I thought it was time I put together a basic shaman healing guide for those interested in picking up the restorative lifestlye.  Please note that this is designed for people new to 80 and getting started. For experienced healers, there will be no really enlightening information here, nor will there be details on end-game gearing and strategies, which can differ significantly. I’ll be going through the basic talents, important spells, along with an introduction to healing for brand new shiny shaman healing folk.

Spells

Shamans are either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your view, to have relatively few healing spells compared with some other classes. I personally like it, as this can make it a relatively easy class to pick up; classes like the holy Priest have a virtual plethora of spells to choose from, and mastering a large number of spells can be intimidating when starting out.

Here are the five main spells your healing will be heavily based on:

Chain Heal:

This is the signature spell for restoration shamans, and the one spell every other healer wish they had. Casts a decent-sized heal at your target, which then jumps to another target within 12 yards, and will then jump a third time if it can. Excellent at healing people standing close together, such as your tank and melee. The downside is a long cast time, which can feel really slow when you don’t have much haste on your gear as you start.

Lesser Healing Wave:

This will be your main single-target heal. Quicker, cheaper and smaller than its big brother Healing Wave, it is a nice medium-sized heal that is fairly quick to get away.

Healing Wave:

I personally don’t find myself using healing wave too much. It has a long cast time, chews through mana, and will often overheal unless your target is significantly low on health. Waiting until your tank is low on health just so you can use your big heal is not a way to win friends, nor a recommendable healing strategy. It does have its place, but I highly recommend sticking to Lesser Healing Wave until you’ve gained some experience and get to feel when you need it. If you find yourself needing to cast Healing Wave regularly in 5 man heroics, you probably need to look at upgrading your gear more than changing your healing strategy. Or find a group that knows how to not stand in the bad stuff.

Earth Shield:

My personal favourite healing spell. Throws a shield onto your target which will automatically heal when that target takes damage. Has 8 charges when talented. Each heal uses up one charge, but there’s a cooldown between heals, so it won’t just fire off non-stop. This is a fantastic set-and-forget spell. Throw it onto your tank, and it will take the sting out of incoming damage, making life a lot easier for you with your regular heals.

Riptide:

Instant cast heal, only slightly smaller than a LHW, but has a heal-over-time component. Has a 6 second cooldown. Less mana efficient than LHW also, due to its instant-cast nature, but still not bad. A regular part of my healing “rotation”.

Talents and build

Shaman 0/13/58

This is my personal favourite healing spec. Like most specs, there are points that you can move around to tailor it more to your personal needs. I’ll go through the talents and explain why I’ve picked them up, and also explain some that may seem good, but have been deliberately left out.

** Restoration Tree **

Tier 1 – Improved Healing Wave

Makes our long-cast heal 0.5 seconds faster. Necessary. There’s no way I’d ever use HW if it took another half second to cast. Also, the only competition on this tier is Totemic Focus. Not necessary at all to make totems cheaper to cast, you’ll have a solid mana pool as a Resto shammy as it is.

Tier 2 – Tidal Focus

5% less mana cost on all healing spells. Yes, please. Competition: Improved Reincarnation, Healing Grace. Faster/better reincarnation is nice, but not worth wasting points on, and threat reduction on heals is not really necessary these days.

Tier 3 – Everything

Improved Water Shield: gives your healing crits a chance to give mana back. Makes up a solid portion of mana regen. Necessary.

Healing Focus: optional. I like reduced pushback, especially for starting out when things don’t go smoothly all the time in 5 mans.

Tidal Force: 1 point for an almost-guaranteed crit, with increased crit chance on the next two casts as well. Very useful for those “oh-crap” moments, and goes very well with Nature’s Swiftness (mentioned later). Necessary.

Ancestral Healing: healing crits give 10% damage reduction buff to your target. Other classes can provide an identical buff, but always worth taking. You’ll be healing your tank a lot, and 10% damage reduction, which is active most of the time, is very nice.

Tier 4 – Restorative Totems, Tidal Mastery

Most resto shamans would probably prefer not to spend points buffing their totems, but these points are required to get to Mana Tide Totem, which is fantastic. And at the end of the day, having a better healing and mana stream totem is nice. And 5% more crit on all heals? Indeed.

Tier 5 – Healing Way, Nature’s Swiftness

The first increases the healing of your Healing Wave by 25%, which sounds awesome, but you’ll find yourself not using HW all that often. Still, I like it, and I prefer points here than some other places, just because if you want to use your HW, you want a big heal, and this makes it even bigger. Nature’s Swiftness is 1 point for an instant-cast heal every two minutes. This is the other half of the “oh crap” button, together with Tidal Force.

Tier 6 – Purification

Needs no explanation. Take all 5 points, you need them.

Tier 7 – Mana Tide Totem, Cleanse Spirit

Both of these talents are fantastic. Mana Tide is excellent for those times when you need a big chunk of mana fast, for whatever reason;  5 minute cooldown. Cleanse Spirit is one of the best cleansing spells around. It cures poisons and diseases and curses, making resto shamans one of the few classes that can decurse.

Tier 8 – Blessing of the Eternals, Improved Chain Heal, Nature’s Blessing

Again, take them all. Good solid heal-improving talents all.

Tier 9 – Ancestral Awakening, Earth Shield, Improved Earth Shield

All of these are fantastic. Earth Shield is one of our-class defining spells, and improving it is a no-brainer for me. Ancestral awakening is a great “smart” heal that you don’t even need to cast. When you crit with one of your single-target heals, 30% of that heal will additionally (and automatically) go to whoever has the least health, as your free bonus for being a shaman. Enjoy.

Tier 10 – Tidal Waves

Very good. This is the talent that provides the structure (or rotation, if you will) to shaman healing. Necessary. This will get explained a little later, in the strategy section.

Tier 11 – Riptide

Another core shaman healing spell. Grab it with both hands.

** Enhancement Tree **

Tier 1 – Ancestral Knowledge

5% more Intellect. Take it.

Tier 2 -Thundering Strikes, Improved Shields

5% more crit. Take it. Improved Shields buffs our Earth Shield, as well as our Water Shield, which goes hand-in-hand with our Improved Water Shield talent from the resto tree. Nice buffs to two of our very important spells.

– Talents Summary –

And that’s it. A lot of people really like to pick up Elemental Weapons out of the Enhancement tree (10% bonus healing on Earthliving Weapon buff). I’m not a big fan personally, since to put three points there, you’ll probably be losing your 25% Healing Wave talents, or your spell pushback talents. It ends up being equivalent to about 45 spellpower for those three points, which is an expensive way to pick up spellpower. Feel free to grab them if you feel comfortable sacrificing some of those talents in the resto tree.

Glyphs

For starting out, I’ll recommend these three:

Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave (+20% healing from your LHW on your Earth Shield target, i.e. tank)

Glyph of Earth Shield (+20% healing from Earth Shield)

Glyph of Water Mastery (+30mp5)

The mp5 from Water Mastery is extremely useful starting out. As you get better gear, you’ll probably swap out Water Mastery for Chain Heal. Glyph of Chain Heal gives you a 4th jump, which sounds good, but starting in 5 man instances, you will just about never have 4 people in such a situation where it’ll work for you, especially if you pug a lot (which is likely to be all the time with randoms these days). Once you get into 10 man raiding, you’ll want it. Glyph of Riptide is also a popular choice as a replacement.

Strategies

The all important conclusion: how do I put all of those spells together and keep everybody alive? Here’s how I go about it:

Buff yourself with Earthliving Weapon and Water Shield. Buff the tank with Earth Shield. That’s the preparation done.

Hit the first chunk of damage with a Riptide. Follow that up with Lesser Healing Waves for the next two heals, on whomever may need them. Make the next cast a Chain Heal. Then follow that up with two Lesser Healing Waves.

Summary: RT->LHW->LHW->CH->LHW->LHW

Remember that Tidal Waves talent? After you cast Riptide or Chain Heal, your next two LHW spells will have +25% crit.  Crit gives your tank a 10% damage reduction buff. You get mana back from Improved Water Shield. Your lowest health party member gets healed for 30% of that heal, free. Not to mention your heal is much bigger than usual. Not too bad. But wait, there’s more. If, when you cast your chain heal, it lands on whomever has riptide ticking on them, your chain heal is 25% bigger as well. These are the reasons for using the above “rotation” for shaman healing.

This is where I’ll mention another point. Chain Heal is actually a fairly good, efficient single target heal, even though it has a longish cast time. The fact that it will heal two other people close by is just gravy. Some people love it so much they will cast nothing else, which, while arguably effective, ignores much of the shaman’s arsenal and flexibility.

The “oh crap” button

There will come a time when things go bad. Somebody needs a huge heal. The whole party needs a huge heal. Oh crap.

The following macros are the magic buttons I mash when this situation arises. Obviously some situations are beyond saving, even for the best of healers, but this will definately help.

/cast Nature’s Swiftness (next heal is instant-cast)

/cast Tidal Force (+60% crit chance, with 40%/20% for the next two crits after that)

/cast Healing Wave

Instant-cast almost-guaranteed crit Healing Wave. Not much more needs to be said there. Make another with Chain Heal instead, if you want to be ready for your entire melee group getting whacked.

Gearing

When you first hit 80, you’ll need mana. Getting a respectable mana pool and a decent chunk of mp5 will be the first ports of call with gear. Don’t be afraid to wear cloth or leather if you can get your hands on it, just keep in mind that Spirit is not a good stat for shammies. All gear has a “budget” of points that are allotted to it. If an item has Spirit, that means a chunk of its budget is wasted on poor stats, which isn’t doing anything for you. MP5 is a very good bonus, and you’ll be getting crit and haste along the way, which is good as well. Always take mp5 over crit or haste if you have to choose (note: this will not always be the rule, only as you’re starting out and need to get your mana pool started). Spellpower will come on all your gear, so  there’s no need to focus on that too much as you start, even though it is obviously another very helpful stat.

Gems

Firstly, your meta gem will be an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond. Don’t use anything else.

Use a Nightmare Tear to fill a blue socket somewhere, that will be enough to activate your meta gem.

Red sockets are for intellect/SP, or haste/SP if you have plenty of mana.

Yellow sockets are for intellect. If you are comfortable with your mana pool, try int/SP, haste or haste/SP.

Blue sockets are evil. Just ignore their colour, and throw one of the above red/yellow gems in there. A single nightmare tear is the only blue gem you should ever consider. If you have a pressing need to use a blue gem, try int/mp5, haste/mp5 or SP/mp5.

**Note: Gemming intellect is a great way to get a good mana pool when you’re starting out. As you get bigger/better/more-awesome-at-everything, you want to move towards haste, as it is currently the best stat by far for shaman healing. Obviously the faster you cast, the more spells you can cast, the faster you’ll chew through mana. Which is why we need that mana pool. Balancing a healthy mana pool with a big pile of haste is the fun balancing act you can look forward to as you move toward raiding.

** Bonus note: despite our love of crit, do not ever gem for crit. Int and haste are much better uses for yellow sockets. Our talents give us plenty of crit as it is.

Totems

Not entirely healing related, but new shamans often get confused as to which totems to be putting down, and when. This is often a case of experience, since we do have a lot of very useful situational totems. Here is a basic setup that I always put down, just assuming for a moment that I don’t need anything specific for an encounter:

Fire – Flametongue (spellpower)

Water – Mana Stream (mp5)

Air – Wrath of Air (spell haste)

Earth – Strength of Earth (agi/str)

These WILL change, depending on what you’re doing, and who is in your group. For example, with a death knight or enhancement shaman in your group, there’s no point putting down SoE, so I switch to stoneskin. If there’s an elemental shaman in the group, their Totem of Wrath is better than our Flametongue, so you could pick another fire totem instead. Our improved mana-stream totem is better than a paladin’s Blessing of Wisdom (unless it’s a holy paladin, which it won’t be in a 5 man, because you’re the healer!), so be wary of people complaining that their Wisdom buff keeps disappearing – your totem will override it. If you have an abundance of pallies in the group, just take the slightly lesser Wisdom buff, and put your healing totem down, just for fun. You’ll get to know your totems in time; knowing the time and place for them is all part of what makes you a valuable party member.

Stay alert when you’re doing instances for the first time; knowing when to drop your “special” totems will help the group glide through easily. Are there lots of diseases or poisons going around? Sacrifice the mp5 from your mana-stream totem, and put your cleansing totem down. Are there mobs that will randomly cast fear now and then? Change your earth totem to Tremor, and watch everybody get in on the shaman love. Fear/sleep can make some fights messy; you’re the one who will save the day and make it a walk in the park.

At the end of the day, have fun learning and experiencing all the interesting things in dungeons. They may seem a little daunting at first, but as you get to know the bosses, you’ll be predicting damage before it even happens and life will get easier. Not to mention all the gear you’ll pick up from bosses and triumph badges. Enjoy the ride, and enjoy the short waiting times when you click the Healer box for your next random dungeon.

In the interests of accuracy, I’ll throw up a link (from ElitistJerks – insert blatant laziness warning here) that has new and shiny information for the 3.3 patch regarding rogues. Rotations and builds have changed enough to warrant taking note of, and with no further ado, here is said link:

Link!