Chain Healers Anonymous

We'll I am now 78.5 and well on my way to attaining level 80 on my shaman and starting to prepare for raiding. As I wrote last week in my blog entree first impressions of the green resto shaman I was struggling with healing small groups and thought I had sumbled onto something that would make my life easier.

We'll I have had the opportunity to run several instances now with this new mindset and I am ready to report on it.

First off all from an subjective viewpoint I have become extremely comfortable with knowing my limits and continually pushing them on Spinel. As you know if you have been following my blog I have some pretty extensive raid experience healing as all three of the other healing classes already, trying to come up with some form of analogy to translate what I had learned from healing on them to healing on a Shaman has been a rocky road at best.

You see the problem is that for a shaman to be ultimatly successful at healing in small groups where they are the sole healer they really have to know what tools are best for what situatoin. I can say with quiet certainty that the same is not true for Druids and Paladins which are the two classes I have the most intimate knowledge with.

With a Paladin in a 5 man you can get away with 95% flash of light spam and an occassional holy light if the tank gets smashed, I quite literally went all of burning crusade without ever touching my Holy Shock button. While other Paladin's I know love it and use it to top meters, it's rarely useful in a neccessity sort of way, it doesnt do enough healing to be a life saver, its more useful in steal Eff Healing from other healers when you finish up a cast of a FL or HL.

Druids can get away or at least could with keeping life bloom on the tank and tossing out a couple rejuvs once in awhile never touching healing touch or regrowth and often going entire instances without using tranquility.

From my experience with a shaman thus far and I will admit I am no expert here but am speaking from my personal experiences the shaman has to know their bag of tricks and know them well.

Here is what I consider my bag of tricks thus far:

• Chain Heal instead of Lesser Healing Wave. I am not sure where I read this but once I started using it, it was amazing how much this little tid bit helped me. Essentially unless you need the faster heal that LHW provides Chain Heal is a more mana efficient heal even if it doesn't jump and heals for roughtly the same amout with talents.


• Keep Tidal Wave active at all times. This comes from two key techniques. If your using the tip above you alreay know one the other is simply to utilize riptide to fill the gaps when chain heal is not neccessary. The extra hot is nice on tanks or used to top off a dpser or even yourself.


• No Water Shield equals No Mana. Refresh and refresh often. WS costs ZERO mana there is no excuse for it to be down. Thus refreshing it before it expires is not a waist of mana, only a global cooldown. Keep an eye on your WS charges with a mod like totemtimers and if there is a lull in healing feel free to refresh the water shield, no telling when it'll lapse and your in the middle of a buch of heals. That few seconds without it or few crits without the mana return could be detremental in some mana intensive fights.


• Earth Shield your tank. This to me seems like a no brainer but I have ran whole instances on my protection paladin with a resto shaman without ever seeing an earth shield form them, and I know they had talents in it. This is a huge tool for healing smaller groups it enables you as a shaman to do more than spam heal the tank. A smart heal for around 1k every few attacks is akin in 5mans to about 20% damage reduction of the damage that gets through your tanks mitigation.


• Totems. Create a macro of your standard 4 totem rotation. Totems are part of the class and while they can be annoying on trash knowing what totems are neccessary for efficiency and which are not can be a life saver. For example Mana Stream Totem and Strength of Earth totem when I am with my wife's bear are essential. The mana obviously for me and the SoE for her avoidance and threat to help me have to heal less and conserve mana for faster trash clearing.

Welp for now that is it. I will try to write in again in a bit once I start hitting heroics.

Head
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Helm of the Lightning Halls]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Brood Plague Helmet]


Neck
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Timeless Beads of Eternos]
Halls of Lightning - [Chaotic Spiral Amulet]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Necromancer's Amulet]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Amulet of Dazzling Light]


Shoulders
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Epaulets of Market Row]
Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Mantle of Discarded Ways]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Spaulders of the Violet Hold]


Back
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Shroud of Resurrection]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Shroud of Moorabi]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Subterranean Waterfall Shroud]


Chest
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Runic Cage Chestpiece]
Drak'Tharon Keep [BOE] - [Reanimator's Cloak]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Scaled Armor of Drakos]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Arcane Flame Altar-Garb]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Moragg's Chestguard]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Dalronn's Jerkin]


Wrist
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Dragonflayer Seer's Bindings]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom [BOE] - [Glowworm Cavern Bindings]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Bands of the Sky Ring]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Limb Regeneration Bracers]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Bands of Channeled Energy]


Hands
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Gauntlets of Dark Conversion]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Cracked Epoch Grasps]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Lightning-Charged Gloves]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Fiery Obelisk Handguard]


Waist
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone [BOE - Cloth] - [Sash of the Hardened Watcher]**
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Mail Girdle of the Audient Earth]
Gundrak (Heroic) - [Slad'ran's Coiled Cord]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Girdle of the Ethereal]


Legs
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning - [Kilt of Molten Golems]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Legguards of Nature's Power]
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Patroller's War-Kilt]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Frozen Forest Kilt]


Feet
Non-Heroic
Halls of Stone - [Sabatons of the Ages]
Heroic



Rings
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Enchanted Wire Stitching]
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Signet of Ranulf]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Band of Guile]
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Band of Enchanted Growth]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Ring of the Frenzied Wolvar]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Solitaire of Reflecting Beams]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Spectral Seal of the Prophe]
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Ring of the Traitor King]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Annhylde's Ring]


Trinkets
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Soul Preserver]
The Occulus - [Tome of Arcane Phenomena]
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Winged Talisman]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Spark of Life]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Forge Ember]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Talisman of Troll Divinity]


Main Hand
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Beguiling Scepter]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Gavel of the Fleshcrafter]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Netherbreath Spellblade]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [War Mace of Unrequited Love]


Off Hand
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Tor's Crestf]
Heroic
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Facade Shield of Glyphs]


Totems
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
None


**Only level 80 healer waist avaialble from non-heroic instances.


Crafted Items
(Chest) [Revenant's Breastplate]
(Boots) [Revenant's Treads]
(Feet) [Scaled Icewalkers]***
(Head) [Nightshock Hood]***
(Waist) [Nightshock Girdle]***
(Chest) [Earthpeace Breastplate]***
(Legs) [Dark Nerubian Leggings]***
(Chest) [Dark Nerubian Chestpiece]***
(Main Hand) [Cudgel of Saronite Justice]***
(Main Hand) [Saronite Spellblade]***

*** Not level appropriate for raiding but decent to get you started in heroics to get the good stuff.

First off I am not even remotely close to being an expert at being a resto shaman at this point. I’ve tried digging around and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of discussion about healing as a resto shaman. The stuff I can find is raid oriented and seems to revolve around varying themes of binding every key on your keyboard to chain heal and then rolling your face on your keyboard.


Spinel is now level 73 as of last night. My wife is playing her druid Caetlyn which she has speced feral towards tanking.

We’ve ran 3 instances now in northrend. Two runs of The Nexus and one run of Utgard Keep.

First off The Nexus is definatly the more challenging of the two instances both because the bosses seem to be a little more technical in strategies but also because the zone it’s self is not linear. You can get to and complete the bosses inside in pretty much any order you would like. Where as Utgard Keep is definatly a strictly linear dungeon and the only real difficult boss at least from a healers perspective was the last boss and only because both myself and my wife are not in full level 70+ blue/green gear. Neither of our characters were 70 for long before the expansion and whatever we didnt get from questing to 70 we pretty much dont/didnt have going into northrend.

On the very first run into the Nexus we had two Retribution Paladins, Myself, My Wife, and a Warlock. The warlock was in Teir 6 gear while the rest of us were all pretty much lvl 70 pre-raid geared.

We wiped twice the entire run, once due to not being able to keep the group alive on the final boss because people were too spread out and taking tail whips from the boss, the other time was from pulling two groups at once due to a patrol.

The second run we did was the Utgard Keep run which was composed of two mages, another feral druid, my wife and myself. I should point out that the other feral druid and one of the mages are two real close friends we have grouped with on many occasions.

We wiped on this run twice as well. The first time was on the second boss pair that once you kill one of them spawns a shade of themsleves till you kill the other. The shade eat me for lunch the first try and lead to a wipe. The second wipe was on the final boss, where I simply wasn’t able to keep up on the shadow smash damage the two feral druids were taking.

The third instance run was back to the Nexus with a Hunter, Rogue, Death Knight, myself and my wife.

We wiped only once and only because my computer decided to reboot just as my wife pulled the first boss we were attempting. Other than that the whole run went smooth.

Of the three runs for me the third definatly felt the smoothest healing wise.

I had an epiphony while healing the last attempt in Utgard that I tried out in the third run in Nexus that really paid off.

It was the pure synergy of Tidal Wave and Riptide.

Essentially previous to this epiphony I was trying to rely on Chain Heal to keep the tank alive and group topped off. Falling back to Healing Wave only as a neccesity when the tank fell below 70%. Only utilizing RipTide as a last resort and generally only to then utilize it’s Chain Heal Synergy.

In the Utgard Keep run I tried to heal more naturally and just do what made sense from a general healing perspective and that was apply direct healing to the target that needed healing. Only AE healing when it made logical sense. The key to making this work was to ensure that by using riptide every 3rd cast I kept Tidal Wave buff active for the 30% haste buff to my direct heals.

This allowed me to take advantage of a Healing Wave spell that only had a 1.4 second cast time and a Lesser Healing Wave that only had a .9 second cast time. When you consider the burst healing / hot from riptide and couple that with the HPS output from the 30% haste it made it a hell of alot easier to keep the tank and other party members alive.

I am going to keep playing with this mechanic and see how it plays out and will definatly be reporting on my findings at a later date

For the sake of the readers I am going to try to keep this short and sweet.

I currently go by Spinel but I have gone by several names over my tenner in World of Warcraft some of which are Amethess, Whissler, Saffire, Topaz, Dawnstone, and a few others.

I've been playing since right after the original release. I've raided extensively as a Hunter, Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, and Protection Paladin, even dabbled in raiding as a holy priest.

I've recently switched my main again to a Resto Shaman.

I had decided after spending most of BC as a protection Paladin that I wanted to heal again. I had already spent a good deal of my time as a protection paladin in healing gear on bosses so I wanted to be all I could be if I was going to have to heal.

The reasons I choose to play a resto shaman over the other healing classes available to me where quite simple.

I never really enjoyed the act of healing on my paladin. I can't specifically say why and maybe its mostly because what I really wanted to do was tank bosses, but while I could perform on par as other holy paladins in my guild in holy gear as prot spec, I never enjoyed the act itself. The few times I speced holy to help out, I enjoyed it even less because my heart was in tanking and I wanted to tank. Not to just be a tank, to actually tank. But alas thats a different post.

I've always enjoyed healing on my druid. I've since the very early days been extremely good at it. I always liked the concept of pre-emptive healing versus reactive healing. I was seriously torn between my druid and my recently minted level 70 shaman for my new main at the end.

But at the end of the day the following factors were the tie breakers.

My wife was going to be playing a feral druid in WotLK and that meant if I played my druid the tank I would be grouped with 85% of the time outside 25 man raids would lead to us having the same group buffs.

The variety of buffs the Shaman brings to the table in general to any group is much more beneficial than those of a druid. As a shaman we can buff any resistance, clear disease, poison, and curse, we can buff str, agi, spell power, haste, mana and health regen, etc. Druids bring three buffs to the table MoW, Thorns, Tree Aura.

I really like the appeal of Reincarnation over Rebirth. I've been sorta tarred and feathered for this observation but I feel its accurate and true. As healers we are responsible for what we bring to the table and items like reincarnate or rebirth are tools we are stewards of for raids. Rebirth becomes somewhat of a responsibility for druids, namely to to pay special attention to staying alive if they have it available because if they die with it up, they really have cost the raid two lives. Theirs and whomever they couldn't rez because they died early. Where as with reincarnate it empowers the shaman to take more risks. If the reincarnate is up, we can more easily choose self sacrifice to save a tank if we know we have the tool up and available.

The shaman earth shield is also a favorite tool of mine that druids have nothing relative to compare with.

Lastly, there is the direction Blizzard seemed to be taking with nerfing lifebloom and strengthening regrowth and healing touch. It appeared that either as a bi-product of pvp or by intent they were moving towards pushing druids into a more reactive healing role.

So there you have it.

I'm now playing a shaman and experiencing yet another facet of healing in WoW.