Hi all,
I've been doing some research, and I'm trying to figure out the right rotation for heals.

I'm currently raiding 10 man Naxx, OS and VoA and we're progressing well. I'm mainly put on group healing (checking tank HP if needed). I would just like to know what other resto shamans are doing for rotation.

Any advice would be appreciated.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... Bonivaruss

For Rotation:

Raid Healing: Ch, Ch, Riptide, Ch, Ch, Riptide, Ch, Ch, Riptide.......

I do this to keep the tidalwave buff up in the event I need to dump a LHW or HW on a tank to help the haste bonus is nice plus RT is fairly mana efficient and its guaranteed EH if you use it properly on a low life player. I generally dump it off on a low priority player who I know most other healers will ignore, this gives me the full benefit of the ticks after the initial surge.

Tank Healing:

It's highly dependent on the encounter. If there are melee around taking damage to soak CH jumps use CH unless the dmg is so great you need more heal per cast for the tank ur given. in which case you go to spamming LHW w/ LHW glyph and earth shield on the tank. Keeping ES up and Riptide going to buff your cast time on LHW. I rarely if ever use Healing Wave atm, and due to the stacking nature of healing way i dont even bother with the talent. Hell I doubt ill pick it up even after the change, I just dont single target heal enough to warant the waist of talent points.

As far as other tips.....

Im not sure what your gemming strategy is since you only have 1 item you can gem but take a look at the Shaman thread over at EJ. INT is pretty much the standard gemming practice for any gear set, its good in pretty much all situations.

Here is a WWS parse of a raid I was in a few weeks ago to give you an idea of spell usage I have myself...

http://wowwebstats.com/qir1f5pgwv53a?a=x261d09c

A note on the previous response: Chain Heal also keeps up the haste buff, not just Riptide. So casting riptide just to keep the haste buff up is false- Chain Heal also keeps it up.

Ok, my opinions:
Obviously, Chain Heal spamming does wonders when you know that multiple damaged toons are standing near each other- melee group, ranged group, etc. However, I also try and pay attention to positioning enough to know whether a chain heal to a stray mage will actually hit someone else. If not, i'll often step backwards to cancel casting (if I noticed it mid-cast), and proceed to cast either Lesser Healing Wave or Riptide. If there is only a single damaged person, I almost never waste time on a Healing Wave, as most classes are far faster at the big heals (HoT + Swiftmend, quick Flash of Light, etc) than we are.

Most Naxx groups I go with usually run two healers, and so I never restrict myself to raid healing- keeping the tank up is half my responsability. Always have Earth Shield up on the tank. If it's a druid tank, I'll often drop full Healing Waves to keep his health up, but otherwise (and especially if tank healing os not my responsibility) I'll just use LHW.

A note on talents: Totem mana cost (via Totemic Focus) is so not an issue that I don't know why you specc'd into it. Put those points into Imp. Healing Wave. Also, 3/3 Elemental Weapons only adds ~50 spellpower from Earthliving. You would be using your talents points much better to throw two of them into Thundering Strikes (remember, crit increases our regen via Imp Water Shield, as well as increasing throughput).

One other opinion on your talents: if 3/3 Healing Grace (reduced threat and dispel chance) is actually helping you, either you're trying to Arena with a bad spec or your tanks are terrible. You can take those three points and put them anywhere- my personal preference is to put them in Healing Focus (reduced pushback), but that's a matter of opinion. But there are better placed to put them than reduced threat.

My talent adjustments eave 1 point over. Put it wherever.

If you are actually doing PvP with this spec (which would make sense for your totem talent choice) than I salute you on pure balls.



Trayel

P.S. Oh yeah, I was supposed to talk about healing rotations. Woops. Just use your best judgment- choose depending on rate of incoming damage, spread of damage, and positions of raid members. It's more of an intuition thing, in my opinion.

I also think that healing as a shaman depends more on what happens in the fight or how the raid is supposed to be positioned, rather than a set rotation to use. For example if you are fighting KT you probably wouldnt want to CH any casters, because they are supposed to be spread around the room, so LHW and HW are better choices. On the other hand, when your are on a fight such as Malygos, you want to be using CH as much you can to top off the raid.

If my math is correct (assuming your LHW is not glyphed), HW should be slightly more HPS and HPM than LHW. As far as CH vs. HW goes...
If it is hitting 1 or 2 targets, CH will be less HPS than HW, and if it is hitting only 1 target CH will be less HPM. Above those marks, CH will be better.
When Tidal Waves is active, however, the HPM relations are the same (past 1 target, CH is better), but HW will ALWAYS be better HPS. Therefore, CH the melee, followed by using HW's or LHW's on the spread-out casters or the tanks is probably the best bet.

For single target, it's actually going to be more HPS (but less HPM) to use CH-HW-HW on the tank, instead of just HW spam, due to the increased haste. However, it would be less HPM, and riptide would actually be better, although I didn't do any math for riptide, yet.

It all depends on a lot of factors, though:
1) How good are the other healers in your group? If they are likely to get heals out quicker than you can get out HW, you are probably going to be better off using LHW or just sticking to CH spam. If they are absolutely attrocious, you probably want to get as much HPS as possible.
2) Are you taking big spurts of AoE damage or steady amounts? If it's big spurts, CH-HW-HW will be better, while if it's steady, CH-LHW-LHW will be better.
3) What is your assignment? Are you solo healing a 5-man, in charge of all raid heals, or just in charge of the melee or even a specific tank? If you're solo healing, you want to do some AoE but keep your focus on the tank. If you're doing just melee, you probably want to spam CH on them. If you're in charge of raid heals in general, you probably want to hit the melee with CH and spot-heal the ranged.