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Resto Raid Guide
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Post by
Mesoforte
This will undergo edits depending on what we get from the patch.
Any unaddressed general questions should be posted so that we can increase the efficiency of this guide.
Restoration Raiding Guide
Sigh, to help stem a few of the questions that have been rising recently, I present a basic Restoration Raiding Guide that might be stickied. The division of parts to follow.
1. Spells (Because auto-attack doesn't heal yet)
2. Stats (What you need, What you don't.)
3. Pre-Raid Mins (Explained better)
4. Cookie-Cutter Raid Spec (If you want to argue it, be ready to back it up)
5. Your job (Good Luck with it)
6. Gear List Link (Self-Gratification)
7. Basic Raiding Tips (Don't stand in the fire)
8. Addons
9. Macros
10. Group Positioning
11. How to tell which upgrade is for you. Item Comparison.
1. Spells
Unfortunately, Blizzard hasn't implemented a heal system where you can just smash buttons and heal the right target. They're working on it, but the players have proven to be an X-factor that messes with their calculations. So here are the tools you will be needing to heal your friends.
a)
Chain Heal
-
Once referred to condescendingly as "Brain Heal," this one spell has had the most changes done to it of our spells. While it is still a powerful group heal, the short range, long cast time, and limit of targets can hinder it. It is a smart heal that distributes the largest health to the person with the most hit point deficit within range of the jump. It also procs
Tidal Waves
.
b)
Healing Wave
-
Your nuke heal. It's incredibly useful in a Nature's Swiftness-
Healing Wave
combo to save someone instantly. It has a long cast time however, with the
Tidal Wave
buff, the spell becomes immensely more useful on targets that need the larger heal.
c)
Lesser Healing Wave
-
This is a short fast heal, similar to a priest's
Flash Heal
or a paladin's
Flash of Light
. It provides for a reactive heal style, allowing the shaman to react to spiking damage quickly. Though it used to be incredibly mana inefficient, with the talent improved water shield, it has become a very viable style of healing.
Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave
gives it greater raid efficiency, if the target you are healing is affected by Earth Shield.
d)
Riptide
-
This spell is similar to
Regrowth
mixed with
Holy Shock
, however it doesn't scale nearly as well. It gives a quick instant burst in the first hit of the spell, and leaves a HoT that can be used to boost the power of the next chain heal cast on the target during the spells duration.
Chain Heal
will consume the hot. It procs
Tidal Waves
.
e)
Earthliving Weapon
-
This spell provides a boost of spellpower to the shaman by imbuing their weapon with a temporary buff. It also gives a 20% chance to proc the HoT called "
Earthliving
" which will heal the target for a small amount over a few seconds.
f)
Nature's Swiftness
-
Makes the next nature spell cast by the shaman instant, allowing for a heal on a target that the shaman might not normally be able to manage. Does not work with
Astral Recall
g)
Tidal Force
-
Increases the critical strike chance of
Healing Wave
,
Lesser Healing Wave
, and
chain heal
by 60% with 20% diminishing returns for each crit that happens.
h)
Earth Shield
-
A smart spell that is placed on the target. When the target is struck in combat, they have a chance to proc the heal.
i)
Water Shield
-
A spell that grants 100 mp5 at max rank to the shaman. 3-4 orbs surround the shaman, depending on your glyphs. They can be consumed by environmental damage and through the talent
Improved Water Shield
.
j)
Cleanse Spirit
Replaces
Cure Disease
and
Cure Poison
while also allowing the shaman to remove curses.
k) Totems
Totems provide a variety of buffs, but the primary ones for healers are
Healing Stream Totem
,
Mana Spring Totem
,
Cleansing Totem
and
Mana Tide Totem
.
Mana Tide Totem, Cleansing Totem and Healing Stream Totem only affect your group. Mana Spring Totem is raid wide, however it is overwritten by Blessing of Wisdom.
Post by
Mesoforte
2. Stats
Blizzard also expects you to be able to correctly assess and chose the appropriate stats when gearing your shaman. Fortunately, the choices are actually relatively simple.
a) Intellect-
This increases your mana pool, the amount of regen you receive from Replenishment, your spellpower, your spell crit chance, and the amount of mana you gain from Mana Tide Totem.
b) Spellpower-
This stat increases how hard your heals it. It is an important stat. It increases the amount your spells heal for by a percentage following the
Shaman Spellpower Coefficients
.
c) Haste-
This stat will increase your healing throughput the most out of any stat you can stack. It reduces the casting times of your spells and the Global Cooldown that they incur.
Chart of Resto Haste
by D2thomas
d) Crit-
Critical Strike Rating increases the chance for your spells to critically hit, roughly doubling the amount healed. It also increases the chance for you to proc Improved Water Shield, and Ancestral Healing. However there is a point of diminishing returns for crit.
e)Mp5-
Though this stat used to be the mainstay of Shaman, Replenishment has diminished the need to focus primarily on this stat. It is one of the lower rated stats for shaman because of the benefit that intellect now gives. However, mp5 is still an important stat, you get it on most of your gear. Gemming and enchanting for it is not necessary though.
f)Stamina-
Stamina is needed to survive certain boss abilities that do aoe damage. Malygos's Vortex is a prime example.
g) Spirit-
Increases five second rule regen. In most cases, this stat by itself is completely useless for shaman.
h) Hit rating-
Unless you are being asked to be an interrupter on a certain mob or boss, this stat is useless. Heals do not miss.
Post by
Mesoforte
3. Pre-Raid Mins
For entry level Naxx, about 1500 spellpower with earthliving, 300 mp5 with water shield active, and around a 15k mana pool are necessary to do most of the early fights to be useful.
Personally I healed it in
this
:o
Malygos
-
18k Hp fully buffed is necessary for Malygos to survive the vortex. Be sure and take this into account when healing this encounter.
Ulduar Starting Mins
-
2000+ Spellpower
20,000+ Mana Pool
300+ mp5 (with water shield still)
Mostly t7~t7.5 level gear makes starting this dungeon much easier.
ToC 10-Man
500+ haste
2.2k SP (Earthliving only)
~21k mana
330+ mp5 (no water shield active)
Onyxia 10-Man
2.1k SP (earliving only)
~500 haste
20k Mana
~300 Mp5 (w/o water shield)
If you're doing a different heal style than most of us, it is understood that you can change some stats out for other stats.
Post by
Mesoforte
4. Cookie Cutter Build
Build here
Post by
Mesoforte
5. Your job
In any given raid you will be given a job. Listed are the common ones-
a) Spot Healing-
Involves picking off any person in the raid that is low on hp. One rank below raid healing. This job mainly involves using
Lesser Healing Wave
and
Riptide
to keep people topped off.
b) Raid Healing-
This involves you healing any raid members who are significantly low on health (excepting the Main Tank and Off-Tank, though you can heal them in emergencies.)
Chain Heal
,
Riptide
, and
Lesser Healing Wave
are your primary tools for this.
Healing Wave
can be a tool in this if you can find a situation to use it in.
c) Tank Healing-
This involves keeping either the main tank or one of the off tanks alive while they are beaten heavily upon by angry mobs. All of your spells can be involved in this type of healing.
Healing Wave
is incredibly useful for damage you can predict, and
Lesser Healing Wave
will cover more spiky damage.
Chain Heal
and
Riptide
provide the
Tidal Waves
buff that creates the synergy for the usage of the former two spells.
d) Kiting-
There are times where you might be asked to kite, even as a healer. You can use
Frost Shock
to gain agro for a single target kite,
chain lightning
for a multi-target kite (assuming you tag them before they agro something else) and use
Earthbind Totem
to slow your targets down.
Post by
Mesoforte
6. Gear List
Link
This contains any glyphs, consumables and items you might need for raiding.
7. Basic Raiding Tips-
a) Situational Awareness is your friend. Pay attention to what's happening around you and adjust what you do accordingly.
b) Know your fights. Knowing what's going to happen can allow you to keep your composure even when things are falling apart around you. That mental edge can help you in any fight.
c) Don't stand in the fire. Speaks for itself. It's the most basic raiding rule, don't stand in things that hurt you,
unless you absolutely have to
.
8. Addons
Grid
Raid Frame Addon
Healbot
Raid Frame Addon
Clique
Use with Grid
DBM
Boss Addon
Big-Wigs
Boss Addon
9. Macros (non-complicated for beginners)
Heroism/Bloodlust (for people who ask you to do it after you do it)-
#showtooltip Heroism
/cast Heroism
/rw Heroism Active
/y I'mma validatin' mah raid spot!
#showtooltip Bloodlust
/cast Bloodlust
/rw Bloostlust Active
/y I'mma validatin' mah raid spot!
The /y line is not necessary, but it is funny. Quoted from Booterang.
Instant Healing Wave
#showtooltip Nature's Swiftness
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force
/cast Healing Wave
Mana Tide Totem Notifier
#showtooltip Mana Tide Totem
/cast Mana Tide Totem
/p Mana Tide Totem Activated
Totems (Actual Totems vary.)
The new totem bar has removed the need for this macro. Please see your Shaman Trainer for more details at level 30, 40, and 50
Reincarnation Tracker
#showtooltip Reincarnation
Runemaster/Stormcaller Simple macro
/target Runemaster Molgeim
/cast Purge
/target Stormcaller Brundir
/cast Wind Shock
Mouse-over Macros
Chain Heal
#showtooltip Chain heal
/cast Chain Heal; Chain Heal; chain heal
Cleanse Spirit
#showtooltip Cleanse Spirit
/cast Cleanse Spirit; Cleanse Spirit; Cleanse Spirit
Earth Shield
#showtooltip Earth Shield
/cast Earth Shield; Earth Shield; Earth Shield
Healing Wave
#showtooltip Healing Wave
/cast Healing Wave; Healing wave; Healing Wave
Lesser Healing Wave
#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/cast lesser healing wave; lesser healing wave; lesser healing wave
Ancestral Spirit
#showtooltip Ancestral Spirit
/cast Ancestral Spirit; ancestral spirit; Ancestral spirit
Riptide
#showtooltip Riptide
/cast Riptide; Riptide; Riptide
Wind Shear
#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast Wind Shear; Wind Shear; Wind Shear
Purge
#showtooltip Purge
/cast Purge; Purge; Purge
Hex
#showtooltip Hex
/cast Hex; Hex; hex
10. Group Positioning
Which group you are in in a raid group can determine your usefulness to the group because of the nature of a few totems.
Healing Stream Totem
is mostly useful in groups taking constant damage.
Cleansing Totem
is most useful in a group that is constantly getting hit with diseases/poisons. .
Mana Tide Totem
is most useful in a healer/caster group because its benefits are dependent on the size of the mana pool of the affected.
Tremor Totem
only affects the group that it is dropped in.
Consider this and adjust your group position on encounters to gain the most benefit from these.
11. Item Comparison
Wowhead offers a great tool to compare the benefits you can get on item upgrades and what stats you lose out upon with your gear.-
Item Compare
When determining if an item is an upgrade, you need to ask yourself a few questions-
1. Do I need more regen? Alternatively- Am I running oom too quickly?
2. Are my spells not hitting hard enough?
3. Are my heals too slow?
For 1, if you need more regen, an upgrade would have higher intellect, mp5, or possibly crit. However, the benefit would need to be higher than what your current gear gives.
For 2, greater spellpower, and intellect would make the gear an upgrade.
For 3, a greater amount of haste would decrease the cast time of your spells, allowing you to react faster and increase your hps.
If you ask around the forums for specific gear, most of the posters will ask for stats, an armory link, or any problems you might notice. They will usually use that to tell you if its an upgrade. Posting with your armory and stats, along with any problems you notice with your current gear will help them when determining if the new piece is better.
Post by
219211
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
278900
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mesoforte
Could you give a link to some calculations concerning spell cap? Till this day I was sure that scaling of all the spells for all the classes is linear.
Its not so much a magic number for the spellpower cap as its just noticing that you don't get much benefit for each point after. There's been a general consensus on healers in these forums that 2k is the soft cap for spellpower. Basically, you can stack more spellpower however its not necessary.
These are the coefficients-
http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_power_coefficient#Shaman_Coefficients
Edit* that's why I called it soft cap, not hard cap. A hard cap would mean you would receive 0 benefit from stacking more. After about 2k spellpower, you would get better throughput from haste. :\ (9 sp/8 haste gem or something in a red slot.)
I love edits-
I thought of a better way to explain it-
If you stack the stats in the order they're listed Int>SP>Haste then you won't have any problems raiding.
Int until you reach 20k soft cap for longevity.
SP until you Hit 2k to boost your numbers.
Haste until you hit 625 (2 sec cast chain heal. I'm not even sure if you can raise it that high.) For throughput.
Post by
Mesoforte
its been 4 hours, so im gonna assume that you are done. and i have one thing to say.
THANK YOU! sorry for the caps >.<
as a new resto shammy, this is like a (insert deity of choice)send
/sticky
Actually...I was going to do more, but I got distracted. :o If I think of anything else I'll include it though.
Post by
219211
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
66520
Again - could you give some link to calculations showing how haste becomes more valuable? I am looking at elitistjerks thread about resto -
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t24796-shaman_restoration/
they assign higher values to mp5 in Ulduar, which is understandable because of amount of healing needed and lengths of fights.
When you stack haste - you need more mp5 to have enough mana by the end of the fight. When you stack more mp5 - you will loose some sp. So at the end you will heal faster, but weaker which may be a good thing for some fights but definitely isn't suitable for all the fights.
Also maybe you have a link to some shammy that has cleared Ulduar-25 and is at 2000sp and lots of haste. I know that this guy is a good healer -
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mug%27thol&n=Priox
He's at 2500sp, 30% crit and only 330 haste.
Firstly, it is noted directly above the valuations that they are tentative. Actual weightings are different for every single shaman because they are very heavily based on how you heal.
For a very clear example of why they should be taken with a grain of salt, examine Intellect's lowest weighting of 0.8. Intellect is actually a conglomerate stat, so we can directly evaluate it against all the other stats -
Mp5 lowest weighting is 1. 1 Intellect is 0.597 Mp5. That's 0.597 'points'
Crit's lowest weighting is 0.8. 1 Intellect is 0.33 crit. 0.33*0.8=0.264 'points'
Spell power's weighting is 1. 1 Intellect is 0.18 sp. 0.18 'points'
What we end up with is an Intellect whose composite functions are weighted
by the same scale
at 1.107. Even if we remove Replenishment we end up with a number that is much closer to 0.9.
When you stack haste you do not necessarily need more mp5. There is a balance to be found - if you are finishing a fight with more than 0 mana than you technically have more mana regen than you need. If you are not popping mana potions for regen then you are wasting stats on regen.
Stacking haste does not necessitate losing spell power. I personally stack haste at the direct loss of mp5 and crit - because I gem for intellect instead of mp5, and items where the choice is made are either mp5+haste OR crit, or they are haste+crit with no mp5.
I haven't finished Uld25
, we're stuck on phase 2 yogg, but (accounting for spec) I have ~100 less spell power, 2% more crit, 100 more haste, as well as 4piece t8. I have ~70 less mp5 but 2k more mana, and I'm still trying to drop mp5 for more useful stats.
Post by
66520
Haste until you hit 625 (2 sec cast chain heal. I'm not even sure if you can raise it that high.) For throughput.
I would caveat this with "if you want to heal with CH". You don't need that much for spot healing with LHW/RT (which a lot of shaman do exclusively), off the top of my head you only need about ~550 with Wrath of Air to get a 2 sec CH.
Post by
243207
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mesoforte
Haste until you hit 625 (2 sec cast chain heal. I'm not even sure if you can raise it that high.) For throughput.
I would caveat this with "if you want to heal with CH". You don't need that much for spot healing with LHW/RT (which a lot of shaman do exclusively), off the top of my head you only need about ~550 with Wrath of Air to get a 2 sec CH.
Thanks for hopping in on my behalf. ;)
I forgot how much of a pain it could be to make one of these.
Again - could you give some link to calculations showing how haste becomes more valuable? I am looking at elitistjerks thread about resto -
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t24796-shaman_restoration/
they assign higher values to mp5 in Ulduar, which is understandable because of amount of healing needed and lengths of fights.
When you stack haste - you need more mp5 to have enough mana by the end of the fight. When you stack more mp5 - you will loose some sp. So at the end you will heal faster, but weaker which may be a good thing for some fights but definitely isn't suitable for all the fights.
Also maybe you have a link to some shammy that has cleared Ulduar-25 and is at 2000sp and lots of haste. I know that this guy is a good healer -
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mug%27thol&n=Priox
He's at 2500sp, 30% crit and only 330 haste.
Sigh, this math is going to be a pain.
I'll do it later. The point however is that once you hit 2k you'll gain any spellpower you need from the gear, instead of having to socket pure 19 spellpower. Essentially, the 2k soft cap let's you free up other stats.
Post by
Mesoforte
Okay, I got it, using
Ghostlight
and
that other shaman
in comparison in a Healing Wave contest.
7403.7742 at 2507 spellpower
13 more casts in 100
96249.0646- 13 casts
740377.42- 100 casts
836626.42
113 casts
7252.5206 at 2351 Spellpower
17 more casts in 100
123292.8502- 17 casts
725252.06- 100 casts
848544.9102
117 casts
Wowhead crashed when I tried to post this. >.> <.< Conspiracy I say.
Haste will increase your throughput more than spellpower.
Post by
CanadianSniper
I have few changes I'd like to see in your guide.
First change I'd like to see is a re-explanation on Healing Wave. If talented (and there's little reason it shouldn't be), Healing Wave has the same cast time as Chain Heal. With Tidal Waves, Healing Wave is an even faster cast. Nothing huge but I noticed you forgot to mention this and made it sound like Healing Wave is a sluggish spell.
I also consider Lesser Healing Wave to be a PvP healing spell only with the exception to the glyph which limits it to whomever has Earth Shield. Elitist Jerk's think tank thread makes an excellent point that it's more efficient to cast Chain Heal instead of Lesser Healing Wave because there's always the chance it will bounce to another target.
I also have a problem with your spell power soft cap explanation. I would like to see evidense that spell power above 2000 will not have as big an impact on healing spells. I looked at the wowwiki site you linked about the shaman coefficients but that doesn't explain that the excess spell power after 2000 will be less useful. If you have the evidense, explanations, and calculations on how you got 2000 then please tell me I'm not afraid to learn more about the game but saying you put in the soft cap because that's what others on wowhead are saying won't convince me. Don't get me wrong though I'm not saying that stacking only SP is the best way to go. I completely agree it's smart to keep a balance between stats.
When I'm looking at this guide being an experienced pve resto shaman I have a few disagreements here and there on what you wrote but that's just me. You started this guide a day ago and I'm sure you'll continue working on it with all the feedback you'll be getting. For that I thank you for putting in the time. Keep up the good work!
--
Oh and to explain to one of the responders in this thread, the reason mp5 has a larger value than haste/crit/etc on elitist jerks is because mp5 doesn't come as high a number on gear like crit/haste does. You'll usually see gear with like 60 haste and 25 mp5 (a rough estimate).
Post by
Mesoforte
I have few changes I'd like to see in your guide.
I also have a problem with your spell power soft cap explanation. I would like to see evidense that spell power above 2000 will not have as big an impact on healing spells. I looked at the wowwiki site you linked about the shaman coefficients but that doesn't explain that the excess spell power after 2000 will be less useful. If you have the evidense, explanations, and calculations on how you got 2000 then please tell me I'm not afraid to learn more about the game but saying you put in the soft cap because that's what others on wowhead are saying won't convince me. Don't get me wrong though I'm not saying that stacking only SP is the best way to go. I completely agree it's smart to keep a balance between stats.
I think I'm just going to cut it. -_- To explain the difference I'd have to drag up way too many variables. My point was supposed to be that after 2k spellpower, you wouldn't need to bother socketing/enchanting pure spellpower (because you would get most of the increase from gear afterward). However, I think the point was missed because of the language.
Post by
Mesoforte
I have few changes I'd like to see in your guide.
First change I'd like to see is a re-explanation on Healing Wave. If talented (and there's little reason it shouldn't be), Healing Wave has the same cast time as Chain Heal. With Tidal Waves, Healing Wave is an even faster cast. Nothing huge but I noticed you forgot to mention this and made it sound like Healing Wave is a sluggish spell.
I also consider Lesser Healing Wave to be a PvP healing spell only with the exception to the glyph which limits it to whomever has Earth Shield. Elitist Jerk's think tank thread makes an excellent point that it's more efficient to cast Chain Heal instead of Lesser Healing Wave because there's always the chance it will bounce to another target.
I think the larger issue with how Healing Wave is used is that the heal is so large when you have other healers doing more than their jobs. I know Lesser Healing Wave is used by some healers because it cuts down on the sniping by beating the other healers. Its not so much a problem with the heal itself, but of the habits of other classes.
*I still changed the wording a bit though. ;)
Post by
287888
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