New resto shamFollow

Sup shamans :)

I've gotten pretty bored with my 49 twink sham and have decided to lvl him to be a 70 raid healer. I rolled up to 60 pretty quick with my twink gear and now want to get to 70 as resto running. I've never played as a healer so I'd like to get used to the healing thing well before I start raiding.

My problem is is that I have 0 healing gear save from a 1h mace I picked up from the AH and I'm not sure what the best way to pick up more is. I've thought about just running ramps and BF till I can get enough +heals to spec over to healing.

However, a friend of mine said I should just get some guildies to run me though lower instances (BRD and such) and get some gear that way and just start healing. This seemed pointless untill I started looking at the healing gear, or lack there of, in ramps and BF.

Should I be looking more for leather gear atm? Should I go pick up some pre-TBC stuff? Should I start looking in the AH for TBC healing BoEs? Also what +heals should I be looking for before I can start healing instances?

S2 is a good way, i never planned on going resto so i have gotten all my healing gear from offspec rolls in raids.

although i would rather die in a fire than pve in full pvp gear, S2 is realy good for resto.

If you don't like PVP then maybe running some instances as dps with your guild, making sure you take a healer that needs no gear, then you can take all the healing gear that drops.

If you are a rich bÃtch, BoE epixx from AH are nice start.

Rep rewards are also a good start

thats all i can raely think of atm.

For us shamen about to ding 70 and looking at the obligatory resto respec....there's a post elsewhere on this forum of PvE gear to seek out to heal Kara (http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=8;mid=119700025732562057;num=24;page=1)

How does S2 compare? In other words, should I ding 70 and start running instances and grinding rep, or stay 69 and run a ton of Bgs to just buy the s2 stuff?

Edit: To answer my own question....looks like the PvP gear is far better than quest or instance stuff. Correct me if I'm wrong, but -- grr. Love PvP; Hate PvPing for PvE gear.

Edited, Aug 13th 2008 6:52pm by tuskerdu

In my opinion it's faster and eventually more practical to just level as enh and then gather resto pvp gear. The season 2 stuff is VERY good, and you can easily heal t4 level raids with a full set of pvp gear, long as you enchant/gem it right. This is what I'm planning to do, I figured I'll develop some healing skills during the pvp grind. But for raids you really don't need the amount of skill as a healer that would make respeccing early worth it. All you need is grid and a few macros and you're set.

Once again I want to point that obvious thing (said already but u can never say this too often), Shammys use cloth as resto. We use cloth and lots of it. I mean in 5mans u can still get few hits in cloth since u are carrying a shield with you aren't you?

I also started running as resto at lvl 58 and my healing gear was from time when I healed ZF as enha. My help was that I had few tank friends (68&70) so they did not need that much healing there. I'm now 67 and I still use that cloth chest that is ment for priest and drops from ramps I think, one with 3 sockets.

-edit, below I talk about merciless pvp rewards.
I have been healing AV also a lot and I have mace, helm and shoulder waiting for me to hit 70. Gonna get many more but those I will use to make myself useful in kara and also to have fun in pvp fields. Fact is that Shamans indeed get nice upgrades as early as karazhan so just grind your wellfare epix to get pve items next. That's not against law =)

At the moment best shoes for resto is cloth from ZA (two toed sandals) so don't be shy to wear cloth. Remember, it's not dress, it's a robe ;)

Edited, Aug 18th 2008 10:13am by Causa

Edited, Aug 18th 2008 10:14am by Causa

Cloth and Leather are decent temporary upgrades for a Shaman but I would not pass up any chain gear for it. Spirit does nothing a for Shaman, and I mean zero, nada, zilch. You can quest a full set of gear for Pre Kara without any PvP gear. I did it and soloed most of the quests while pugging my way to 70, and that was from 40.

PvP, Cloth and Leather will lack all the important mp5 that Shaman need more than Druids or Priests. Using the Armory's upgrade section you can figure out which pieces are close enough to obtain via quests and what needs to be grouped. You can get 1k +heal,100+ mp5 and 8k+ mana and be the third healer in Kara with ease by time or shortly after hitting 70, the 100mp5 is buffless which doesn't include Water Shield.

You can choose the easier way by equiping PvP, Cloth or Leather to boost +healing for decent short fight stats, but for the longer fights those choosing mp5 and lesser +healing can and will out perform you on the healing charts.

Ok, I hit 69 last night with my Shaman, why would you not just hit 70 and BG? I am very new to PvP, but I do enjoy healing BGs. My question is why stay 69, is it because generally the entire BG is not 69 so you can generally murder lowbies? Don't you get more honor etc from doing the 70 BGs? PvP still confuses me a bit. Sorry for the noobish question.

Staying 69 to BG is a personal quirk. I don't like being a drag on my team so I tend to do my honor grinds at the top of the bracket. A fresh 70 is like a x2 or x3 person due to gear shortcomings, and therefore a drag, so I try to max out my honor at 69 before dinging. This is somewhat obsolete with the starter blue pvp gear and it isn't as efficient as just dinging and grinding the 70 BGs, which do offer more honor. So it's not a big deal to ding 70 and then grind.

His post was all about stats and pointed out that most cloth and leather did not have the stats that chain mail did basically due to the itemization of chain mail to be worn by shamans vs cloth and leather not. At the level the OP is at, "having enough mp/5" is most likely not going to occur wearing cloth and/or leather because gear at that item level does not typically have mp5.



This is right and wrong. The particular gear that Blizz designed for a particular class is often times optimized for that class(for the most part lol. Silly Blizzard) as far as what stats it should contain to maximize item points. Obviously it's stupid to worry about armor over stats when you're a healer, a lot of the time the natural gear itemization will put you in that gear anyway. You can never rule out cloth or leather but mail typically has the stats we want to maximize. The best cloth pieces you tend to find on AH are the "of the physician" which was +stam +int and +heal.



This item drops in BT. At the OP's level there aren't many cloth or leather items itemized like this that would benefit a shaman to the full extent so although nice to look at, doesn't really help him at this point. If you know of some easy to obtain gear like this at his level that would be nice to have examples of. (I'd like to see them too.)



s2 gear is great to get into kara with. It will save you a lot of time and angst trying to get the right gear to drop out of instance and will also save you some cash from picking up BoE's off the AH. The big thing to remember about PVP gear is that it wastes Item points on resil which is mostly worthless is the majority of PvE encounters. Due to that fact it's not perfect but it's a great start and easy enough to get if you can handle the PVP grind. Depending on class, shamans are lucky here, some PVP gear will end up still being better for us due to some decent itemization on Blizz's part than it's PvE counterpart.

Overall, gear accordingly as far as stats, don't worry so much about armor, but know that you'll tend to fall into mail anyway eventually and also hit up some PVP if you can handle it because it'll get you into Kara and that's where shammies really start getting geared.