalent to 1.5 MP5 (this figure is rounded up for hybrid gems, and hence Dazzling Talasite and Royal Nightseye provide above-the-norm benefits). 4 int equals 60 mana, which is equalled by 1.5 MP5 over 40 ticks, or 200 seconds, which is the approximate duration of a Karazhan boss fight. Everything in 25 seems to last over 5 minutes which would mean that MP5 is superior in almost all cases.
However, int in the eyes of a resto shaman is not only front-loaded mana, but also MP5 AND +healing; due to Mana Tide and the 35 talent, respectively. Every five minutes, you gain 24% of your mana from Mana Tide, therefore every point of int equates to 3.6mp per 5 minutes, or 0.06 MP5 (lol). A trivial amount, but something to take into consideration, since you are gaining 1 Mp5 for every 17 int.
If you already have a healthy amount of healing (1400+), Dazzling Talasites are definitely a fine choice for blue sockets.
Talent Choices
From a PvE perspective 43 points in Resto is almost a given. I’d say the other 10 (Nature’s Guardian and Tidal Mastery) are very close to must have. A free self heal and I can’t count the number of times it has saved my life. If you don’t like it’s 50% nature feel free to stuff it in for cheaper totems. Tidal Mastery has good synergy with Ancestral Healing, and +25% armor on your tank is nothing to scoff at.
The last 8 points which I’ve put in Ancestral Knowledge and Guardian totems is a pure playstyle choice. You could either dump them in Totemic Focus + Focused Mind, or Concussion + Elemental Warding. At my stage in raiding, 2 seconds off my Grounding Totem is gold. Totemic Focus is very situational, and Focused Mind is unreliable. Since you drop totems and then drink before most fights, you at most have to re-drop your totems maybe once or twice during a long fight, not worth the 5 points.
Healing
Earth shield the tank and use Max Rank Healing Wave to heal him. On certain fights you want to Earth shield yourself (Aran). On fights you take damage like Illhoof, keeping water shield up will help your mana pool greatly. Chain heal for any fight where more than 1 person is taking damage and people aren’t too spread out.
I’d say the staple for shaman healing is Chain Heal. It’s efficiency is unrivaled and the initial heal is good enough to keep up with most tanked damage. Make sure your group knows that you will chain heal and sticks together when situations allows for.
The most difficult decisions to make will be when to re-drop your totems. Prioritize your totems and stagger the refresh. It’s OK for windfury to be down a few seconds (the buff itself lasts 8 secs), and it’s better to be not buffed for a few seconds than risk your tank dying because of you chaining 3 totem drops.
Earthshield is a unique spell in that it is not affected by downranking penalties. Hence, your rank 1 earthshield and rank 3 earthshield’s only difference should be the base amount of healing. This means that the more +healing you have, the less mana efficient rank 3 becomes. You can save alot of mana if you keep rank 1 up on the tank instead of 3 during the fight, and in most long boss fights I suggest downranking.
Macros
If you have more than one of those healing relics, then you should be macroing them into your heals for maximum efficiency. Totem of Healing Rains from Maiden in Karazhan for Chain Heal, Totem of the Plains from a quest in Nagrand for LHW, and Totem of Spontaneous Regrowth from Heroic Slave Pens for HW.
/cast [name of heal]
/equip [name of relic]
This will help you get maximum efficiency on each of your heals without needing you to manually swap relics. Back in 1.0x they introduced the GCD to equipping items, however, you can still equip items while inside another GCD and not invoke the GCD. The power of the heal is determined while it goes off, therefore using this macro will not interfere with your heals, nor cause any unnecessary GCDs.
Note: If you’re moving while you hit the macro and you equipped a different totem than the one in the macro, you will invoke a GCD because of item swap. It is also not not advisable to spam these macros. If you’re a button masher, I suggest you just place the spell in the hotkey slot, not these macros; I advise against button mashing as a healer though.
Tips
Maiden of Virtue – Grounding totem absorbs holy fires, thats 5 people immune to the single spell that can even come close to killing anybody in that fight, just make sure they’re in range tho.
Moroes – Get every one to stand near the tank if they’re garroted, that way you can keep them up with Chain Heal and heal the tank at the same time.
Curator – Cuddle up near Curator and just spam chain heal, you wont’ have to worry about who’s tanking hateful bolts and your melee doesn’t have to chase everyone around. Does require good dps/manapots/shadowpriest to keep yourself from being OOM tho.
Aran – Earthshield yourself. If you have to at 40% just LHW yourself and tank the water elements. Try your best to help out with disrupting his casts, and heal with LHW, the fight is short enough you won’t run OOM. Avoid blizzards early and don’t get trapped in a flame wreath next to him. Save heroism for 40%
Malchezaar – Run up and place a fire elemental at 61% and hit heroism at 60. It’ll help with your healing and speed up the risky phase 2.
Would you select Totemic Focus over Tidal Focus from your experiecne?
Moliu: Never, unless you never needed to heal and only had to drop totems.
Does this look kinda like your build?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GZxbZEf0tAeotek
Moliu: almost, 1 in improved ankh and 2 in chain heal.
How much +Heal,+Mp5s,Mana pool do i need to heal in heroics smoothly?
atm i have 939+heal
120 mana regen while casting
8500 mana pool
Moliu: Thats more than I had when I started off as resto and solo healed heroics (with feral off healer when needed). But I’d say it would also depend on your tank, my tank had pretty much the best 70 blue tanking gear so that would also make a difference
Great article. I have the exact build but I have two in imp reincarnate and 4 in nat. guardian.
My question is … at what point is downranking chain heal going be affected by downranking penalties?
Moliu: Good Q, something I haven’t put much effort into finding out. A quick research revealed this page which would mean these ranks of chain heal get the following penalties: R4 – 95.7%, R3 – 85.7%, R2 – 74.3%, and R1 – 65.7%. However, I’m at office and I can’t confirm any of this for ya.
I read your guild. and wanted to give my view and experience. I hope I am welcome to do so.
Gear
Enchants is not as straight forward when you go along. 30 heal on bracers or 6mp5 depens on where you are playing. 30 heal is better in heroics and kara. 6mp5 used at magtheridon and up. My strategy was to max out on healing and totally neglect my mp5. this way I was able to heal all heroics. Including SL, SH and arca. Pre-nerf. There rarely is a fight that last longer then 3 min of intensive healing.
why 9 stam + minor speed on boots ? Vitality on Boots is better then that. Also is the pure stamina. Int on shield till Gruul yes. But from magtheridon and further. Stam on shield is better. (yes u need loads of stamina later on)
I’m no JC. And I use 1 healing trinket and 1 mana regen trinket. Mixing around what I have. A USE-trinket that gives a lot more +heal. using that trinket to buff up my Earthshield and my Healingstream totem.
When you use a Meta, don’t take gems to get that meta to be active. Rather pick your gems and see which meta works with him. For this reason I use Mystical Skyfire Diamond. I also use Royal Nightseye (9Heal, 2MP/5) on almost all my sockets. No matter what the bonus is. I prefer 9 healing over the 4 int bonus. Only in SSC and up there are a few socketbonus of 9 healing. Only on those I use Dazzling Talasite.
When you look at your stats. Try to get this ratio. 10 healing for 1mp5. (1000 healing 100 mp5, 1600 healing 160 mp5)
Talents
Please do use 2 points in chain heal buff. This is the (game) shaman strongest heal. Max it !
I personally rarely us a HW. HW is useful on bosses where you have to spread out and heal a lot. CH won’t jump there. When you look at the role of a shaman in the raid. He will have to random heal and mass heal a croud. Healing way is only usefull when you are solo healing a tank. other classes are way better on that then shamans. mostly I use LHW and CH. Or NS+HWr10 (nature swiftness + healing wave rank 10) therefor healing way is kinda useless. Cus you will not heal that target again within that given time
Healing
Ok, I wanna split this in 2 groups if you don’t mind. Cus your healing role differs a lot.
always use your mana tide when you are at 50% mana. Use a mana pot when you are below 25% mana and you think you won’t have enough mana to finish the job.
5-man / Heroic
Depending on your gear, but I just take that your gear is equal to the place you are, blow all your + heal (orc racial thingie, Wrath of air, trinkets) cast Earth shield on your main tank. And place healing stream. (you don’t need mp5 in heroic / 5-man like I said befor.) don’t use HWr10. use LHW. This is the only way to keep an undergeared tank up in heroics. If he still dies. Then either your tank is to much undergeared or something went wrong. Als use CH depending on your group setup.
Raid
a few bosses take longer then 6 min therefor cast mana tide at 75% now. And use mana spring.
Keep in mind that Earthshield gives your tank more Threat. So give max rank ES at the start of a boss fight and lowest rank during a boss fight or at trash. Use CH as your primary heal. Shaman is the best cross over healer. Meaning we will out heal any class when the raid takes much damage. Main healing a tank is not using our healing power to a greater extend. Assist healing a tank is needed at time though.
Most heroics don’t require a great deal of mp5. I switch from my mp5 set and stack healing for heroics. If I’m really in a pinch.. I can cycle pots and drop tide but most of the time I keep tide for more of the “oh crap, this is gonna be awhile” moments.
This was a great article for me starting as a resto shaman. It was very informative for the starter resto and taught me things I wouldn’t have otherwise thought of for resto shamans. I recently respeced for these exact reasons, raiding and heroics. Thanks for making this available.
Leveling a shaman to be resto. When should i go full resto what level? Little off topic what is the best spec to level a shaman? Thanks for all the good info.
Moliu : enhance is the easiest spec to level solo (elemental doesn’t work because of gear and lack of anti-pushback). If you’re going to level in a group then you might want to go resto, otherwise enhance until 70 before you respec. Quest reward wise gear up your enhance to speed up your leveling. You’ll get good enough healing pieces from outland quest rewards.
In response to Moliu’s response to Ramram, I would offer my own opinion.
I would agree that Enhancement is easiest to level, because your damage is less dependent on mana than other builds.
Elemental is very viable for leveling, but takes a little more skill and patience. Once you get into the midlevels, you will need to drink occasionally, but otherwise it can be just as effective as Enhancement for soloing, and offers greater flexibility for a dps/off healing dual role in groups. I have been leveling a Draenei Elemental shammy and it has been fun. If you would like me to elaborate, just ask.
Resto can solo very effectively once you have Earthshield (level 50), but is fairly slow. Unless you are leveling with a group, I would not recommend speccing Resto until level 58, when you can get ES and put 5 points in Concussion and 3 points in Fire Totems. If you solo a lot through your 60s, I would pick up Convection, Elemental Focus, and maybe Reverberation along the way. If you stick to mobs your level or lower, you can easily get into a rhythm where your Earthshield keeps your HP up, and let your mana totems and outside-the-5-second-rule regeneration keep your mana up. And with a Resto build you can instantly be ready to main-heal 5-mans along the way.