GUIDE: Shaman Healing

[Omniel]

DISCLAIMER:
ITS NOT FINISHED YET> TOO TIRED.

some of the information here comes from WoW Boards but i adjusted it myself to make it suitable for shamans. Also note that alot of these oppinions are mine and are not necesarilly the best.

First of all: I did not make this post out of flaming or pointing fingers or any other expression of pun. I made this to boost the general level of healing shamans, and i hoped to reach this goal through constructive criticism.

Secondly i think i need to establilish who i am. Im a geezer with alot of bad habbits and an fucked up sense of humor. But i do have alot of hours of healing behind me. My main character, omniel, is now almost a year old and has seen alot of healing in alot of different places. I met alot of other great healing shamans who tought me alot and granted me alot of insight. Even priests and druids helped me form my vision of healing shamans. The first one to guide me gently through these steps was sabexz, a shaman who currently appearantly does not play any more. After that i picked up a few bits here and there, and on the shaman boards aswell. I learned alot about min-maxing my healing, as i call it, from GA and akash. Two great priests with different views.

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Introduction:

Now im not saying all of the shamans are bad healers, not at all. But i AM saying there is alot of improvement to be made.
Alot of this improvement can be made quite easily.. lets say that 80% of the skill i'd like to see.
The other 20% is made by min-maxing and squeezing every ounce of effiecieny out of ur healing.. however this comes with experience.

U can get alot of insight by browsing different forums to see what other have found out through experience and trial & error.
But the most efficient way of finding out is asking guildies (dont be shy:D) and thinking about it for yourself. Because i can easily tell u what i think are handy talants/stats/gear u should go for.. and its a good guideline; but what u should do with this info is analyse it. Ask yourself WHY it would be good, and WHY other stuff is crap.

General Knowledge:

Intelect: 1 intelect gives 15 mana and 60 intelect gives 1% chance to crit with spells.
Spirit: 1 spirit gives 0,25 mana/tick. Total spirit / 4 + 12,5 = mana/tick. 1 tick = 2 sec.
Stamina: 1 stamina gives 10 health.
Mana/5sec: 1 mana/5sec gives 1 mana every 5 seconds all the time.
Critital strike: a critical strike gives 150% of the amount of damage or healing.

Healing contribution:
The amount of healing given to different spells of your total amount of +healing depends on casting time and the type of spell.
For casted spells, +healing contributes for 100% on 3,5 sec cast spells. For example: lesser healing wave is 1,5 sec cast, so that gives 1,5/3,5 = 43% of the total amount of +healing to flash heal. However, talents which reduce the casting time will not decrease the healing contribution.

The 5-sec rule:
As you might have noticed, your mana can regenerate fast or slow, even when you are not drinking water. After you cast a spell, you will have several seconds no mana regeneration from spirit, they call this the 5-sec rule. After you succesfully cast a spell, you won’t regenerate mana from spirit for 5 seconds. After these 5 seconds, your mana regeneration will go back to 100% again.

Gear:

The next step will be gearing up, this too is relatively easy. Don't just wait for that Earthfury to drop, but also get healing-blue's from other instances. U will find that its actually quite effective. Dont just go for The Elements set and go to MC, no look at the element set and ask yourself: why on earth is this good for healing? Don't be afraid to wear leather or cloth items, AC is problably the least of you're worries. HOwever there are plenty of good blue's out there. If i we're you, a beginning shaman, i would go for mana-regen and get yourself to ATLEAST 6000 mana unbuffed. +healing is not bad either, actually a combination of mp/5sec and +healing would be the best for you at this time.

Eventually u will get Earthfury, wich is bassicly devine to all totemstomper things healing..
And this is mainly because of the 5th set bonus wich has a 25% chance to return 35% of the base mana cost of ur heal.
Earthfury is not beaten easily for healing shamans untill certain drops here and there from aq40 and naxx.

[Omniel]

Healing itself:

Then the biggest thing u can do to improve youre healing is the actual action itself. This can be learned quite fast, and it comes down to understanding how shaman healing works. Shamans we're designed to be burst healers,.. to heal a person fast untill others can keep it up. So that means Lesser Healing Wave. U can also quite effectively use lower ranks of Healing Wave.. but not as good as a priest (who mainly uses this), druids dont have a equivalent so shamans are best suited to be in the kind of burst-healing role.. This is why mana/5seconds is so generally accepted as good for shamans, because we are burst-healing short heals alot there is not as much time to regen through spirit, like druids or priests. Therefor we need the mp5s to regen while casting (since it keeps us in combat so that spi does not work).

Ergo dont be afraid to spam you're heals when the tough gets going, especially if we use healing-groups. I have found that u should just ask for 40 drinks at the start of an MC run and spam alot during Trash fights, and drink up afterwards. Who cares if ur overhealing.. u made sure none died! u we're there to get ppl out of the < 2000 hp zone the fastest. If every shaman does this then i can assure you that cassualty rates will go down drasticly.

Then there is the +healing. This is also good for mana-regen because it makes sure that youre heals give back more Health for the same mana.
but here comes the great part about +healing: for about every +100 healing u have u can go down a rank of the spell. This lessens the mana-cost while keeping up roughly the same ammount of HP restored. This also is great for the nature of healing shamans do. But to an lesser extent because its even better for the bigger heals and our big heals dont compare to those of priests and druids. The best thing would actually be a combination of both with the preference of mp5s.

General healing:
Healing is not pressing a few buttons and making your gear do the job like dps in most cases. There is allways a way to improve your healing, because it is depends on so many things. You have to correct people’s mistakes when they get aggro and need to get healed. If 2 people are nearly death, you have to decide which one to heal.You need to respond on things that will come and it is important to know as much from it as possible. Not keeping a tank to 100% health and suddently getting a 5k hit which ignores armor on your tank and you can try it again.

You can say that healing consists of 4 basics:

Using the right spells

Using the right spells is not only not using a 2000 heal on someone who just took 1000 damage.
If, for example, your tank has 6 healers total and he takes 2500 damage, then its not needed to heal for 2500, because other people will try to heal him as well. A better example is when a tank is on low health. Allthough he needs to get healed for more, a faster heal by all healers on that tank will usually be enough to get him back to full health.
It is good to know how much damage someone will take when you start healing him and how quick they can react with something that might prevent them from getting hit.
For example rogues and hunters can remove all their aggro at once by using either vanish or feign death. This means they won’t be the target of the mobs anymore, the only damage they possibly can take is aoe damage. When they remove their aggro, its not needed to heal with a fast heal, because they probably won’t take more damage.
Mages who AoE for example usually get hit with a consistent high amount of damage on a low amount of health compared to classes who are made to get hit. Then its important to spam your flash heal.
Warlocks usually need to get healed much as well. They lifetap (converts health into mana) usually to full mana after or during the fight. Because you know the amount of damage they will take its problaby wise to leave these guys to the druids and priests who can put a mana-efficient dot on them to get their health back.

Balance efficiency without taking too much risks

Efficiency means healing more for less mana. When your roughly have 500+healing your lower ranks heal wave will heal as much as a flash heal, but for about 60% of the cost. Though, it takes 1 more second to cast and this is where we have a risk. 2 Examples are:
A mage who is using aoe spells, which means they usually get much hits. Using lower ranks is efficient, but before the spell is casted, there is a big chance your mage is either death or nearly death.
A tank who is on full health can be kept on full health by spamming LHW, but this will make you go out of mana in seconds. Offcourse big raids have innervates available, but that won’t be enough to keep up your LHW spam. Be aware that going out of mana is a risk as well, because you won’t be able to heal as much anymore. It requires some training, but there is a way to keep a tank on full health with a very high efficiency, which will be explained later.
Allthough these examples are right in most cases, there are exceptions.

Timing the landing of your spells

A spell can be interupted by either pressing 1 of the movement keys, the key to jump or escape. Because there is some time before the server knows that you pressed a key, it is possible that the interuption is too late and will be casted. This is dependant on your latency, the lower your latency, the faster a server the server knows you interupted the heal. In general, when you try to interupt a spell, try to do it 1 sec before it will be casted to be sure it really won’t get casted.
But why would you want to interupt a spell? Big heals usually require a long casting time (3 sec for greater heal, 2,5 sec with talents). When you know your tank for example, is getting a big hit soon, but didn’t take it yet, you can start casting it allready. When you see your main tank didn’t get the hit yet, 1 sec before the heal would have land interupt the spell and start casting again. Now, when the tank gets hit, the time that is needed to heal him is decreased by up to 1 sec. This can be the difference between life and death, because tanks sometimes get heavy damage burst (much dmg over only a few seconds). In some cases the tanks will get hit just after you interupted your spell, but then again, it will only take 2,5 sec to recast it, the same amount as when you start casting the tank when he did get the damage.
This way, you prevent overhealing by spamming heals on the main tank, but you are still able to react faster then waiting until the tank gets the damage. Allthough, this way of healing requires full focus and maybe lots of training, but when you master this, you are both very mana efficient without taking more risks then spamming the tank.

Priority of healing

As a healer, you sometimes have to decide who will die and who will get a heal. This descision has to be made very fast, or the persons will probably both die. I cannot give you a list with priority of classes, this is something you need to make for yourself before you start the encounter. Knowledge of the encounter is needed to be able to make a priority list. In most cases, a tank is required to stay alive to be able to defeat the enemy. But a tank without healers is useless, he will die within a few seconds. But when the dps is death, a tank probably won’t be able to kill the enemy, because the damage is significant lower with tanking gear, 1h weapon + shield and defensive stance. You probably can’t keep up the tank for ages, so in general you can say all classes are needed to complete the fight.
Though, some classes have special jobs to do on bosses, which give them a high priority to keep alive. An example is Garr from Molten Core. He has about 8 guards to be tanked or banished. Banish is a warlock ability which makes a mob unable to move/attack or getting attacked for 30 sec. Between those banishes, the warlock needs a few seconds to recast banish and has a high chance of getting attacked by the mob meanwhile. A warlock usually can take a few hits, but when he dies, a tank should replace the job of the warlock and tank the add AND the tank needs to get healed. And when no tank is available he will probably aim for the healers and kill those. As you see, special jobs can make classes important to keep alive. Another good example are the twin emperors from Ahn Qiraj 40. They hit very hard, so you need healing on them all the time. Sometimes, 1 of the twins targets a healer and cast blizzard on him. Blizzard is an aoe spell which deals about 1k dmg/2sec and slowers. Because healers don’t have much room to stay, more healers will usually get hit. The first priority of all healers is to move out of the blizzard, while the people who didn’t get hit spam the tank to keep him alive. But in most cases, the second priority of the healers who get hit is to heal themselves up, which means that the people who didn’t get hit need to heal the tank for several seconds more, which usually ends up in a death tank. When you got damaged and you know you won’t get hit for some time, then focus on the tank first and heal yourself when the tank is on full health. I cannot give you a list for all bosses which classes have priority, the best way is to make them yourself by knowing how the fight will go and which tactics you use.

Raidhealing

On most fights, warriors are not the only ones to get damage. Some bosses have aoe damage, some people might get aggro and warlocks lifetap. Also this damage needs to be healed and preferably by a healer with lots of +healing and mana/5sec.
Raidhealing looks pretty easy, but there are a few points to face:

Panic

Never panic, allways stay cool and keep healing according to your priority. Sometimes its not bad to let people die, for some people it’s the only way to learn they did something wrong.

Overview

Make sure you have a view of all people in the raid/you have to heal and try to put the groups close to eachother, so you don’t need to search your whole screen for wounded people. The mod CTRaid provides a good way to organize this overview with lots of abilities of showing damage taken/% life/buffs/debuffs and so on.

Know what is happening

When somebody suddently get’s aggro which is not supposed to get aggro, he needs to get healed as well. A good way to get track on people who get aggro is enable the main tanks target’s target. This is the target of the mob your tank is tanking. When you see it switching to someone who is not supposed to get aggro, start healing him allready. Preferably with flash heal. Don’t blame yourself if the enemy 1-shots your target, its probably the fault of your target and as I said before, we need to heal people’s mistakes. In most cases someone who gets aggro will die instantly, but if you are able to keep him alive until the tank gets the aggro back, then you’re the man who saved the day.

[Omniel]

Aggro Management:


Lets start this with an example: when someone slaps you in the face, you get angry on him. When someone slaps a random person, you probably won’t get angry. When someone slaps a friend of you in the face, you get angry as well. This is exactly how aggro works. The one who has done the most slaps will be the target of the mob. Area of effect spells, like mages do, will slap several targets and make them angry. This is how healing works as well. You might not do anything to the target of the tank you are healing, but your actions have a bad influence on the goal of your tanks target: killing the tank. Also healing the person who is no2 on the list to kill for the enemy will result in building up aggro.

In general, you can say healing gives an amount of threat to all hostile mobs who are being attacked. This is one of the main reasons why you want a tank to tank all mobs when you play with a party. When you get 3 enemies attacking your party and your tank and dps focusses on 1 target, the heals that the tank requires make you aggro the other 2 enemies.

Aggro allways starts with coming too close to the enemy or with doing any harmfull spell to him from a larger range. The range at which you will aggro the enemy depends on your level and the level of the enemy (note that some bosses have an exceptional long aggro range). When you are level 60 and you are approaching a level 20 enemy, you can probably just stand next to him without getting aggro. When you are level 20 and you approach a level 60 enemy, he will probably aggro you from a longer range then you can cast a spell on him.

You can’t prevent not to build up threat, but you can prevent not to get on top of that list (as long as our tanks are doing their job offcourse).
Before the shaman patch healing aggro occured quite alot, but since then they implemented a talent wich reduced healing aggro by 15%. That combined with Tranquil Air totem (if ur luckly enough to give urself 1) should be enough to keep u safe. Do keep in mind tho that those effects are not added up (15+20). Also remember that due to our spammy nature it is still wise to use some breaks now and then when fighting risky bosses, during trash u bassicly got nothing to fear.. since DPS ussualy takes aggro way before us.

[RagingHorn]

if dps healing i&#180;m beginning to find chain healing pretty good actually (sure it might be overhealing sometimes, but there&#180;s a good chance u heal 1/2 additional wounded targets)

PS: u forgot to mention that u get healing penalty if u drop too low in ranks :P (could be i&#180;m blind though)
i have +400 healing and for fun tried to heal myself with lowest rank heals while bored in ogrimmar. LHW1=90healing/160 if crit, LHW2= 160-190/250 if crit......but rank 4 LHW didn&#180;t seem to get any penalties....would assume the same would go for HW if u drop below rank 4 (didn&#180;t try that cause i was busy crying over the penalty hehe)

rly good guide m8 :)

[Tapja]

If the spells cast time is under 3.5 seconds untalented, you get less out of your +healing than normal. Don't remember the exact percentages, but I could try dig em up if your desperate for em :)

[RagingHorn]

yes plz :D

[Veth]

casttime/3.5s = percentage of healing/spell power.

sometimes there is a fixed penalty like on the frostbolt (because of the slow effect).

[RagingHorn]

for my rank 1 lhw that would be 1,5/3,5= 0,43
with +400 healing that gives 171 of the +healing that should pass through.....but still rank 1 lhw only heals around 90-160.....so there has to be more to it or??

[Veth]

try a mod called "theorycraft". it will update all your tooltips and give you additional information.

[Tapja]

for my rank 1 lhw that would be 1,5/3,5= 0,43
with +400 healing that gives 171 of the +healing that should pass through.....but still rank 1 lhw only heals around 90-160.....so there has to be more to it or??

The reason:

Spells Learned before level 20
Many spells have multiple ranks. To avoid having players using these lower ranks to deal constant damage at a negligable mana cost, any spell which can be learned at a level lower than 20 has a large penalty applied. If the spell has a shorter cast time, this is also taken in to account. This level penalty can be worked out by taking off 3.75% for each level lower than level 20.

(20 - Level Spell is Learned) * .0375 = Penalty

(Edit: Also take into account the fact that any bonuses to healing spells from Talents will be applied AFTER the modifiers have been taken into account.)

(Edit2: For the whole shebang about +damage/healing, look at http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Plus_damage_and_Plus_healing#Rules_for_Ap plying_.2BHealing_and_.2BDamage)

[Omniel]

yep i might not have mentioned it :)
however it misses even more stuff.. but atm im abit to pre-occupied to finish it. Should be done arround next week or so.