Resto Raiding tips Follow

Good and not so good. You should always keep Earth Shield up on a tank, but don't just mindlessly spam Chain Heal. It's a very efficient heal only if it reaches its maximum potential on all three targets and it's expensive either way, so don't be afraid to use Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave even if you're on raid duty. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be taught. It's a judgement call based on circumstances.


Again, that's a judgement call depending on the circumstances. On a fight like Gruul where healing is very intensive raid-wide and everyone is spread out, you can't possibly be expected to run around chasing everyone with low health and keep them all topped off. All of the healers have a responsibility here to be spread out as such that there is always at least one healing in range of everyone, and anything beyond that falls on the shoulders of the people who need the healing. Tanks obviously can't just drop what they're doing and go look for a healer, but DPS certainly can. (And they can also back off and go bandage, etc.)

As a healer, your job is to do as much as you can within your means, but you can't do everything.

Greengimp has a point. When I was raiding I could pretty much spam on everyone and do fine on mana, a pot every now and again. But I found that you can actually use Rank 3 or 4 instead of 5. The healing isn't damaged very much, but mana does alot better.

Everyone gave good advice. On the topic of chasing down a player low on health... DON'T DO IT! As a healer, we don't have time to keep moving around just to heal one person low on health. There are other healers too, and hopefully (on fights like Gruul), your healers are spread out. So whoever is the closest should toss a heal over to the low health person.

The only time we would have to move on fights like Gruul is with the cave in... obviously.

If you need/want to, make a macro stating you can't reach someone to heal them. It definitely will get easier though, just a little practice and you'll do fine. You'll soon figure out who and what's a priority (minus heal assigns), and how to work with things being crazy all around you.

Best guide I've ever read is over on EJ:
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t24796-shaman_restoration/

Another good guide:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=AD466C185A441B134CFF32B16783190E?topicId=2043948355&sid=1

Great list of which abilities work on which bosses:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19181-shaman_how_heal_like_pro/

Amazing gear list:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4665556793&postId=46649270835&sid=1


As for "Brain Heal spam", it's not just a matter of mana efficiency. CH is comparatively efficient. At +2000 heals, full rank chain heal (on only one target) is more mana efficient than any rank lesser healing wave. Chain heal 4 (on only one target) is more mana efficient than full rank healing wave (with no healing way) as well as LHW. BUT you also need to consider the healing/second as well as the healing/mana. It doesn't matter if you end the fight with half a mana bar if you have crummy healing throughput, which is what happens with CH spam with no jumps. Conversely, our highest possible heal/sec (AND, incidentally, heal/mana) comes from chain heal if it jumps--healing wave only gets close when healing way is stacked.

So: when in doubt, brain heal. When you're sure it has no chance to jump, healing wave.

The two "biggest" raid heals in the game are Chain Heal and CoH. CoH is instant... Chain heal IS NOT. For this reason, Shamans DO generally need to mindlessly spam chain heal. Keeping the raid as high as possible on health is necessary. You sometimes can expect when the raid will take damage and where it will come. Perfect example is Brut in Sunwell. There's NO need to mindlessly spam chain heal. I heal my side from meteor slashes when it's on my side. Then he switches to the other side and I healing wave spam the MT and time for Stomp. Then back to chain heal on my side.

Fights like Gruul's or Hydross, you don't really know where and when damage will happen. And "spot" healing with chain heal is the best route. In the time it takes to cast chain heal, more raid damage may happen around that target, and you now INSTANTLY healed it instead of waiting for them to all take damage and now they have to wait for your healing wave/lesser to finish and then the cast time of your chain heal to finish. In all that time, you could lose 3 raid members that could potentially have been saved by chain heal.

In honesty, it all depends on the fight and how familiar you are with the other healers and your raid. If you are unfamiliar, your heal ratio should be 98%'ish chain heal. It will do you the best. It's smarter than any caster. Once you are "good" your percent will still be 90%-95% chain heal for most encounters. The spell is THAT good. It's rare that you'll cast something else more than 10% of the time. The only time I can remember doing more healing with something other than Chain Heal WAS on Brut and that was with healing wave on the other group's MT.