Playing Well With Others: Resto Shaman

Raiding is a team sport, and knowing your teammates' abilities goes a long way towards a successful night. Instead of griping about why your heals are pitiful compared to someone's or bragging about the meters until people put you on mute, try to understand that each healing class has different tool kits, different strengths, and different weaknesses. With this knowledge, try to mold your own healing so that it works in harmony with your teammates instead of blindly mashing buttons. It can be exhausting to research what each class does, and to put together a battle plan taking those into account on your next fight.

My Guild raids in the 10M format. We don't have the perfect team comp on every fight, but using what I know about different classes helps me flesh out how to best tackle the challenge in front of us. So without further ado, here's a quick and dirty break down of Shaman healing.

Core Spells

Riptide – Direct and HoT, similar to Regrowth

Healing Surge – Fast, expensive direct heal

Healing Wave – Small, mana efficient direct heal

Greater Healing Wave – Large, slow direct heal

Chain Heal – Heals 4 targets, each successive target receives less healing than the previous.

Healing Rain – AOE HOT – the “Big Blue Circle”

Earthshield – Increases the healing done by the shammy on the target and heals its wearer upon hit

Totems – Key to remember: Totems are dropped at the feet of the Shammy! If you're too far away from the totem, you will not receive its benefits.

Healing Stream Totem – Smart HOT, targets most injured player and heals every 2sec for 15 seconds.

Spirit Link Totem – Reduces damage taken/reallocates health pools of raiders within 10 yards 

Mana Tide Totem – Gives 2x the Shammy's spirit to casters for 16sec  – remember Spirit = Mana Regen

Other Talents/CDs/Raid Walls

Ascendance – 3 min CD, the Shammy takes the form of the elemental and all healing done is duplicated and distributed among nearby raiders for 15 seconds

Primal Elementalist – Increases healing done by shammy while Elementals are active

Spirit Walker's Grace – 2 min CD - Allows Shammy to cast while moving for 15 seconds

From a utility standpoint, the Shammies bring a lot to the table. They are the originator of Heroism/Bloodlust, buffing every single person in the raid for a short duration. They bust out the Mana Tide Totem, providing all of us casters extra mana in a pinch. In the current paradigm of capped mana pools, this is an invaluable asset that all of us drool over. Stormlash Totem boosts DPS across the board while it's active, helping to burst down the targets, shortening the fights (every second helps!).

Shammies are well suited to raid healing, which increases dramatically when raiders are stacked up. Stacking up means more people can benefit from Healing Rain and Spirit Link Totem, increasing the effectiveness of the Shammy's AOE heals. While a Shammy may not be your first choice for a tank healer, it can be done – I assure you, I've seen it in action.

Mobility is a challenge to Shammies. Because of that, we Druids work very well as a counterbalance to that when grouped with a Resto Shammy. When we have a fight with movement involved (Garalon for instance), the Druid is a better choice to chase down the tanks and the kiters. With a long CD on Spiritwalker's Grace, it is difficult for a Shammy to pull off stunts like this. If you're faced with a fight where one person has to be a pingpong ball, a Druid is a much better choice than the Shammy. Let the Shammy stand still and rock their heals while you run around like your branches are on fire going “WHEE WHOOSH WHEE HEAL!”

Both Shammies and Druids are excellent raid healers, of course each with their strengths and weaknesses. To successfully work together, remember that you can blanket the raid in a short amount of time, with both your Rejuvenation and Wild Growth. A Shammy's style is very different than yours. Their raid healing is very dependent on positioning, and works best in situations where everyone is stacked. You can argue that both Efflorescence and Mushrooms also benefit from stacking; while this is very true, you have more instant casts than Shammies and can crank those out faster than they can cast their own spells to top people off.

When you're grouped with a Resto Shammy, try to be aware of when they use their Mana Tide Totem. Why? Stagger it with your own Innervate. I encourage my healing team to use their CDs early and use them often. If you stagger your Innervate with the Mana Tide Totem, you can regain your mana twice as often as you can with Innervate alone.

On fights with heavy Tank damage, try to be aware of which tank has the Earthshield. With the revamping of the Lifebloom glyph, it's super fast and mana efficient to swap your Lifeblooms from tank to tank. When both tanks take heavier damage at the same time (think of Lei Shi when the Animated Protectors are up), keeping Earthshield on one tank and a full stack of Lifebloom on the other tank will help to keep their need for heals a bit more even.

I asked our primary Resto Shammy for a bit of advice to anyone raiding with her. Quite simply, she stated, “Whenever possible, please stand in the blue circle.” Stand in the good stuff, not the bad stuff!

TL/DR: Shammies are awesome raid healers, their efficiency in healing increases when the raiders are stacked together. They are far less mobile than Druids. They have awesome utilities, remember to use your own CDs in conjunction with theirs so that everyone is happy. Use and abuse Symbiosis on a resto Shammy to get Spirtwalker's Grace on high damage, high movement fights – Walking Tranq!!