Resto Spec Advice

[Veyne]

Obviously, according to my signature, I'm a Shadow Priest mainly. I used to heal as Holy back in Burning Crusade all the way in to T6 content (I spent a ton of time at entry level content in a guild I was in with friends before I moved on, and never managed to hit up Sunwell back then). So yeah, I know a little something about healing. But the Restoration Shaman spec is kinda interesting.

I recently leveled a Shaman with the intentions of being Elemental. I love Elemental. I do some okay damage considering how crappy my gear is, and its a fun, sorta fast paced spec that's a little more forgiving to bad framerate than my good ol' shadow priest. I've been trying to run heroics like crazy, but the problem is, no one ever wants to tank or heal heroics. I've been considering going resto while I farm heroics but still mostly gear up for Elemental. I figured a huge amount of additional MP5 probably won't be necessary while I farm heroics.

Anyway, I read the 3.2 Resto FAQ sticky and I read up on builds on WoWWiki. I still don't know what I should go with though. WoWWiki's got a couple spec options:

The Raid/Chain Healer http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xx...oxkrIRt:LAqzMc
The Tank Healer http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xx...oxkbIRt:LAqzMc

Whereas the MMO-Champ sticky only had a couple different specs depending on if you had mana issues or not (if so, put three points into Elemental Weapons and use LHW, if not put those three points into Healing Way).

With Crap gear which spec should I go for for healing heroics? Tank heal spec, raid heal spec, or the mana-efficient LHW spec?

Thanks for the tips. I haven't actually tried going resto yet, I have to save up for Dual Spec. I took a 4 week break from raiding after my last guild imploded and now I'm staying pretty much broke buying epic gems for my main and crafting gear for alts. And I'm definitely not going to do 25 dailies a day as resto.

[Lhasa]

With crap gear mana efficiency will be an issue. You won't be using HW often in Heroics.

Put 3 points into Elemental Weapons, then later when you get better gear, more mana, and more experience with shaman healing go 3 into Healing Way.

Instead of the Riptide glyph, go with Water Mastery (I believe it's an extra 30mp5).

[Aerikaya]

I'm in a similar boat, but I leveled my sham to be resto. Bought a few decent pieces, but I am using the raid healer spec and glyphs, casting CH more that the others. Just got the Conquest CH Totem and for heroics its mostly just cast CH and use Riptide when its up. My regen isn't all that great, and SP is still <2k but we did H UP last, which I feel can be a little rough on a new healer. 3 points in Ele Weapons helps too for Earthliving.

[Deleted]

With crap gear mana efficiency will be an issue. You won't be using HW often in Heroics.

Put 3 points into Elemental Weapons, then later when you get better gear, more mana, and more experience with shaman healing go 3 into Healing Way.

Instead of the Riptide glyph, go with Water Mastery (I believe it's an extra 30mp5).

This basically. If your mana is low then go for water mastery glyph and elemental weapons. You should be gearing up very quickly that you can change glyphs soon.
Our mana is brilliant with improved water shield.

[Embermoon]

Veyne, if you pull me up on wow-heroes, you can see both my resto spec and gear. It's the spec I'd recommend to any resto shammy, with the caveat that if someone is still having mana issues, and/or if they're getting swamped with pushback, then they could tweak the spec and glyphs.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend the glyph of water mastery. It's truly not a bad recommendation. However, I would say to go to that glyph, only if you start experiencing mana issues. When Wrath first launched, it was a highly recommended glyph. As of the recent patch, all mp5 gear has had it's mp5 values increased by 25%.

When I have water shield and mana spring totem down, I never have mana issues. Some people could attribute that to gear, but I'd focus on the fact that you're talking heroics.

If you're only concerned about heroics, though, you don't even have to spec resto to heal them. You can wear all blue elemental gear and heal heroics. Prior to dual-spec, I'd just throw on whatever resto gear I had, specced enhance, and would heal that way. It was always even easier for an elem shammy to simultaneously dps and heal them. If you run OK or AN, just throw a cleansing totem down, and chain heal.

Down the road, if you want to dual-spec as resto, I'd advise you to read up on EJ's forums. They have a really great resto theorycrafting thread, which contains multiple spec options.