Desperate for Resto helpFollow

I'm not really sure what you want somebody to say about the gear issue. You seem to understand exactly what your problem is and what stat you need to procure more of in order to remedy said problem. Do I really have to state the obvious before you'll go out and do it?


1400-1500 with the totem down is fine for entry-level heroics. I think part of your problem is that you're getting advice from elitists, or people who don't play healers. Unfortunately, almost all people who fall into that catagory tend to care about spell power exclusively when that stat is only slightly more important than regeneration (I.E. longevity). The biggest heals in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't have the mana to cast them.


Again, there is no cookiecutter answer here. There is no rotation to speak of. I'm honestly not trying to be a **** when I answer, "If someone needs to be healed, then heal them."

Healing Wave is generally your go-to spell for single-target heals as it is the most efficient.

Don't have time for Healing Wave? Then cast Lesser Healing Wave.

Don't even have time to cast Lesser Healing Wave? Cast Riptide.

Need to heal while moving? Cast Riptide.

Need to heal more than one target? Cast Chain Heal.

The only "tricks" you really have concern Riptide. It's often better to get Riptide on a tank early to get the HoT rolling and help manage incoming damage. This will also proc Tidal Waves, which will greatly increase the speed of your incoming heals, and thus your HPS. Again, a good trick to manage incoming damage if you know a large spike is incoming.

Now... all that having been said, do understand that healing heroics is actually fairly difficult (it's more difficult than healing Naxx any night of the week), so don't expect to waltz in and just breeze through one. Not only do you have to be at the top of your game hitting every heal (since you're the one and only healer), but the tank needs to be geared well enough and the DPS needs to be pulling their weight as well.

I can understand the feeling of everything being your fault. Even if you're not feeling that way, the DPS is usually quick to make sure you do by blaming the healer and/or the tank when there's a death or wipe.

Heroics are an animal, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either over-geared or selling something. Many times, damage is just outright impossible to heal through. Sometimes you'll feel like you're barely hanging on from the second a fight starts and you just get further and further behind until eventually you're overwhelmed. In heroics, tanks and DPS often have to play a part in actively mitigating damage by making sure to avoid certain mechanics, many of which will simply kill them outright or in less time than the ~2.5 seconds it can take you to get a Chain Heal off. (First boss in Heroic Gun'Drak, for instance.)

DPS in particular have a strong tendancy to be lazy. They'll join heroic parties thinking that it doesn't matter what their DPS is; as long as the tank and healer keep them alive stuff will die eventually. This has become such a problem for me that I've downloaded a damage meter and any DPS that doesn't hit the 1.5k mark (within reason) usually gets kicked from my party and replaced with someone else who can (hopefully) do their job right.

As a healer, there's always room to improve. I am still refining my techniques every time I enter an instance. But having a solid tank and three DPS over 1.5k can often be the difference between three heroics in three hours or one heroic in three hours with an 80% repair bill. Just keep trying to do everything you can do, and definitely do try to find yourself a solid core to run with if you're in a guild or have friends.

Healing Way is one of those talents that looks great on paper (How can you argue with an 18% increase?), but in practice it's actually very lackluster unless you're healing a tank in a raid, which, honestly, a Resto Shaman never should be. I know from my own personal experience, once I started actively paying attention to the buff I realized that I was actually getting very little out of it in heroics and almost nothing in raids since Chain Heal is my most used spell.

Now, that may change in the next patch as Healing Way is going to be changed to provide the same benefit with a single buff instead of a three-part stack last I heard. But right now it's definitely skippable.

Healing Grace is kind of up in the air. Some people have started skipping it since with the aggro most tanks generate, healer threat is more or less a non-issue on established targets. "Established targets" being the key word there. There is enough loose aggro floating around in instances and raids that I feel safer still taking Healing Grace, but depending on the quality of your tank you may easily be able to live without it.

What glyphs are you using? In my opinion you should use:

1. LHW glyph (20% stronger on targets with your Earth Shield)
2. Water Mastery (30 MP5)
3. Doesn't matter (Healing Wave probably for 5 mans)

Always keep Earth Shield on the tank. Always keep water shield up on yourself. Try to keep Riptide on the tank (which will also keep Tidal Waves a lot of the time). I pretty much spam LHW (while keeping water shield up). Chain Heal targets that need the most healing. Also, make sure people pull TO your totems so you can lay them before the fights (or lay caster totems before, then run in for melee totems).

Maybe you should start with non-heroic instances just to get the hang of it?

I must second that motion. Glyph of Chain Heal is the single most important glyph for a Resto Shaman.

Other than that, as you can see, there are a couple good Resto Shamans on this forum, so feel free to ask us if you have any more questions. I'll try to answer what I can and help in whatever way I can.

As I also appreciate resto help, I had two questions in regards to this topic:

1. Gaudion and other experienced Shamans have listed suggested targets for +SP & MP5 for heroics/Naxx. +Haste and +Crit are generally not mentioned (except for an exchange a few posts ago). Since the WotLK, it seems to me with ancestral awakening and improved water shield talents, + crit becomes more important. Is it still considered nice to pick up but do not sacrifice +SP or MP5 for it, or have people actually tried stacking + crit to experiment its effectiveness? How much, if any + haste is recommended?

2. What is a good piece for the totem slot to replace the totems from BC content?



Edited, Jan 13th 2009 7:14pm by jvscubadude

good to know about haste. I was wondering about that. It seems like all the quest gear in Northrend had haste on it, and it got me wondering if instances needed. I still would like to collect haste gear. It may come in handy on short fights where mp5 gear isn't needed. Seems to me you have to sacrifice mp5 if you want haste (very rarely both are on the gear), and I'm not going to do that. But I may make a haste set. There may be short fights where you need fast heals. But for anything over 5 mins, you'll definately want the mp5.

As for crit, I'm not familiar with those builds. I hear there is a build for it. But I'm still old school. I like to think I keep up with new trends, but in many ways I'm still stuck in TBC ways.

Yeah the crit and haste gear will just usually come along with whatever gear you run in to.

Take the emblem shield. That comes along with crit. I've gotten some shoulders in Violet Hold that has some haste... heck! Even my T7 chestpiece(I think that the stats are a bit off on the link... will have to tell Wordean) had haste on it. It'll come eventually without you having to worry about losing a whole lot of spellpower or mp5 (for the most part).

ya I think I don't have the threat talents (I'd have to look again lol). I haven't had too many issues. But I do remember one boss fight I was standing in the wrong spot, and adds went straight towards me. But with proper positioning, this shouldn't be an issues. Just make sure the tank is between you and the adds. :). And if he as aoe threat, just go over to the tank.

I have died a few times in heroics, so maybe I should get it. When I'm done with Hodir dailies I might. Right now I have my spare points in elemental for a little better lightning damage. But when I'm done with dailies I can put those points into resto. I also have 5 in the enhance for the int boost. I know that's kinda dumb, because the math back in BC proved it wasn't really worth it. I'm sure that holds true even now. And I have enough good gear and mp5 I don't need the extra mana anyways.

One thing to remember in instances:

If the tank dies, it's your fault.
If you die, it's the tank's fault.
If the dps dies, it's the dps' fault.

CH help the dps, but if you are wiping because they are dying, you did nothing wrong!!

With 1900 sp, you should be able to keep the tank up. You'll be working your butt off, but you should be able to do it. But usually only if you don't go around trying to worry about the dps.

This of course doesn't apply to boss fights where the DPS inevitably take some damage, so be sure to know the fights so you know when you'll have to worry about dps. Just prior to those points, make sure the tank has a fresh earthshield, a fresh riptide, and is at full health.

Also, feel free to direct your dps -- unless the fight demands otherwise, the ranged dps should be close enough together that your CH hits them all. If they aren't -- tell them to move or die.

It takes time to get it all right, and you'll get better with experience, but also be aware that the other players have a huge responsibility to your success as well -- be as demanding on them as you are on yourself.

That doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it, but you do have to let people know what you need.

takes a little practice. I remember my first instance rfd I believe- I was using lesser healing wave all the time. trying to play like a pally. I really didn't do any serious healing until 70. After doing like 40 or 50 kara runs, it's pretty much an old habit now. But 5 man healing can vary wildly from raid healing. 5 mans are so unpredictable, it's hard to say what to use in every situation. Anyways I started playing my shammy after a month off. I didn't want to make the committment to serious raiding, and I was unhappy with the low pop of my server (I still am tonight since I can't find anyone killing Omen- but that's another story).

did all the dungeon elders tonight. Almost all are normal, so that's easy stuff. But the dps wasn't all that great. I never really believed the stories about how important dps is- but it's true. But tank/healer are still a little more important as they should be. I was running with a group that's not geared for heroics. But one of those elders requires a heroic dungeon.

I felt I was a good enough healer (why lie- I think I'm badass lol) to pull them thru it. And I did- barely. But definately be careful when running with tanks low on health. I actually did heroic gun drak with 2 tanks. And 1 tank died on me :(. He had 20k health. And I got behind in healing. Thing is as a shaman, it's hard to catch up when you get behind. Tidal force helps (and I forgot to use it lol- guess I'm not so badass), but healing wave has its limitations as mentioned before. Can't compare to pallies or priests big heals. So it helps to have a tank with that extra cushion. Anyways the other tank picked him up. Eventually he died because the dps was just too horrible and I ran out of mana. boss killed a couple dps then went to me. I pulled out fire elemental, but the boss killed me. But something (not sure what) got that last tick off the boss and he died just as I (I think I was the last one left) died. Interesting run.

Moral of that story is don't do heroics with tanks at 20k health lol. You need that cushion. And definately don't do it with poor dps. To show you how raw this group was- 2 of the people in that party got the achievement for their emblem of heroism. Their very first heroic lol. And the warlock was a girl- not to rag on girls- some are good- but most don't know how to optimize their player for max damage.

anyways as I said every group is different. Depending on the tanks gear you'll either do more healing waves than chain heals, or more chain heals (and riptides) than healing waves.

I know exactly how you feel, I had the same problem in heroic VH last night. I have healed it successfully before but Zuramat kicks my *** every time. I just could not keep everyone up through it. My normal strategy is to use earth shield and riptide on the tank, then use chain heal and lesser healing wave, but I was spamming chain heal and (even with the glyph) we wiped. I felt like it was my fault, I just did not have the healing power to handle it. I'm also looking for help, add ons, etc. but I plan on doing non-heroics for gear and if I have to do UK a million times for badges, I will.

anyone know what the mats are for glyph of chain heal? I can never find this thing on the AH. I hate not having it. I also may get glyph of lesser healing wave again. I got rid of it, but think it's useful for pugging 5 man heroics. Right now I have glyph of healing wave, mana tide, and healing stream. Of course I can only use 1 at a time (mana tide or healing stream), so I don't really need both. But I was thinking about running with glyphs of healing wave, lesser healing wave, and chain heal. I just need to find someone who can make them. They are never available in AH.