Jaba's Compendium of Shammie Healing Tricks and Tips

[jabadue]

This is the forum topics for Resto Shaman. Please discuss and contribute. I certainly don't claim to know it all.

This is a macro that I have been using:

#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/stopcasting
/cast Lesser Healing Wave
/equip Totem of the Plains

This is a macro that stops your current cast (be careful because it starts the global cooldown, this could be deleted), casts max rank lesser healing wave, and equips Totem of the Plains before the cast is complete. I have one of these for Chain Heal and Healing Wave so I am always using the right totem for the right cast. You can equip totems in combat and it does count toward your current heal if equipped before spell is cast.

This might also be useful for Druids, Priests, Elemental Shaman etc...

Addons: I am an Addon freak and find that they can be a real asset in healing during a raid. I use decursive for cleansing disease and poison, BigWigs for raid warnings and boss information, and ORA2 for raid communication. These are all Ace addons available from wowace.com. Omen is a threatmeter and a requirement for raiding. Don't pull agro now. I also use Aloft, Cartographer, Bongos2, and probably some I don't remember.

For healing, I use Healbot Continued. I find that click healing gives me the fasted response time. In addition, I can bind a macro to specific mouse click, for example my Nature's Swiftness/Healing Wave Oh Crap macro. To do this, using the example above,

/stopcasting
/cast [target=hbtarget] Lesser Healing Wave
/equip Totem of the Plains

and the oh crap macro:

/stopcasting
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast [target=hbtarget] Healing Wave;
/equip Totem of the Maelstrom

Notice I added the Healbot target (hbtarget). So I bind that to say left mouse button. Then, when I click on the Healbot cell with a certain player in it with the left mouse button, that macro is executed and that person receives a lesser healing wave. BTW, I am also a macro junkie.

If you want to know what gems and enchants I have, take a look at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Silver+Hand&n=Jabadue">http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... &n=Jabadue</a><!-- m -->

Let me talk about some of my choices, because they are a little different. I have always believed that mana is the Shaman's biggest issue for healing. Thus, I have made some choices to increase either my overall mana pool (+int enchants or gems) or my mana regeneration (mp5 gems over +healing). Resto shaman have one big advantage over priests and druids, and that is survivability. Thus, I want to survive to the end of the fight and have as much mana as possible for when the inevitable *expletive deleted* hits the fan at the end of a boss fight. Then, I can spam freely whatever I need to. To this same end, I down rank both Healing Wave (Rank 8) and Chain Heal (Rank 4) most of the time. Saving the big heals and my mana for critical times. With BC raiding, most healers are spaming heals most of the time, rather that working in a set rotation. This is because the tanks and raid can take big spike damage in most encounters. For shaman, mana management is key, especially in 10-man raids. Don't neglect the +heal, but don't over emphasize at the expense of mana. That is my philosophy. Others, I am sure may differ.

More later, and please contribute your thoughts.

[Oryx]

Oh, I like that totem-swapping macro, Jaba! I've never done that before, but I'll have to add it to my bag o' tricks.

A small trick that came up recently in Vent is the "Rank 1 Healing Wave Prespam". Healing Wave (1) has a very fast cast time and procs Healing Way/Ancestral Fortitude just fine. You can easily max out Healing Way on your tank before the pull, giving you that 25% boost to your big heals. Advanced students might try to swap in their +crit gear to boost the chance of a Fortitude proc but you risk missing the timing and wearing your elemental gear during the fight, so it's probably not worth it! If I find myself in a lull during a Karazhan fight and my mana bar is already close to full, I sometimes just rotate through the tanks hitting Healing Wave (1) to keep my Way refreshed.

Other quick hits, hm..

• Healing Stream Totem stacks!
  
• Earth Shield uses your +healing at the time it is cast, so pop your trinkets before putting it on the tank if you have time to wait.[/list:u]
  
  I've worked on a wowwiki page about Mail healing gear somewhat erratically - somebody else recently updated it for ZA, thankfully! Here it is: http://www.wowwiki.com/BC_healing_equipment_(mail)

[Guest]

Ooh, I'm not technically Resto, so I can't take advantage of all your tricks, but I am a healer, and that totem swapping bit sounds useful. Once my computer is up and running, I'll try to get that going.

And thanks for the gear link! I'm positively drooling looking at it. I've been in love with mana regen since it was introduced as a proper (and common) stat; I kept that dagger from Maraudon *forever,* just because I thought it was awesome.

[jabadue]

Healbot Continued is a great healing addon (imho). Here is a guide to using it:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ihordeguild.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=991967&sid=c191b2b0e4ecc0e3147d2b508e743357&gid=15794">http://ihordeguild.guildlaunch.com/foru ... &gid=15794</a><!-- m -->

[Oryx]

I was scanning through the Elitist Jerks page on resto shaman raiding. I don't think there's a huge amount here that's new to readers of this forum, but I did see a couple interesting points.

* Downranked Chain Heal is actually more efficient than Lesser Healing Wave, even if it doesn't bounce.
* The author argues strongly for 8/0/53, in order to get the elemental resist.
* He argues that you should have a specially enchanted and gemmed set of +spell hit gloves, so that you can minimize resists on fights where you need to do Earth Shock interrupts.
* Not entirely sure about wearing three pieces of Ten Storms... but, hey, maybe it would work. 8)
* He argues for large mana pool and +healing rather than MP5 since "you can always downrank".

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19181-shaman_how_heal_like_pro/">http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19181-sham ... _like_pro/</a><!-- m -->

[jabadue]

Jaba has been 8/0/53 for awhile now, and I do like it. In SSC and Zul'Aman, I have especially noticed the difference in his survivability. Jaba takes a lickin', but keeps on spamming Chain Heal( Rank 4).

[Zeengo]

I must agree with much of what was said so far only some small things I disagree with.

The large mana pool and healing gearing, yes it does work, but it does mention (i think)that it really only works to fullest potential when you are relegated a shadow priest. If you can not count on a shadow priest being with you, you will still have to gear for mana reg. I still like keeping a tight balance on the two, I used to try to run a 10:1 ratio on healing to mana regen, I think that is still one of the better ratios for kara/t4. Once you get above that, seems better to start sliding more healing in. Right now, I am running 1900ish/170ish healing to IC mana regen. Of course that changes a lot, as I am always moving trinkets around per different fights. To get it however, I sacrificed about 400 mana, I still have not noticed a difference.

I think thats where the expendibility is and where down ranking actually does take effect, in the base mana pool, not in the regen. You are taking a smaller chunk out of a smaller supply that heals fast if you have decent mana regen and always have watershield up. Heck, if you are lucky and have a Tide-brooch then you are just gaining the majority of the mana back on the cast(once every minute)

As for what to down rank, the only thing I do not downrank is LHW. There just is no point to it, as its there for the most amount of healing in the fastest bit of time. I always keep a Rank1 rank7 and Rank 11 HW available, the last two are linked with totem of spontaneous regrowth and the prior one is with the totem of the maelstrom. Also keep two ranks of Chain heal, a rank 1 and a rank 4. The rank one is for cruising healing so to speak, just spam the crap out of it, with a totem of living waters you hardly lose mana at all. The rank 4 is the beef spell and have that with my totem of healing rain. Commonly the first hit of it heals for more then my top rank HW.

Right now in terms of spec, 8/0/53 is still the penultimate raid healing build. I still see just as many 0/5/56 builds running around as well though. I personally did not like the latter build when I tryed it, the 5 points in enh are pretty much wasted points. Ancestral knowledge just does not give enough mana for a healer to take any notice of it. Unless they were really low on mana to begin with I suppose. Right now, I am running a 0/8/53 build myself, but it is a pvp spec with the 8 points in enh going for shield spec, imp ghost wolf and guardian totems. Amazing how long I survive when I give myself plenty of room. But I do not recommend it generally unless you are going to be doing a lot of pvp/arena