Resto Shaman Conspiracy Theory

[Deleted]

True.. is it that bad unglyphed though?

And did we mindlessly spam CH as our only spell in 10 man WoTLk raids as well? I remember LHW being high up..

Doesn't really matter glyphed or unglyphed, the throughput just isn't there since it's not adding as much from Earthliving. It's not really needed most of the time either; all 3 healers help on AoE healing with their (mostly) passive abilities like Healing Rain, Wild Growth, Holy Radiance etc. You're typically better off using single-target heals to pick up the few that are lower than the pack and letting those passive heals take care of the rest.

As for WotLK, that depended quite heavily on the encounter. BQ, Sindragosa and Putricide all required heavy use of CH for example, even in 10m. Other fights, not so much. It had a place in almost every fight though, if only temporarily so.

[Frostphoxx]

BEFORE you start reading... the top THREE paragraphs are basically me ranting..
if you wanna just skip to the point of this long post go ahead and skip down to the Fourth Paragraph

Don't feel bad Yamma... Shamans have been getting the short end of the stick for a while now.. I myself actually play Elemental and offspec resto so i can't completely keep up with the other main spec shaman healers. My guild runs two Shamans as Resto who are fairly high themselves. The resto set/spec is actually pretty solid.. unfortunately a lot of WoW is balanced around PVP and giving shaman any kind of significant healing buff would make us a bigger pain in any kind of PVP then we are now.

When i PVP the only thing i change from my Elemental PVE set is my trinkets (I use the Tier 11 4-Set gear because of the Reduced cast time on Lightning Bolt (Which is just under 1.9 Seconds with 20% haste), high amount of Crit and haste even when switching to resto spec)
and Mana almost never becomes a problem. Just last week i decided to do a WSG with 4 of my guildies (So we had a 5 man team.. Tank(Pally),Healer(Me),Hunter/Mage/Spriest(all for damage and various buffs) vent, coordination etc, etc.) while being the ONLY healer in the
battle ground on Alliance side i was able to keep up the majority of the team against the horde's three healers.. using Mana tide totem sparingly and Telluric Currents i was more than OK. If you don't think that's a little to powerful your worse than all the frost Mage's out there (Granted PVP fights are greatly influenced by player skill.. they could have just sucked.)

But your probably more focused on PVE so.... here:

In PVE i actually need to switch to offspec gear.. (Spirit, more haste, blah, blah, blah) I will admit i do have problems keeping up with Holy Priests in HPS but because of the shamans design and healing mechanics i more often then not outlast most of the other healing classes in long fights. (I find myself using my Manatide totem mostly for the other healers or to bring my Mana up for some incoming heavy damage on tanks or the raid.. a perfect example is on Nef right after Electrocute where an ill timed heal can lead to a dead tank if your stunned
from the Tail Swipe from Ony, slacking, lagging, or w/e he's dead.. it happened)

Because of the spec i PREFER to use:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hG00hZ...fRho:dMs0VcMzm
BEFORE I GET INTO THE BONUSES OF THIS SPEC:

Healing Touch(Druid): Base Heal: 7211-8515
Greater Heal(Priest): Base Heal: 8362-9716
Greater Healing Wave(Shaman): Base Heal: 8968-10244
Divine Light(Paladin Base Heal: 11100-12366

That is a list of all of the "Big Heals" (All cost around 30% base Mana.) All are a Three second cast. As you can see Greater Healing Wave(Shaman) is second only to Divine Light(Paladin). We were blessed with a Large heal with a decent Mana cost (Not to mention
Casting a Riptide or Chain Heal beforehand reduces the casting time by 30%... With 20% Haste the spell comes out to a cast time of 1.46... don't be afraid to use it!

With the Spec above Initial and direct heals are fairly powerful BUT the HoT from Earthliving Weapon suffers a bit because the Two talent points normally going into Blessing Of The Eternals end up being in Telluric Currents. However with this spec its not to big a deal, your not relying on a HoT anyway. Because of the points in Elemental Precision and Convection (for the hit rating, and reduced mana cost of offensive spells namely Lightning Bolt) Not to mention the extra Crit from Acuity you can Safely and Continuously use large and quick heals without feeling the pressure of low Mana near the end of a fight. (This Strategy is no different than a Holy Paladin using Divine Plea Reducing their effective heals to get additional Mana, or a Priest using Hymn of Hope rendering them immobile and unable to cast.) A simple announcement in Vent or Raid chat letting the other healers know for the next few moments your restoring your Mana (By casting Lightning Bolt) is more than enough in a Decent raiding guild. If your gonna try to question me i don't have any numbers to post and no screen shots to back anything up, Do it yourself, focus on some Haste, get some Crit rating, and your other healers will love you for having a little extra spirit mixed in there since the Manatide totem now works off of the Casting Shamans Spirit before Procs.

Although I'm not a huge fan of the Resto Shamans mastery it comes in handy more than some might think. A starting Value of 24% increased healing on targets with low health with a 3% bonus for every point of mastery. With your Mastery around 34% (Which is extremely easy just a few pieces get ya there) a Greater Healing Wave that Crits for 49250 (My average Crit heal out of 50 total Criticals) you get an additional 16745 in healing done for a total of just under 66k. The Death Knight tank my guild uses as one of our Main Tank's has 154k HP Unbuffed and 359 gear all around. So if the tank is at say... 24k HP and his health is considered low enough to get the full 34% buff that Crit is gonna bring your tank up to about 90k HP (And if you don't Crit your still looking at around a 30k heal then with mastery just above 40k... with a non-Crit that's respectable) and one more Greater Healing Wave will bring him just under 140k, and guess what.. because you just used Nature's Swiftness (Instant Cast) for your first Greater Healing Wave you saved your tank from a death and a potential wipe for your raid.

There are some little perks available for Restoration Shamans... Just take a second and think about it. We have Two instant cast heals without popping any kind of Cool Down. Were the only class with that available to us with absolutely no build up to it. Riptide: 6 Second Cool Down Unleash Elements: 15 Second Cool Down. The closest thing to that would probably be Revelations in the Holy Priest tree. We place our Mana Regen with just a Global Cool Down and we are free to move around and cast with it active, and with the recent buff to Spiritwalker's Grace your capable of casting while moving for 15 seconds we can sit around and laugh when a Tank out ranges a healer mid cast. Our Cleanse Spirit (Dispel) is also the only dispel that heals when it removes magic or curse effects (Except for priest but you have to glyph for it.)

Try a few things out, Look at the "Cookie Cutter" build and think about how you like to heal. I told you mine and it works great for my play style. So if you can read this and seriously think Restoration is still inferior to the other healing classes at the moment you need to take a look at yourself and see what your doing wrong, You may not top meters but you WILL save a tank in a pinch or an unlucky DPS standing in fire.

/Cheers and Congrats on avoiding that 1% wipe.