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.
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