Resto shaman requesting advice

[Litoru]

Where to start?

I've played and raided as a resto shaman since vanilla WoW. During Ulduar and ToC, I was one of the best healers in fast progressing guild, despite stacking int. It somehow suited the way I played, sniping and such, and I spanked healing meters together with a druid friend of mine. Healing meters -I know, but I used it to compare me and another other shaman, who stacked haste. He always did bad, so I thought that int stacking would own haste, if you just have some brains.

Now, I've joined my boyfriend's guild and I fill in when they're lacking a healer, but there's no way in hell that I can keep up with those healers.

The guild is abit "special", smacking healing meters in everyones' faces all the time, bragging and overall very confident. I'm having an upcoming raid with them, and I simply want to show them that I can do good aswell, so that they can keep needing me and maybe offer me a raider trial. I've gone all haste, having 1057 ub, got head and shoulders tier 10 pieces, planning on getting the lightning-infused leggings and so on. Still, stacking haste (nor int) didn't help me that much when I raided with them. I don't have a chance on basically any fight in ICC25.

I don't just spam chain heal, I plan my different heals, I do everything what the book says with common sense added.
What I'm saying is, playing a healer, resto shaman at that, for this long, I should do good, but I don't do good enough. In pugs I have no problem topping meters, but these healers.. I don't know if it's the slight difference in gear (how dependant are resto shamans on gear?) or if the other healers are just plain better. The healers in the guild are very competitive, the guild in general is very good. As there's no other resto shaman in the guild, I can't compare myself if I'm the one who sucks, or if shamans are just having difficulties keeping up with druids, paladins and priests?

I raided with them once in TotgC25, doing very well on the meters, which seemed to shock them. I was stacking int during that time, but the thing was that I knew the fight very well, and I could plan my heals depending on any incoming damage. As I haven't raided ICC25 that much, I'm not too familiar with the fights, can that be the problem?

I'm using mouse-over macros, addons for raiding, key bindings, I read alot of theorycrafting, using CD/trinkets and all that, so I know more than the basics. I still don't manage to pull off one hell of a performance. Not even once.

I don't know if this thread is pointless, but I'm on a verge of giving up here, so any advice is appreciated!

[Gouban]

Depending on what classes your healing with, a resto sham could find themselves in a very bad place if the other healers are equally skilled/geared.

We aren't terrible, don't get me wrong, we can perform, just not quite to the extent some other classes can.

Though, skill > anything else in most cases.

[Deleted]

First off, really great post
Do you have any logs to show how you are comparing with the other healers to analyise it more? Keep going with stacking haste, around 1269 we shine even more. What healers are out healing you (all of them or just certain classes in the guild).
If you are keeping everyone alive and not standing in the fire/void zones and you are doing that to the best of your ability I wouldn't worry.

But, as said, if you have any logs that would be really helpful

[aminix]

If there are no other resto shamans in the raid, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to spam chains off tank/melee and hold your own on meters. Not necessarily what's best for the raid, but is almost guaranteed to save you the embarrassment of getting doubled on healing meters.

edit: World of Logs/WoW Meters Online would make it significantly easier for us to tell if you're doing something fundamentally wrong though.

[comablack]

here's an opinion based on raid experience and not omg i need XXXX haste to GCD certain spells

post 1100 or so haste its wasted when you factor in latency, spell usage etc

[Sparkalark]

I don't really think resto-shaman belong in a certain place on the healing meters. Sometimes the guy with good gear gets top spot, sometimes you get 3rd or 4th. Depends on how and who you're trying to heal. The following is not necessarily what you should only be doing, but this is what I do. I also really don't like complicated UI stuff, so I only use grid and DBM. I know, how archaic!

Marrowgar as raid healer.

In most cases, there will only be 3+X raid people taking damage, where X is your hunter count. Those three bone spiked people need 2 LHW each, one right after the other. Your raid should have destroyed these bones by now. If not, a 3rd cycle of LHW might be needed.

Check hunters and Locks for another LHW should they need coldflame dodge help or lifetap help. No one's taking damage? reapply earthshield to tank, cast chainheal on tank with aggro to fish for ancestral fort proc. First WW hits. Look at ground. Are you going to get hit by fire?

Yes? move to the side, fish for chain heal targets. People are still clumped from normal phase.
No? stand still, fish for chain heal targets. riptide or LHW anyone who's taken any damage at all.
Have you gotten to the point where coldflame might come at you? move or stand still sniping with riptide + LHW or riptide followed by HW on anyone who has taken damage. Go back to the big melee clump. refresh earthshield. Repeat as necessary.

Your priorities are always pesky hunters, bone victims, then fish for chainheals on tanks for procs.

Marrowgar as tank healer. pretty much the same, only spam chain heal the tank with lowest hp. There should be at least 1 other healer doing the same thing. WW? same as raid healer. Never eat a riptide with chainheal. Use riptide on a different target, then go back to spamming chain heal.

LDW:

Phase 1? Snipe heals all the time. As soon as someone gets 1 hit, they are either a tank who needs more healing or a dps who pulled threat and needs a LOT of healing. LHW, riptide. Theres a lot of lulls in combat, so your numbers are going to suck. Plain and simple. But you have a very critical job, as the other healers will almost always be trying to snipe too, you decurse Torpor. This is not a shaman healing friendly fight, so stay on top of Torpor 100% and you'll be doing everyone a huge amazing favor.

Phase 2? DPS too lazy to interrupt frost bolts guaranteed. Main tank won't be taking much melee damage, so you need to chain heal spam whenever a frostbolt goes off. (everyone in raid takes about half their life) watch for decay, and purple ghosts. Watch ghosts, and heal people ghosts go after. Most everyone can take one hit without dying. If you can snipe a LHW + riptide before they die, you can 4 out of 5 times save em. You'll still get off about 5 or 6 CH after a frostbolt before everyones full.

Gunship:

chainheal spam anyone who has taken damage. theres a lot of moments where your dps will rather eat a 7k rocket in the chin than mess up rotation. Too easy, chain heal chain heal chain heal. When your boat tank gets mortal strike, spam him with chain heal. Any other dps will be eating a small amount of WW. If a tank flies over to other ship, he can either pull to the side so you dont have to jump, or another healer can go instead, or you can jump. Either way, tank is the only one taking damage on that side. This is the one fight where the random guy will top meters, because no one is really taking any damage. I usually stand on the deck and lightning bolt half the fight.

Deathbringer:

fish for ancestral fort procs on tank. Make sure if you're the raid healer, you top everyone off asap. Usually only one or two people are getting hit by it depending on how you space out. (we always just double up) blood beasts = your threat becomes an issue, if you're healing the dps. Earthbind totem everytime DBM calls blood beasts. make sure you chain heal tank until the first mark hits, then it's either you or the holy paladin who keeps the mark up. This guy will be taking about 3-4k dps for the rest of the fight. So HW them. count 1, 2, 3. HW. count 1, 2, 3 HW. adjust depending on what he's doing.

if you have about a 12k HW, this will keep him up for the rest of the fight, depending on your mana. And that can be said for any encounter. If you have the mana for it, fish for fort procs using chain heal.

meters, and I can't really stress this enough: Healing meters are biased for tank healers. If you're a raid healer, you will be low on meters, end of story. There's no escaping it. Even if you're not a tank healer, and you snipe tanks full time to push your meter, when the raid needs you you're going to be 2seconds and 20m shy of doing your job.

I also don't see much value after 900 haste, and I'm starting to see a lot of higher end shaman gear for set bonus using 20haste yellow, haste+crit red, and haste+mp5 blue, but I have no numbers other than *feels good man* to justify that.

[Nørf]

Depending on what classes your healing with, a resto sham could find themselves in a very bad place if the other healers are equally skilled/geared.

We aren't terrible, don't get me wrong, we can perform, just not quite to the extent some other classes can.

Though, skill > anything else in most cases.

This.
As I've mentioned a ton of times before, we are life savers, fillers and consistent versatile healers.
We are not supposed to have a certain role but can fill both. Don't compare yourself on meters, its about lucky heals and hits, you cannot compete @ healing.
I'm glad you've gone haste though, or I would have turned this into a flame war

[Litoru]

I need to sum this up quickly before I'm off to work!

Gouban (and the rest of you), the setup they usually have is 2 paladins, 2 priests (holy, I believe) and 2 druids for ICC25, when one of them can't show up, I'm there to fill the spot. This is a tight and solid group though, it's always the same healers. Looks like all of them have almost full tier 10, while I'm mostly in tier 9 and ToC25 stuff. Afaik, they never have any healing targets, except on possibly Lana'Thel.

Pearroc, I currently don't have any logs, but the plan is that I'll raid with them tomorrow, so I can post it then.

I do agree about this "as long as your target's alive, so on and so forth, you're doing great". However I'm trying to kind of prove my worthy here, to sometime in the future get a spot as a raider, rather than being a stand in :P When they spam healing done in the raid, I tend to feel abit bad when I'm as low on healing as I am :P

aminix, I don't tend to sound offensive, but by writing "I know more than the basics", don't you think I've tried to spam riptide, chain heal on the tanks for it to hit melee? :P There's no way I'm topping meters by doing that.

Sparkalark, as I've been a fan of snipe healing for quite some time, I feel I'm doing good at that. What might be the problem is the solid group of healers they have, which as I mentioned recently, don't have any healing targets. They are so competitive, it feels like everyone's topped up in an instant.

Eel, if we're just fillers and life savers, why would anyone want a resto shaman, when they can instead have a solid group of 2 priests, 2 paladins and 2 druids, doing a much better job? I mean, if one of those were to leave the guild, why would they take a resto shaman? They've already got a elemental shaman for BL (the only shaman except me, in the guild).

One of their priests was gone one raid, so I had to jump in for him, everything but prepared for raiding and fighting Lana'Thel (25 man), I didn't even have a haste set then.
With their usual setup, they had healing targets sorted group wise (healer A heals group 1, healer B heals group 2 and so on), and I was put to heal the healers' group (I begged for the melee group, but they said it wouldn't matter). I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't have a chance on that fight. My group was ofcourse all spread out, so chain heal was no good. Not to mention the intense and constant damage, my water shield got consumed in seemingly a few seconds. Felt like I did more rebuffing WS, than desperately casting riptides and LHWs on my group, but it wasn't enough.
How do other resto shamans manage that fight?

[weorep]

I need to sum this up quickly before I'm off to work!

Gouban (and the rest of you), the setup they usually have is 2 paladins, 2 priests (holy, I believe) and 2 druids for ICC25, when one of them can't show up, I'm there to fill the spot. This is a tight and solid group though, it's always the same healers. Looks like all of them have almost full tier 10, while I'm mostly in tier 9 and ToC25 stuff. Afaik, they never have any healing targets, except on possibly Lana'Thel.

Pearroc, I currently don't have any logs, but the plan is that I'll raid with them tomorrow, so I can post it then.

I do agree about this "as long as your target's alive, so on and so forth, you're doing great". However I'm trying to kind of prove my worthy here, to sometime in the future get a spot as a raider, rather than being a stand in :P When they spam healing done in the raid, I tend to feel abit bad when I'm as low on healing as I am :P

aminix, I don't tend to sound offensive, but by writing "I know more than the basics", don't you think I've tried to spam riptide, chain heal on the tanks for it to hit melee? :P There's no way I'm topping meters by doing that.

Sparkalark, as I've been a fan of snipe healing for quite some time, I feel I'm doing good at that. What might be the problem is the solid group of healers they have, which as I mentioned recently, don't have any healing targets. They are so competitive, it feels like everyone's topped up in an instant.

Eel, if we're just fillers and life savers, why would anyone want a resto shaman, when they can instead have a solid group of 2 priests, 2 paladins and 2 druids, doing a much better job? I mean, if one of those were to leave the guild, why would they take a resto shaman? They've already got a elemental shaman for BL (the only shaman except me, in the guild).

One of their priests was gone one raid, so I had to jump in for him, everything but prepared for raiding and fighting Lana'Thel (25 man), I didn't even have a haste set then.
With their usual setup, they had healing targets sorted group wise (healer A heals group 1, healer B heals group 2 and so on), and I was put to heal the healers' group (I begged for the melee group, but they said it wouldn't matter). I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't have a chance on that fight. My group was ofcourse all spread out, so chain heal was no good. Not to mention the intense and constant damage, my water shield got consumed in seemingly a few seconds. Felt like I did more rebuffing WS, than desperately casting riptides and LHWs on my group, but it wasn't enough.
How do other resto shamans manage that fight?

Oh yea i love that fight , keep up Water shield, chain heal works like hell dont worry and also put tremor totem, try to find a good place where u can heal almost the whole raid

[hvidgaard]

...
if we're just fillers and life savers, why would anyone want a resto shaman, when they can instead have a solid group of 2 priests, 2 paladins and 2 druids, doing a much better job? I mean, if one of those were to leave the guild, why would they take a resto shaman? They've already got a elemental shaman for BL (the only shaman except me, in the guild).

One of their priests was gone one raid, so I had to jump in for him, everything but prepared for raiding and fighting Lana'Thel (25 man), I didn't even have a haste set then.
With their usual setup, they had healing targets sorted group wise (healer A heals group 1, healer B heals group 2 and so on), and I was put to heal the healers' group (I begged for the melee group, but they said it wouldn't matter). I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't have a chance on that fight. My group was ofcourse all spread out, so chain heal was no good. Not to mention the intense and constant damage, my water shield got consumed in seemingly a few seconds. Felt like I did more rebuffing WS, than desperately casting riptides and LHWs on my group, but it wasn't enough.
How do other resto shamans manage that fight?

They would take you because you're a good raider, that's why. Having a situational awareness, knowing what heals to cast when are worth more than any classdisparity. That said, if you want solid arguments for bringing a Resto Shaman:

Earth Shield - It's just that good
AF - 10% reduced physical damage is just that good as well, and in all honesty, putting a holy priest on a tank is doing it suboptimal.
Totems - Cleansing/Tremor can make or break a fight
Versatility - Shamans are the only class that can switch healing role midfight and still do a good job.
Heroism - I know they got an elemental shaman, but what if he's out?


Now, that your RL tells to to keep a specific ranged group up on the Blood Queen, shows an extraordinary amount of ignorance. I will not even start to mock him(or her) for the stupidity of that assignment, or the failure to listen to you that is several magnitudes worse. If you want advise on her, the only I can give if to refresh WS every time you have a free GCD, you need that mana.

[Skydiver]

hum.. our raidsetup is mostly like 2 paladins 1 druid 1 diszi and 2 shamans or 1 shaman/holy - and if me and my shaman partner are in raid both - i don't know why - we're on almost each boss on icc @ rank1/2 in healing meters.. even if there's only one of us, we are always on top.
maybe our other classes are going to sleep while raid...

We don't have roles like healer 1 heals grp 1 or something like this, everyone knows what to do.

And i think there's almost no fight like Lana'thel were you can push meters with healing the hole raid up to 10k+ hps

edit: what i maybe need to say is our gear is like 26k mana and 1,2k+ haste @ 3,4k spell unbuffed

[Nørf]

Eel, if we're just fillers and life savers, why would anyone want a resto shaman, when they can instead have a solid group of 2 priests, 2 paladins and 2 druids, doing a much better job? I mean, if one of those were to leave the guild, why would they take a resto shaman? They've already got a elemental shaman for BL (the only shaman except me, in the guild).

One of their priests was gone one raid, so I had to jump in for him, everything but prepared for raiding and fighting Lana'Thel (25 man), I didn't even have a haste set then.
With their usual setup, they had healing targets sorted group wise (healer A heals group 1, healer B heals group 2 and so on), and I was put to heal the healers' group (I begged for the melee group, but they said it wouldn't matter). I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't have a chance on that fight. My group was ofcourse all spread out, so chain heal was no good. Not to mention the intense and constant damage, my water shield got consumed in seemingly a few seconds. Felt like I did more rebuffing WS, than desperately casting riptides and LHWs on my group, but it wasn't enough.
How do other resto shamans manage that fight?

You said it yourself, no one really wants a resto shaman, and those that do are either retarded or don't have a choice.
We are not the most wanted healing class, far from.

I pop my totems, my water shield and my earth shield and I heal, simple as fuck. It's probably just you.
And for the love of god, healing assignments.. This is not 2006.

[evan_s]

One of their priests was gone one raid, so I had to jump in for him, everything but prepared for raiding and fighting Lana'Thel (25 man), I didn't even have a haste set then.
With their usual setup, they had healing targets sorted group wise (healer A heals group 1, healer B heals group 2 and so on), and I was put to heal the healers' group (I begged for the melee group, but they said it wouldn't matter). I don't know if it's just me, but I didn't have a chance on that fight. My group was ofcourse all spread out, so chain heal was no good. Not to mention the intense and constant damage, my water shield got consumed in seemingly a few seconds. Felt like I did more rebuffing WS, than desperately casting riptides and LHWs on my group, but it wasn't enough.
How do other resto shamans manage that fight?

You were setup to fail on that fight and that isn't your fault. It is the raid leader or who ever was assigning heals not understanding your class. For Lana'thel healing a group full of healers is going to be the hardest assignment possible and it doesn't fit well with the spells you have at your disposal. The healer group is going to be spread out, not getting any self healing from being bitten and generally speaking less hps to buffer. A Druid or holy priest is going to handle that much better. If they had listened to you and given you a melee group you could have used chain heal and they would have been self healing from being bitten at some point. Yes blizzard wants all healer to be viable just like they want all tanks or dps to be viable but that doesn't mean you can just swap between classes with out accounting for the differences between classes at all. Pallys are great healers and most would say the borderline OP but they would have still struggled with that assignment.

[aminix]

aminix, I don't tend to sound offensive, but by writing "I know more than the basics", don't you think I've tried to spam riptide, chain heal on the tanks for it to hit melee? :P There's no way I'm topping meters by doing that.

Resto shaman rotation is as simple as having 1100+ haste, spamming chains on tank/melee when the ranged are topped off, and spamming LHW/Riptide on ranged when their health goes down. Never stop casting if you're stationary. You say you know the basics, but those are the basics and it's all that's involved in topping healing meters. If it's not working, you probably just need to get better at anticipating where damage is happening and react faster. There's no secret to topping healing meters, it = spam spam spam. The only situation where shamans are disadvantaged is completely spread out fights with constant small damage(i.e. Blood Queen). Although shamans can still maintain 10k on BQ with the exact rotation that I said above. http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-7k...?s=5532&e=5862

Do you have an armory by chance?

If your guild is setting you up on an insignificant assignment like healing the healers (lol) they clearly view you as their weak link and that's sadly pretty common in mediocre guilds for anything but exceptional shamans.

And for the love of god, healing assignments.. This is not 2006.

QFT

[Litoru]

Skydiver, that was your first post? I really don't gain anything from people saying "I'm a shaman and I top healing meters in my raid!", because alot of people say that, without giving any real advice nor proof. That was the biggest reason why I didn't post on the wow forums, because they're filled with "Shamans are fine, I top healing meters every day on my blue geared shaman in ICC10!".

Eel, first of all, I didn't ask nor set healing targets, I simply did was I was told to. Second of all, "I pop my totems, my water shield and my earth shield and I heal, simple as fuck.", I recall mentioning that I knew more than basics, that comment didn't give me anything. I doubt, and hope, that shaman is more than faceroll healing.
Anyone can do that, spamming only chain heal and hoping for the best, but I want to compete, because obviously, the healers in the guild I'm in are very competitive, and good at that. As I also said, topping meters in a pug is no problems, but it's different.

evan_s, that feels comforting to hear :-X I would like to try out the fight without really being set to targets to see if I've got a better chance then.

aminix, about the healing targets, it was the absent priest's healing target, and I just had to take over, so it had nothing to do with me.
As I wrote before, "I raided with them once in TotgC25, doing very well on the meters, which seemed to shock them. I was stacking int during that time, but the thing was that I knew the fight very well, and I could plan my heals depending on any incoming damage. As I haven't raided ICC25 that much, I'm not too familiar with the fights, can that be the problem?"
The problem might be that the other healers, which is such a solid group, know the fights and the incoming damage so well, that it puts me in an disadvantage. What do you think, that could be the main problem?
Here http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20848504 I had to make it real quick, so I haven't had the time to fix talents, but it's the overall used specc. I haven't either had time to check if everything's correct, but it's better than nothing atm


Is there any fight which is in favour of resto shamans in ICC? There's alot of fights where druids and paladins shine, I'm sure of that, but what about shamans? Maybe not entirely, but abit of favour atleast?

[aminix]

Get spell power trinkets.

A very large part of it is probably not having enough experience with the fights to naturally know what damage is going to happen where every second. When I switched guilds mid ToGC, it was quite frustrating not being able to go into auto mode and having to adapt to a completely different set of people in a completely different strat. My healing rose significantly every week that we did the fights.

Is there any fight which is in favour of resto shamans in ICC? There's alot of fights where druids and paladins shine, I'm sure of that, but what about shamans? Maybe not entirely, but abit of favour atleast?

For normal modes -
-Deathwhisper(is very very friendly shaman fight) Just use a lot of LHW/Riptide to snipe all of the frost bolts.

-Putricide(very chain heal friendly on the melee in phase 3) Plus a lot of single target spike that shamans can use T10 2pc proc to take advantage of.

•Lich King(nearly perfect fight for resto shamans to be honest) Shamans can REALLY shine on this fight. Each phase is a little different type of healing which just spoons shaman healing versatility. Phase 1 is tank healing, phase 2 is AoE healing grouped up on tanks (wet dream for chain heal), phase 3 is major single target spike, and the transition phases on the ledge remind me of Phase 2 of Illidan(focused group damage). I'm doing nearly 10% over the next healer on Lich King.

[Winlol]

Shamans shine in general. Maybe not in pure numbers, but healing isn't about numbers, and if you are running with a guild who thinks it is, then god help you. It comes down to: did people die? If you do your job, no one will die.

On Marrowgar, chain heal spam the tanks during normal tanking time(since all 3 will be taking damage) and chain heal spam everyone during BOOONEEEESTORRRRRMMMMMMM.

Lady D, you should be dispelling the curse as fast as you can. If the guild tries to make fun of your meters, dispell like mad and link dispells in raid chat (I had 27 my last Lady D kill on my shaman, 2nd place had 9). Use riptides to spot heal tanks and chain heal people who get hit my DnD. Chain heal spam melee when her shield goes down, since they will be too lazy to move for ghosts.

Gunship is an everyman for himself type deal.

Saurfang, heal whoever gets hit by bloodboil or anything, frost shock blood beasts if any escape or head to you. When someone gets Marked, LHW spam them with riptides thrown in.

Festergut, chain heal spam melee and tanks.

Rotface, chain heal when he does his spray move and when big slime comes close to raid.

Prof, chain heal off of the green slime target, riptide the orange slime target, and chain heal spam on P3.

Blood Princes, see gunship.

BQL, chain heal spam tanks and melee especially. LOTS of raid damage here.

Dreamwalker, heal Dreamwalker.

Sind, chain heal spam both melee and ranged groups.

LK, see post above.

[Nørf]

Eel, first of all, I didn't ask nor set healing targets, I simply did was I was told to. Second of all, "I pop my totems, my water shield and my earth shield and I heal, simple as fuck.", I recall mentioning that I knew more than basics, that comment didn't give me anything. I doubt, and hope, that shaman is more than faceroll healing.
Anyone can do that, spamming only chain heal and hoping for the best, but I want to compete, because obviously, the healers in the guild I'm in are very competitive, and good at that. As I also said, topping meters in a pug is no problems, but it's different.

If you know more than basics, why are you asking a question that a 3 year old can answer?
It is so god damn simple that there can't be more too it, healing is not rocket science, specially not normal mode.

[Kirbee]

If you know more than basics, why are you asking a question that a 3 year old can answer?
It is so god damn simple that there can't be more too it, healing is not rocket science, specially not normal mode.

I'm glad you've gone haste though, or I would have turned this into a flame war

I think you just did

[Cuddleduck]

It's all about taking a decision on who to target, I as a resto shaman win in almost any fight in icc. On festergut I stand ontop of the tanks and spam chain heal (Really, beside cooldowns thats all I use I dont even bother with 2pt t10 for that fight).
Gear, latency and IQ will also be a big part in deciding if you're going to win on meters.