Shaman Guide to Healing

[Nasanna]

Here are some tips I've found to be very helpful for healing for anyone interested in playing a shaman. Many of these tips apply to other healing classes as well.

Here is a list of healing gear from rep rewards, 5-mans, heroics, PVP, Karazhan, and all 25-man raids.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=383470305&sid=1

A good guide to PVE healing:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t19181-shaman_how_heal_like_pro/

Some good tips I've picked up:

Anticipate incoming damage
If you know that someone is going to be hit by an attack or spell, you do not have to wait until they take damageto actually heal them. Start your heal BEFORE they get hit. This is very useful if you know that a boss is casting a spell that does a lot of damage or if the mob is going to enrage, etc.

Down-ranking your heals
When you get a lot of +healing gear, you might find that your max rank healing wave heals for too much.  You don't want to heal the tank for 4000 when he is only down 1000 hp (the extra 3000 healing is known as overheal). By using a lower rank of healing spell, you can avoid this. Downranking also helps save mana.

You do not need every rank of healing wave on your hotbar. Currently, I have ranks that heals for about 4000, 3000, 2000 and 1000 on my hotbar along with lesser healing wave and max rank chain heal.
You can get a mod to help you with this (I use Dr.Damage, found at http://files.wowace.com/) that will estimate how much damage or healing your spells will do based on buffs, talents, and gear and shows this number on the icon for each spell. If you do not want to download a mod, try casting several different ranks on yourself several times to see about how much they heal you.  Then when it comes time to top off the tank, choose the appropriate rank! This will take some practice but it is easy to learn and helps extend your mana.

Just because you are downranking, do not be afraid to use your max rank heals. For bosses that enrage or if the tank's HP falls low, use a big heal. It is okay to overheal if the tank will be taking spiky damage- over healing is better than a dead tank.

You are not a priest
You are a shaman. You have three different healing spells plus earthshield. You do not have PWS to give you extra time to cast a heal. You do not have renew to top people off while you return to healing the tank. You do not have an aoe 30 yard range group heal. You cannot dispel magic debuffs.

This might sound very negative but shamans are quite different from priests. This does not make them bad healers. Besides giving your group damage increasing totems, mana restoration and heroism, a shaman healer's strengths are:

Instant partywide curing of poisons and disease. Just drop a poison cleansing totem or a disease cleansing totem. It will "pulse" when you initially put it down and will dispel all poisons/diseases on party members within 20/30 yards (depending on talents). It will pulse again after 5 seconds and dispel any other diseases or poisons that you or party members may have received. These totems are much more efficient than the "cure disease" or "cure poison" spell. I still keep these on my hotbar in case someone not in my group is poison/diseased.

Earthshield: This spell is unique to shamans. It acts as a "renew" on your tank, healing them whenever they take damage, with approximately 3 seconds between each charge releasing. Put it on the tank at the start of each fight. If you use your trinkets and wrath of air totem when you cast it, each charge will heal for much more than  it normally would. In aoe intensive fights, I often use this on myself. A good example is the Shade of Aran fight in Karazhan. For those  not familiar with the fight, the boss casts spells randomly at party members and cannot be tanked. So you will get health restored to you when you are damaged and can focus on healing the rest of your group. Earthshield also recieves about 300% of your bonus healing.

Chain Heal: No other class has a heal like this. It is very mana efficient. It is great for aoe intensive fights or fights where melee classes take a lot of damage from cleaves, whirlwinds, etc. Generally for trash pulls in instances, I will target the main tank to top him off and let the other two jumps heal the rogues/dps warriors/hunter pets.  Also, if a boss does an aoe and it lands on you and other nearby players, target yourself and cast the heal. It will jump to heal the players around you without taking your time to change targets and heal.

Healing Wave: This will be your main heal. It is fairly efficient. Use downranking to prevent overhealing.

Lesser Healing Wave: This spell is very mana inefficient. Do not use it unless you must cast quickly while moving during a fight. It does not benefit from +healing gear as much as healing wave.

Healing Stream Totem: Although mana spring totem is better if you are in a caster group, you can pop your trinkets and wrath of air totem for a heailng stream that ticks for more.  Very useful if you are healing a melee group.

Totems
Again, something else no other healing class has. Totems allow you to adapt to many different situations and group compositions. Fire, frost, and nature resist totems are great for fights involving a lot of magic from a specific school. Grounding totem will absorb many spells including mana burns and dots.

The hardest part of using totems is often trying to decide which air totem to use.

Wrath of Air: If you have mainly casters in your group, use wrath of air for the extra spell damage and healing.

Grace of Air: Untalented, this will give all party members within range 77 bonus agility. This gives more dodge and crit chances to hunters, rogues, warriors, feral druids, paladins, and enhancement shamans. If I have a warrior and a rogue or a warrior and a hunter in my group, I often use flametongue totem for the weapon proc and grace of air for the added agility.

Windfury: If you have warriors and/or melee paladins in your group, use this totem. It will give them a 20% chance on melee hit to instantly attack a second time with additional attack power. It works even while the person has an enchant on their weapon, such as mongoose or crusader. Rogues often use poisons which override windfury. Mana oils or any other weapon oil will also override windfury. Druids in cat form or bear form do not benefit from weapon procs like windfury. Hunters do not benefit from windfury either. I prefer to use Grace of Air in combination with Flametongue totem.

Mana management during boss fights
If you know in advance that a boss fight will be long and that you will most likely run out of mana before it is over, remember these tips: Drink a mana potion as soon as you have used the max amount it will restore. That way, your next potion cooldown will happen before you are completely out of mana. Drink another potion whenever the cooldown is up, NOT when you run out of mana. Also, use mana tide when you are at about half mana. Do not wait until you are completely out of mana. Then you will have to wait for each pulse, which will hurt your healing. Make sure that other mana using party members are in range to benefit from mana tide.

Stats to Look for: +healing and mp5
These two stats are your main focus as a shaman healer.
Bonus healing directly makes your heals stronger. How much stronger depends on how quickly the spell is cast and how long the spell lasts. Longer heals generally receive a higher percentage of your bonus healing from gear. I would aim for about 500 bonus healing before trying to heal level 70 instances and 1000 bonus healing without buffs before entering heroics or Karazhan.

Mana per 5 is a shamans only way (besides mana totems and potions) to regenerate mana during combat. Shamans do not benefit from spirit. I would aim for about 70mp5 while casting without buffs before entering Karazhan.

Also, do not sacrifice too much int and stamina for +heal and mp5. I would aim for at least 7000hp and 8000 mana without buffs before attempting heroics or Karazhan.

Cloth, Leather, or Mail?
I generally use mail gear. Shamans do not benefit from the spirit often found on cloth gear. Additionally, mail will mitigate more physical damage, which is useful while soloing. However, I will use a cloth or leather piece if it is an upgrade for me and has more +healing or mp5 than my current item.

Here is a guide to mail healing gear that can be found outside of raids. This is a great guide to gearing up for Kara
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=96053656&sid=1

Shield or Staff?
I would go for the shield. In addition to probably giving you more HP, shields will give you more mitigation to physical damage and you can enchant your shield and mainhand. Some shamans do use staves but I have found plenty of healing maces and daggers at level 70, so I use mine in combination with a shield.

[un4]

Nice guide
I'm not sure what the deal is with it now, but I have had windfury proc while using poisons MH/OH before.