Healing in Cataclysm for the Restoration Shaman

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Welcome again to Totem & Ankh! Have a glass of the Dalaran Red or perhaps a tankard o’ the house brew while we discuss this week’s topic: Healing in Cataclysm as a Resto Shammy.

If you’ve tried healing normal dungeons or heroics in Cataclysm, then you are fully aware of the new challenges. Things like crowd control will make your job easier, even if you’re the one called upon to bind an elemental or to hex a beast or humanoid. You also know that mana drains faster from you than water leaking from a sieve.

First off, tanks who use crowd control are your friends. Some tanks are used to running through dungeons like maniacs, trying to chain pull groups of mobs like there is no tomorrow. If they keep on like that, it’s a wipe and you haven’t saved any time. They may try to blame you, but it’s not your fault. They need to settle down, wake up and smell the Cata.

If kind suggestions for the tank to mark and assign CC don’t work, then offer to do the marking and assigning yourself. Familiarize yourself with which classes can do what CC. Some will be obvious because you will know the kinds of things your friends can do, but if you’re in a group with an unfamiliar class, at least know what they bring to the CC strategy. This guide will help you with CC. I apologize for the author’s inability to spell the word “interrupt” properly. It won the contest from MMO-Champion. Note the table which is exceptionally good.

Now that you’ve taken care of the CC issue, how do you deal with the mana issue? Right now, I’m doing a two-pronged approach. I have my old, mana expensive way with my healbot setup and my mouse buttons connected to my heals.

I left-click healbot and get a Healing Surge, middle click for a Chain Heal, and Right Click for a Greater Healing Wave. A Shift click gets an Earth shield on my healbot target and a Ctrl click gets the target a riptide. This way runs me out of mana very fast and the only reason I still do it is because I can do it very quickly and keep a lot of people alive without conscious thought. I recommend doing what’s comfortable when you were healing in WOTLK in tight situations as needed.

The better way, which I’m in the process of retraining myself without getting kicked from pugs or letting my guildies down, is I use the new game party/raid interface and I select the target from the panel and push the keybindings for the heal I want. I keep Earth Shield on the tank always, and I use Riptide a lot as well. I also unleash my Earthliving Weapon whenever it’s off cooldown.   By using these spells, primarily on the tank, my Healing Wave, which is very low mana for healing, or my Greater Healing Wave, perform very well. Healing Wave doesn’t heal for a lot, so if your tank is below 50%, you’ll need to forget about conserving mana and pop some bigger heals on him.

While I like my two pronged approach very much at the moment, I feel it’s too clunky and slow for proper raiding. I’d like to be able to heal as efficiently as possible which means using one system or the other. When I tried to re-set my healbot with the lower mana cost spells, people died, so I’m still working on that. The main thing to keep in mind is to find every possible way to conserve mana or you’ll end up doing what I call Triage Healing.

Triage Healing is when you’re low on mana and everyone is in the red zone – or dead. You have 2 main healing priorities: yourself because you can’t heal if you’re dead, and the tank, because you’ll be dead if he dies. You want the dps to survive so they can get the mob or boss down, but if they incur unnecessary damage, they are toast. Don’t forget to keep the Water Shield up and use the Mana Tide Totem at this point. Don’t let yourself feel bad if dps die due to their own stupidity. How will they learn to stay out of the fire/poison/black swirly stuff of death if you don’t let them die? However, you should never let dps die because of poorly managed mana.

Healing Rain is a lovely new spell for Restoration Shamans. I almost never use it unless I’m raiding or in a battleground, in which case it’s flat out amazing. People flock to the little circle of blue like their lives depended on it. There are rare situations in dungeons where it can be useful but it uses so much mana that I don’t like to waste it on 2 or 3 people. If we are all bunched up then it can be viable.

These tips should help you survive some normal dungeons and some heroic dungeons. Don’t give up as a healer just because it’s become hard. Healers are more appreciated than ever by the intelligent and judicious group member. As more people give up on healing, those of us who stay and learn what to do will be ever more valued.

Last Updated on Thursday, 17 March 2011 16:04 Written by Savoire Thursday, 13 January 2011 00:32