Audience

This guide is intended for a more intermediate to advanced raid environment, however beginners can also benefit from the concepts discussed here. Shaman just starting out at level 80 that are not already advanced through tiers of raiding should take some precaution in applying intermediate or advanced techniques and gear logic.

Guide

General Healing and the Value of Stats

How you play and gear can vary depending on the environment you are in. The environment being your raid composition and overall skill as well as the content you are progressing in. It would be foolhardy to simply lump every Restoration Shaman into one style of healing and stat stacking, although you technically could since the spec is very versatile regardless of how you gear, so it comes down to varying degrees of effectiveness. The Shaman and the raid leader should always be aware of this.

When 3.2 was released, which will be the current benchmark discussed in this guide (and should for the most part apply to Icecrown), haste was more valuable in comparison to the other stats which Restoration Shaman favored. Most HEP (Healing Equivalency Point) calculations were weighing haste as low as 1.5 and as high as 1.7 from what I have seen (with spell power at a flat 1.0 for reference).

I feel that spell power loses value as your over healing increases, but has a bottom at 1.0. I believe you cannot calculate when over healing will occur (but you can always assume it will exist in all encounters) so spell power will be a variable throughout a clear that changes value based on the amount of over heal you are incurring at that time. An example is Twins. Your over healing is the lowest on this encounter compared to all others in ToC, thus spell power is worth more for the duration of this encounter. It is not worth as much as haste, but it is higher than 1.0.

A point to be made is that you can run HEP calculations against a raid that already completed and figure out a value for spell power, but you couldn't effectively calculate it real time, so it is a variable value until after the raid, where it would then be a fixed value. You could run a Shaman_HEP parse during only the duration of the Twins encounter to see if spell power increased in value due to less over heal, but in the end you have to lump all encounters together to gear for all of it (and swap out gear for each encounter if you have it available). Thankfully if you are gearing more like an Elemental Shaman and avoiding MP5, the stats you desire are abundant enough without stacking them using gems.

This tier of raid content exists in an environment where over healing is not scoffed upon due to mana being in such abundant supply for most all classes. However, it is important to keep in mind that not all healers have abundant sources of mana or mana replenishment (especially in 10's) and length of fight will vary from raid to raid. The point being discussed here however is how haste fits into everything, so in areas of the game where haste is most desirable, mana is in fact in abundance at top levels of gear. In essence, the value of haste should increase as you are more progressed while the necessity of MP5 and mana decreases. Values of intellect increase decently each tier. I was 24k in Ulduar and 29k in ToC for example.

Because we can safely sustain a constant supply of HPS to a tank or raid for extended periods of time, we can value spell power as something to pick up if it's convenient. Such as activating a socket bonus that is 7 spell power or higher on an item without blue sockets, using Reckless Ametrine and/or Quick King's Amber. Or weighing a piece of gear that has 100 spell power and 80 haste against a piece that has 120 spell power and 60 haste.

So if you still feel stacking spell power or activating almost every socket bonus regardless of the color of gems is worth it, look at your over healing after each raid and consider the impact that has on how you gem. As a general rule of thumb I avoid all blue gem sockets with the exception of one to activate my meta gem. Sacrificing 10 or 20 haste to get 5 or 7 spell power is not ideal. Why? Because haste can and will lower your over healing while still being a great throughput stat on its own.

If you are on the way to stacking haste, you should do so slowly and with caution. Replace gems a couple at a time and run a clear. If you are still having plenty of mana to spare, then continue swapping gems until you feel comfortable. Spell power comes with gear in good amounts. I do not stack spell power at all, and sit at 3500 raid buffed, which a decent percentage of goes right into over heal.

The question for me is now: Do I continue to stack haste? I'm at 1254 as of writing this, and my LHW's are almost dropping under 1 second. I will still stack haste most likely as it continues to improve CH and HW, but also focus a little more on spell power, since the hard modes in ICC will not be short of outgoing damage and the fights will likely be longer earlier on in progression due to not already having post 258 gear as well as learning curves.

10's versus 25's and How to Choose Your Heals Wisely

Healing in a 10 man and a 25 man are different for me. I do not typically approach each of them the same nor apply the same logic to both. For example, I never cast Healing Wave in a 25 man raid but sometimes use it in 10 mans depending on the raid composition. In 10 man's there are less people performing the same job as you, so the weight of your heals will increase. If I were to ever evaluate a healer that was applying to Fusion, I would prefer to see them in a 10 man because they have to carry more weight.

Coming back to over healing again, Healing Wave will suffer most from it in a 25 man raid because you're in there with 5 or 6 other healers dealing with the same problem: there just isn't enough damage going around these days with the exception of a couple of encounters and one of them requires you don't heal people. Couple this with the instant heals going around along with tank healers throwing non-stop heals, and it is virtually impossible to get 100% effective healing. Because of this, I tend to favor faster, smaller heals.

I consider Lesser Healing Wave my bread and butter even though on a given clear LHW and CH are close in percentage of total casts, and sometimes CH is higher. I use LHW exclusively on Faction Champs with Riptide and constant Earthshield switches. Here we have an example of a fight where you could technically get a near-100% effective Healing Wave in on a person being focused on (or even spam Chain Heal on), but you shouldn't. But I just got done saying that Healing Wave would be worth casting on occasion if you could get most of the effective healing out of it, so why would you choose Lesser? The risk of death is so high in this case that you want to heal them as fast as possible, not for as much as possible. HW is around 1.3 seconds (Tidal Wave'd)at 1200 haste with LHW around 1.0 seconds, but I still prefer the 1 second heal with a risk of death factor as high as Faction Champions.

You are best suited to stabilize the player in this scenario than any other healer. You have to assume that as you begin spamming LHW on the focused target, other healers are also doing the same.

So when I weigh Lesser Healing Wave against Healing Wave from a logical point of view, it comes down to two factors: 1) Is the inbound damage on your target constant and high? and 2) How much effective healing will each heal incur as a result of other healers around me?

These will vary every time. If you're two-healing ToGC 10 and 3 raid members that are not tanks take a large spike in damage, you could Riptide one, and Healing Wave the other two. You are not worried that the tank healer is going to snipe a heal on one of them for the most part (which wouldn't really be a bad thing anyhow), so you can predict that you will get the full effect (compared to that same scenario in a 25 man, where 3 or 4 other healers are healing them as well). The ability that caused the damage is a one-time hit that is on a somewhat long timer. You can safely assume they will not take further damage (and if they do, it's their fault for standing in something, in which case you can switch to LHW if you catch it), so a slower, larger heal is a good choice (where slower is relative, since a HW with Tidal Waves is still quite quick, just not as quick as LHW). It's a matter of topping off health with as few heals as possible if you're allowed to.

Making logical decisions requires you to know each ability the boss has, and you should always know when damage is sustained or a one-time event because it will affect how you choose your heals. If you are ever unsure, just fall back to LHW as a safe bet. You can also time heals to be pre-casted when the encounter allows for it. Gormok's stomp and Guardians on Yogg Saron exploding near Sarah are two examples where you can have CH hit the moment damage occurs.

If those 3 raid members in the example above were taking damage that was constant, then chain casting Chain Heal if they are in range of jumps would be ideal, or Riptide and LHW's spread around as an alternative. Speed and area of effect (e.g. Faction Champions damage versus Twins damage) is the key factor for constant damage, and Chain Heal gets an exception because it jumps to multiple targets. However, if one out of several targets is taking a larger portion of damage relative to the others (larger being that they are taking enough damage in a 1.6-1.7+ second time span to die), then do not cast Chain Heal into the group. Stabilize that player with LHW and then reconvene with yourself on your logical decision making to decide if you can then begin casting Chain Heals.

As you can see your logical decisions revolve around the events occurring around you, which you should always work to improve on by knowledge of encounters and weighing what other healers are in the raid with you.

To Spam or not to Spam

I see this topic come up all the time where Shaman prefer to simply spam Chain Heal over a given fight that does not have sustained raid damage. This is never ideal. It's the easy way out of what is actually a complex process of decision making.
We have become relaxed in this tier of raid content because it lacks challenge, so you could effectively just spam Chain Heal and collect epics. But you are doing yourself and your raid a disservice in the long run by never becoming a good all-around healer that can adapt to new environments and change since you've cornered yourself into a one-button-wonder.

When you get to Valithria Dreamwalker in ICC, how would you approach healing the dragon? Chain Heal is hardly ideal HPS when you finally have a chance to use HW to its fullest. If you were locked into spamming CH, you may not adapt well to fights like this. You might never consider using a CH > HWx2 rotation, and when you do, you are now depleting your mana at an extremely fast rate in doing so. Spamming a spell wont fix this, as you now have to juggle taking portals along with your healing to sustain the mana. Work towards being a good player, not just an effective Restoration Shaman. Being well-rounded healers plays right into this line of thought.

Always look at each fight and find out what damage is sustained and what damage is on a timer. Knowing this information will allow you to make better decisions and be more well-rounded since you can effectively use your entire tool box. This forces you to think, and when you approach every second of the encounter from a thoughtful process, it makes you better at parts of the game outside of the realm of replacing health too. As you do this more and more, it almost becomes second nature.
To further justify that Chain Heal is not an effective all-around heal for all situations, keep in mind that you are not getting effective Ancestral Healing procs and uptime, which brings me to the next section:

Shaman, The Tank Healing Raid Healer

When I'm assigned to raid healing, I consider myself a tank healer that highly prioritizes raid damage when it occurs. When you approach fights this way, you are helping the tank healers with your armor buff as well as providing a buffer for them. Every fight has periods of time when there is no damage except the tank damage going out. Never stand around doing nothing. Always know when these periods exist by having a good knowledge of the encounters themselves.

Change gears as the fights progress. Tank healing is proactive and raid healing is reactive. Healing a tank is a situation where you don't really want to wait for the damage to occur, so you cast it assuming damage will occur regardless. Tank healing is very heavy on over healing as a result. When you are raid healing, you are most effective when you let the damage occur first. Fights like Twins that favor spamming CH are somewhat of an exception to this, but you can still guess who will need the heal the most as you begin casting when there are no clear cut targets to choose (usually a tank).

Even though Twins is a very Chain Heal spam friendly fight, I still have a good amount of LHW and Riptide casts, since the strategy we employ involves soakers. It is always better to stabilize a single player in cases like this with single target heals (since they are often out of range of CH jumps) than inflate your HPS.

My UI Mods

A list of mods that I consider mandatory to my style of healing and UI configuration is as such:

Grid: Raid frames with very detailed configuration options. (See the end of this section for my list of debuffs I display in the center icon position. Please comment with any that you think I may have missed that would be useful. Any other ones that I didn't list likely are marked in Grid with a raid symbol so I never bothered.)

Clique: Mouse-over healing functionality to coincide with Grid.

Bartender: Action bar mod with robust configuration capability.

TotemManager: To track my Water and Earthshield, as well as my weapon buff.

Power Auras: Allows me to add buff/debuff tracking easily.

Chatter: I consider this chat mod mandatory for me since it adds highlights to text. So I can setup a keyword to display as scrolling combat text. If a Priest says 'Hymn of Hope used' in raid chat, I don't have to actively see it to know to drop Mana Tide, and so forth. Other keywords I use are 'Mana Tide', my characters name (in case someone references me in chat and I don't notice) and HoH in case they shorten Hymn down to an acronym. Add any word you can't afford to miss in chat.

My Clique cofiguration:
Shift + Right Mouse = Chain Heal
Shift + Left Mouse = LHW
Shift + Middle Mouse = HW
Middle Mouse = Cleanse
Shift + Mouse 5 = Earthshield
Mouse 5 = Riptide

I use a cheap Kensington mouse with the left-side button (5) in a very comfortable position. I've used some mice that had the button too far forward.

I try to use mouse over for everything I do commonly. For example I have my NS macro on 1 and water shield on 2 for keybinds, with various things like my shocks and purge on 3-0. I work completely within Grid using my mouse. I also play with Grid directly to the right of my character so I can heal and see anything that might cause me harm. Be careful with smaller objects like Meteor Crash on Algalon if you do this. I've had one hide under Grid and died as a result. I actually keyboard turn as I'm healing in Grid with A and D keys to have a panoramic view of everything. It does not interrupt your healing to do this if you are using mouse-over.

My left hand places the index on the D key, middle on W, ring on A with the pinky on shift for mouse over. This allows me to spin my character while healing to see more of the area I'm in (you can hold shift down with A or D while clicking over unit frames in Grid without interruption), as well as having the ability to nudge my character forward to stop a cast. Since Grid displays aggro as well as other healers incoming heals for me, I can stop a cast on someone and switch to another if they are now the target of inbound damage, or if I see another healer already casting.

Don't waste your heals if you can by switching to other targets that do not already have heals incoming to them. In a perfect world every healers heals are displayed in Grid, but this is not always the case.

My Spec

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=7&tal=000000000000000000000...

You may notice I have Improved Reincarnation. This is not a change I've used since the 3.3 patch. I have used this spec since 3.0. The bottom line is if you are ending fights with mana, then you can drop 2 points from Tidal Focus to grab this. You can argue that you shouldn't be dying, and therefore should not need it, but that's simply an invalid argument if you are using 2 points to pick it up that are not required or useful anywhere else. The extra mana and health is a huge benefit when you use the ability, and a 15 minute cool down in 3.3 is pretty handy for progression.

I also forgo Healing Focus for pushback. There have been compelling arguments that pushback exists in ToC (I can't speak for ICC yet), but I run Quartz for my cast bar mod, and have it enlarged and above my character for when I play Elemental. I only ever see push back during Algalon with Constellations. Therefore I do not take the points in it. You can move 3 from Elemental Weapons in this build to pick it up if you really want it, which I will do if there is sufficient need in ICC for it.

Icecrown and Beyond

As we enter Icecrown, we should now reevaluate the overall value of each stat. As of writing this, I have only cleared the first wing on normal mode, so nothing has changed for me personally. Fusion runs with very experienced and skilled players from top to bottom, so the difficulty of the fight is a bit unfairly judged by me here. For players that find it challenging (and we all will experience this on hard modes, as the few hard modes I tested on the PTR were very heavy on outgoing damage) you are still only concerned with longevity of mana beyond all else until Cataclysm. This will not stand a chance of changing until Cataclysm when they reevaluate how tanks take damage and how healers replace it.

It's ok to over heal, so long as you aren't running out of mana, but still work towards being as efficient as possible by applying the logic of the topics discussed in this guide.

List of Grid Debuffs

Arctic Breath
Frost Blast (if you still do Kel'Thuzad)
Incinerate Flesh
Mark of the Fallen Champion
Penetrating Cold
Squeeze
Strengthened Iron Roots
Touch of Jaraxxus