Shaman Healing Instances

[Stormhart 12]

Hey fellow shamans, 

I am relatively new to shamans (mana classes in general) and ask advice for healing instances, as I don't have any experience. 

 

[seeth07 1]

As I level (leveling as enhance), I like to keep a set of gear for healing instances as it is much easier to get into a group when you can say that you can heal or dps.

Healing gear consists of int,stam and spirit for the most part as +healing items aren't too common until after level 50.  Thats ok though because you don't need much more than a big mana pool to heal all of the instances before blackrock depths.  Therefore, int is your main priority on gear.

The first thing you need to do is set up your action bars to have 4 heals bound: your highest rank lesser healing wave, your highest rank healing wave, rank 1 or 2 healing wave and rank 3 or 4 healing wave.  At level 40, I was using 2 and 4 to give you an idea of which one you should be using.

After tank pulls and cc is taken care of (sheep or sap or w/e) you just start spam healing the tank with rank 1 or 2 healing wave.  Based on how fast the tank's hp is falling, you adjust accordingly.  I typically will continue the spam of rank 1 or 2 until his hp gets below 67%.  Than I'll use a rank 3 or 4 healing wave to catch up and go back to spamming rank 1 or 2.  Using your highest rank healing wave is typically used when the tank is below 50% and i need a good high catch up heal.  However, this heal should never be cast when the tank gets below 25%.  That is when you need to get a quick catch up heal by using your lesser healing wave.  I will typically cast lesser healing wave right into a max rank healing wave.  This will get the tank from 25% or less all the wave back up to 75% or more.

That is tank healing basically in a nutshell.  For other raid members, using your rank 3/4 heal is typically used when they get below 67% or you got the tank to max health and have the time to top everyone off.

There is obviously more to it than just this outline but it will get you started.  Other basic items to remember about being a shaman is that you can purge and keeping totems down 100% of the time is extremely valuable.

[Zosyn 8]

Hello,

I've been playing as elemental and picking up some healing gear as well. My main focus when I need on healing gear is maximizing my Mana-pool with Intellect gear. Dungeon fights are short enough to the point where I dont consider spirit and mp5 to be very important. I've noticed that healing as a shaman gets easier and easier as you level up because you gain Lesser Healing Wave (shorter cast time), and eventually Chain Heal.

 

I setup a different action bar for healing, as previous post described. I down-rank some spells too. Every time i level up, I calculate my healing efficiency of spells:

Healing Efficiency = (min heal + max heal)/(2* mana cost)

 

You will notice that your Fastest heals are the least efficient and will make you Oom. I like to use Lesser Healing Wave in emergency situation where I pray for a crit to push up the tank's hp enough so i can witch back to a more efficient (but longer cast time) spell. I also use Lesser Healing wave on myself/dps on fights where tank is taking substantial dmg from boss and the dps are taking dmg as well from other sources. Soon when I get chain heal, I'll rely less on Lesser Healing wave, and more on Chain Heal to deal with such situation where everyone is taking unavoidable dmg.

I personally like to use my most mana-efficient heal (long cast time Healing Wave) on the tank. It minimizes my downtime, allows me to participate in maintaining 100% totem uptime / interrupting / purging / melee'ing etc.

 

How I play in dungeons really differs from one group to another. If tank is strong and well geared, that allows me to participate in other roles, and safely heal him whenever my most-efficient big spell will exactly refill his hp. If tank is low lvl and undergeared, I focus more on healing and find myself constantly spamming heals to keep his low hp-pool from suddenly dropping.

I recommend that you run dungeons many many times to learn the trash mobs and all the fights yourself. You will notice that you will develop a skill of Anticipating damage on your tank. Then you start being able to predict how fast the tank's hp is going to drop on any fight. With this information, you can make good decision on how which spell to choose, and even better when you know when to cast/cancel your healing spell. Sometimes you'll know that a big hit is coming despite tank being at high hp, you must be prepared and pre-cast your heal in anticipation of that dmg.

When I Oom (usually happens with incorrect pulls, or dps taking aggro), i throw my Earth Bind totem and tell the tank to kite, or ask for off-healing to support.

Shaman is a very fun and versatile class. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am :)

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Zosyn

[Stormhart 12]

Thank you both for your input. Very detailed and helpfull info. 

This will help to get started. So far I healed RFC and off healed in WC.

Edited January 24, 2017 by Stormhart

[ValarMorghulis 2]

That's indeed some detailed and useful tips as I am finishing leveling my first shaman as well and been learning it through trial and error ;) Just wanted to add that +healing spells gear is available much earlier than level 50ish, just keep browsing AH every now and then. I think I got my first pieces around 30. 

[seeth07 1]

Who buys gear on the ah before level 60? :P  Leveling isn't that hard lol

[Seiki 4]

advice:

press healing wave

put all points in resto talents

put down wf totem

rly not hard

[gotmilk0112 10]

5 hours ago, ValarMorghulis said:

That's indeed some detailed and useful tips as I am finishing leveling my first shaman as well and been learning it through trial and error ;) Just wanted to add that +healing spells gear is available much earlier than level 50ish, just keep browsing AH every now and then. I think I got my first pieces around 30. 

You shouldn't be using "of healing" pieces while leveling. Hell, you shouldn't really be using them at all, outside of chest/legs and wand for Priests.

 

Back on nost forums, people calculated that Int is much better for short fights, and 5mans are nothing but short fights. Dropping int for +heal is going to provide less healing overall.

[Timergu 0]

Dont spam lowrank inefficient heals like the first guy said. Download theorycraft and use it to see mana efficency on your heals. Try to only use your most efficient heal wich will be max rank healing Wave. Use unit frames like Luna that preshows how much health your heal will restore to avoid överhealing. Remember the 5 second rule.

I've healed everything up to rfd with only reduced casttime on healing Wave and havent had much problems.

[gotmilk0112 10]

Yeah, downranking does not become good until you get lots of +heal gear at 60. While leveling, you just want to use max rank Healing Wave and time it so that you can be casting as little as possible, to get as much regen as you can in between casts.

[seeth07 1]

I will politely disagree and leave it at that.

[Stormhart 12]

I used healing wave rank 3 in BFD yester day, it was good to keep the tank up against the trash. But for the hard hitting bosses I resorted to rank 5. 

I used lesser healing wave as emergency heal.

I had a 1300 ish manapool at lvl 26 and only got oom once. I used Smoked Sagefish buff and had manaspring totem up alot.

Agian thanks for all the tips and opions! I am just trying to figure out what works for me. 

Edited January 30, 2017 by Stormhart

[Seiki 4]

just use your max rank heal as much as you can

you dont have any +heal gear or mp5 gear

the higher the rank you do, the more healing you do per point of mana until you start to have +heal gear

youll often have downtime between each spell if you use max rank, meaning you get better mana regen from 5 sec rule if you have spirit gear

just dont overheal