Throwing out some advice about healing in general and resto shamans in particular.
First, your UI is important. In our 25 man raids I tend to be a raid healer so I've got to be able to track everyone's health efficiently. Here's a shot of my UI in a raid:
That is the addon known as Vuhdo, I highly recommend it for healers. It shows lots of information in a very efficient manner and you can display it however you like. I did a write-up about Vuhdo already so I won't spend a lot of time on it but I will point out it lets you track your Earth Shield and Riptide which is very handy. That brings me to point #2.
Keep your Earth Shield up on the tank at all times. AT ALL TIMES. Yes you are a raid healer. No it does not matter. ES should be glyphed and it should be on the tank AT ALL TIMES. I'm so OCD I programmed PowerAuras to blink a big red signal in my face when ES falls off the tank.
YOU NO HAVE ES ON TANK!!! FLASHING RED CROSS MOCKS YOU!!!! DEATH IS NOT AN EXCUSE!!
The thing is, Earth Shield is a very nice fire-and-forget (so to speak) spell that does a significant portion of your healing. You don't have to cast it often. It helps out the tank healers and this is a team effort. It is highly efficient since it only procs when it is needed. Plus if you have Lesser Healing Wave glyphed and you have to toss a heal on the tank ES will make your Lesser Healing Wave more efficient. Find a way to track it. Vuhdo, Healbot and Grid all do a nice job when propperly set up. There are also addons out there specifically for shaman shields like Shields Ups. I haven't tried them myself but I have heard other shamans swear by them.
Side note: Keep your Water Shield up. It is a good chunk of your regen both thru the passive MP5 gains and thru Imp Water Shield. Yeah, it's pretty obvious but it doesn't hurt to mention it. Besides, it is fun to keybind it to an easy to reach key and spam it when you are bored (I have it bound to "z" personally). Don't forget Earthliving Weapon either. You can set up various buff trackers to make sure it doesn't drop off. Or you can refresh it before every fight while buffs are going out like most OCD shamans do. It's not like we've got to bless folks or whatever.
The resto shaman healing toolbox is a well rounded one: you have a big heal, a small heal, an instant heal and an AoE heal. They have a very nice synergy together.
Riptide: Your instant heal with a hot attached. The best part of Riptide is that it procs Tidal Waves. Tidal Waves are your friend. Tidal Waves can make your next Healing Wave really fast or it can practically guarentee your next Lesser Healing Wave will crit. We like critting Lesser Healing Waves because they proc Ancesteral Healing. Ancesteral Healing is our friend and should not be underestimated. I try to keep it rolling on the tanks whenver possible. If you have the two peice T10 Riptide becomes an even more awesome boost to your next spell because of it speeding up the cast. It's fun to cast a Riptide and then Chainheal that very same person because it will get out fast and Chainheal will absorb the Hot to get bosted and heal everyone it hits for more. One of my favorite targets for that sort of thing is the tank, especially on a fight like Blood Queen. The melee will love you for it.
Chain Heal: I won't lie, this will be the 25 man raid healing shaman's bread and butter. You will use it a lot. It may account for 80-90% of your healing on some fights. But try not to be totally dependent on it because our other heals are awesome too. And when folks are spread out *cough*castersonBQL*cough* it won't be very useful.
Lesser Healing Wave: Your handiest single target heal. It is fast, it is efficient and it procs all sorts of fun things. Bind it to something handy and use it often.
Healing Wave: Very nice spell. However, as a 25 man raid healing shaman you won't use it much. I cast it maybe half a dozen time a night in a main raid. With the T10 2 pc bonus it can take less than a second to cast *after* a Riptide and that is all sorts of fun. But not always useful. Paired with Nature's Swiftness it is a nice tank saver.
Those plus Earth Shield and Nature's Swiftness are the basics. Nature's Swiftness is your "Oh Crap" button, put it somewhere instictive. I use it with both CH and Healing Wave on a regular basis so I don't macro it to either of them but some folks like specific macros.
Speaking of macros, I just macro'ed Tidal Force to something. Probably Nature's Swiftness. It's not a terrible exciting ability and won't make or break anything.
Glyphs: For Raid healing get Chain Heal. Do not pass Go, don't collect $200, get that glyph. Ditto for Earth Shield. From there it is personal preference and situation. By the time you hit ICC you shouldn't be having much mana trouble so I would pass on Water Mastery. Believe it or not most of the Resto Shaman glyphs are viable in one situation or another. Earthliving Weapon, Riptide, and Healing Stream are all acceptable. Healing Wave and Mana Tide are both PvP glyphs so skip them. Personally I run with Lesser Healing Wave but that's because I also do 10 mans where I help out on the tanks. When I wasn't using LHW I used Riptide because it made it easy to have 3 different Riptide hots rolling on the raid, that let me pick and choose who to hit with Chain Heal to give it a boost. I hear Earthliving Weapon can be better but I'm not a fan of Earthliving Weapon because it is random and I'm a control freak.
Stats: Haste is your friend. Some shamans say to stack haste to the point of ignoring everything else but I find 1k to be a healthy number. Haste cap is 1400 or so and completely reachable if you gear, gem and enchant for it to the exclusion of everything else. Some raid healers do just that. I like a balance of things since I tend to fill multiple rolls and I'm too lazy to maintain multiple sets of gear. Your ideal gear will be SP, haste and Crit. (Crit is regen stat for us thanks to Imp Water Shield) SP, haste and MP5 is second. Crit and MP5 gear is to be avoided if possible but don't worry if you wind up with some of it, Blizz's itemization team loves to try to cram it down everyone's throats. You'll have to have at least one Crit/MP5 peice to get the T10 4pc bonus which is entirely worth it.
Spec: The cookie cutter and very serviceable Resto Shaman spec is:
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?c...010501122331251There is some flexiblity there though. Personally I think Healing Focus is optional, if you are getting beat on not only is there something seriously wrong with your tanks, you won't be standing there casting and cursing pushback. You'll be Riptiding yourself, Windshearing and running like heck probably. So I took two points out of Healing Focus and dumped them in Imp Reincarnation so when I have to pop back up I've got a halfway decent chance of not immediately going splat again.
Concerning mana: In ICC gear in a 25 man raid with replenishment it's not going to be something you have to worry about much. If you are having mana issues make sure you use Mana Tide Totem. Drop it as soon as you hit 75% and then again when the cooldown is up if the fight is a long one.
Flasks: I usually use Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Mojo can be handy on mana-intensive fights like BQL or LK but won't make enough of a difference to change before the original flask runs out. If you are having mana issues then yes, of course Mojo is the one to choose.
I've played 3 of the 4 healing classes and I find resto shaman to be an incredibly flexible healer. Yeah, Chain Heal spam will probably get the job done (and it is hands down one of the best spell effects in the game) but a good shaman makes use of all their tools and can really make a difference when the crap hits the fan. If a tank healer goes down you can step up and fill the roll with zero change in gear or spec. You can assist the tank healer and heal the raid at the same time by Chain Heal spamming the tanks (I do this on just about every fight). Ancestral Healing provides nice damage reduction whenever it pops up. Riptide and Nature's Swiftness can save lives and we all know dead DPS = zero DPS. And never forget, totems >> all.
"Let's face it: armed combat beats unarmed combat any day of the week." Tom Clancy
Shaman Healing As Of 3.4, just a general idea
Jul 3 2010, 07:23 PM
My main has always been a holy priest for nearly 5 years so this is somewhat different although many of the principles are the same. The screenshots also really helped! I appreciate you taking the time to make this post 
