10/11/2009

Shaman healing for beginners

I really like healing. I currently have a priest, a paladin and a druid at level eighty, all of whom have at least one healing spec and a set of healing gear that ranges from solid to awesome in quality. I've used all of them to heal in five-mans, raids and (with the exception of the paladin) PvP. I guess as such it was only a matter of time until I would turn my attention towards the one healing class that was still missing in my stable, the shaman.

I decided to mainly level as enhancement, since I once tried to level a draenei shaman as restoration and it was pure agony (though this might also have been related to the server she was on). Even this time I started to collect healing gear early on though, and mostly focused on keeping my fellow team mates alive in low-level battlegrounds. At forty I purchased restoration as my proper dual spec, but since finding groups for low-level instances is still such a pain, I never got to try it out in a PvE group environment - until I hit Outland that is, where I have now successfully healed Hellfire Ramparts, the Slave Pens and the Underbog so far.

I have to say, my first impression of shaman healing is that it's really kind of slow and boring. This might change once I get riptide, which I don't have yet due to prioritising some PvP talents first, but as it is... yeah. I'm still having a good time, but this is mostly because I'm excited about experiencing something new.

The thing is, I like how priests and druids have tons of different spells. It means that there are different ways to deal with every situation and always decisions to make. Paladins have fewer abilities, but if nothing else their healing style with the hasted holy light bombs is fast and still requires on-the-fly decisions about who to heal first, since you can only heal one person at once (two if you have beacon of light up).

Now, shamans... they only have few spells, but said spells are simply too good. If there's no aoe damage going around, you can just put earth shield on the tank and then go AFK for the next pull. Since it's "smart" and only consumes charges when the target actually takes damage, you don't even have to worry about regularly refreshing it after x seconds like you would with a regular heal over time effect. At first I couldn't believe that a single spell could be this good and kept trying to supplement the earth shield healing with the occasional lesser healing wave, but I just ended up doing a lot of overhealing.

When more than one person gets hit, things usually get interesting for the healer. Who should be healed first and with which spell? Is it feasible to heal multiple targets at once, and if so, which ones? As a shaman, as soon as you see more than one person taking damage, you just target someone, anyone, and then cast a slooow chain heal. Then you repeat this until everyone is topped off. Argh.

What did end up being more interesting than expected was totem management. Duh, you say, totems are what shamans are all about! Well, obviously I knew that, but it's still different to actually be walking in a totem carrier's shoes yourself. The first thing that struck me was just how often I had to drop my totems and then pick them up again; I swear I spent more mana on that during my instance runs than on anything else. I shudder at the thought of what that must have been like before the option to drop four totems at once was introduced...

The thing is, totems bring so many and such powerful buffs, yet non-shamans seem to be completely oblivious to them. I almost miss people nagging my paladin about whether they want blessing of kings or might - at least they care! When you're a shaman, nobody gives a crap about whether you drop strength of earth or stoneskin, healing stream or mana spring, and good luck figuring out which of your totem buffs are at odds with buffs that other people in your party give by default! Unsurprisingly, nobody pays attention to the location of your totems either. You try to drop them in a nice, central position so you can take down several pulls within their range, but people will run off and just out of range anyway. So into the bag they go (the totems, not the people), you run thirty yards ahead and then drop them again. Good times...

My final observation so far: Reincarnation is amazing and awful at the same time, kind of like spirit of redemption is for priests. If you've ever been a priest healer in a pug where you died, managed to keep everyone alive for the rest of the fight while in spirit form, and then had to make a corpse run on your own while the rest of the party congratulated each other on what an awesome job they did, you'll know what I mean.

Case in point, we over-pulled some Underbog trash and ended up with three groups at once. A few mobs went for me and started beating me up. I blew a nature's-swiftness-plus-healing-wave combo on trying to save my life while I ran to the tank, but I still died shortly afterwards. Of course I couldn't let the rest of my group die to vicious sporebats though! So I hit reincarnation, dropped a mana tide totem and successfully kept everyone up until everything else was dead. The tank started to apologise, saying it was his fault, but the dps death knight immediately interrupted with: "No worries, we're all alive!" Yeah, now we are, no thanks to you. Thanks for not even noticing my dramatic demise! Though I guess I can be glad that this method at least doesn't involve a lonely corpse run.

5 comments:

  1. Aww - I really enjoyed reading this post. I can so relate to you because I to have my own shaman. You are not alone :D
    /hug

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  2. Shinter, did you read the last comment I made on Miss Medicina or what? I was just saying resto shammies seemed to be all gone. And now you write a post about them :) Well timed ;)
    To begin, mine turned resto at 80, until then was only enhancement (and I'm really thinking into respeccing elemental seeing the crazy dps they do). So when I got dual I had all the spells available, like riptide.
    Resto shaman was a surprising spec. It's very well balanced and simple to play. Of course, as I always say "easy to play, difficult to master", since I'm not delving deeply into it like multiple totem switching and so.
    Totems. They're very useful, like limited pally blessings. My totem management depends on the group composition, If I'm the only shammy in 5man I drop Stoneskin or Strenght (depending on tank numbers), mana spring, flametongue weapon and if there're more melee than ranged windfury, otherwise wrath of air. This is the fixed totems I cast (thanks Blizz for the totem bar!!) and only switch to tremor totem (if boss do aoe fear) or cleansing (for splash poison damage). If there're more shammies we negotiate which one plants each. I usually go with the defensive/caster ones (stoneskin, flametongue, mana spring, wrath of air) while he casts the offensive (strength, searing, windfury). Most of the times you can plant them and forget until they're about to run out.
    For healing spells: protect the tank with earht shield, cast riptide on first noticeable big hit then proceed with lesser healing wave until riptide hot is out. Rinse and repeat. Use only chain heal when several players take heavy damage, otherwise riptide/lesser healing wave.
    So the number of spells you're going to use is small, but remember you bring also great utility to the party not only in the form of totems: cleanse spirit to remove nasty debuffs, purge to remove nasty buffs from the boss and the true king of the world: heroism/bloodlust.
    And all rejoice about reincarnation, Blizz is reducing the cooldown on 3.3 ;)

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  3. Oooh shammy healer! My main raid toon is a shammy healer and I love her!

    The drop-4-totems with one click was really a major buff for us, with some heavy hitting bosses it could take half a fight before I had found time to drop all four.

    I tend to use Lesser Healing Wave a lot, even in aoe damage situations because people are often running around and too spread out for the chain heal jumps to work. But it looks hilarious when I chain heal melee on some knock back boss and get the greenish white lazor beams all over!

    In 5-mans, I usually drop the healing stream instead of mana spring and use the Mana Tide if I run low on mana.

    @Kurnak, good news about the reincarnation cd!

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  4. My main is obviously a resto shaman, but I heal raids on level 80 with a priest and druid. I have never healed with a paladin because blood elfs make my eyes bleed.

    You already said it, druids and priests have tons of tools to heal. Shamans have fewer. If you have many tools at hand, you are somewhat forced to learn to handle them. I guess that's a reason, why there are many, not so excellent resto shamans out there. Folks are just too lazy to master the allegedly easy way of shaman healing. But the fact is, resto shaman healing has an awesome flow and feeling. RT LHW HW and of course CH are all excellent spells you will use often and learn to use according to the situation. It's great to switch from tank healer, to fast spot healing to strong group healing. Watching the Tidal Waves Buff, Earth Shield Charges and managing totems all requires attention.

    If you came that far, don't give up on shaman healing yet. Switch to enhancement, level up and enjoy resto healing at max level.

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  5. With 5 main heals I'd kind of agree that there's not that much there but each one clearly defines a role and I kind of like that direct approach.

    Shaman healing is all about the timing. Yeah Chain Heal is now a bit OP compared to the other heals but that 2-2.5 seconds can be death some of the time. I've lost count the amount of times I've said bullshit after my heal was a fraction of a second too late. Or even as often when a paladin or druid heals my main Chain Heal target to full before my spell can get off.

    On totems, totally. People don't know or care which totems are out, often I see many Shamans who don't either, they just drop whatever and leave it at that often not dropping any at all.

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