Main Healing/Solo Healing as a Shaman

[Treesh]

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:

• 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! :)

[bonemage]

Thanks for the post, Treesh! I have learned a lot about tanking/healing dynamics from my tanking for a priest vs. tanking for a shaman. I also must put my stamp of approval on this post/declaration stating that main healing any 4-10 man party is within a shaman's abilities. It is not as simple as with a priest, who can throw mana at any situation with little thought, but it's much less of a 'healbot' healer. Through my experience tanking for Treesh's shaman, Mogoraindyn (I can even spell that without looking that up), I've learned a lot more about incoming damage, and ways to mitigate it. It's made me a much smarter player.

Points from Treesh's post that I would like to stress:

It doesn't take great gear on the tank or the shaman! Mogo and Durambar had 'meh' gear while doing some challenging instances. We're talking greens and level 40-50 blues, which is typical for recently capped toons. With several runs into the high level 5 man instances and UBRS (one half run only), my gear is MUCH better than before, and Mogo's is better too. It should be much easier for her to solo/main heal for me now.

It is a very involved healing role. There is much more to keep track of than just your mana and the tank's health. Understanding the mobs, their damage, their skills, and how best to mitigate it is crucial to being successful. If you're lazy or lack in your abilities to keep track of details, don't apply.

The tank needs to know how things are different with a shaman. The timing is different than with a priest, with heals usually having to come faster, so the tank might have to adjust their rythmn to get lockdown on all mobs for healer aggro.

My two cents:

It's ironic that now that our gear is getting better and the job gets easier, Mogo will probably not do much main healing anymore. With a newly capped druid and a fast approaching second priest, we no longer have to have Mogo main heal alone. However, you can't ask for a better support player/backup healer, which I think is Treesh's preferred role. Having been pushed very hard to master a difficult role has honed Mogo to a superb support player. She is still on top of mitigating as much damage as possible (why she is always in my party in any raid I organize), helps with healing, shuts down casters, offtanks if needed, and puts out respectable DPS, all in one fight. I can't think of a better training ground for a shaman than having to main heal, and it's evident in Mogo's play, even when not healing, as it makes you pay attention to every detail of a fight.

[Artega]

Now that I've been working on my Shaman, I've begun to plan him out for Lv.60, shooting for UBRS-level gear (and avoiding BG gear, since not all servers will have every BG active frequently, though mine does.) Additionally, I've planned out his talents, and wouldn't mind some feedback from someone who's already done what I'll be doing :)

The talent build is looking like this:

Enhancement, 21 points:

5/5 Ancestral Knowledge
5/5 Thundering Strikes
2/2 Improved Ghost Wolf
2/3 Improved Lightning Shield
1/1 Two-Handed Axes and Maces
5/5 Flurry
1/1 Parry

Restoration, 30 points:

5/5 Tidal Focus
5/5 Totemic Focus
4/5 Ancestral Healing
5/5 Improved Lesser Healing Wave
5/5 Tidal Mastery
1/1 Nature's Swiftness
5/5 Purification

The Enhancement talents give me a formidable melee presence, and the addition of Parry further increases my ability to be able to survive melee combat (especially important in PvP.) Restoration talents are focused on improving my healing capability; I decided to go with 4/5 Ancestral Healing, given that I drop totems frequently both in PvE and PvP (and they tend to get destroyed in PvP, not to mention that Fire Nova is a complete mana hog), and 5% Armor won't make a major difference in the long run. Purification is a 10% boost to the base heal values of my three healing spells, and seems like a natural choice for a healer build (versus getting Toughness and Improved Rockbiter Weapon out of Enhancement for an offtank build.)

The gear I've chosen for him is focused entirely on +healing, so it's not going to have as many stats or luxuries like +MP/time. Obviously, I'll probably sacrifice some +heal for those aforementioned luxuries as I see how the end-game goes for me.

Head: Insightful Hood (Cho'Rush the Observer, DM North)
Neck: Animated Chain Necklace (Ramstein the Gorger, Undead Stratholme)
Shoulder: Royal Cap Spaulders (Jandice Barov, Scholomance)
Chest: Vest of Elements (General Drakkisath, Upper Blackrock Spire)
Waist: Barrage Girdle (Cannon Master Willey, Scarlet Stratholme)
Legs: Silvermoon Leggings (Prince Tortheldin, DM West)
Feet: Merciful Greaves (Alzzin the Wildshaper, DM East)
Wrist: Loomguard Armbraces (Kirtonos the Herald, Scholomance)
Hands: Harmonious Gauntlets (King Gordok, DM North)
Finger1: Fordring's Seal (Fordring Quest Chain, EPL)
Finger2: Band of Rumination (Warchief Rend Blackhand, Upper Blackrock Spire)
Back: Hide of the Wild (Leatherworking)
Right Hand: Timeworn Mace (Prince Tortheldin, DM West)
Left Hand: Sacred Protector (Nathanos Quest Chain, EPL)

All the items combined with talents result with a +7% chance of spell crits (e.g. crit heals), and +316 Healing.

Using the math that I tried to remember from other posts involving +Healing effects and talents, I've come up with these heals:

Healing Wave X - 646 MP (3.0s Cast): Heals 2098-2351 (3.45 HP/MP)
Lesser Healing Wave VI - 361 MP (1.5s Cast): Heals 1020-1126 (5.94 HP/MP)
Chain Heal III - 385 MP (2.5s Cast): Heals 817/409/204-903/452/226 (2.23/1.12/0.56 HP/MP)

I used 2/3 (.6 repeating) for Chain Heal, since I couldn't remember the correct value offhand. I used 1/3 (.3 repeating) for LHW, and used the full value for Healing Wave. Both values were averaged and then divided by the spell's MP cost to generate HP per MP.

Assuming my math is correct, this clearly shows that - with Purification and an insane amount of +healing (for the gear level) - LHW is clearly superior to both Healing Wave and Chain Heal for most healing duties, though the huge healing amount of Healing Wave would still probably be preferable for healing tanks, due to their huge HP pools (as Treesh mentioned.)

[Treesh]

You should be able to heal just fine (and dropping one point from ancestral healing in order to get parry is definitely worth it considering the rest of your build), take damage, and dish out some good damage as well. :)

For weapons, have you looked into (in addition to Timeworn and shield) Hammer of the Grand Crusader for when you are healing and not needing a shield? Since you're getting to use two-handed maces/axes (I'll have to peek at axes next), you may as well have one around. :) Or even maybe Fist of Cenarius? Less stamina though than the one hand and shield (by a fair chunk).

You may want to look into getting Hardened Steel Warhammer as well for use with your shield. I'm having quite a bit of fun with it on Mogo and it's really not that difficult to get either.

Edit: I didn't look at the other gear you listed so that's why I didn't comment on it, but the talent spec is really solid and should be much fun and quite effective. :)

[vor_lord]

I used 2/3 (.6 repeating) for Chain Heal, since I couldn't remember the correct value offhand.&nbsp; I used 1/3 (.3 repeating) for LHW, and used the full value for Healing Wave.&nbsp; Both values were averaged and then divided by the spell's MP cost to generate HP per MP.

Assuming my math is correct, this clearly shows that - with Purification and an insane amount of +healing (for the gear level) - LHW is clearly superior to both Healing Wave and Chain Heal for most healing duties, though the huge healing amount of Healing Wave would still probably be preferable for healing tanks, due to their huge HP pools (as Treesh mentioned.)
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Chain Heal should be 2.5/3.5 =~ .714 (so better than you have). LHW should compare even more favorably than your numbers, as you should get not 1/3 =~ .333, but 1.5/3.5 =~ .428 of your +heal gear.

[swirly]

I'll tell you that I believe +healing gear is the way to go on a shaman as well. Its what I went with my shaman and I haven't regretted it at all. I sometimes wonder if this is why my shaman experiences and Treesh's experiences differ some. I seem to feel like shaman healing isn't as tough as she feels it is. There are lots of other factors in this too though like I usually had alot of CC going on, the players in my group knew each other very well (played from 0-60 together for several of us), and other such things. I do wonder if her liking +int over +healing (judging from her first post where I didn't notice +healing at all and her saying that +int is the way to go) has a decent part in things.

Your gear list looks very very similiar to mine. I had a few more weapons/offhands to toy with while healing, but often I would keep my shield on anyway unless I knew the warrior well. My group was myself, a rogue, a mage, and a warlock usually. So the tanking roll would either be myself with a priest behind, a warrior with me healing, or a shaman as healer and a shaman as tank (we didn't run into many druids or hunters for some reason). My favorite thing to talk about is the time we did orange side of maraudon with myself as both the main tank and only healer. That was crazy fun. : ) Since the warriors we would get would be ones I didn't know so well, though we did start finding more that we played with consistently after a while, I tended to find the shield helpful when healing. I also went with an emerald flame/fordling combination for rings instead of what you chose. Overall though I think your gear goals are fine.

As to talents, your restoration is exactly as mine was. So not much to say there. I went 21 in elemental though because I found that the quicker shocks with more damage and occasional free ones were better for me being main tank than the enhancement talents were. I just found that going that route allowed the people in my group to not hold back much at all where with the other route they would have to worry about taking aggro more. The added mitigation from enhancement didn't really seem to make a difference either. Course the route I went was horrid at tanking nature immune guys though. For that enhancement is definately better. For offtanking which you seem to be aiming for enhancement may be better though. I'm not really sure. It may be more of a matter of preferance.

I also tended to not foucs on totems as much as Treesh does. Sometimes I would drop a grace of air and a grace of strength if I was tanking, but often I didn't bother, because it just wasn't needed and I didn't feel it was worth the mana to cast. I know Treesh will be shaking her head at my lack of totem use, but oh well...she does that at me alot. : ) When healing I would sometimes drop totems before a fight so I could regen the mana from them, but I also didn't bother all the time with that either. While totems are nice, I generally didn't find that they added enough to fights to make them worth the mana.

Oh speaking of mana, that is key with the +healing route. It was rare that a tank ever was taking so much damage that I couldn't keep up with it. The only issue was if my mana pool would last the fight (which is why Treesh stresses +int of course). As I started to get my blue gear (like yours, as I said) it started becoming less of an issue though. Even before that though it really wasn't bad. Some fights would be close, but I recall surviving many fights with just a little mana alot more often than I recall wiping because of being out. They say that people remember the bad things more as well, so it seems odd to me that I would not recall those situations. So I really don't think that mana is an issue with a +healing build. Course some of this may also be do to the things I meantioned before. My party knowing each other very well, using alot of CC, and also the lack of totem use since they use mana. Oh, I do agree with treesh about the posion/disease totems though. Those are almost always worth their cost if posions and diseases are floating around.

Anyway, yeah...I think you will be fine with what you are planning. I should also say that my shaman experience is in everything up to and including UBRS. Past that I only took my shaman into ZG twice. Once when it first came out with a random group just to see it (didn't go well hehe). Then another time with some guild people we knew (went very well). I don't recall noticing anything that needed to change in the build for that, but its one run with a well geared and knowledgable group. So take that for what its worth. : )

[nobbie]

I'll tell you that I believe +healing gear is the way to go on a shaman as well.

Correct. You can see this by the practical non-existence of the Abyssal Mail Legguards (of Restoration) in the Horde auction houses, and the relatively cheap auctions for these in the Alliance auction houses. I saw an auction of 30-45 gold for these great Shaman leggings in the Ironforge auction house yesterday ;)

[Treesh]

I'll tell you that I believe +healing gear is the way to go on a shaman as well.&nbsp; Its what I went with my shaman and I haven't regretted it at all.&nbsp; I sometimes wonder if this is why my shaman experiences and Treesh's experiences differ some.&nbsp; I seem to feel like shaman healing isn't as tough as she feels it is.&nbsp; There are lots of other factors in this too though like I usually had alot of CC going on, the players in my group knew each other very well (played from 0-60 together for several of us), and other such things.&nbsp; I do wonder if her liking +int over +healing (judging from her first post where I didn't notice +healing at all and her saying that +int is the way to go) has a decent part in things.
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I did actually mention +healing at the end, but I'm not at all happy with my comments on gear and didn't mention that what I did mention was for growing up (when there isn't as much +healing gear that also has stats) rather than for cap. That was rushed and not well thought out and has to be redone since I don't agree with it. ;)

Mogo has 4 different sets of gear - casting gear, healing gear, hybrid gear and melee gear. The healing gear has as much +healing (with other stats) as I can get my grubby little hands on. If I'm main or solo healer, that's what I wear. If I'm backup healer (or in a fight where there's a lot of magic AoE being thrown around by the critters so if I go melee I'll be a drain on the other healers), I'm in my casting gear (high int, then stamina and well, spirit seems to get thrown in with that mix frequently but I don't actually look for it). If I'm duoing with Marn in Silithus playing with elites or we're in a raid where I don't have to heal much, I'm in my hybrid gear (stamina, some int, some +healing, some strength, some agility). If we're grinding together or I'm soloing, I'm in my melee gear (stamina, strength with some int thrown in by lucky drops).

About the totems, I used to rarely drop them growing up. It was more cost effective to just heal through instead of "waste" the mana dropping them. The closer I got to the cap (and now that we're raiding in ZG frequently), I drop them a lot in parties. If the fights aren't going to last long, I don't bother dropping them. If it's longer fights, they get plopped all the time. However, I do still stand by using totems as helping healing, even using strength of earth and windfury. If the critters die faster, less healing taken. :) In 20 man raids, I put them down all the time simply because I've got the mana, I'm not main healing so I may as well use it. :)

I actually think the differences you and I saw in healing difficulty Swirly are because I didn't even have 5 mans in the 5 man instances until Zul'Farrak (I think that was the first full 5 man I healed with Mogo). We did it with just Marn (Tauren Hunter) and I or sometimes threw in one or two other people for the "tough" ones. I also had pets as main tanks more often than anything else. I didn't get to really heal warriors as my tanks in front of me until Uldaman (I think that was the first warrior tank I had. Durambar may have to correct me on that one ;) ). It was pet tanking all the way. :) Healing a pet tank (before the hunter changes that made pet tanks more viable) is more difficult than healing a warrior tank. We also usually didn't have much in the way of crowd control beyond freezing traps. Having a mage along was a rare, rare luxury and having a rogue for sap or a warlock for seduce/voidwalker offtank was unheard of for the longest time. It was Meowry tanking everything but what was in a freezing trap (and then beating on Marn when Spirit Bond was awesome ;) ). I grew up healing in much less than ideal circumstances, but it was damned fun and challenging. :)

Edit: Oh, and I also had the issue of seeing just how much easier most of the encounters were to heal as a priest. :)

[Artega]

Chain Heal should be 2.5/3.5 =~ .714 (so better than you have).&nbsp; LHW should compare even more favorably than your numbers, as you should get not 1/3 =~ .333, but 1.5/3.5 =~ .428 of your +heal gear.
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Thanks for the specifics. Wasn't sure how the values for non-3s spells were calculated.

[swirly]

Mogo has 4 different sets of gear - casting gear, healing gear, hybrid gear and melee gear.

I actually think the differences you and I saw in healing difficulty Swirly are because I didn't even have 5 mans in the 5 man instances until Zul'Farrak (I think that was the first full 5 man I healed with Mogo).

Edit: Oh, and I also had the issue of seeing just how much easier most of the encounters were to heal as a priest.&nbsp; :)
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I only used one gear set on my shaman. My blue goals were pretty similiar to the ones artega listed (mail helm though, not leather) and I used it for healing, tanking, or damage. : ) As a shaman tank I always found that the added healing helped more than anything else I could put on myself. I've said before that my shaman tanking style involves alot of healing though so maybe thats just a difference in playstlyle.

My group with my shaman actually didn't really start having warrior tanks till we were around 60. I spent alot of time doing both rolls with no backup which is probably why I ended up with my healing style of tanking. It was what was required as both main tank and main healer. : ) Overall I would say that I actually spent more time as a tank than a healer. Not that that is all I did, but I did do it more. Its kind of funny. I sometimes think that in instances where their aren't nature immune bosses, that shamans may be better tanks than warriors. We would have recap running and when my shaman tanked I would be taking 80-90% of the damage. When we had warriors tanking they would usually take (if they were decent ones) 60-70% of the damage. Even on Terenas its rare to see a warrior tank go above 70% damage taken I think. Some of this is because of pets and AOE and such, but I've always found it kind of interesting. I think its mainly because a warrior needs time to lock down a mob where as a shaman can shock things to pull and get good initial aggro. Course its kind of like people have said in other threads about druids tanking. The thing with warriors isn't that they can't be beat with aggro, its that they get so much more mitigation than others. Plate, +defense, +stam, etc. For 5 mans I sometimes question how much it is needed though. : )

As to the priest bit, one must remember that I did play a priest till 56 before I played my shaman. Means I didn't play her at the 60 instances (stopped at ST), but I do have some experience with priest healing. : ) Priests are definately easier when it comes to healing AOE and various other things.

[Treesh]

As to the priest bit, one must remember that I did play a priest till 56 before I played my shaman.&nbsp; Means I didn't play her at the 60 instances (stopped at ST), but I do have some experience with priest healing. : )&nbsp; Priests are definately easier when it comes to healing AOE and various other things.
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I do keep forgetting that. :) Since I've never seen your priest, I don't admit she exists. :P ;)


Plus healing is really nice to have (that's why it's part of my hybrid set (although I really should just call it my "never die" set instead ;) ) in addition to my actual healing set), but too much low level equipment only has +healing and nothing else in the way of stats. I really do need to go through and redo that whole slapped in part about gear in the initial post. I didn't like it when I wrote it (and was a little pressed for time), still don't agree with what I said, but haven't bothered to change it yet to something that actually makes sense and actually agrees with what I put into practice. ;)

[bonemage]

I didn't get to really heal warriors as my tanks in front of me until Uldaman (I think that was the first warrior tank I had.&nbsp; Durambar may have to correct me on that one ;) ).
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I'm not sure that I was your first warrior tank, but I do know that Uldaman was when we first partied together for a run with Mogo as the only healer and Durambar tanking. We started in as a threesome, but got more help later, iirc. I think we partied for a quick 5 man zerg of SM Cathedral prior to that, but Necrali was healing me then, though you were probably still covering Meowry. However, the most memorable instance for me of the early days was the first half of Maraudon, which we did as a trio (Mogo, Marn, Durambar). We were near appropriate level, and it was incredibly challenging, where nearly every fight had a well timed war stomp/challenging shout/aggro juggle with pet/conc blow/shock/bandage/pot that tipped the scales in our favor just enough to get a victory. We all played well, were successful, and had fun doing it.

[Treesh]

I'm not sure that I was your first warrior tank, but I do know that Uldaman was when we first partied together for a run with Mogo as the only healer and Durambar tanking.&nbsp; We started in as a threesome, but got more help later, iirc.&nbsp; I think we partied for a quick 5 man zerg of SM Cathedral prior to that, but Necrali was healing me then, though you were probably still covering Meowry.&nbsp; However, the most memorable instance for me of the early days was the first half of Maraudon, which we did as a trio (Mogo, Marn, Durambar).&nbsp; We were near appropriate level, and it was incredibly challenging, where nearly every fight had a well timed war stomp/challenging shout/aggro juggle with pet/conc blow/shock/bandage/pot that tipped the scales in our favor just enough to get a victory.&nbsp; We all played well, were successful, and had fun doing it.
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I do remember that it was you for my first warrior, then Conc for most of the Friday nights, then it was Durambar as main tank for most everything else at/near cap. I just couldn't remember if Uldaman was the very start or not. At first I had typed that it was Maraudon, but then I remembered the runs to the enchanter trainer. :)

I remember Maraudon quite well and fondly. :) Maybe that's the only difference between Swirly's take on difficulty of healing and mine - I was doing three mans more often than 5 mans. That may skew things just a little bit. ;) It did aggravate me every time you had to drink a pot though. Felt like I let you down on healing, but I still enjoyed every bit of those undermanned runs. :)

Oh, and I don't count the SM zerg under healing for me because, well, it was a ZERG. Those don't count for anything but loots. ;)