Resto Shaman Healing in Cata

[havik02]

So I have replaced all my greens with blues and have attempted running some random heroics. Needless to say i got my but whooped. Everyone was taking way too much damage for any one healer to manage. My question to anyone who reads this how are us shamans supposed to deal with this. Stack haste? Stack Spirit so we spam healing surge? or are heroics just not viable for pugs right now? Very frustrated help me out.

[Bashal]

Everyone was taking way too much damage for any one healer to manage [...] how are us shamans supposed to deal with this.

You don't.

The group needs to learn what damage is avoidable and avoid it. You aren't supposed to have the healer just power through it. The mechanics of the bosses and even the mobs are supposed to matter. And they do.

I'm finding that with 5-man buffs, around 2.7k mp5 in combat, 10% haste, 22% crit and 10 mastery does fine so far in heroics. I use reckless gems (int/haste). I've tried to look up what the experts say about resto shammies, haven't had much luck finding anything solid (EJ is hell to search through, google turns up conflicting opinions, or no real opinion at all), so I'm winging it at the moment.

I would stay away from pugging heroics for the time being; if you have guildies you can run with, do that.

[The_TempesT]

Hey Havik.

I'm a Resto shaman and I've gotten all 346 gear from heroics and Justice points. Many of that was from pug groups so let me give you a few tips.

First off, if DPS is getting hit by aoes a lot, there is not much you can do. You really should only ever be healing DPS with riptide, and very rarely (when your starting heroics) healing rain. If the tank is not taking any damage then you can spare some regular healing waves on the dps. If dps is taking to much damage, you need to just let them die. Wasting mana on them and not being able to heal your tank is worse then keeping 1 dps alive. Hopefully they will get the picture eventually, if not, get them kicked and replaced.

When healing a tank you want to keep a riptide rolling on them all the time, and always have earth shield on obviously. When that is done you want to be constantly casting healing wave on the tank as much as possible, and you don;t want to use Greater healing wave unless healing wave can't keep up any longer.

When your using Greater Healing wave, its a good idea to combine it with Unleashed Life. This will make it 30% stronger. If you want to go even more then this, and you have 3 points into focused insight (the shock talent for resto) use flame shock or earth shock on the mob, use unleashed life on your tank, then use GHW on your tank. This GHW will be healing for 60% more due to these two buffs. You don't have to do it this way but I do recommend at least combining GWH with unleashed life whenever you can as it is a little bit more efficient.

Healing rain does become one of your very best friends when you get a bit bigger mana pool. When you start using it, make sure everyone goes inside it. I would go even as far as combining a macro with a yell command to tell people to go in the damn circle!

Also I am happy to report that now that my gear is getting better, i can already see chain heal getting new life. It is not nearly the chain heal of old, but it is starting to gain a few uses.

I hope this will help you. Good luck and have fun.

EDIT:
Just a couple other things I forgot to point out. Don't be afraid to use mana tide as much as possible. And on boss fights I would recommend using mana tide when you are at 60-70%. Some boss fights are long and this way you can probably use it twice during the fight.

Also when you have a mage in the group, or a dps shaman. Try to make them use lust/time warp instead of you. That 6k+ mana can be used to heal instead of lust! Always a good tip.

Also I like mana spring more then healing stream (unless i have might). So I recommend using that instead of healing stream.

[Bashal]

Also I like mana spring more then healing stream (unless i have might). So I recommend using that instead of healing stream.

If you have pretty good mp5 already, I find that glyphed healing stream can be more useful. A constant (albeit gimpy) hot on everyone, plus a lot of resistances, which cuts damage taken from frost, fire, and nature by around 25%.

You may find it's situational, and sometimes one is better than the other. Just wanted to throw that out there.

[Knowledge]

First off, if DPS is getting hit by aoes a lot, there is not much you can do. You really should only ever be healing DPS with riptide, and very rarely (when your starting heroics) healing rain. If the tank is not taking any damage then you can spare some regular healing waves on the dps. If dps is taking to much damage, you need to just let them die. Wasting mana on them and not being able to heal your tank is worse then keeping 1 dps alive. Hopefully they will get the picture eventually, if not, get them kicked and replaced.

Amen! I know its hard to let people die sometimes but if they are being dumb and standing in the poison...so be it. Being dumb = no heals from me! If they cry about it just be honest and say 'Sorry bro, if you stand in the purple circle, you don't get heals, I got other players that are actually paying attention that need it more than you. It's not your job to carry people that are not paying attention!

When healing a tank you want to keep a riptide rolling on them all the time, and always have earth shield on obviously. When that is done you want to be constantly casting healing wave on the tank as much as possible, and you don't want to use Greater healing wave unless healing wave can't keep up any longer.

I agree 100%. And don't just spam RipTide to be sure they have it, actually watch and wait for it to almost end...if you're casting it 10 times when you could have casted it 3 times, you're wasting mana! Earth Shield needs to be on your tank at all times period!

When your using Greater Healing wave, its a good idea to combine it with Unleashed Life. This will make it 30% stronger. If you want to go even more then this, and you have 3 points into focused insight (the shock talent for resto) use flame shock or earth shock on the mob, use unleashed life on your tank, then use GHW on your tank. This GHW will be healing for 60% more due to these two buffs. You don't have to do it this way but I do recommend at least combining GWH with unleashed life whenever you can as it is a little bit more efficient.

Ok, this is where skills come in versus just brute healing and huge mana pool! This is where you have to step your game up, instead of just spamming your heal on the tank like a robot healer, you have to use your combos! This is what I have been working on lately, learning how to throw a flame shock and then toss a big heal, or using my Unleash Elements and then throw a big heal...it takes some practice but this is key to being a good shaman healer or a GREAT Shaman healer....

Healing rain does become one of your very best friends when you get a bit bigger mana pool. When you start using it, make sure everyone goes inside it. I would go even as far as combining a macro with a yell command to tell people to go in the damn circle!

This spell can be your best friend or your worst enemy, the best time to use this is when everybody is stacked up. At a cost of almost 10K Mana, if you try and use this too often, it can kill you! The MACRO is a GREAT idea and I will be creating one as soon as I get home! I have a Macro for my Mana Tide totem to let everybody know that its down and that I am low on mana so if they have anything that can help me get mana to use it! The macro is easy to do, it would say something like:

/yell I SUMMON FORTH THE POWER OF THE MANA TIDE!
/cast Mana Tide Totem

I might do something like this for the Healing Rain:

/yell I SUMMON FORTH THE POWERS OF THE HEALING RAIN!
/cast Healing Rain

I try to tell all the ranged DPS to stand near me if possible that way we can all benefit from it.

EDIT:
Just a couple other things I forgot to point out. Don't be afraid to use mana tide as much as possible. And on boss fights I would recommend using mana tide when you are at 60-70%. Some boss fights are long and this way you can probably use it twice during the fight.

Also when you have a mage in the group, or a dps shaman. Try to make them use lust/time warp instead of you. That 6k+ mana can be used to heal instead of lust! Always a good tip.

Also I like mana spring more then healing stream (unless i have might). So I recommend using that instead of healing stream.

I agree with all of these things, Healing Stream is good for trash or questing but a lot of the heal it puts out will be 'over healing' which is a waste, most of your DPS classes will benefit from the mana as well. Having the resistances can be helpful, but the main thing to get out of all this is that these guys shouldn't be taking a lot of damage, if everybody is taking huge damage, then they are in the wrong place or doing something wrong!

Using the Mana Tide early is a good idea, its like potions...don't wait till the end, just pop one near the beginning and then you can probably pop a second one towards the end if you need to.

I use this same theory with Blood Lust, don't just save it for the last boss, you can use it on the first boss and if it takes you 10 minutes to get to the second boss....you're ready to rock it again. I always try and have the Mage use their Time Warp instead of using Blood Lust if possible to save mana.

This was a Great post by The_TempesT...

[Peden]

I have found healing stream saves me more mana then mana spring because it is consistent healing that you do not have to do saving you mana, plus giving you resist. I am not a fan of the focused insight, but definitely us unleash elements combo-ed as much as possible. Dps have to learn to move out of stuff, and avoid as much damage as possible. I will say I have found it hard to find good shaman forums compared to other classes lol.

[Airowird]

The best about Healing Stream is really that you can simply stop healing people past 80% and let HST, AA, EL, etc do the rest. You get more healing out of them that way and you can focus on healing more injured people (which heals for more thanks to mastery)

[mieteq]

Hey guys,

I am starting with healing l85 dungeons and was reading this and other forums. I have one question regarding Unleash Life. As I know it should be used to boost your next big heal I wonder when it is the best time to refresh it on a weapon again. Should this be done immediately after the enchant is unleashed/gone or a specific macro should be set up or else...?

Thanks in advance for help.

[Tsy]

I think you're misunderstanding the way the spell works. It's not like you cast "Unleash Life" and then your weapon enchant is gone. It's just a utility spell with an instant heal that buffs your next heal. The spell has a 15 second CD, so 15 seconds after you cast it, you can cast it again. You don't need to refresh it or anything like that.

[mieteq]

I think you're misunderstanding the way the spell works. It's not like you cast "Unleash Life" and then your weapon enchant is gone. It's just a utility spell with an instant heal that buffs your next heal. The spell has a 15 second CD, so 15 seconds after you cast it, you can cast it again. You don't need to refresh it or anything like that.

Yes. I've just checked it again and you're right. My bad.

Thanks

[kahlina]

Do any of you guys have any tips for healing raids? Chain heal seems to be pretty useless at the moment for the cast time vs the amount healed. Healing rain is nice, but some fights require players to spread out, it uses a significant amount of mana, and is on a 10 sec cd.

Healing surge is fast and efficient, but a mana drain.. GHW is a long cast time and doesn't heal for that much unless it crits. And yes, I use unleash elements prior to casting every time its up.

One fight in particular I'm struggling with is Halfus. By the time one drake and the whelps are down, I'm completely oom even after using any mana regens I have. The only thing saving us at this point is having a holy pally in group.. =/

I'm in all 346+ gear and have starting collecting epic pieces as well; so I've got the best available at the moment. I understand the mechanics have changed a bit, but it shouldn't be this discouraging.

[Zelfin]

Couple things I learned in Cataclysm Heroics.

1. Healing depends on the fight.
2. Always use Healing Stream Totem. Gives resists and healing which is less mana cost in the long run.
3. Do not stress if players get below 75% health (some people say 50%, i assume raid bosses could 1 shot a player at that point)
4. Haste and Healing Wave. I have reforged all my mastery items into haste, Healing wave is fairly quick now. With a 3k mana cost vs a 9k for Healing surge its much more effective mana wise. Still healing for approximately 11k-15k per wave.
5. Stay fluid. Be able to change your healing strategy midfight if something is not working.
6. Mana Tide totem. I cast this only during difficult/boss fights and always as soon as i am 15k mana down. With most bosses now this means you will get a 2nd Mana Tide Totem before the fight is completed. I have even had fights where i got 3 of them down. (Make sure to put up HST when the MTT goes away)

Disclaimer: This is only my opinion and things i have done. I can now heal heroic dungeons bosses without going OOM. This method will change as i get better gear and hit raids. This is by no means a set of rules, just ideas that work for me.

[Airowird]

First things first: Drop as much Mastery Rating as you can. Mastery is a tank-healing only stat for Resto Shamans.
Check gear options, reforge what you have into Spirit/Haste, it'll help you a lot in raids. (And if you're raid-ready, you can do heroics with that gear). try to keep your Haste & Crit at about the same unbuffed, which is the best HPS increase for single target heals.

#2: Spec/Glyph correctly. Are there talents that do not increase efficiency or mana regen that you can dump for better ones? I'm specificly talking about talents such as Focused Insight, which do not really help when you don't have time to DPS. You may want to keep Telluric Currents to regen tons of mana on damage-increase phases on bosses such as Arcanatron pools, Magmaw head or Maloriak green vial phase. Do you have the Water Shield Prime glyph? And the CH, HW & HST Major glyphs?

And finally: Healing Style: Still working on that part of my sham guide, but mostly, don't CH unless you can GUARANTEE 3 hits, preferably 4.
Make sure you have ES on the tank when you're healing them. Preferably with a Riptide rolling as well (Riptide ticks proc Ancestral Fortitude on crits!)
Focus mainly on Healing Wave & Riptide on CD, with GHW on people in danger of 1-shots (depending on encounter this is 30-60% HP)
Only use Healing Rain on large groups of people. Theoreticly, you'll need about 15-20 ticks of HR for it to equal CH in Healing done per cast, but in efficiency it can only really compare if you have your entire raid (or for 25mans, atleast half your raid) standing in it, so Earthliving can proc on all of them.

Resto Shams got it really hard atm, because you're meant to weave all your spells together, using Tidal Waves as much as you can. This truly is the hardest if you are 'fixed' on either tank or raid healing (filling in both roles would give you more options to grant & use TW buffs)

On Halfus, the healing tactics can really depend on which drakes you get, so it is pretty hard to advise on it, you will need to adapt evfery week to raid comp vs drakes comp.

On mana regen: There a lot of ways to regen mana. First of all, you should never be standing around doing nothing. If you got nothing to heal, use Telluric Currents, which gives you quite some regen. Secondly, macro your on use spirit/intellect trinkets to Mana Tide for max efficiency (the valor trinket is basicly a free mana pot here!).
And be efficient about your totems. Place them as central as possible, but don't be afraid to recall & redrop if you think they won't reach your raid. A decently placed totem can save you a lot of damage that needs to be healed otherwise! Also make sure you are popping Mana Tide early enough (check after a raid, while you're still buffed, how much mana regen you get from it, so you know what the earliest point in a fight is you can drop it without losing the regen). Also do not drop totems that others are already bringing! Got an SP buff (Mage, Ele Sham) in the group? Don't drop FT. Same goes for Earth & Air totems. Only your Water totem should always be up, even if it's 'just' Healing Stream (which does provide ~1% HP to your party every 2s, which does add up to a full HP bar every 3-3.5min)

[Karuma]

Okay these things are understandable. Here are some tips that i learned.
1) Learn the fight.
Take time to learn the boss and and in what phase you can focus on tank and in what phase you need to focus on the rest of the dps.
2) Healing Wave/Riptide is now your go to spells
Healing Wave becomes almost a free spell once you are in most 346 ilevel gear, and try to keep your riptide in cooldown.
3) ES/WS should be on at all times
This is pretty much the same from WOTLK
4)Cleanse stuff
In Woltk you could heal through curses and magic. Now we needed to cleanse them to make sure the dps survives
4) Learn the uses for your other spells.
Healing Surge for example is a quick spell to use if the party member is really trouble
GHW is a great spell if you want to get a big heal of on your tank. (hint: use it with UE for awesome results)
5) Conserve Mana.
If a dps insists on standing on fire, then let him die. He is not worth wasting you mana. get telluric current, there a lot of dull phases where the is little healing needed, this is a great time for you to gain some mana. I have also learned that you can use heroism and telluric currents to gain some much need mana back.

The best tip is tell your dps that they need to use survivability cool-downs to survive high damage phases.

[prohealsftw]

I read over the post on everyones ideas on shamman healing and alot are very good and true facts but what i have found being my 2 mains are a holy pally and resto shamman that shammans have to dps to keep mana just as paladins use judgement to return mana to their mana pool so i qould recommend putting talent points in the following talents [Telluric currents] and [concussion] so when possible throw a lightning bolt you will instant gett aroun 4-7 k mana back if ur not using vent and are in pugs make a macro letting people know ur not healing for a split second. also if you have any trinkets that proc spirit regen you should try and time your mana tide when they proc as to the totem and trinkets will stack and return a large portion of your mana. Def try and use your totem twice during fights. and all of this unleash elements talk is hosh posh only use it when u need a critical heal on the tank as to that 1600 mana used all the time is a waste

[Airowird]

proheals, please use punctuation & capitals, it makes posts easier to read.

As for what you said, Concussion is worth about 130 mana per LB, which is nothing compared to Elemental Precision (up to 1500 mana per LB in full T11 gear) The "4-7k mana" is pretty false, because you'ld need to be running around in 15k Spell Power to gain back 4k mana from LB.
You do not need a macro, DPS should ALWAYS pay attention to their health and LBing should not be an excuse to let people die. I've already mentioned spirit trinkets with MTT, guess you did not read all posts.

Unleash Elements is great if you need to move or if you want to buff Riptide or GHW, otherwise it is not useful. But the heal it'self is too low to be considered a "critical" heal. Healing Surge + Greater Healing Wave will give you more healing over the same time, it just costs tons of mana extra.

[prohealsftw]

Lol first off i'll spell however i want. Second were not talking about people that are sitting in full t11 gear. So your elemental Precision is of no use when your trying to go threw heroics. and the 4-7k mana is not false as to the first heroic i ran still in blues and greens the tank with 118k health pulled large trash mob and boss at same time most people would say o thats a wipe. but no due to the fact that i could regain mana from lightning bolt. I have been playing a shamman since bc and since we downed the LK 25man in Blood Legion and consider myself well read on shammans. so until your get your T11 GEAR i feel it is almost a must to spec into lightning bolt. This is not wotk and healing is not sitting back spamming heals. shammans are not dung healers there tank healers. with good gear they will be best healers in cata.

[Peden]

I have found that you do not need to spec into Telluric currents to keep your mana up. If you gem crit instead of haste the crit equals mana regen. Yes healing surge costs a lot of mana but if you use it with tidal waves there is a really good chance you will crit giving you 1745 mana. Yes your spells will take longer to cast but you will be able to use more healing surges. I also don't even use the water shield prime glyph because after 2,500 mp5 in battle it is no longer needed.

If people are running out of mana I would like to ask are you gemming pure haste like wotlk, or are they not using enchants like heartsong, and lastly what meta gem are you using?

[Airowird]

FYI, Healing Surge is far less efficient than either HW or GHW and with Tidal Waves, HW even comes very close in HPS due to how TW works.
More crit would only tip the balance away from HS, exactly because of how Tidal Waves works!
But Haste is indeed a VERY large mana burner, it can cost up to 3 Spirit in mana regen to balance out. If you have mana issues, getting more Spirit/Crit gear is definately the way to go!

Elemental Precision (even in heroics) is still the best talent to boost Telluric Currents mana gain, if you did the math you'ld know that. Not to mention that it helps guaranteeing spells such as Hex & Wind Shear to hit, which help you prevent damage (thus saving you lots of mana as well). It also scales with spell power, so if it is useful in heroics, it can only get better in raids (especially because you gain more hit chance from it!)
And if you really insist on your insane regen, let's apply science: Assuming your 7k numbers are crits, the so called 4k mana gains from Lightning Bolt, with max Telluric Currents, mean your Lightning Bolt does an average of 10,000 damage. The base damage at 85 is 770, meaning you need 9230 damage from Spell Power. At 2.5/3.5 scaling, this would require a total of 12922 Spell Power, which is double what you get in full epic gear, yet you claim to achieve this in blues and greens. With 5k Spell Power (a more realistic number) the damage Lightning Bolt does would be ... ~4342. Familiar number? Damage =/= Mana gain!

Having have healed tons of heroics, from careful tanks to "Wrath babies" chain pulling like hell, I can guarantee you that Shamans are one of the best 5-man instance healers. It is exactly because of the power of your Mastery as well as how Tidal Waves requires you to weave in Chain Heal/riptide regularly. As pure tank healer, you will not have the options to Chain Heal 4 targets or Riptide a person who does not yet have the HoT, making you either waste tons of potential healing (in order to get more on other spells), or ignore a large part of your talents. The same goes for pure AoE healing. And this is not just my opinion, all my guild's tanks as well as the other healers agree on me there.

You're right about one thing though, Shaman healers surely aren't dung healers and considering that they need to be way smarter than other healers and probably have the most annoying Mastery to work with, they will indeed be the best healers in Cataclysm. That is, if you define 'best' in terms of skill, not Healing Meters!
And healing now is pretty close to what it was in WotLK ... when you were raiding Naxxramas. Only the increase in regen will (most likely) be slower per Tier, and big heals are far more expensive now, making the ICC healing spamfest something of the past.

Off-Topic: If you don't care about your posts being easy to read, why should readers even care to read them? Maybe if you respect your readers, they will actually consider what you write rather than think you're just an arrogant 13y old enjoying the anonimity of the internet. I certainly have my doubts about the opinion of a player who cannot even spell his own class name correctly.

TL;DR: You should really read it. But if you don't; Healing Surge & Haste = empty mana bars, Elemental Precision = great tool for heroics & probably best regen talent if you have TC, 4k mana return from TC is male cow droppings, Shamans rock 5mans and require a skillful player to excel in raids, if you don't respect your spelling, do you even respect your own opinion? Or do you post for other reasons?

[Dizaster]

[QUOTE=Zelfin;482110]Couple things I learned in Cataclysm Heroics.

4. Haste and Healing Wave. I have reforged all my mastery items into haste, Healing wave is fairly quick now. With a 3k mana cost vs a 9k for Healing surge its much more effective mana wise. Still healing for approximately 11k-15k per wave.
QUOTE]

11 -15 K? i have very good gear and i cannot get it over 10K when it crits normally its 5,5 t 6,5 K .
I really could use some help here.

TY