Droodz

Now i know that this is a resto shaman blog, but I've always felt that variety can be a good thing. Doing a complete 180 from a healer, I'm currently trying my hand at tanking. Or leveling a character that I plan on tanking with. Now c'mon, what sounds more frightening, a tiny human with a sword and shield, or a giant bear about to maul you.... I vote for the bear. Druid tanking has always been something I've wanted to do, and now that i am in a healing slump, this is the perfect time. I'm sure I wont actually get him to 80, or even close to it, but I'll post about what i learn as I go along, just to assert my complete lack of understanding of the class.

I take a dip in ulduar

So today i got an invite to ulduar 10m. I wasnt really looking forward to it, but hey, why not right?
We ended up only downing Razorscale and XT, with a few problems on Ignis. Mostly him dropping ppl in flame right after his fireballs and then jets. Not a good combo. I have to say, it was more fun than I thought it would be. Razor is really quite fun from a healing prospective, and XT? Well he is just a bitch. Not because of anything he does really, but instead because ppl dont realize the you HAVE TO MOVE on both bombs. We nearly wiped a few times because ppl wouldnt move on the gravity bombs. All in all I really liked it and am looking forward to going back tomorrow.

3.2 = FUCKING AWESOME

So the official patch notes for 3.2 came out, and if you haven't seen them, they are awesome. I dont play as Enh, and Ele is my pvp spec so I'm going to skip those entirely. But oh boy, the changes for resto are much needed(wanted) and I cant wait.

Restoration

• Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.

WHAA ??? HOLY SHIT!!! 10% dmg recuc is amazing, and in progression raids? I am simply amazed.

• Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.

• Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.

• Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.

HOLY SHIT!!! Okay, lets say your HW hits for 8k untalented, add 2k to that and what do you get?
awesomeness.

• Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
• Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30 second internal cooldown, and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
• Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
• Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.

This was unexpected but nice non-the less. I wasnt one to use LHW all that much, but just think, a properly item
-ized shaman has about 25% crit, add another 25% and for every 2 LHW's you cast, 1 will crit. Awesome.

Combine the new healing way with this and i see more shamans useing HW than spamming LHW. A play stlye Imyself try and use.

• Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

This excites me. It has been long complained about that CH didnt proc IWS. With this update CH will be used
more often(is that possible?) because it wil be less of a mana drain.

Btw, not comsuming charges is awesome. plain and simple.

• Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

This is just epic. All there is to it. 25% more mp5 makes me jump for joy. I will never again have to say "No mana,
sorry u died."(hopefully!)

HW v LHW v CH

So here it is, the big debate between all resto shamans. Im not going to give you long complicated numbers or anything like that because i dont really understand them, this is just going to be how i see it.

HW v LHW
HW: 1044 mana for 8000 base heal.
LHW:626 mana for 4000 base heal.
Now already I can see that you get double base heals for less than double mana with HW. Now we can take into account talents. Healing Way: Increases healing power of next heaing wave on target by 18%, 18% of 8000 works out to be about 1500. If we take into account tidal waves as well, mostly from riptide, you can cast a 1.6 sec HW for around 9.5k heals.

HW beats LHW

HW v CH
HW: 1044 mana for 8000 base heal.
CH: 793 mana for 5300 base heal.
This is a more situalional comparison. For certain situations you are going to need to use CH, it's just neccesary. However, I have seen some shamans use CH no matter what, and this is just wrong. You will get 9.5k on a HW, and only 5.3k on a CH, so for single target healing HW is better.

HW beats CH (situational)

LHW v CH
LHW:626 mana for 4000 base heal.
CH: 793 mana for 5300 base heal.
Once again, this is situational. However, in my opinion, in this case you are going to want to use CH, because it allows you to pass the GCD, and if you have tidal waves you cannot do this with LHW.

CH beats LHW (situational)

Now I know that this seems a little be funky, with me telling you that CH spamming is wrong and then saying that it beats LHW, but bear with, im getting there!. For all single target healing you should use HW, it is more efficent, and allows you to top off a tank faster. For healing a larger group, like melee classes that are close together, CH will be your best bet, and should be what you use. Sure there are going to be times when you should use LHW, like if someone is only down slightly and you dont need a big heal, but other than that, HW is how you should go.

So there it is, my take on one of the bigger issues resto shamans deal with, I dont really care if you dont like it, but if you agree that im happy i could help.
( I didnt take into account any tier bonuses or totems that reduce mana cost, numbers will vary when you take those into consideration.)

My UI and why it works.

I really like my UI. I use Bartender for my bars. Chatter for my chat, And if you can see it i have IceHud as well. I use Mbst for my combat text. This is probably my favorite variation of the UI that i always use. It has grid the help with healing, although I do use raid frames more often( thats what big gap in center is for). This UI allows me a great central view and allows me to track my parties health without looking in the corner of my screen. I'll post a SS of my in a 10m and 25m just so you know what it will look like.

OH HAI....U WAN TOTUMZ???

Look at my shiny new blog!!! Its so shiny....and shiny and new. I play a restoration shaman on the server drenden, and im awesome, not to toot my own horn. I know im not the best, most knowledgeable or experienced healer in the game but i've done my fare share. This blog is something I've wanted to make for a while now, basically since I really got into healing. Im not going to bring you the latest big ass equation on which spells to use, or how you should play, because i dont know what im doing, i just act like i do :) This blog is really for entertainment, because I've done or seen some pretty hilarious things. I might bring some semi informational stuff now and again, but seeing as most of my time outside of a raid is sitting in dalaran with some guildies dancing with my totems i wont be much help. If you like the blog, and what i post than my job is done, if you dont, well then im still going to blog because i enjoy it so suck it!!