Restoration Shaman Alt

[Testrum]

Well I've recently dinged 80 on my DK and have become rather bored of Melee DPS and DPS in-general so I'm looking to get into healing.

I will be using heirloom items (shoulders, chest, weapon, trinket or two) so leveling will be a breeze (essentially lol). I'm wondering if I should level at Restoration or if I should go Elemental or Enhancement till, lets say 40? And then switch to Restoration?

Here's the build I'm looking at (basic cookie cutter, will teak as I get more experience and etc.):
- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xx...oxkrIRt:A0LVcM

Any advice is appreciated, I've read the Restoration FAQ but haven't read every post that's in the thread lol.

~Testrum

[Flashbomba]

It's much easier lvling as a dps spec until 80. More killing = more XP. Resto can only dps very little, so it will take you a lot longer to kill mobs for quests etc.

I lvled as enhancement with a few talent points into resto and I was still able to heal all instances until 70+ (cant remember if I was even able to heal some of those but not sure). I just kept my enh items as well as some spellpower items for when I was healing.

Once you hit lvl40 you get dual-wield and enhancement becomes much better. However, I've heard elemental should also be pretty good for lvling now, so it might just be a preference. I'd imagine enh is better to begin with due to it's not 100% dependent on mana to still do *some* dps, even though its not a lot without the special abilities that uses mana. But ele is 100% dependent on having mana for doing dps.

Also when you finally get spirit wolves, I find them very usefull to get out of bad situations, both vs mobs and ganking. ;-) However if you're tired with a melee class just go as elemental - I guess it should be more fun for you since its different.

So in short: lvl as enh or ele until 80, whichever you prefer, and then swap to resto.

[Vashta]

I would get the heirlooms and level as Elemental. You will still be able to heal instances in this spec or you can dual spec.

Levelling as Resto is very, very slow.

[hanh]

After playing a rogue for a couple years, I was sick of melee dps also.... So i rolled a shaman.

I leveled as resto, but I had 2 other buddies leveling with me so it made some sense and we ran instances constantly. Resto is slow going for sure, once you are able to get earth shield and riptide it is actually decent for aoe'ing things down (esp. with the new fire nova spell). Until then, I would take the advice of the others and level as elemental. When I was leveling, we didn't have water shield until lvl 60 or something so mana issues were bad on elemental. Now with water shield coming in so soon, you will be fine.

[Testrum]

Thanks everyone, I've decided to go Elemental till around 40 or so since that's when you get Chain Heal and I might have a buddy who is going to make a Tankadin. It'll be exciting too since I've never played a Caster class or Healing class so both are very new to me but I'm always up for a good challenge.

~Testrum