It's finally time to actually put some of this in writing. Shaman are definitely capable of solo healing/main healing all the non-20+man instances in the game. It takes some work, a bit of luck and nerves of steel (ok, not really on the nerves of steel, but it sounded good!) but you can do it. I'll try to touch on common tactics, what I consider the minimum talents to be a main/solo healer, but won't go into much detail about specific gear choices. First up, talent choices.
You really don't have to go that deeply into the restoration tree to be a very effective healer. 21 points will buy you most of what you really need. These talents are the ones I consider basically required for a main healer or the shaman being sole healer in the group.
Restoration Tree:
You really don't have to go that deeply into the restoration tree to be a very effective healer. 21 points will buy you most of what you really need. These talents are the ones I consider basically required for a main healer or the shaman being sole healer in the group.
Restoration Tree:
- Tidal Focus (5/5): Reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by 5%<>
- Totemic Focus (5/5): Reduces the mana cost of your totems by 10%<>
- Improved Lesser Healing Wave(5/5): Gives you a 75% chance to avoid interruption cause by damage while casting Lesser Healing Wave<>
- Tidal Mastery (5/5): Increases the critical effect chance of your healing and lightning spells by 5%<>
- Nature's Swiftness (1/1): When activated, your next nature spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell.<>
[st]Tidal Focus is an obvious choice since, well, you're a healer. You're going to be casting lots of heals. Every bit of mana you can save on those heals, the better off your group will be.
Totemic Focus may seem like an odd choice, but the majority of the shaman's healing power and utility comes from totems. Rather than just trying to overcome the incoming damage with heals, you use your totems to mitigate the incoming damage instead. Stoneskin totem, windwall totem, nature resistance totem, fire resistance totem, frost resistance totem, poison cleansing totem and disease cleansing totem all directly reduce incoming damage. Tremor, grounding and even earthbind totems indirectly reduce incoming damage and, to a small extent, grace of air totems will help a little with dodge and armor rating. Grounding totems gets rid of some sheepings and silences and curses; tremor totem wakes up sleeps (it's always annoying to have your only healer slept or your tank slept) and keeps party members from running into adds when feared. Earthbind comes in handy to keep runners from bringing more adds and even helps to keep things off the AoEing mages if they have to start kiting. I did not mention tranquil air totem to help keeping aggro on the tank where it should be because this was just recently added and I'm still making up my mind on what I think of it and how useful it really is. With all the different totems to choose from, and their situational value, you will be switching what totems are down frequently. If all the casters who blast you with fire are dead, you no longer need to have fire resist totem down and can choose to put down a different water totem. If you've killed off all the critters that fear, you can switch to a strength of earth totem or a stoneskin totem if there's still a lot of heavy physical damage coming in. The farther into the game you get, the more frequently you will be changing what totems you have down mid-fight. The more times you plop a totem, the more you want them to be cheaper to cast.
Improved Lesser Healing Wave is basically a no-brainer. You don't have any skills to shed aggro, only skills to gain aggro, so you will be getting hit. You want to have at least some way to keep healing while getting pounded on.
Tidal Mastery is required for Nature's Swiftness, which is an absolutely fantastic skill.
Nature's Swiftness is a necessity if you are the only healer in the group. It's only a three minute cooldown so don't be afraid to use it, but still use it intelligently. Keep track of how the flow of the fight is going. If the tank got hit by multiple crits in a row but the normal hits aren't hurting too much, go ahead and burn Nature's Swiftness since that was just a really unlucky string. If your tank is consistently taking large chunks of damage in the fight that your heals can't keep up with, burning nature's swiftness won't really help much since you're still going to be having trouble keeping up with the healing after nature's swiftness is burned. Instead, you should see what you can do to mitigate the incoming damage better. Did some of your totems disappear during the fight? Did your tank forget to go into defensive stance? Is the group focusing fire on the right target or was crowd control broken?
I highly suggest (almost to the point of including it with the "required" talents) putting 5 points in Ancestral Knowledge in the Enhancement tree to increase your maximum Mana by 5%. A higher mana pool generally helps out the shaman more than high spirit since you will be casting more frequently than a priest does while main healing. I also strongly recommend putting 5 points into Purification (increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%) for your main healing shaman. Ancestral Healing is a talent I also recommend putting the full 5 points into since it increases your target's armor value from items by 25% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells. You've already got the increased chance for your heals to crit because 5 points in Tidal Mastery is required to get Nature's Swiftness so you may as well get some more use out of those crits.
With the "required" talents that I mentioned earlier, you'll still have 30 points to play with and you'll have 15 points to play with after my suggested talent points. Mana tide can be fun and definitely helpful in some situations, but it's really up to you if you think it's worth spending that many points to get something that basically gives you the same amount of mana as a greater mana potion, but doesn't use the same timer as one. Keep in mind there is also a trinket now from the shaman Sunken Temple quest that helps with mana regen too so you need not spend all those points for mana tide totem.
Healing tactics have already been somewhat discussed in the discussion of talent points. I'll stress again that totems are one of your main tools for healing. If you aren't familiar with all the critters in World of Warcraft and/or can't remember exactly what type of damage each critter does, have a chat window setup so you can see what different types of incoming damage the critters are using. Critters that do shadow or arcane damage, especially if it's in Area of Effect form are the deadliest to groups with only a shaman to heal and must die quickly or be the top target for being crowd control. Remind your group of that. Mitigate whatever incoming damage you can as quickly as you can. The quicker you place the totems, the more time you can wait before casting a heal on the tank. The more time you give the tank to lock down the critters (especially when fighting multiple mobs), the less likely they'll break for you and try to have you for dinner after you heal the tank. You have no way to shed aggro so you want to avoid having aggro if you can help it, even though you are less squishy than a priest. However, occasionally there are times when you actually want some aggro.
Discuss the following tactic with your tank beforehand if you haven't played with him or her very often. If one mob breaks for your squishier party members, you can earthshock it to get it to come to you instead. You will have better armor and possibly more hitpoints than the squishy and will take less healing. This can buy you and the tank some time to get that critter more under control. Unless you are also setup for off-tanking and have already discussed this with your tank, don't keep attacking the critter. Let it be crowd-controlled (if possible) or else take the critter to the tank and have him get it off of you. Since you didn't keep attacking it, it will be easier for the tank to get it back under control. It's also not good to have the only healer getting pounded on for long periods of time. If just an earthshock didn't get the critter off your squishy, you can rockbiter it for a couple of swings until it turns to you. DO NOT KEEP ATTACKING IF YOU DO THIS. You've already generated quite a bit of agrro and you can't guarantee that your tank has a taunt/mocking blow available to get it off of you. Most of the time, it's best to let the tank, off-tank or the crowd controllers handle the critters that break off the tank.
Lesser Healing Wave (LHW) versus Healing Wave (HW). You hear many shaman say they don't use HW at all because the mana efficiency of the two skills are very similar. There are good times for each one. Shaman are quite lucky with this. If damage is coming in quickly, you can spam LHW and not worry about your mana efficiency going to pot like the priests have to worry about. If incoming damage is steady and not too overwhelming, you can use Healing Wave instead. You also don't have to keep multiple ranks of LHW and HW on the bar since the mana efficiency of the two are so similar and you can avoid overhealing quite easily by choosing between LHW and HW. The smaller heal of LHW is good for healing the squishies since they have fewer hitpoints (or just topping off a warrior who gets hit with only the occasional "splash" damage) and the larger heal of HW is better for using on the tanks in the group since they have a larger hitpoint pool.
Poisons and diseases can be pretty nasty. You want to clear these as much as you can. They can reduce stamina, increase physical damage taken, dish out damage over time, and can even put your group to sleep if not cleared off your party members. The poison cleansing and disease cleansing totems cost almost exactly the same as cure poison and cure disease so you may as well plop a totem down instead of hitting just one person with your cure. Sometimes you will run into critters that periodically inflict poison or disease so having your totem down pulsing the clears is all you need so you can just focus on healing rather than dispelling debuffs. Other times, the critters will be constantly inflicting new poisons/diseases to multiple people. In those cases, the pulses that the totem does are just too slow. The totem will pulse immediately after placing it so you may be better off to just spam cast the totem and clear it off of everyone instead of spamming cure poison/disease off of one person. Do be mindful of your mana though. If the poison or disease isn't that bad, you don't have to go all out clearing it off of your group otherwise you won't have the mana left to actually heal. If the poison or disease is causing most of the damage to the group, yes, clearing that off has priority.
Grounding totems can be used (in some cases) to avoid getting hit by some debuffs. You must have the grounding totem placed before the critter casts the debuff in order for grounding totem to be of any use. Some silences and some curses which can be very ouchy for the party (especially if your only healer gets chain silenced) so if there are critters around who can cast those nasty things, place a grounding totem down. Not all magical debuffs/curses can be cleared by grounding totem, but I don't have a definitive list of just what spells/skills cast by what creature can be prevented by a grounding totem. If you see that the totem isn't preventing what you want it to prevent, don't place another grounding totem down when you're fighting them. Grounding totem does not prevent being "frogged" in Zul'Farrak or Lower Blackrock Spire.
Bandages. Yes, there is a reason for first aid for healing classes and no, it's not just for when you are out of mana. Use them on your party members if you know the upcoming fight is going to be mostly a battle of mana conservation on your part. If someone takes the occasional hit (and isn't still taking damage), bandage them if they're getting low and aren't bandaging themselves. Keep in mind that you also have to be not taking damage during the bandaging of others. Also remember that there is a debuff associated with bandaging someone. They won't be able to rebandage while that debuff is active so use the bandages intelligently and try to throw a heal their way if you see that debuff, but they are still needing to be healed. Crystal Restores (once you have completed the Un'Goro quest) can also be used to help stretch your mana pool while healing. Having a Heal over Time (HoT) definitely helps to keep up those folks who are only taking minor periodic damage. The crystal restores aren't much, but they're better than nothing. :)
You will have to make some difficult choices if there's too much damage coming in on too many people. You may not be able to save everyone and if you try to save everyone, you may end up wiping the group. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one person (or a pet) so that you can keep alive the rest of the group. You do have the safety net of being able to res folks as long as you are out of combat and have the mana. You don't have a timered res like the druids so there's a bit less stress about deaths right there. Still, your job as a healer is to keep the group alive. Do your best to keep everyone alive, but when it's time to make the call to sacrifice someone, do it.
As a shaman, you have a great wipe prevention tool - your self-res. Word of warning though, if a wipe is incoming, get away from where the critters will reset once everyone is dead. If you end up dead in aggro range of the critters, the self-res won't do you any good. You'll pop up, aggro the critters and die. Use your ankh res only if you're sure you're away from critters who will aggro on you otherwise you've burned it for nothing and you may need it later.
In some areas, there are critters who can and will shield bash you, pummel you, kick you or interrupt your castings in other ways and shut down that school of spells. These are a pain in the butt for healers. However, having your heal spells shut down can be avoided. Since you are a shaman and only healer or just main healer, you will probably be meleeing between healing duties so you aren't "wasting" mana by casting damage spells. This is going to put you right by the annoying critters. Priests can just stand out of the way and not worry about it while they wand away. Shaman merely have to time things right. All the critters spell interruption skills are timered - they can only use them every so often. Luckily for shaman, they will use them even if you aren't casting. Wait until right after they burn their skill to start casting your heals. You can either have an add-on that tells you when you've been kicked/bashed/whatever or you can just have those messages from the combat log placed in another visible window. I put them in the same window that I use to see what types of damage are coming in so I can place the proper totem. If there are multiple critters in a group that can interrupt you and shut down your schools of casting, try to position yourself so you are only in range of one of the critters. If you get two or more critters in range, they can keep you chain interrupted and that will cause a wipe. If you can't position yourself away from them all, do what the priests do and just back out of the range of all of them. It's better to lose a little bit of DPS than to never be able to cast a heal.
Another positioning issue that you'll have to be aware of is for cleaves or other directional AoE/multitarget skills. Do not stand directly next to the tank if the critter has a cleave attack. Stand to the side or behind the critter. If you've got good rogues in your group, try to position yourself close to where they are standing. If your rogues have been consistently taking damage from cleaves, directional AoEs, tell them to move so they aren't draining your mana and show them where to stand. Some AoEs you can't avoid though since they have 360 degrees of effects, but a lot of AoEs or multitarget attacks pretty much only affect those standing in front of the critter.
*gearing paragraph removed until I can write something that actually makes sense and that I agree with* :D
Well, there it is, in all its rough glory. ;) Expect more edits, but I've delayed this long enough so I'm submitting this as is. Enjoy. Go out and spread the word that shamans can actually heal too and without needing super uber gear to do it! :)
Intolerant monkey.