Hi,

I'm new to this whole healing thing. My main is a hunter but I wanted the option of being able to heal for a group, so I leveled a shaman. I though chain heal was awesome and I could always switch to elemental if I didn't like healing.

So I've healed on dungeon run at 80 and didn't suck. Now I'm trying to improve. First, I can't seem to find anyone interested in running non-heroic instances so I don't really have a way to get better gear but heroics. Which would be great but I'm not sure that I'm able to heal heroics with my current gear level. So I'm asking for two things.

1. What should be my strategy generally for 5-man content?
2. Is my gear sufficient to heal a heroic at this point? And before you ask there is no way I can get anyone from my guild to run a few normal instances to gear up. Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... n=Xaathras

Thanks.

[Edit]
It's not in armory but I have the Totem of the Bay for the relic slot.

I am not quite certain I understand what you mean by:"1. What should be my strategy generally for 5-man content?"

The gearing issue is easier to deal with. Unfortunately the Armory is bugging up on me but the general advice I would give if you can not get gear from Heroics at the moment is to get crafted gear.

Buy them right out, or gather the materials and have a friendly crafter make them for you. You can have a cloak, boots, ring, neck, chest and mace made that I can remember just off the top of my head. I suggest going to www.wowhead.com and searching for mail with spellpower and filter it for craftable. You can do the same for cloth and leather but I do find a lot of it has spirit on it.

If you do not want to wait to get all this crafted I say go do Heroic Nexus. I find this Heroic very easy to heal and it would be a good place for you to test out your skills and gear. If you can not do it, then craft more and do more normal runs with pugs until you feel your skill level and gear level has improved enough.

This thread contains some excellent advice on how to heal as a shaman:

http://plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1116

The short version for how to heal 5-mans is to always keep the Tidal Waves buff up. There is much less need nowadays to preemptively cast big heals because Tidal Waves allows for extremely quick LHW and HW casts.

Looking at your gear as it exists in the armory, you have on a lot of elemental gear with low mana regen. I recommend doubling your mana regen while casting before you attempt heroic PUGs unless you know all your fights will be extremely short. You can quickly do this by crafting some more of the Stormhide mail gear.

Thanks Nerien, I've been browsing these forums for a while now but most of the posts I saw were more advanced than "Help me! I don't know how to heal!". Which is about where I am.

Regarding crafted gear. Are the Revenant's Breastplate and Revenant's Treads worth it? As far as pugging normal instances goes I managed one the other day but I can't seem to find anyone that is actually interested in non-heroics most of the time. I'll have to see if my feral tank friend will be my guinea pig.

Thanks again.

You should certainly get the crafted epic pieces because they provide a big chunk of spellpower that's easy to acquire. You do still want to balance out your spellpower and mana regeneration so you can heal through boss fights. I think the 10:1 rule of spellpower to mana regeneration (while casting) is still a pretty good guideline. The reputation epic gear is certainly better to get in the end, but that can take some time running heroics or doing quests before you can reach the requisite Exalted status with those factions.

If you're looking for an idea of which non-heroics can provide upgrades for your existing gear, then Gear Wishlist is a pretty good source of information:

http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/wishlist?character=Xaathras&realm=Silver+Hand&region=us&site=Lootrank

As for PUGs, I don't understand why it's hard to find one for non-heroics. Healers are still hard to find on most servers, aren't we? But if that's the case on your server, then the easiest way to go with the flow is to get the whole Stormhide set crafted, then the two Revenant epic pieces, then look to see whether there is actually still stuff in non-heroics that you can get to upgrade your gear. I'd definitely run normal CoS until getting the [Soul Preserver], which is one of the best mana regen trinkets for resto shamans for well into Naxx.

That thread is an awesome how to, nothing I can add to that (and saving a copy). =p

"Is crafted gear worth it" boils down to can you afford to make it. If you have the mats already farmed and know a leatherworker that can do the combine.. it's basically free. It's worth it then for 1% improvement, arguably.

If it's going to take you a week per item.. and it's a teeny upgrade, then no.

IIRC the Revenant Boots are a pretty good item. As is the Stormstrike wrist and belt. I never made the epic ones, but I did enter Naxx with wrist and belt.

The way I manage gearing is I use something like lootrank.com and dial back the sources. For example, in your shoes I would uncheck all raids.. and just see what options you have. I keep a "drool list" of obtainable upgrades.

Click here for an example of Resto Shaman Lootrank list - This can *and should* be tailored to your needs.. and these values are not absolute. But sometimes you turn up obtainable items this way.

Edit: Nerien beat me.. and nice site, I'll check that out.

I think that other thread does cover it all, so I won't comment on that.

For finding gear upgrades, I highly recommend Lootrank.com. You can set many conditionals for the search, and it will provide you with an extensive list of gear options. I did this search for items you could obtain easily with a touch of Int, solid MP5 and good spellpower: http://www.lootrank.com/wr.asp?Cla=64&A ... &k5=0&k6=0

Ultimately, I don't think you need to be hesitant to do heroic 5 mans; Realize that some of them are considered harder than others: Halls of Lightning, Azjul-Nerub, Old Kingdom, and Occulus jump out at me as the hardest (based on my admittedly feeble memory). Some are quite straightforward- Utgarde Keep, Violet Citadel (although 1 or 2 bosses there require good communication), Nexus, Strath and Drak'Tharon. All of the latter should be doable with a decent selection of Blues, particularly if you have a good tank or solid DPS who can cover for your weakness.

Be honest when you go in a PUG- let them know you are working your way up in gear, but can handle it. You'll lose some groups that way, but you probably did not want to go with them in that case anyway. Good groupw will be able to adapt to your limits and get thru steadily, if not perfectly.

And remember, pushing yourself in these situations is great. You really learn how good a healer you can be when you are using every ability, cooldown, and strategy in order to get the job done.

Edit: And Auggie beat me Great minds I guess...

2nd Edit: Auggie, I noticed you put mp5 over spellpower on Lootrank values; I didn't find mana pool to be as big a deal when I was starting heorics as pure thruput was. The fights tended to be short and high intensity. I'm curious as to whether others found mana pool or thruput the limiting factor.

Regarding relative value of MP5 to spellpower in healing heroics as a shaman, my experiences tell me that 1500 spellpower is just fine for throughput, but that you'll be OOM unless you have around 150 MP5 unbuffed. Heroic PUGs are not about smart, tactical execution -- tanks (even those that aren't geared for it) expect to be able to pull 4+ packs of mobs and DPS expect not to have to CC anything along the way. Unless you're capable of keeping up a continuous stream of heals on the tank, if not the whole party, it's difficult to find acceptance in PUGs. Of course, guild runs are usually much more forgiving, especially if you're leveling a healer to help your guild fill slots for raids, but if you PUG a lot then you have to be prepared.

Luckily, that 150 MP5 mana regen number is fairly simple to achieve. If you're simply wearing all 8 pieces of the Stormhide gear, you already get 120 MP5 -- that's before you account for your main hand, shield, necklace, rings or trinkets.

Meh. I pulled that at random from my Auggie.txt file (it's called "revised Plan C that I might like better").

But.. Spell power has never been a problem for me. Anything with MP5 is going to have spell power. I was tweaking the values so that some of the known "best in slot" items would show up.. at all.

On mana pool versus throughput.. yes, mana issues are few in Wrath to date. So (much like the end of TBC) all of the healers in my guild (not just the Shaman) find ourselves gearing more and more for throughput. Haste, SP and some Crit. But I am keeping the MP5 pieces in the bank for when the pendulum swings back.

Just a couple of nuggets, I suppose....

I wrote something up on the blog w/ regards to gearing Resto / Ele at the Heroic level a few weeks back, here. May or may not be helpful, but it's a checklist if nothing else.

There's this too - I use it more than lootrank because this one isn't blocked by the "no gaming" filter at work. I use the following values on gear to get weightings that fit my playstyle, though yours may vary:

Stam: .67
Int: 2
Spirit: -2
Attack Power: -4
Critical Strike: 1.25
Haste: 1.5
Spellpower: 1.7
MP5: 4.25
Meta: 60
Blue Socket: 32
Red Socket: 32
Yellow Socket: 24

Weighting scale scores that given value for each point of the attribute present and evaluates accordingly. Thus, the negative number on AP, for instance, weeds out stuff that might be a crit/AP trinket, for instance, and helms w/ Meta sockets are sweet. MP5 is a high number to compensate for it as a direct ratio, as something may have stats like 66 Spellpower, 16 MP5 - a weighting of 112.2 for Spellpower value and 68 for MP5; thus, while 4.25 seems high, it's really just to get the right stuff in there,

@Auggie: Yeah, I certainly have my raid oriented mp5 gear resting in the bank for that eventuality, as well. The good news is that it looks like they want to scale back the regen of every class to the level shaman run at, rather than cutting all of the classes.

@Manchengo- I like your lists, with one significant exception in your theory as it relates to gear at the level of this thread. You indicate that you don't include cloth and leather among your items. For a person gearing up for heroics and introductory raiding, I think doing so could overlook some tremendously useful pieces. When I was going thru this process, for example, the [Battlemap Hide Helm] was far superior to any mail piece available. This comes off of the first boss of one of the easiest heroics to do when starting out, Utgarde Keep. The closest mail item that is as easily accessable, is the world drop [Helm of the Lightning Halls] which lacks gem slots (but has nice mp5). The equivalent mail item [Brood Plague Helmet] is from Ahn'kahet, a much more difficult instance.

Now, the leather item was nerfed back to equivalency recently, because when it was first released it had 77 stamina and 77 crit rating; the point, however, is that selected mail and cloth items are extremely viable for a shaman healer who is gearing up. Avoid items with spirit, as you suggest. I think that discounting all leather and cloth is a mistake, however.