New to Resto Shaman and need help

[Hollybell 0]

Hello all. 

 

First time poster and relative new healer.  I normally main a hunter....however due to turnover in our healing ranks for various reasons I've volunteered to try and heal for our team.  I have a general understanding of the concept of healing and had my baptism by fire by healing in SoO heroic last week.  I didn't do too bad, but I want to be better.  Specifically I want to become more mana efficient and not do so much overhealing I could use some advice on the best ways to do so without being completely reactive to incoming damage and more proactive.  Any general tips or do's and dont's with resto shamans would be helpful as well.  I'm sorry if I'm asking alot, but again....I'm fairly new to this and am not satisfied with being so-so.  Thanks in advance.

 

Hollybell

 

Here is a link to my shamman on the armory for any other ideas.  (Yes I know I still have ele gear, but it's all I have.)

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/rexxar/Yunhan/advanced

[kitsu 55]

nice gear, crit's a touch low but no excuses there as long as you ahve the healing LMG.

 

have any logs?

 

mana efficiency and less overheals go hand in hand. get used to situations where you're going to be overlapping HS with someone else's direct heal and cast HW instead. every healer in your group will prioritize certain people with their own reactive heals. if you really want to avoid overheals, use unglyphed riptide as the first thing you do when someone is in danger then cast HW on them and see if their bar gets filled up by teamwork.

 

with our mastery and cooldowns testing the waters to see if people get behind on healing isnt a risk. just stop casting and see if your existence matters. learn what parts of each fight you can make the most difference on.

[CptDan 25]

Hello, and welcome to the pithy underbelly that is healing. :) Really it's my favorite class and spec of all time and I've mained it since BC on a few different shaman toons.

 

I'll see what advice I can offer, and I'm sure stoove will be relatively close behind me with his thoughts.

 

1. Gear - Right now this is the sticking point. Your item level is great, and elemental gear isn't a bad thing when itemized with the other stats properly.

 

Your stats would be better served by lowering your mastery and raising your crit. You have plenty of spirit and could probably even go down a bit. I ran you through AMR and was able to get you to 40% crit raid buffed with ~32% haste and about 11k spirit. This is a pretty good stat set and could be tweaked even more. I just did a quick crunch.

 

Get some healing trinkets, even if you can only get flex ones for now. The int boost on your trinkets is okay now but requires some luck and you may not get the buff the first attack. (RNG FTW) Any of the healing trinkets would help, as they all give a stat boost and some offer bonus healing (multi-strike, cleave) 

 

2. Are you doing 25s or 10s? This would change how you do things and spell selection. The basic icy-veins guide should suffice here. Just try to keep HR down on a group of people and use HST on CD, etc.

 

3. Mana management - I could and will go on forever on this topic as it seems to be the crux that separates the good shaman healers from the great ones. I'll do so in another post when I have a bit more time. For now, take a look into the posts regarding totemic recall (stoove posted some excellent weak auras) When you really master efficient healing you'll never go out of mana and your numbers will sky rocket.

 

4. Cool Down Management - Work with your co-healers and make sure that no cooldown is wasted. Learn the encounters and when damage spikes and be ready. A lot of healers instinctually pop the CD after the damage happens as a sort of "oh snap" moment. Using things like Healing Tide just before the damage goes out can be a game changer.

 

5. Post some logs for us to go over and we can give more in-depth analysis of your healing. This will give us a good view of your spell selection and timing. 

 

6. Do

• Remember the basics - Earth Shield on Tank, Riptide to keep Tidal waves up, HST on cooldown.
• Use your kit - learn which encounters favor which talents/glyphs
• Keep Calm and Carry On
• Use mana tide, use it early and use it often

 

7. Don't

• Spam Healing for the sake of healing numbers
• Over react to a small damage spike, know what can be healed normally and what needs a cool down
• Waste Cooldowns - Timing is everything
• Let buffs drop (earth shield, tidal waves)
• Spam Healing Surge or other expensive heals when a simple cooldown is warranted

 

 

8. Final notes: learn to have fun, learn to relax and your healing experiences will not only be heaps more fun, but you will perform better. Look at the fights where you had issues, and learn from them. I'm always happy to go over logs and "talk shop" with the fellow shaman in the game so don't be shy.

[Stoove 347]

Fantastic response from CptHeals there, despite mocking me for my slow response times ;)

 

There is a difference between efficiency and mana-regen, and it is important to this conversation. Regen just gives you more mana to play with in general, and at your iLvl you should be able to get more than enough of that. A Spirit level between 11k and 13k is usually reasonable (I choose 13k, though 11k would suffice). Crit also gives you regen, and quite a lot of it at that! Typically you want to stack up Crit as high as possible for this reason.

 

Efficiency is the other side of the coin - your spell choice and targeting. This is very much learned through practice, so before you raid next I suggest you go through your list of heals and just note which ones are most appropriate for different situations. Choosing (for e.g.) GHW over Chain Heal can make a massive difference. Particularly with Chain Heal, it simply isn't worth casting if you can't get it to hit multiple (3+) targets. One major point for improvement is always Chain Heal usage. Similarly, you want your Healing Rain hitting 4+ people (it caps at 6). This bit is really about watching yourself as you play and spotting where you could have made a better spell choice.

 

Once you've learned all that, then start looking at Totemic Recall to withdraw your totems before they finish. You can do that with Healing Stream Totem, your utility totems, and even Healing Tide Totem if everyone is topped. There is also something you can do to game your Legendairy meta-gem proc and gain regen equivalent to ~3k Spirit.

 

Good luck! :)

[CptDan 25]

Stoove is the wizard of all things shaman related. He is neither late nor early, For he arrives precisely when he intends to.

 

@stoove, i just know that our time zones are different which usually gives me the jump and then you always have great wisdom to add. 

 

Following up on what stoove said above. Your spell selection is very important. We don't have the ability to blanket a raid very effectively, we are the kings of smart healing. 

 

The way I learned to alter my spell selection was to look at logs and see which spells were generally wasted (really high over healing) and then I would look as to why those spells were so high. I had some that were 90% plus over healing. Which means that in essence that spell was only worth 10% of its mana cost. We all over heal, it can't be really avoided but it can be managed. When you see that Healing Tide Totem was 94% over heal maybe you can drop it at a more impactful time. How many casts of Chain Heal vs Targets? if there is 1 or 2 then you should readjust and make sure you are hitting 3-4 people each time. Be aware of not only where you are standing but where others are standing. You will be an efficient machine of the raw powers of watery deluge!!!

[Grahmrook 6]

To reiterate on Cpt's first post and last, pay attention to the tool kit.  Glyph of chaining can be amazing, particularly in 10m.  It also helps to slow you down if you find yourself just spamming it.  Also, try to riptide your intended CH target first. 

[Stoove 347]

CptDan's comments about overhealing on logs is particularly important considering the changes to healing coming in patch 6.0, so I'd advise getting used to minimizing overhealing now in order to hit the ground running in 6.0. :)

 

Be aware of not only where you are standing but where others are standing. You will be an efficient machine of the raw powers of watery deluge!!!

 

Replaced Glyph of Deluge with Glyph of Rain of Frogs. Never regretted it :P

[CptDan 25]

Aww I am immortalized in stoove's siggy line go me!

In real life medicine (my profession) there are a few quotes which will become increasingly fitting to what we do.

1)"the key to saving a life is the proper medical intervention at the proper medical time."

2) and a quote from working in the army emergency room: "slow is smooth, smooth is fast."