Changing my main to Resto shaman, tips?

[Deleted]

Yes, another one of these threads!

So I've been playing a priest for almost three years soon but lately I've noticed myself falling for the shaman healing. Since our main raid doesn't have anyone who uses BL/TW/whatever regularly anymore that's one push further with my changing. So I'd like to ask am I heading the right way? There's an armory link on my signature, but I'll throw it here too; http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...anamo/advanced

I browsed through a few threads about stat priorities and with the 4-piece bonus of T13 I decided to settle around the 1267 Haste for the extra HR tick when the bonus is active and go for Mastery from there. I'm not really comfortable going below this Haste amount, so I think I'll stay on this, at least with the 4-piece T13 bonus. I'm sitting at 2631 Spirit and I managed to win the normal version of Heart of Unliving. My Mastery is currently at 1823 which equals 18.17% which increases the potency of my healing spells by 54%. Crit is at 15.84% but I honestly haven't payed too much attention to it.

I used a non-TC spec before last night and after reading about it a bit more I decided to change my spec and try it out. I don't know will I settle for this spec or go back to the non-TC one, but it's worth the shot. With the CD chaining I haven't had that much mana issues without TC, but as I said.. Worth the shot.

For the weapon I change between the LFR version of the Maw (stacked up fights) and the normal version of Scalpel of Unrelenting Agony (a bit more spread out, like Hagara) if this makes any difference to anything.

With healing I try to keep the Tidal Waves up with Riptiding different targets, Healing Rain when a lot of people are stacked up combined with some Chain Heals and then Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave for when a single target needs healing. And naturally I try to keep Earth Shield on one of the tanks at all times and I try to keep track of my Water Shield so it doesn't drop off completely for a long time.

Uhh.. That's about all the background info I could come up with right now. Any tips and reviews are appreciated.

[Mietsch]

Since you are using a TC spec now you can reforge some of that spirit away. You can then change those stats to Haste or Crit. TC Is wonderfull in DS everyfight has a phase where you can shoot some bolts. I never use healing wave instead I Bolt 2 times and then just GHW if they aren't healed up by my fellow Druid and his hots

[Deleted]

Since you are using a TC spec now you can reforge some of that spirit away.

Hmm, good point. I decided to change the spec right before logging so I didn't pay attention to the reforges anymore. I'll have to look into it tonight. :P

[Deleted]

Try to reforge some of the spirit into mastery.

Your heal rotation will/should change too, when using TC. Fewer but more expensive heals. Healing wave is rarely used. Hand out riptides, ghws as needed, drop a healing rain and then it's back to spamming lightning bolts.

Pay attention to the uptime of your totems and water shield/earth shield.
Drop mana tide early if the other healers are ~70%, even if you're at 100% due to TC.

Maw is probably superior to the scalpel on most, if not all fights. The proc is really powerful if you are standing right.

[Deleted]

The Healing Wave using is kind of stuck from my priest's spec and healing style. Since on her I'm specced for Strength of Soul I try to cast Heal during some downtime to reduce the Weakened Soul debuff on targets, usually tanks. I know I still need some tweaking in the healing style if/when I change to my shaman, especially now with the TC-spec.

How much Spirit do you guys usually go for if you have the TC-spec? I mean I also have the Heart of Unliving which gives 880 Spirit when all the stacks are up, so I'm not entirely sure how much more "can" I drop off. I know some of it comes down to personal preference, but..

[Radux]

With HoU fully stacked and TC, you could get away with ~3k Spirit (fully buffed). It all depends on you, though. Some people need more, some people need less.

[Deleted]

Reforge all spirit away and try it. If you feel like you are ooming then increase the amount of spirit slowly. TC > Spirit tho so you should really focus on using LB whenever there is no need for a heal and replace HW with GHW. I was running with 1700 spirit from gear without spirit procs from trinkets and it worked just fine. With your trinket you should be able to go as low on spirit as you want. I assume you are healing 10m because you are there to provide BL, I just switched from 25m to 10m on my shaman and it feels like mastery is way less effective in 10m because I use CH/HR less and mostly GHW so I changed to a high haste + high crit reforge which works well for me.

[Deleted]

Since I'm still learning and in a way starting on my shaman (I dinged about 85 about 10 days ago) I don't want to drop off too much Spirit and end up running around like a headless chicken with an empty mana bar. I still need to get a bit more adjusted to the healing so I don't want to go out of the "comfort zone". I'll try to reforge some more Spirit off and test out what I'm comfortable with. At least I know I can still get rid off quite a lot of it.

[Mietsch]

I reforged everything to Mastery and I always picked the stat that provided the most increase in mastery. Then I looked for my preferred haste cap 1573 since I get Dark Intent and thus am sitting at the 2005 haste breakpoint with Wrath of Air up. I first reforged every Spirit left to crit. But I found I was ooming to fast. Now I am at 2111 Spirit from gear and I feel a lot safer on mana. I have the LFR version of HoU though.

Remember I go for Haste breakpoint because of personal preference. It by no means mean that I am pulling the highest HPS.

try http://wowreforge.com and choose the expert mode function to have some fun with different reforges without it actually costing you any money.

[CricketEmerissEU]

Just a matter of getting used to being able to get people up quite quickly with a tidalwaved & mastery boosted GHW. Once you get a feel for this you can relax with the healing waves and instead fill in with some lightning bolts.

You can reforge back and forth all you want and nitpick over minute details, but I think you will see the biggest increase in performance when you really notice how low you can let your group drop before you actually have to panic heal.

[Alltat]

The Healing Wave using is kind of stuck from my priest's spec and healing style. Since on her I'm specced for Strength of Soul I try to cast Heal during some downtime to reduce the Weakened Soul debuff on targets, usually tanks.

Try binding an auto-assist Lightning Bolt macro to your Heal key. There aren't a lot of times when you want to use Healing Wave anyway. Spine is the only one that comes to mind, and only if your LB spam would risk killing tentacles. Any time there's a hostile target around to shoot, GHW is more mana efficient than HW.

How much Spirit do you guys usually go for if you have the TC-spec? I mean I also have the Heart of Unliving which gives 880 Spirit when all the stacks are up, so I'm not entirely sure how much more "can" I drop off. I know some of it comes down to personal preference, but..

About 2800 spirit (including HoU) works for most heroic content.