Shaman Resto Pro Guide 4.1.0 - Cataclysm

Welcome to the premium Resto Shaman guide in the World....of Warcraft. Sit back and enjoy, because if resto is your game, you'll walk away playing your class to the max.

This guide is aimed at the already raiding Resto Shaman. If you're fresh to the class and looking for where to start, then this will not be the guide for you. Secretgarden has a wonderful guide for the starter Resto Shaman, so go there for all your beginner needs to get your feet wet. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1577519250

If you're already raiding and looking at what it takes to push your class to the max, then you're in the right place. This will give you the info you need for whats best in raids to maximize your performance.

Also this guide will be written from a 4.1 perspective. The mastery changes are looking to go through in their current state, and the importance of that will effect our stat choices a fair bit. However things like Spirit link won't be written about until it's live due to needing to test it.

Table of Contents
Section 1 – Talent Builds
Section 2 – Glyphs
Section 3 – Stats
3.1 - Int
3.2 - Spirit
3.3 - Crit
3.4 - Haste
3.5 - Mastery
Section 4 – Roles and Optimal Stat Choices
Section 5 – Gemming
Section 6 – Enchants
Section 7 – MTT and your Mana
Section 8 – Spirit Link Totem
Section 9 – Healing Ideology
Section 10 – Healing Methodology


**** Section 1) Talent Builds ****
I've now accepted that TC is viable if you want it as your healing style. With gear scaling, you get very decent mana return. On the low end in hard modes 200mp5 can be expected, on the high end 2k mp5 can easily be reached. I've seen enough ranked parses from WOL to know that it can work and you can still do great healing with it. So here are your 3 best builds.

Cookie Cutter Max hps build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhMZfGbMsdcoGo
This is your do-it-all spec. It works with any role, and any stat priority. Assuming mana isn't a concern, it will be your best hps spec.

Non EP based TC resto build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hbZbhMZsGbMsdcRGo
Sacrifices a bit of hps from losing 1% crit in order to allow you the ability to regen mana using TC. The idea being during low damage downtime you weave LB's in between your heals giving you more mana overall to cast bigger heals when you need them. The catch is, this style of play is most viable if you are a haste/crit stat build shaman to maximize your TC return and minimize LB castime. In addition in a tank healing role or 10man role, downtime is harder to come by so you'll have less a chance to really use TC.

EP based TC resto build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhb0bZbZfGbMsbcRGo
Same as above, but sacrifices even more throughput and mobility in order to give a greater amount of mana return. The idea being with the greater mana return, you then are able to spam your higher throughput spells more freely to compensate. So you're able to serve your raid in that role if required. Two core points with this build is that you'll need 2640 spirit to hitcap and you'll need a +runspeed boot enchant to compensate for loss of AS.

So which build should you play? Well first of all you have to ask yourself if you want to use TC for not. Some Shaman swear by it, some swear at it. It's a personal decision. In the end it comes down to your personal spell usage and healing style. There are ZERO encounters in this game that require you to have TC, so think of it only as a 'buffer' for your mana. Gear, gem and play properly, and you don't need it. But having TC allows you to recover mana in downtime to blow mana more freely during hectic times.

The best way I can relate is dig back to wrath raiding. Personally my mp5 was in the area of 90 or less throughout the entirety of the x-pack. Even in Ulduar when everyone was stacking int to overcome their mana problems, I blasted my way through content stacking haste because I was able to. And set dozens of ranked hps parses along the way. So ask yourself if you can relate to this or not. If your find you have mana problems due to whatever reason in your heal style, then TC will be worth a look for you. If you find that you're able to heal in a way that you don't need active mana regen mechanics and just blast out hps all day long non stop, then go for the max hps build.

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 10:39 AM (PDT) **** Section 2) Glyphs ****
Prime
Glyph of Riptide
Glyph of Earthliving Weapon
Glyph of Earth Shield

Major
Glyph of Healing Stream Totem
Glyph of Chain Heal
Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem

These choices are your cookie cutter glyphs. The only other glyph that you might want to take instead would be Glyph of Water Shield. You would use it in place of Riptide or ELW if you're finding you're having mana problems. If you're more a tank healer, use it in place of ELW. If you're more a raid healer, use it in place of Riptide.


**** Section 3) Stats ****
You will see a big change in the way of thinking here. It was a bit of a epiphany for me too. First of all, the way a lot of us (me included) have been looking at stats has been flawed. Mostly in how we look at crit. It's time we reevaluated. Crit is NOT a throughput stat. It's in fact a regen stat. It's function if you will is to replace spirit the more we gear. It's NOT to be used in place of haste or mastery if your goal is increasing your hps. Once this paradigm shift sinks in, your gearing strat becomes a lot clearer.

3.1 - Int
Int is your prime stat. You gem for it, you gear for it. You take the gear upgrade that has more Int, and reforge the stats if need be to suit yourself. When it comes to Int, gearscore, sadly, matters... The more Int the better. Int is the new haste. That is about all that needs to be said on the subject.

3.2 - Spirit
Spirit is your prime regen stat. Stack it hard and high to support your big heal spamming. How much is enough you ask? Well honestly there is no exact answer other than it's enough when you don't run oom. But I will give a value of 2640 fully raid buffed as a target. For a couple of reasons. Firstly Mana Tide Totem is a raidwide CD that benefits all healers including yourself. Having a solid base amount that gives consistent mana for everyone is a huge benefit. Second because it gives you the freedom to hitcap yourself if needed for any encounter. Now this isn't a hard set in stone cap value, if you find you need a lot more than this to do your job, stack it higher. If you and your raid team find that mana isn't a concern and you have no reason to ever spec EP, then feel free to go lower.

3.3 - Crit
Your secondary regen stat. At this point in the game, I can't call crit a throughput stat. It's way too weak compared to haste and mastery. There is nothing that crit brings to the table throughput wise that mastery and haste can't do better. So the old way of stacking crit past the haste breakpoint as a gearing strat is dead except for entry level gearing.

Instead it's time to start looking at crit as a regen stat. Think of it as a replacement for spirit. It's a fancy form of spirit that sacrifices some mana return in order to increase throughput. How this works for you is individual. We may get to a point where spirit will be as dead as mp5 in wrath and just have crit rating to carry our mana with WS procs. Or spirit will just be too good and crit will just be reforged out of for everything as haste/mastery scale. Tough to say. But use crit only in the sense of it's a way to return mana without impacting your throughput a lot. Tank healing as an example. haste/crit type build with some base spirit will overall do better than a pure haste/spirit build. There are many way to make crit work, so do what you find works best for you.

One small mention of the damage reduction ability we have with AH. It's a moot point in this discussion as it's useless as a raid heal ability as vast majority of damage is magic and AH is physical only. And your natural levels of crit in addition to riptide constantly rolling will keep it up on tanks good enough that stacking crit isn't needed.


3.4 - Haste
Your pure throughput stat. Increases your healing done by reducing your cast speed. There are a couple of ways to use haste, to either just plainly stack it as high as you can go, or only stack it to a breakpoint and then stack something else. Which you choose will be largely dependent upon your healing style. I'll go into further detail with this later on in Section 4 as to what may benefit you most.

To explain breakpoints further, once you are past a breakpoint, a point of haste has little impact of increasing your hps on hot type spells. For example, if you have 700 haste or 2500 haste, your HR will heal for the same amount. Meaning other throughput increasing stats become better. In the area of 2-5x better per stat point. This is why haste is no longer our prime goto stat anymore for all situations. If you look at your healing breakdown in a parse, the % of spells that haste affects can vary widely based on a lot of factors of your raid setup.

Heals that haste will FULLY effect
Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Chain Heal

Heals that haste will MOSTLY effect
Riptide, Unleashed Elements

Heals that haste will NOT effect (unless breakpoint value is reached)
Healing Rain, Earth Shield, Earth Living Weapon

Haste Breakpoints for HOTS
All values are including Wrath of Air totem as it's assumed you'll be using it. The numbers are listed as
xxx = haste rating value needed for extra tick
[xxx] = haste rating needed assuming Goblin racial
(xxx) = haste rating needed assuming lock haste buff

Haste Rating Needed for GCD softcap: 5491 (4958)

Haste Rating Values Needed for Extra Hot Ticks:
Healing Rain AND Riptide(no glyph)
1 extra tick: 610, [475], (220)
2 extra tick: 3050, [2892], (2589)
3 extra tick: 5418, [5307], (4958)

Riptide (glyphed)
1 extra tick: 261, [130], (0)
2 extra tick: 2005, [1857], (1573)
3 extra tick: 3748, [3582], (3266)
4 extra tick: 5418, [5238], (4958)

Earth Living Weapon
1 extra tick: 916 , [780], (516)
2 extra tick: 3966, [3798], (3478)
3 extra tick: 7016, [6817], (6438)


3.5 - Mastery
Your other core throughput stat. Works by increasing the power of your heals the lower your targets hp value is. First of all, Mastery is not a bad stat, just bad shaman think it is. Here's the breakpoints where mastery is better than other stats. (note, the spell selection factors in 4.1 buff)

When target is < 100% hp: Mastery is better than haste for HR, ELW, ES
When target is < 84% hp: Mastery is better than crit for HR, CH, UE, ELW, ES, Riptide HOT
When target is < 67% hp: Mastery is better than crit for HW, GHW, HS and Riptide Direct Heal
When target is < 48% hp: Mastery is your strongest stat period

Considering in raids, a lot of healing is done on targets at the 67% level or lower, (a lot of the time, near death healing is common) and virtually all is done at lower than 84%, mastery is truly a good stat to have. In addition to this, it increases HPM, while haste does not.

Mastery also scales extremely well. Which makes sense when you consider it's a % of a % increase to throughput. Because of this, Mastery scales with increasing returns vs haste and crit. (assuming you're healing people who are lower than the hp breakpoint) This means comparing low stat values of mastery to haste and crit, it will have similar throughput value. But scale this to say 2000 points of mastery, and healing the same hp level target will have a much greater throughput increase. Here's is a simple graph explaining this concept: http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g392/rbollinger/MasteryScaling.jpg

When you look at that, it becomes obvious that mastery is better than crit. The only factor becomes how it compares to haste. For this there is no one answer. You have to look at your raid as a whole and look at your healing style and spell selection as a whole. I'll expand on this further in Section 4.

**** Section 5) Gemming ****
This is pretty easy to follow. Int is our core stat, but it's not so important that it's like wrath where we don't care about socket bonus'. The bonus' for cata are actually pretty decent so I recommend to follow gem colors.

Red Socket: Brilliant Inferno Ruby

Yellow Socket: Artful Ember Topaz or Reckless Ember Topaz

Blue Socket: Purified Demonseye

Meta Socket: Ember Shadowspirit Diamond


**** Section 6) Enchants ****
Does not include profession enchants. But obviously use your profession enchants in place of any of these if applicable.

Helm: Arcanum of Hyjal

Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone

Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect

Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats

Bracers: Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect

Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery or Enchant Gloves - Haste

Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle

Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread

Boots: Enchant Boots - Mastery or Enchant Boots - Haste
*(If not specced AS, use Scroll of Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality)

Shield/OH: Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Enchant Weapon - Heartsong for replaceable weapons is perfectly fine too.

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 11:56 AM (PDT) **** Section 7) MTT and your mana ****
Mana Tide Totem works by taking your spirit, and giving that value to the rest of the raiders in your raid x 4 for the duration of the totem. Meaning the more spirit you have, the more mana regen you and everyone else in your raid gets. While the temptation might be to stack your spirit to the moon in order to act as a “mana battery” so your other healers can flow in mana for more healing, overall it makes little sense. Nerfing your healing output just requires others in your raid to compensate for you, so the extra mana becomes a wash. And the heart of this guide is for maximizing your healing. If you want a guide for stacking spirit and doing gimp healing, look someplace else...

Now there are currently only a handful of trinkets that still work with manatide post 4.06 worth equipping.
Darkmoon Card: Tsunami
Mandala of Stirring Patterns
Jar of Ancient Remedies

DMC: Tsunami is your BIS trinket, so get it. It will last you a long time. In regards for your complimenting trinket, your other best choice would be Vibrant Alchemist Stone. However, that's an Alchemy only trinket. For us non Alchemy types, you are then left with choosing between the remaining 2 spirit trinkets, or going for a throughput trinket. This depends on your situation. The spirit trinkets will give more mana return from MTT overall. So if mana is a concern, then this would be the way to go.

If mana is not that much of a concern, then my recommendation would be to find another Int trinket and use that instead. Int is just too good to pass up for spirit if you don't need the regen.. In which case you have 3 choices in this order.
Tyrande's Favorite Doll
Fall of Mortality
Core of Ripeness

As for how to properly use MTT, first of all pop it early in fights when you drop to about 60-70% mana so you can get 1-2 more uses out of it. make a macro that /y to your other healers to stand near it when you pop it, handy for fights where you're spread out a lot to alert them to move nearby... For items like core, ideally it's macroed into something so it's used on CD to maximize your mana return. (most addons have this functionality built in) For MTT's CD, have a buff tracker that will alert you when it's off CD so you can pop it immediately again. (more on this in Section 10)

Another tip is Potion of Concentration. This by far should be your on use potion if you require one in raids. There is usually periods of downtime in a raid setting where losing 10 seconds isn't critical. And it stacks with Vibrant Alchemist Stone.


**** Section 8) Spirit Link Totem ****
This will be covered once live hits.

TLDR – When grouped and raidwide spike inc, drop this totem. Profit!

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 11:21 AM (PDT) **** Section 9) Healing Ideology ****
To be perfectly honest, I'll need your help here guys. Give me some tips from your raid experience as since I retired, I'm starting to feel the rust. So feel free to add to this, or if someone wants to take the initiative to write this entire section, feel free.

This is the only fuzzy part as I'm still somewhat crafting it out myself. From someone who has been a twitch healer for so long mostly just using Chain heal, the idea of a 'rotation' is still somewhat foreign to me. However I will say this, there is a lot more of a case to be made for maximizing your HPM CD's. In wrath, I was able to heal using a pure hps build, this isn't the case for cata.

Rather than a strict rotation, and a concrete way of 'this is the way you need to do things', here are some general Guidelines.

* We should be placed in the same group as the tanks. With Healing Stream Totem being affected by mastery (in 4.1) and MTT being raid wide, there is no reason for us to be in the 'Healer Group' anymore. A perma mastery boosted HOT on the tanks is valuable.

*Riptide and UE on CD as much as u can. (assuming someone needs healing, otherwise just sit there and regen) Not because it increases your HPS to use them, it doesn't. But the GCD's spent on them, and their proc effects, greatly increase your HPM. And in the long run, thats what you need to do.

* HR is your most efficient spell. Even moreso than HW. But only if it's used properly. If you have a situation where 5+ people will be hit at 60% hp or less, use HR on them. Drill it into the heads of every raider that they NEED to stand in our healing circles when the need healing, the aura heals are the best way to heal for like every raid healer. Alternately if you can teach them to run out when they are full hp, even better.

*Chain is situational, Ideally you cast it on a raid member with a riptide on them. But it's no longer our goto heal. But it's still always a good ideal to sprinkle them in if you can. It's more efficient than GHW and HS, and procs tidal waves. Try not to use it right after a riptide to make the most of your Tidal Waves procs

*HR + CH is your goto AOE heal dump. In any raid situation there will be periods where this will be your goto. Be ready to unload when the time is right.

*HW will still be used a fair bit, but it is usually way down the chart on my healing done. But in periods where you know damage will be light, and most raid bosses have this, stick to using HW even if raiders are somewhat low.. You'll regen mana and be ready for the next spike phase with your bigger spells that need the mana pool.

*UW is best followed with either CH or GHW, and then Riptide right after. The reason being is if Riptide is cast instantly as your CH or GHW lands, both heals can get the UW +% bonus.

Thats about all I can think of for now. I may add to this as time goes on. And do editing here and there... But if you have any comments or additions feel free to post them.


**** Section 10) Healing Methodology ****
This will include addon tips, and some helpful macro type things that I picked up here and there to max the way you place the class using your actual hands.