Ever since the 50's or so I've always been infatuated with the restoration spec. There are also a lot of factors and sciences involved with Elemental and Enhancement, but i'm our resident resto expert, perhaps Sin or Lost will do a thread on enhancement, but i digress.

Important stats for resto Shaman:

Intellect: Increases your total amount of mana. Shaman are not known for fantastic mana regen, like priests, and they don't have little tricks to regain mana like paladins, so a lot of base mana is essential.

Mp5: Spirit does not adequately help the Shaman class as it does priests, therefore we have to go for straight up Mp5, cut out the middleman.

Crit Rating: ever since the patch leading up to the WotLK, there have been many talents that increase the use of spell crit rating in Shaman, if you're level 70 and resto, you probably already know a little bit about these abilities.

Avoid stats such as 'Hit rating' when possible: ever since the latest patch what used to be confined to caster items are now useful for healing as well, but helping determine what weapon you should use if presented with a choice, it might be wise to go against the weapon with hit rating, this is a caster dps stat, and to my knowledge gives no bonuses for healing.

Avoid spirit when possible: when presented with the choice between spirit and pure Mp5, go for the Mp5, as i stated before, it does not benefit Shaman enough to be a sought after attribute.


Shaman's role in raids:

Shaman perform well as both main healers and raid healers. For main healing, I suggest the Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, which increases healing done by Lesser Healing Wave by 20% if your target is affected by Earth Shield. When main healing, i suggest always renewing your Earth Shield, pressing to only use Lesser Healing Wave unless an emergency, and throw a few Chain Heals if there are multiple melee dps or the tanks are standing near each other. Also throw a Riptide on your main tank to keep him/her topped off, and the HoT bonus helps the effectiveness of keeping the tank at high health.

For raid healing: If you are primarily a raid healer, i strongly suggest putting talent points into the Chain Heal effectiveness talent, near the bottom of the tree. Your biggest 2 spells as a raid healer will be Chain Heal, and Riptide. Chain Heal bounces to 3 friendly targets, getting weaker with every bounce. Use your judgment with this spell, if you know a lot of range dps are standing close to each other, and are all injured, use it, if it is only one person injured out of a certain group, i suggest using Riptide. Also, Riptide can be useful to throw on the main tank of a raid for its HoT bonus, might as well help out the main healer when you can.


A rundown of Shaman healing spells and when they are most useful:

Healing Wave: Your biggest and most mana-consuming spell, as an experience resto Shaman, i suggest only using this in emergencies, considering Shaman don't have ridiculous mana regen, it is a waste to spam this spell

Lesser Healing Wave: As stated above, if you are primarily a main healer then this is one of your favorite spells. When combined with Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, simply renewing your tank's Earth Shield will make healing them an easy job using nothing but this and Riptide.

Chain Heal: Your favorite spell if you are a raid healer. As mentioned earlier, Chain Heal jumps to 3 allies, but reduces effectiveness with each jump. I've said it once, and i'm going to say it again because it is an overlooked factor: USE YOUR JUDGMENT WITH CHAIN HEAL. You can save a lot of mana by knowing where people are in relation to each other, and whether or not you should use this spell or Riptide depending on who's hurt, and how close they are to each other.

Riptide: Added in the latest patch, it is the Shaman's first semi HoT. Riptide heals about 2/3 as much as a Lesser Healing Wave, but also heals a substantial amount of health with it's HoT effect. Good for keeping the MT topped off, and good if for some reason one dps is getting targeted rather than several.


There you have it, a rundown from someone who knows what they're talking about. RESTO FTW.

Wow resident expert and knows what hes talkin about eh Cow???

Got any ankhs on ya....LMFAO

Just givin ya beef buddy. Good post.

Just like to add a few helpful glyphs

Glyph of Chain Heal- increases the amount of people healed by chain heal to 4. This is very helpful because blizzard put lot's of AoE effects on bosses in the new WotLK instances, making this very helpful to efficiently heal up the group

Glyph of Healing Wave- your healing wave heals you for 20% of the amount healed on the other target. Helpful for the same reason, with the tank and others getting pounded on, you don't always have time to heal yourself, so this is a good way healing yourself without taking focus off the tank.

Thats good info buddy. Thanx for posting it up.