A little shaman education.

Moonscipher

Moonscipher

New Member
I know I need it! I looked at some guides about shaman's in raids this morning. Basically I wanted to see how I could most benefit my party and how to heal properly. I've never played a healing class before so any help other healers can give me is great.

What I've learned so far is that-
1- EarthShield both generates healing threat and adds to the total healing of the person it's cast on. What that means is for every point healed you gain 0.725 threat to all mobs. Pretty cool huh. The other part is instead of adding to my overall healing, it adds to the affected target's healing. Not that it matters but I was curious myself

2- I also learned that, taking last night's group into consideration, I would have been much better in the tank/melee group. My windfury totem, 20% chance of granting an extra attack with extra AP added, would have added a huge amount of dps to the raid. The raid make up last night was: Group 1- Tinie, Kagnus, Deed, Mimbari, and Ashkanz(sp?). Group 2- Myself, Avesti, Loiki, Berstromme, and I'm drawing a blank on Tarrus' mage. If I would have been swaped with the hunter(ashknaz(sp?)), the group would have lost his buff of 100AP, I think, and gained both windfury and an 86 str totem. A little info on WF totem. It does not share the hidden 3 sec cooldown that my self WF buff does. So what it basically does is give all 4 members a 20% chance to hit the mob with white dmg with added AP. Seems to me that would increase dps substantially not to mention generate more threat for the tanks.

3- Chain Heal(hit's 3 target's who are close together with a heal that downranks each jump) is very effective heal. If raid members are grouped together, namely dps, I could effectively heal all with just one spell. It only effects targets who take dmg. The one thing I'm not sure of is when cast on a party member will it jump to other raid members? I read somewhere that it won't but then last night it seemed to do just that. If cast on a member of the other party it could jump to all raid members but not sure if it works the other way around.

Other than these three things, I think most other shaman healing talents/spells are pretty standard. This isn't meant to critize anyone by no means. I really wanted to learn to be a better healer and I felt it was also necessary for other people to know what I can do. Most people I group with have not seen a shaman very much and therefore know little about them. Thanks for listening and looking forward to helping out the best I can!
 
The obvious

Work on your mana pool, regen and + heals. My pally is over 11k mana unbuffed now ( can get up to around 13k fully buffed including pots) around 1200+h unbuffed jumps to 1600+H with light on my target (soon to be 1800-2000 with some enchants) regen is 115 in combat with improved bow. Which means when I go oom, I can still spam flash of light 1200-(1700-2000) (crit) around every 2 seconds. (Work on getting some healing enchants) By the time you get to Maiden & Curator in Kara.. you are probably going to notice your going oom, really fast..

In terms of healing mechanics..I'm not sure what kind of heals a shammy has.. (Group heals?, fast heals? cast time? Can shaman's decurse?) In Kara you will probably be working with 2 other healers of some type.. These are the things the other healer's around you need to know to work on a healing strat.
 
Would it be worth it for a healing shaman to go for the primal mooncloth set (belt, shoulders, robe)? Excellent +healing and mana/5, as well as some gem sockets. The set bonus would give you 5% mana regen while casting.

I know it's cloth, but are there better mail healing items for those slots? (Would mean you'd have to take up tailoring, but might be worth it - that's the only reason my priest is a tailor).
 
There are particular 'SPECIES' that give buffs or auras to any given class, it should be decided who will most benefit from using you in their party. That is one way to maximize your over-all group performance. Going from elemental or whatever you were right to a healing spec is a big change, I would suggest running instances healing so you can get used it it a little more -- I suggest this for a couple reasons. 1. getting used to the healing cast times and 2. getting a feel for which heal spells are the most mana efficient.

You will be loved for your chain heals in the very near future, Curator is one of the fights where chain heals are the way to go, rather than blasting off 3 hots or small heals you are sending one to fill people up.

I think you will do just fine healing, you did a great job healing arc the other night -- its just going to take some time to get used to it all.
 
It was my suggestion to put you in with the casters last night. Your +1% to hit with spells, mana spring, mana tide, heroism, and totem of wrath (the spell damage/healing one?) in my estimation bring much more to that group than windfury, strength of the earth (the +strength totem?) on 2 tanks, a prot pali, and a single rogue than if you had been in the other group.

I could be dead wrong on that estimation and would be happy to have you try a melee buffing roll.
 
Oh, and are you *certain* that the Windfury totem doesn't have the 3.0sec cooldown? That's the first I've heard about that and would love to know if it's a bug or working as intended.
 
As one of the healers in the group you were in, the buffs to me were very useful. Normally I'm chugging at least two super mana potions on Moroes, only needed one. Was able to throw some consecrates on Moroes because of the extra mana, plus the increase in spell dam/heals was very nice (i'm sure our mage friends enjoyed it even more...) On nights when we have two rogues perhaps putting you in the melee group would be better, but your buffs on two ranged dps plus all the healers was very nice. Chain heals would be nice for many of the fights.

Do you use a healing mod like healbot? Very nice interface for healing. Creates a little panel with all the raid members (works for parties as well), shows you their health. Let's you program some mouse buttons to cast your heals and away you go. If you have a 5 button mouse it is really a joy, with a two-button mouse you can shift/alt/ctrl click for different spells.

I use healbot to "heal the board" as a pally. All my heals are single target and I have a long big heal or a quick little heal. I'm still working on my healing. I still get caught trying to "save" someone when they pull aggro and throwing a big heal, only to have them die before it finishes. (Trying to work on this to those who have died during my learning sorry!) Problem with flash healing and not having Light's Grace up is the big heal takes .5sec longer to finish casting. I've lost more than a few in that .5 sec, so I'm trying to interweave more Holy Light spells despite the over heal to stay in Light's Grace. Anyway, I've rambled so I'll wrap it up.
 
As per healing...

Shammies don't have a HoT. They do have a greater/lesser heal and a chain heal as well as a healing totem that heals a certain amount every 2 seconds or so. They can cure poisons and diseases as well as plant a totem which cleanses either poison or disease every 2 seconds. They can also purge an enemy target of a magic buff (but not cleanse magic off of friendlies).

The trick to some of these totems is that a shammy can only put one totem of each "type" down - one water, one fire, one air and one earth. It means that they can have EITHER a healing totem or a mana regen totem down (water totems), EITHER grace of air (+agi) or windfury (chance to hit thingy) (air totems), EITHER strength of earth (+str) or another earth totem, EITHER flametongue or magma (fire totems)...you get the idea. Sometimes there will be cases where two people would like different totems (melee would like windfury, ranged would like agi....healers would like the added heals, mages/locks might like the mana back etc.) and the Shammy would need to understand what the different choices would make to the raid. As part of my talents I have a totem that I can use once every 5 mins I believe that gives 6% mana back per 3 seconds for I believe 30 seconds it seems to be almost like an innervate but for the whole group.

Overall I'm having a hoot with my resto shammy (lvl 56) and am looking forward to levelling her to 70 and getting keyed for instances to give another healer option to the guild.
 
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Oh, and are you *certain* that the Windfury totem doesn't have the 3.0sec cooldown? That's the first I've heard about that and would love to know if it's a bug or working as intended.
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No I am not 100% sure but I did read it in a few guides. If it's true then that alone would add serious dps to rogues. Anyway you're probally right about last night, and my intention wasn't to critize anyone. I only meant to discuss and better understand how to best play my class.

Gotta run so I'll comment on other things later.
 
Thanks for posting this Tone:) I am definitely a noob when it comes to shammies. It was very cool to have you on our run. Tinie likes shammy healin' :)
 
Kinda funny cus with 3.0 weapon speed or higher you won't notice the diff. With my warrior and his 3.7 speed weapon it double procs all the time, but then again its 3.7 speed. Would be curious to test it out with a rogue/fury warrior/tank.

Sean
 
Moonscipher said:
No I am not 100% sure but I did read it in a few guides. If it's true then that alone would add serious dps to rogues. Anyway you're probally right about last night, and my intention wasn't to critize anyone. I only meant to discuss and better understand how to best play my class.
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Of course! No criticism taken. I, like you, am curious at what point shaman in melee group > shaman in caster group. How many melee DPSers does it take? I don't know the answer.
 
I agree with the general posts about the helpfulness of hte Shammy in the caster group...I only chugged one mana pot (not counting gems, obviously) the entire night, and that was during Moroes, and I ended the fight without using evocate and with about 3k mana. I'm not sure if that's a huge benefit, as I usually don't go oom on that fight anyway, but I do know that the +100 spelldmg was AMAZING to have alongside me...enough that I tried to stay within it's radius as a conscious thing. I have no idea if you would have that kind of effect on a melee group, but as a caster, I felt epic. (=
 
Would you mind linking some of the better guides? I've been looking for good reading material on Shamans, and have come up woefully short, except for a decent elemental guide, which I'm not really interested. I'm resto spec right now, and only level 20, so I know lots won't apply, but I still want to learn.
 
As for guides, I found a few lately. Mostly are for end game shaman's but the info pertain's to leveling I'm sure. This link contains attainable gear when raiding. It also has 2 other links that are great for resto shaman's. One is a healing guide and the other is pre-raid healing gear.
 
Oh yeah john. As for the hidden 3.0 second cooldown on windfury. I tried it out a bit today. Using a 2.0 weapon speed mace, I saw it proc 2 times in a row. Now Maybe I missed something but I'm gonna try it out a few more times. I have a 1.6 mace I'll try it out with. Might be able to get it to proc more often. Grouping with a rogue would be nice too so I'll ask about it next time.
 
I'm gonna have to test that. If it's true, then I don't see why every enhancement Shaman out this isn't using WF5 on off hand and WF totem on main hand even when soloing.
 
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