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Belgarion.
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re: Resto Shaman Healing 101

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Angellesa

I was concerned (and a little ticked off) the other day when a fellow shaman told me that all a resto shaman does in a raid is chain heal. That is it. Nothing more. That would be like saying all a tank does is stand there and take hits. All a mage does is cast frostbolt. All a rogue does is auto-attack ... bangs head

You get my point. Each class in a raid has multiple things they are doing, and usually needing to do them at the same time. So for a resto shaman to tell me that all a resto shaman does in a raid is chain heal is just utterly appalling.

I am far from being the best resto shaman, but I am able to hold my own in raids. Sooooooo, to hopefully help the unmanned shaman see the light � and possibly help anyone with lower level shamans or anyone that makes a shaman in the future � let's looks at some things.

Introduction to some Resto shaman spells from the talent tree:

    [li][spell=16229]Improved Healing Wave[/spell] - Shorter cast times always come in handy.[/li]
    [li][spell=16217]Tidal Focus[/spell] � Reduces mana cost of healing spells by 5%. Less mana per heal is always a good thing.[/li]
    [li][spell=16208]Restorative Totems[/spell] - Increases the effect of your Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems by 25%. Also necessary to unlock Mana Tide in the talent tree.[/li]
    [li][spell=29202]Healing Way[/spell] - I put points in this to add a little more versatility to my healing, but mostly just to open up the next tier on the resto tree.[/li]
    [li][spell=16188]Nature's Swiftness[/spell] - When activated, your next Nature spell (our healing spells are Nature spells) with a casting time less than 10 sec. becomes an instant cast spell. I set this up in a macro so that all I do is press the macro button and it automatically casts Nature's Swiftness and uses Healing Wave on my target (or on myself if I don't have a target selected). I'll include a section later on macros. Great for those fights in a raid where a healer or 2 have died, and your MT just took huge spike damage and you need a big heal on him asap or the next hit will kill them. Not the only time it's useful, but you get the idea.[/li]
    [li][spell=16213]Purification[/spell] - Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%. Also 5 points in this is necessary to unlock Cleanse Spirit. Honestly though, as a resto shaman if you don't want to increase the effectiveness of your healing, then why are you even resto in the first place?[/li]
    [li][spell=51886]Cleanse Spirit[/spell] - Another "must have" for raiding. They take our ability to remove disease and poison and smoosh it into the same spell, and add to it the ability to remove curses. Not to mention, you remove 1 of each with each cast of this spell. So if a raid member has a curse, a poison and a disease on them all at the same time you can cast this on them and BAM! All gone.[/li]
    [li][spell=16190]Mana Tide Totem[/spell] - Summons a Mana Tide Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 12 sec that restores 6% of total mana every 3 seconds to group members within 30 yards. (That means a total of 24% of your mana restored in 12 seconds and you can use it every 5 minutes). This is a necessity for raiding. [/li]
    [li][spell=51555]Blessing of the Eternals[/spell] - Increases the crit chance of spells by 4% and your chance to apply the Earthliving effect (yay! An increased chance to proc our other free HoT!) on the target by 80% when they are at or under 35% total health.[/li]
    [li][spell=30873]Improved Chain Heal[/spell] - increases the amount healed with Chain Heal by 20%. Add this with the glyph (I'll cover these later) that allows your Chain Heal to hit a 4th target and now you are in business.[/li]
    [li][spell=30869]Nature's Blessing[/spell] - Increases your healing by a % of your Intellect.[/li]
    [li][spell=51558]Ancesteral Awakening[/spell] - a free heal for your party/raid member who has lowest health every time you crit heal.[/li]
    [li][spell=49284]Earth Shield[/spell] - another handy thing to have as a resto shaman. I mean, seriously. It becomes available at level 50 in the resto talent tree. It reduces casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 30%, attacks heal the shielded target for 337(base, this varies with bonus healing), has 6 charges and lasts 10 min. It's basically a nice neat little HoT with no real time limit (other then the 10 minutes). Just recast it as needed on your tank after all 6 charges are used.[/li]
    [li][spell=51561]Improved Earthen Shield[/spell] - if you are a level 51 (or higher) Resto Shaman you should spec for this. If you are level 80 and planning to raid, it is basically a necessity. I won't say you -have- to, as I don't believe in telling anyone they have to build their toon a specific way ... but as a resto shaman you -have- to spec for this. It grants your Earthen shield 2 extra charges (making it a total of 8 charges) and increases the healing of each charge by 10%. Weeeee, gotta love the essentially free HoT.[/li]
    [li][spell=51566]Tidal Waves[/spell] - You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal or Riptide to lower the cast time of your next 2 Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spells by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects. Tank getting low on health and not quite able to keep up? Cast Riptide on him, then a Healing Wave or 2 and BAM! Good to go.[/li]
    [li][spell=61301]Riptide[/spell] - A resto shaman's new best friend. Yay! We get a HoT! Yay! It's an instant cast HoT! You can spec for it at level 60. Use it. Yes, there is a 6 second cooldown, but it lasts for 15 seconds. There is NO reason not to keep Riptide up on a tank (especially during fights where the mob/boss silences/stuns/fears/does a knock back/etc). I also tend to use it on locks that life tap, on myself when I am taking periodic damage, etc. It has countless uses but there is absolutely no reason I should be hearing complaints from people grouping with resto shamans in the guild who are not using Riptide on a tank at all, even when they know they will get silenced/stunned.[/li]


A little math concerning the Mana Tide totem:
Let�s assume a 10k mana pool for everyone in your group. At a 5 minute cooldown and restoring 2400 mana, this equates to the same as a passive 40mp5 for everyone in your group.
5 minutes x 60 seconds = 300 seconds in 5 minutes
2400 mana / 300 seconds = 8 * 5 = 40mp5

To take that even further, I have almost 20k mana raid buffed at the moment. It would restore 4800 of my mana. That might not sound like a lot, but take this into consideration:
4800 mana / 300 seconds = 16 * 5 = 80mp5

The upside to all of this is that it does not just restore my mana. It restores anyone�s mana that is in my party, and within 30 yards of the totem. The only limiting factor on it is the 5 minute cooldown. So you have a boss fight that takes 5, 8, 10 minutes or even longer, being spec�d for, and knowing when to drop a mana tide totem, can make a huge difference in the fight. Especially now that you can only drink one mana pot per fight.
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re: Angellesa

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[size=12pt]Glyphs for Resto Shamans[/size]

[size=9pt]Note: Some of these I find absolutely useless. But every shaman has their own personal preferences. Also, no idea how to make it so the glyph names do not show up as white. If I figure out how to change it, I will.[/size]

Major Glyphs:

    [li][Glyph of Chain Heal] - Makes it so your Chain Heal heals 4 targets instead of 3.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Earthliving Weapon] - a must have for raiding Shaman in conjunction with [Glyph of Chain Heal] (Earthliving Weapon can proc off any or all bounces of a Chain Heal. So adding one more bounce per cast is another chance for Earthliving Weapon to apply a hot on other players for no extra mana cost what-so-ever.)[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Healing Stream Totem] - I find this one pretty useless compared to other major glyphs, but that is just my opinion.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Healing Wave] - has it's ups and downs. More of a PvP glyph. Personally I prefer other glyphs over this one.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave] - Some say with this glyph, Improved Water Shield, Earthliving Weapon, Ancestral Awakening, some crit% and haste, a Resto Shaman can easily compete with paladins' single target healing capabilities. It has some viable uses, but I prefer to use other glyphs for more versatility in my healing.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Mana Tide Totem] - Not necessarily a bad glyph. Very situational though. I personally don't use this one.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Water Mastery] - This is the 3rd major glyph I use as resto (the other 2 being Chain Heal and Earthliving Weapon). It bumps the mana regen I get from Water Shield to 130mp5.[/li]




Minor Glyphs:
[size=9pt]Note: I've only been able to find a total of 6 minor glyphs for shaman. No idea if more exist or not. Nothing great, but some that are just handy to have.[/size]


    [li][Glyph of Astral Recall] - to quote one of the comments on wowhead for this glyph "Downrank me all you want, but next time someone asks me for a definition of the word "Useless", I'll use this Glyph as an illustrating example."[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Ghost Wolf] - Useful if you PvP a lot (for running flags in EotS & WSG).[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Renewed Life] - Like the other minor glyphs for shaman, I find this pretty useless.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Water Breathing] - Came in really handy while questing to 80. Also saved me from having to farm reagents.[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Water Shield] - "In order to not lose mana from the passive mana regeneration on Water Shield, you need to always refresh it before it the last charge is used up, meaning that you effectively have one less charge that you can allow to get used up before rebuffing. Without this glyph, you can let two charges get used up before needing to rebuff. With the glyph, you can let three charges get used up. So effectively this isn't a 33% buff to the number of charges, it's a 50% buff."[/li]
    [li][Glyph of Water Walking] - I find this a handy one to have, even at level 80. Not only can you sit on the water to eat/drink while farming, now that you can be mounted while water walking this was almost invaluable while questing, even more so in a group.[/li]
Belgarion.
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re: Angellesa

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Helpful Macros:


    [li]Nature's Swiftness/Healing Wave:[br]
    #showtooltip
    /cast Nature's Swiftness
    /cast Healing Wave[/li]
[br]
    [li]If you use the same 4 totems all the time, and you want to save space on your hotkey bar, you can use the following macro (just replace the totem names with the ones you use):[br]
    /castsequence reset=4 Mana Spring Totem, Wrath of Air Totem, Strength of Earth Totem, Flametongue Totem[/li]
[br]
    [li]Reincarnation (this is just a handy little thing I use so I can place an icon on my hotkey bar to make it easier to see my cooldown left on Reincarnate, as well as how many ankh I have on me):[br]
    #showtooltip Reincarnation[/li]
[br]
    [li]Max camera distance (not really a macro, but handy nonetheless):[br]
    /script SetCVar ("cameraDistancemax" ,50)[/li]
[br]
    [li]Targeting macro for fights Such as Rage Winterchill or Solarian (we don't raid them anymore, but I am sure there are times in the future it will be needed. Just replace the name in the macro). Also, do not include a rank. This will make it cast the highest rank you have learned:[br]
    /target Rage Winterchill
    /assist
    /cast Lesser Healing Wave[/li]
[br]
    [li]Offensive spells (I use a customizeable UI, including the hotkey bars, so my offensive spells are showing at all times. I use the following macro so if I have someone targeted ... usually the tank ... I can attack what he is attacking if healing is not required at the time - just replace the spell name all 3 places if you want to use it for different spells. I will show a few examples):[br]
    #showtooltip Flame Shock
    /cast [harm] Flame Shock; [target=targettarget, harm] Flame Shock
    [br]
    #showtooltip Earth Shock
    /cast [harm] Earth Shock; [target=targettarget, harm] Earth Shock
    [br]
    #showtooltip Chain Lightning
    /cast [harm] Chain Lightning; [target=targettarget, harm] Chain Lightning
Belgarion.
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re: Turalon

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I thought totems were raid wide now, not just party only?
Belgarion.
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re: Mareb

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They are.
Belgarion.
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re: Angellesa

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[quote author=Mareb link=topic=356.msg1997#msg1997 date=1228258812]
They are.
[/quote]

False. Only certain totems are raid wide. Some totems (such as the mana totem) are party only and are NOT raid wide.
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re: Raashna

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Good Info Angel, thanks. I have never really looked at Resto as I have only ever specced it once or twice just for a specific healer short Kara or something like that.

In conjunction with the original post I have to say there is no class that does just one thing during a group and/or a raid, or for that matter even while soloing.

There was a time when it was said all an Elemental Shaman does is Spam Lightning Bolt, or a 3xLightning Bolt, 1x Chain Lightning on AoE pulls. The new Talent trees, and the addition of new levels and spells have totally destroyed this. If an Elemental Shaman now tells me all we do is Spam LB for raids I would have to say they should put their account back on to E-Bay and see if they can get what they paid for it.

On the other hand I am currently on a course called "Leadership Communication for Supervisors" and have so far learned that I sghouldn't say things like that, and try to redirect someone to more positive things, and use positive reinfo..... awww forget it, resell on E-Bay, cut the cash loss.
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