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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTotem Talk: Restoration shaman Q&A
by Joe Perez 
Jan 11th 2011 at 1:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus), shows you how.
The last few weeks, we've gone over healing a couple of the dungeons in both normal and heroic, as well as the various gear that you can look forward to from the various encounters. We also went back and looked at the entirety of the year of 2010 for restoration shaman. This week, I thought we would take a break from that and instead address some concerns that have been brought up about restoration shaman.
For the last few weeks, I've been rolling through the official shaman and healing forums, Plus Heal and TotemSpot as well as various emails and comments from you the readers. There has recently been concern over our healing numbers in comparison to other classes', difficulty in healing certain fights, mana management problems, concerns over haste and questions about our raid viability as well as spell choices. Today I'd like to address some of those questions and concerns.
The last few weeks, we've gone over healing a couple of the dungeons in both normal and heroic, as well as the various gear that you can look forward to from the various encounters. We also went back and looked at the entirety of the year of 2010 for restoration shaman. This week, I thought we would take a break from that and instead address some concerns that have been brought up about restoration shaman.
For the last few weeks, I've been rolling through the official shaman and healing forums, Plus Heal and TotemSpot as well as various emails and comments from you the readers. There has recently been concern over our healing numbers in comparison to other classes', difficulty in healing certain fights, mana management problems, concerns over haste and questions about our raid viability as well as spell choices. Today I'd like to address some of those questions and concerns.
I can't heal these heroics; what am I doing wrong?
I saw quite a few threads about this; there are quite a few threads popping up on this all over the place. Resto shaman are starting to feel what I like to refer to as the "heroic crunch." We all know that healing is harder, and right now we don't outgear it. This means that instead of just "face-pulling" the entire instance, it takes time, communication and watching crowd control. As a healer, your job is tougher than ever before. You have to watch your mana constantly, you have to know when to manage your cooldowns, and you have to know what tool is right for the job.
A good question to ask yourself is are you using triage? One of the biggest problems I've noticed is that people feel that they need to heal everyone to full all the time no matter what. Learning how to properly triage will help you conserve mana, allowing you to heal for longer. If you see a DPSer constantly standing in something that is draining your healing and stressing your mana, you may just have to let them die. Remember, keeping your tank alive is your first priority, followed by yourself, then the rest of the group. Most DPS have ways to recover health, avoid damage for a bit of time, or in some cases even self heal. You have to learn when it is okay to not heal someone if it is a lost cause. Learn to recognize the signs.
Also keep with you the fact that you don't have to keep everyone at full. Someone coined the phrase that 50% is the new 100%, and in many ways, that is true. Until we out-gear the fights, don't expect to have everyone at full all the time.
Learn how to use your healing tools in the right situation. Keep in mind that spells like Chain Heal are now situational. There are times where you will want to rely on Healing Wave and others when you will need to use Healing Surge or Greater Healing Wave. Everything has a place; spend some time learning which spells to use in what situation. If something isn't working, don't be afraid to try something else. Remember, practice makes perfect!
Are you utilizing your cooldowns? Restoration shaman have some pretty amazing cooldowns. Spiritwalker's Grace is an ability I see quite a lot of people forgetting about when they talk about healing in heroics and raids. It lets you move and cast any heal while you are moving. There are a lot of fights that will force you to move out of the way, but the rest of the group and tank will continue to take damage. This 2-minute cooldown will let you get out of the bad while keeping your healing up -- use it!
Mana Tide Totem is another ability you should be utilizing frequently. Since it has only a 3-minute cooldown, there is no reason you shouldn't be using this often to keep your mana up. Using it when, say, your mana is at two-thirds of your total to fill back up will let you use it again later in a fight. I see too many people wait until they are already dangerously low on mana to use it. We'll talk more about that a little later on.
Do I have the right stats? Do I have enough haste or spirit? How about trinkets?
Shaman stats are something that will always be a topic of conversation. Right now, a big concern is whether or not healing shaman are stacking enough of the correct stats. Int is pretty much a given, as it gives us mana, spellpower, and to a lesser degree, mana regeneration. Everything a healer wants will have int on it. Haste is something that at the end of Wrath we were stacking to get the fastest heals, and it still continues to be useful now. Here's a quick breakdown of what you need to know for haste (at least for now):
262 rating Riptide gains one additional healing tick
610 rating Healing Rain gains one additional healing tick
916 rating Earthliving Weapon proc gains one additional healing tick
Once you get to 916 haste rating, you're pretty much set for heroics and raids. Think of this as your bare minimum haste rating. While more will continue to benefit you, once you reach this level, it's all right to sort of forget about haste for a while.
Spirit should hover somewhere around 2,000 by the time you're ready for heroics and raids. Remember, Meditation allows you to continue to regen 50% of your out-of-combat regeneration while in combat. Remember our Mana Tide Totem? It increases your spirit by 350% whenever you use it, giving your mana regeneration a serious boost whenever you use it.
After you've hit these levels, you can start looking at either crit or mastery. Mastery really comes into its own whenever you find yourself healing targets constantly at low health. So if you find yourself constantly healing targets near death or super-low health levels, you will get the most mileage. Progression raiding will likely see the most benefit of this. For all other instances, crit will be more valuable to you. Keep this in mind when reforging or choosing upgrades.
Tear of Blood is a fantastic trinket that you will hopefully get your hands on. It increases your spirit by a healthy amount and will go a very long way to helping your mana regeneration out. If you don't have much luck with drops and you're a jeweler, Figurine - Dream Owl is a good substitute until you can get the tear.
As far as purchasing gear, the very first thing you should spend your valor points on is a Core of Ripeness. Available for 1,650 valor points, this trinket significantly increases your spirit totals for 20 seconds at a time and on a meager 2-minute cooldown. That's an extra 1,926 spirit every 2 minutes. Combine that with your Mana Tide Totem and you have some serious mana regen. I use a macro to link both the trinket and mana tide at the same time.
#show
/Use 13 (or 14 depending on trinket slot)
/cast Mana Tide Totem
/y SPIRIT BOMB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every time I use it, my mana bar pretty much fills up so I can keep healing. Core of Ripeness should be your first valor purchase.
Our healing output is much lower than the other healers; what about my raid spot?
I'm seeing a lot of people posting links to World of Logs showing off the top 10 healers for various fights and showing how shaman aren't often among them. Truth is, number-wise, there are discrepancies between the healing classes -- but they aren't as vast as many people make them out to be. Remember that not everyone uploads their logs, so you're not seeing every single healer sampled on those fights. Also keep in mind that in Wrath, we suffered a lower healing per second than other healers in the Ulduar content release, only to come out on top at the end of the expansion. Another note here is that things are still balancing out, and it's early in the expansion yet.
I'm not going to harp on this for too long, but I've always hated meters for healing aside from seeing if someone is really sleeping on the job. The point of healing is surviving the encounter and keeping people up. So ask yourself, did your group survive to fight another day while you did everything you could to make sure they lived? If you did, congrats -- you did your job! The numbers don't really matter as long as you did everything you could and lived, while the boss died. Will HPS matter? When it comes time for heroic-mode fights, it very well may be, but unless you're getting ready to dive into heroic Blackwing Descent, don't sweat it for now. The truth is we offer a long list of buffs, versatility in crowd control, and solid healing for every situation. Our raid spots aren't in danger anytime soon, as long as you're making sure you are doing your job.
That's it for this week. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave comments here on the site. I'll do my best to answer in a timely manner. Next week, we'll talk more about heroic healing in the remaining instances.
Totem Talk: Restoration will show you the basics of endgame resto shaman play as well as how to find the expansion's best reputation gear for resto shaman and tips for easier leveling. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Tom Jan 11th 2011 4:05PM
Incidentally, that tank might want to rethink his gearing strategy. 180k? Eesh. 150k and some avoidance or mitigation would likely make him a far better tank.
Boobah Jan 11th 2011 4:53PM
"I've been better waiting until there's a larger deficit and using something else."
See, the idea is you use Healing Wave/Nourish/Heal/Holy Light while you're waiting to need something else. It's not huge throughput, but it costs almost nothing. And if you finish the spell before you need the something larger... well, that target has that much longer before they'll need the something larger.
My Healing Wave is only 8 or 9 K (on someone near full health), but it's always casting, giving me chances to proc with improved water shield, ancestral awakening, ancestral healing, and earthliving weapon. Maybe the other healers don't have that much going on with their base heal; I haven't done anything on any of them since Wrath ended.
Mark Jan 12th 2011 2:46AM
@Saeadame
This list helped me immensely when running with my druid thru the first few heroics:
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t110354-resto_cataclysm_release/#Our_spells
Frankly, if you're not using your hots to keep people above 80 and using nourish to fill, you're probably using too much mana. Nourish and lifebloom should use about the same or less mana than you can regen, very very efficient. for heavier damage, rejuvs, wild growth, and regrowth with clearcasting as much as possible.
Fujis Jan 12th 2011 9:17AM
@grimm Unless your tank is in full raid gear he has too much hp. 180k is overkill and he is probably losing out on mitigation/avoidance which will just make your job harder, he needs to think about regemming.
My usual tank (druid) sits around 150k and is gemmed/enchanted for avoidance/mitigation, I have no problem keeping him up in heroics with shield-riptide-GHW when needed then just use HW on the dps if needed. Usually manage to keep him and the dps 80-90% hp through all fights with no mana issues (my ilvl 359 ish)
On some fights in HoO i actually got outhealed by my totem and earth shield......
Verine Jan 11th 2011 1:41PM
My resto shaman has healed 2 heroics so far and has out geared regulars to the point that it's like the Wrath days. Both have been long affairs (2 hours) some bosses were one shots, some took 4-5 tries.
I specced telluric currents but right now I'm too busy healing to put it to use. What do you think of TE and is it worthwhile for you?
What's a good MH enchant? The Wrath Spell power one?
Joe Perez Jan 11th 2011 1:45PM
For weapons our best choice right now for 333 gear is Heartsong http://www.wowhead.com/spell=74225 It's cheap and increases spirit quite often so it helps with mana regeneration.
When you get a weapon you're going to hold onto for a long time, or maybe some nice epic, you can consider upgrading to Power Torrent http://www.wowhead.com/spell=74242 It's considerably more expensive, but 500 int is a delicious proc.
Azbec Jan 11th 2011 2:11PM
I have found Telluric Currents is useful in raiding situations. Very rarely have I found time to use it in heroics.
Of our new abilities, Unleash Life is the one I find to be very useful. I can use it before healing rain or chain heal to boost my AoE or I can use it before a big heal on the tank. There is talk of using it before a heal with a cast time and queing up a riptide so that it buffs both of them.
Try dropping GHW completely and use Healing Surge exclusively. As long as you have a charge of Tidal Waves HS has a 30% increased crit chance. Crits our our bread and butter for healing. They activate Water Shield, Ancestral Awaking and the damage reduction buff that I forget the name of.
-Cabo
Ice Jan 11th 2011 5:20PM
@Azbec
Unleash elements doesnt increase healing rain hot nor riptide hot (increases riptide first hit tho). Its DIRECT healing, so I dont think it works on all jumps at chainheal either.
Oriflame Jan 11th 2011 2:00PM
I understand that chain heal is situational, but I don't yet know what that situation is. How many hops have to land before it is a good choice? Is it a good choice at 3 (or whatever number) hops because it is more efficent than HW, or is it a good choice because it heals up faster than GHW.
I'm just not sure where it is supposed to fall on the spectrum.
Joe Perez Jan 11th 2011 2:07PM
I think that's the part most of us shaman healers are struggling with. All of the same rules apply though really, with few exceptions. Will it hit at least 3 people? Is there a lot of people clustered together? etc. It's just not something you want to use as your main tank heal really. A lot of the fights require people to spread out. If you cast chain heal and notice that people aren't close enough for it to jump, switch gears. Really, as sad as it is to say, it really is trial and error. Fights like magmaw, drop HR, HST and when people cluster up chain heal is a champion. But on fights like Om nom nom defense system say with Electron, people tend to be too spread out to make use of it so it's time to use a different heal.
Saeadame Jan 11th 2011 2:09PM
I think that Chain Heal has to a) not overheal and b) hit at least 3 targets to be worth using, imo.
Firestyle Jan 11th 2011 2:34PM
The problem with chain heal was that it was the answer to every situation. The problem with it now, is that it isn't the answer to any situation. It needs to be comparable to prayer of healing, which can hit 5 targets for about 10k. So chain heal needs to do about 50k healing, but spread over 4 targets. The way chain heal works not, it would have to hit target 1 for 31k, with a 40% reduction applied to each of the next three targets to net at 50.344k. This makes it a functional tank spam with residual applied to melee. Therein is the problem.
Cetha Jan 11th 2011 8:41PM
Honestly Chain Heal makes me so sad these days that I hardly ever use it, and have even considered removing it from my bars altogether (ok sight hyperbole, but you get my meaning)
However, what is now the most glorious healing spell known to man is my new lover Healing Rain, and I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned much in the article. Seriously Healing Rain is one of my favorite spells ever, and I fear that Blizz is gonna come along and nerf it in some horrible way that will make me very sad.
Remember how you used to spam chain heal all day long into the group of melee, and pray that someone didn't move in some wierd way to mess up how many bounces of the chain you got. Well now, all you have to do is place that healing rain marker over the group, cast your raindance and glory in all those drops of watery goodness healing everyone smart enough to stay standing in the rain without an umbrella.
Honestly enough can't be said for the glory that is healing rain. I am loving it so much. Especially in heroics, it's been such a good send to just fire off a healing rain so I can focus my attention into keeping the tank alive.
Embrace the Healing Rain and I promise you your life will be better.
Kuro Jan 11th 2011 2:04PM
One thing that helped me a lot with getting out of bad stuff is instant ghost puppy. I macro'd it to the same key I had blink macro'd (`) to on my mage and it was great way to avoid stuff. (I'm looking at you Valiona...)
However there is a bug (?) with it that causes healing rain to stop ticking when you're in ghost wolf form.
I'm rather frustrated with shaman healing compared with healing the same content on my Paladin with a different guild -- hope the patch will help a bit with some of throughput the issues.
Saeadame Jan 11th 2011 2:12PM
The healing rain thing could be somewhat like how Starfall stops killing things if you change into, say, travel form. It's not quite the same, but it's kind of cheap to be able to run through a bunch of people killing them with falling stars, and similarly it may be cheap to be able to stick down a "cast and forget" AoE heal and make a fast get away.
It's probably one of those PvP balance things.
joshua.hunter1 Jan 11th 2011 2:14PM
While this is a great article, I will be the first to sprinkle a bit of QQ with a lotta bit of realism.
First of all, the meters.. while they are a bane to us, they are a tool which raid leaders use to not only assess why they succeed, but why they failed and when you see tanks dying and the shaman healer only covering 25% of the healing (even if none of it was overheal at all) and the other classes are blasting millions of healing on failed attempts, it's just like the dps who falls flat on dps but interrupted every single cast, dispelled every single mechanic... there's going to be those in the raid who are tired, who are frustrated, and they want to know why this guy isn't down if everyone is doing what their class is supposed to.
Stats I will not touch... because no one else is either... Those who are reading articles like this are the people who want to raid, who want to be successful raiding and want to be the best that their class can do. They want to min max and the only thing they are getting from anywhere is "Well crit is good, and mastery is good, and haste is good...you want just the right amount of each without too much of the other".... I'll give all the others who are working on guides a small hint...... GIVE US TANGIBLE NUMBERS!!!! I would like to thank you for this guide because you were the first one to actually show an actual number tied to an effect tied to a goal that we wanted. We can take this, and actually work our gear with a purpose. Thank you once again
And onto the next point.... Cooldowns.... er... Cooldown.
Yeah thats right, we have nature's swiftness. Thats it... Don't try to butter us up we are all out there and we know a lot better than to accept that dribble about the benefits of mana tide and ghostface tank killer. These heroics and raids still hit hard. we aren't doing 30-40k hammers, we have an instant heal and we have the ability to still heal 10 seconds (which is like 2-4 spells before the last one is interrupted) These do not save that tank from eating death. all we can do is spam fast enough to top them off and hope that we can suck on enough potions to allow us to handle the next big damage phase because our cooldown won't be ready til the main tank dies, gets battle rezzed, topped off by the druid healer in an instant and is desperately trying to pull aggro off the main baddy and hopefully not the 4 other adds that were originally the offtank's assignment. The raid is hoping that this is during the last 5% of life that the boss has left but more often than not...it's while they are still around 45%. We don't have tank saving cooldowns, lets not lie and try to dance around the 800lb gorilla in the room. we will face it, plan accordingly and work on downing these bosses in spite of the drawbacks of being a shaman healer.
In spite of my miffs about being a shaman healer, I will say that this is a good guide, I will be using this as well as the many other guides that ya'll give us and continue to figure out how to keep these stubborn dps and tanks alive (because heaven forbid you tell these people that they need to start using the bandages they have been making so they can have their first aid at 525 for their achievement and not because it would help out the healers if you actually took the time to try to heal yourself for a couple seconds and not be so focused on seeing your cute little dps name pop up higher in the dps chart.)
for those who are already typing "TL DR" don't worry, I know your not a shaman healer, because those who are, are throwing their fists in the air because they are "feelin me dawg"
Saeadame Jan 11th 2011 2:33PM
Resto druids are there with you on the low output, but we don't even have Mana Tide to keep us in the raids.
So....
Yeah.
Lyacanthrope Jan 11th 2011 2:16PM
Facts, Shamans were not the top healers at end of Wraith, Druids were coming in at 11k hps with no mana problems.
Shamans mastery is nearly worthless
Chain heal? see above
What they do have is Earth shield and Astral Rain which when stacked with a druid's Eff and wild growth a very potent combo for say Magmaw when raid damage is nearly constant.
All in all shamans are lacking the tools to keep up with pally and druid heals right now. Buffing chain heal slightly or a complete revamp on the mastery feels needed. My suggestion is for mastery to affect either healing totem or earth shield. Getting bonus heals right before a tank dies really is not useful seeing as Pallys are kings of the tank heals as usual. What a shaman can do though is lend an earth shield to a tank and sprinkle aoe and quick cast spells across the raid.
Know your spells and realize a shamans utility comes in the mana regen, earth shield, and aoe heals, not heals per second!
glyakk Jan 11th 2011 2:39PM
I actually quite like our mastery just the way it is. I cant tell you how many times I had a tank below 20% then I popped UE/RT or NS/GHW. The key to shaman healing is to not keep everybody topped off, I know that sounds counter intuitive as a healer, but we have enough passive healing utility between ES/AA/HST/ELW to not have to go into emergency mode until HP drops below 40%. I personally wait until about 50% to start healing, then I stop at 80%.
Boobah Jan 11th 2011 5:08PM
On the mastery thing: Yeah, once the player is down to 50% or less, our mastery has the same throughput as holy's, only we don't have to wait six seconds for the mastery heal to apply. And it's buffed on the PTR so that we match Echo of Light's throughput at 58% target health.
I wonder how much more (or less, I suppose) people would appreciate Deep Healing if it showed up in the combat log as an extra heal instead of modifying the original one.