Never healed before - Looking for some tips

[Deleted]

So, due to our 10 man having real issues finding a dps with healer offspec I am being asked to heal for the first time :P

I am extremely worried especially since my first fight will be heroic meg on Wednesday and I really have no clue what to do. I am ofc going to read the resto shammy guide here and on other sites to catch up on the basics but I really need some other help aswell. Especially with my gear.

This is me: Armory

And as you can see the way I am gemmed and reforged is not optimal for Resto, so I do not know what to do really. The alternatives I have are the Shoulders from tortos HC, Normal Tier Chest (Elemental) and the Mace from Lei Shen normal Lfr Tier Token Chest.

I currently have no trinkets other than the 2 I am wearing now.

As it will be probably only for Meg hc I would really like some specific pointers for that fight as resto in 10 man. What do I use on the rampages and how do I heal outside of the rampages?

Is there any top resto shammy out there who has a grid+clique setup I can use since I also have no macros or healer ui :P

Any sort of pointers would be a giant help.
Thank you in advance.

If you need more info just ask

[Deleted]

Int, Int/haste, Int/Spirit gems are perfectly fine. However, you'll probably want at least 11-12k spirit before you feel comfortable. So reforge any mastery you have into either spirit or crit. If you still have more than 7613 haste, you should definitely reforge out of that as well. Pick up Glyph of Totemic Recall and use it every time your HST is about to expire.

If you can afford it or have another helmet to use, pick up the healing LMG. Your current chest is fairly good and I wouldn't replace it for the elemental normal tier chest. As for trinkets, I suggest you also pick up the Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault and the DMC trinket.

Consider taking AG as your Tier 5 talent for Megaera. You're CD rotation could be something along the lines of AG - Asc/SLT - AG - Nothing - AG - Asc/SLT depending on how fast your group is killing the heads.

[shammypie]

Consider taking AG as your Tier 5 talent for Megaera. You're CD rotation could be something along the lines of AG - Asc/SLT - AG - Nothing - AG - Asc/SLT depending on how fast your group is killing the heads.

Not really sure what your smoking but it must be good. Healing Tide Totem is miles ahead of AG for a multitude of reasons. If for some reason your dps is miles ahead of the average and your getting rampage every 45 secs then get AG for the shorter CD.

Anyway you rampages generally come out about 1 each depending on your dps. Therefore you should use CDs in this order: SLT, Asc, HTT, repeat. outside you can either take the chaining glyph or just do rip/hw spam and GHW when needed. Depending on how bad your rampages are for you, you may not be able to afford that 4s cd. My group tends to be ok with the damage load so i take the glyph to make spread healing a little bit easier. You want to conserve mana in this phase and remember to recall hst.

[Deleted]

Ye I had full haste gems but I switched them out for inf, int/haste and int/spirit gems since that seemed to make more sense if I am actually using my offspec. I did a msv pug and picked up the trash on use trinket and also purchased the relic of chi ji. Sadly I do not have enough valor for the shado pan trinket.

I tested reforging my gear into full spirit and it seems to be about 10k but I would still have about 8k haste. How do I go about using riptide? Is it like rejuve? Am I blanketing the raid outside of rampages or am I just using it on a few targets while filling with healing wave and greater if necessary?

So rampages seem to be Buffed Healing Rain + CD + CHain Heal spam. I guess I would have to test if I can use it glyphed or unglyphed, seems to depend on how much CH spam I have to do in a rampage. So my strongest CD is HTT? That would be the one I should use on 3 and 6?

As Always much appreciated.

[Krekko]

I know you're looking for some specific tips, but if you want to get into the swing of things, put yourself into a Heroic Scenario a few times to get the swing of things.

Go in with a group and heal around. Get used to your bindings, your spells and necessary reactions. It isn't a Heroic raid, but it's better than nothing.

[Jotaux]

I'm also trying to get a feel for resto. Are Heroic Scenarios a lot better than LFR for learning how to heal? In LFR I come out looking amazing, doing like 80% of the healing done. In a real raid it feels like I have no clue about what I'm doing.

[Deleted]

I know that I have to actually use my spells and heal people to get a better feel for the spec but HC scenarios and Dungeons or lfr are my only option atm anyway and i dont know how any of that compares to what I will run into when healing meg hc 10, thats why I asked for more specific tips :P

Anyway, ty

[Krekko]

I'm also trying to get a feel for resto. Are Heroic Scenarios a lot better than LFR for learning how to heal? In LFR I come out looking amazing, doing like 80% of the healing done. In a real raid it feels like I have no clue about what I'm doing.

I honestly prefer learning (now at least, proving grounds in 5.4 might replace this however. We'll see.) in Heroic Scenarios over Heroic Dungeons, or LFR.

I feel like you notice your mistakes, or properly executed moments are better reflected in such instances and you have technically more opportunities to make more of your class in H Scens, and while sure, you'll complete it, the goal to complete it before the timer runs out, and beat your best time is always up there. LFR is quite mindless, especially at this late in the game, to the point where you can literally do almost anything and guarantee success.

Heroic Scenarios, especially with people at a lower iLvl require you to be more environmentally aware and utilize more of your toolkit when not. Sure you can do it without a healer, it's still a great place for a healer, or any spec to learn, however.

You'll learn to react to what's going on with other people while what's going on with what's happening on screen as well.
When you can afford to ignore the mechanics, you almost inherently will. When you can't you'll be forced to learn or die. Just make sure to take people on the lower end on the iLvL spectrum for more fun.

[Deleted]

Not really sure what your smoking but it must be good. Healing Tide Totem is miles ahead of AG for a multitude of reasons. If for some reason your dps is miles ahead of the average and your getting rampage every 45 secs then get AG for the shorter CD.

Not sure I care for the way you're trying to get your point across. There's a pretty even split in the top WoL logs on Megaera between AG/HTT and the ones using AG generally do more healing with AG than the ones with HTT do with HTT. There are many situations where HTT may be better than AG, but Megaera certainly isn't one of them. Another advantage of AG is that it lets you spread your CDs around more, which is good for the same reason you don't want to stack your own HPS CDs.

[Xionyus]

Well. My rShaman is my alt, but I still play it just as frequently as my main.

Since you're only healing heroic Megaera, I would suggest going for the 7163 haste cap. You'll get an extra tick on your healing rain. I would do this for reforging priority:

Spirit > 7163 Haste > 50% Mastery > Crit => Haste

I like Crit over Haste for 10mans. If you're 2 healing, you'll be doing a lot of single target heals, and that's where I like the crit. You also get mana returned back when you crit because of Resurgence.

I wouldn't use Glyph of Riptide. If you're gonna try and blanket the raid with Riptide, it isn't going to work well. The mana costs are really high. You'll be OOM before you know it. I would swap it out for Glyph of Totemic Recall. You say you only have about 10k spirit. That's not bad, but I'm running with about 12k and I'm not entirely comfortable. Have Healing Stream Totem down always, pretty much on CD. If you have your 2pc, it's great. When your totem is about to expire (16-17 seconds left on cooldown), use totemic recall. It will give you back the full mana cost of the totem. Don't recall your totem if you have your Fire/Earth Elemental or Stormlash Totem out, those will be gone as well. Only use Totemic Recall if it's just Healing Stream Totem. If you're in a tough spot, you could use Totemic Recall right as your Elemental is about to despawn. It is a lot more mana efficient compared to telluric currents.

When healing rampages, always have Healing Rain down and chain heal. If you aren't using Healing Tide Totem, try and save Healing Stream Totem for the rampages. Healing Rain and Chain Heal are pretty expensive, so make sure you're using Totemic Recall.

The only other suggestion I'd make is to change out Totemic Projection for Call of the Elements. If you're in a tough spot and your Healing Stream Totem just went down, use Call of the Elements and put it down again. It also helps for mana, since you get to recall twice.

Good luck!

[Deleted]

Well. My rShaman is my alt, but I still play it just as frequently as my main.

Since you're only healing heroic Megaera, I would suggest going for the 7163 haste cap. You'll get an extra tick on your healing rain. I would do this for reforging priority:

Spirit > 7163 Haste > 50% Mastery > Crit => Haste

I like Crit over Haste for 10mans. If you're 2 healing, you'll be doing a lot of single target heals, and that's where I like the crit. You also get mana returned back when you crit because of Resurgence.

I wouldn't use Glyph of Riptide. If you're gonna try and blanket the raid with Riptide, it isn't going to work well. The mana costs are really high. You'll be OOM before you know it. I would swap it out for Glyph of Totemic Recall. You say you only have about 10k spirit. That's not bad, but I'm running with about 12k and I'm not entirely comfortable. Have Healing Stream Totem down always, pretty much on CD. If you have your 2pc, it's great. When your totem is about to expire (16-17 seconds left on cooldown), use totemic recall. It will give you back the full mana cost of the totem. Don't recall your totem if you have your Fire/Earth Elemental or Stormlash Totem out, those will be gone as well. Only use Totemic Recall if it's just Healing Stream Totem. If you're in a tough spot, you could use Totemic Recall right as your Elemental is about to despawn. It is a lot more mana efficient compared to telluric currents.

When healing rampages, always have Healing Rain down and chain heal. If you aren't using Healing Tide Totem, try and save Healing Stream Totem for the rampages. Healing Rain and Chain Heal are pretty expensive, so make sure you're using Totemic Recall.

The only other suggestion I'd make is to change out Totemic Projection for Call of the Elements. If you're in a tough spot and your Healing Stream Totem just went down, use Call of the Elements and put it down again. It also helps for mana, since you get to recall twice.

Good luck!

WoW, thank you so much.

[Varzik]

Xionyus gave good advice but kept transposing the haste break point for HR -- correct one is 7613.
http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41

[Xionyus]

Xionyus gave good advice but kept transposing the haste break point for HR -- correct one is 7613.
http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41

Derp. He's right. My bad. :P

[Axelond]

So the first thing you want to do is pick up a crafted mail 522 helm or 502 helm just to get the legendary meta healing gem. Once you have the legendary any spirit level is fine just the lower your spirit is the more you need to recall totems, Dropping magma totems during LMG procs and recalling them AFTER the proc (if you recall them during a proc you get 0 mana back instead of 13k).

For gearing you should go Int>Spirit(More spirit less recalling, Less spirit more recalling)>7613 haste>Crit>mastery>more haste>more spirit If you are in insane gear (like 545+) you can try and go for the 15316 haste cap for healing rain This is really nice in 25 man but still decent in 10 because the extra haste will give you so many LMG procs the extra haste is really hard to notice mana wise

Otherwise in 10 man I use glyph of chaining on almost every fight because its almost impossible to get a 4 bounce without it, Never use glyph of riptide its not worth it. The HST glyph is nice because a lot of fights in ToT use fire, frost, nature damage.

Your general "rotation" should be unleash+Healing rain on cd mostly just in the melee group or range group. Chain heal with glyph main filler, Dropp your healing stream totem as much as possible (This is most of the time your nr 1 heal and always nr 1 on spread out fights). You have two big cds that you should use as much as possible unless you are assigned to use HTT use HTT/Ascendance really whenever you feel like casting a Greater healing wave. Unless you need the mana you can also combine a cooldown with a int pot for massive burst healing if needed.

Once you done that you can start doing the rest which is casting riptide on people and GHW if needed and HW/lig bolt with glyph if nothing else is going on. Whenever you are at this stage and get a LMG proc I usually drop a magma totem and recall it with my next HST if nothing at all is going on and you have the time and need mana you can also drop a earth elemental and recall it. This is also the time you can spend recall HSTs for mana

[Deleted]

Hey,

I am an elemental most of the time, but on Megaera I have to heal. My gear is a lot worse than that of my healing colleagues but i still pull ahead most times. Here's how:
I mostly heal the tank, group healing is done by my colleagues. That is why I simply spam healing wave on the tank. thanks to my 4pc bonus and HST I still heal the group enough. I am running a full haste build (11k+) and spam my 1.8s healing wave casts. pretty boring stuff, but enough.

Now here's where I pull ahead of my colleagues:
During rampage apply riptide on the tank who has the fire debuff or the arcane debuff (only one of these two should be present during rampage) and just chainheal him. The arcane debuff does massive ae heal while the fire debuff ticks fairly high so you don't overheal very much. Keep HR down. 2nd rampage: HTT + SLT, 3rd: Ascendance, 1st: CD by one of your colleagues.

I run with a ridiculous 8k spirit but have no mana problems. I don't even use totemic recall at all because i'm too lazy. during the non rampage parts you regenerate more mana than you spend.

Now, this only works because i heal the tank, not the group (me and a holy paladin are the only viable tank healers). if you have to heal the group, a full haste build is crap, go crit instead.

me raidbuffed (approx.): 42k sp, 8k spirit, 40% haste, 67% mastery, 20% crit. I'm not trying to stack mastery, i just happen to have a lot (i also like it more than crit since it's less random and i don't have mana issues)

[Varzik]

if nothing at all is going on and you have the time and need mana you can also drop a earth elemental and recall it. This is also the time you can spend recall HSTs for mana

Whoa, I'd have to be REALLY struggling for mana to do this. Passing up 20% dmg reduction and 10% healing from reinforce for 1 minute is big no-no --- assuming you have PE talent. [Aside: I finally found UF useful again. Proving Grounds! I think I last took UF doing Gold CMs]

And where are you finding all these gcd's to drop magma and recalling. I'd rather use LMG procs for tidal waved healing surges (on tank if light dmg phase).
Not only are you healing but you get a high chance at free mana via resurgence.

[taheen74]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8177778099

Just a basic pocketguide I wrote a number of months back- it'll be updated when next patch comes out.

Also, carry plenty of those tome things- I tend to switch out my glyphs/talents depending on the fight.

[shammypie]

Not sure I care for the way you're trying to get your point across. There's a pretty even split in the top WoL logs on Megaera between AG/HTT and the ones using AG generally do more healing with AG than the ones with HTT do with HTT. There are many situations where HTT may be better than AG, but Megaera certainly isn't one of them. Another advantage of AG is that it lets you spread your CDs around more, which is good for the same reason you don't want to stack your own HPS CDs.

You are correct in that output wise AG/HTT are compareably on Meg. However in your CD split between rampages you had 1 without a cd rolling. This way your CDs are spread evenly and not clumped. Each of our cds is a game changer for rampages, even SLT. Furthermore the mana requirements for AG are alot higher than HTT and someone just getting to the fight might not be skilled enough to deal with the increased load.

[CallMeGrey]

The only tip I have is to recommend what I did to learn to heal: run random BGs. You will have a multitude of intense, hectic situations where you have to react quickly. There is also little "pressure" to perform well because no one really notices what anyone else is doing. But if you can keep a couple team members going while 2-3 people are hitting on you and you're trying to survive, then you'll be well prepared to handle anything raids can throw at you.

Also, my healer is a pally. The most important thing I learned was to use my cd's. Not sure about shammies, but the difference between a good pally healer and an average one is their use of cd's.

[Deleted]

Big thanks to the MMOC shaman community for all the tips, we shall see how it goes tonight.