Managing Restoration Shaman Cooldowns

[grautod 6]

How Do You Manage Your Cooldowns

Getting the most out of your restoration shaman cooldowns and keeping up the right buffs is key to being an effective shaman healer. So how do you know what to cast ?

I am curious to know what others use. What do you use ?

When introduced to healing it was suggested to use Healbot http://www.curse.com...l-bot-continued and I still do. There is really useful prompts there on who has low health, who has what shield and who has riptide on them. That was a good start, but after a while I found two main challanges with it.

One I was looking at the bars and not what was happening around me as much as I should be if I focused to much on the bars, second it didn't help me understand what to do next (it only told me what was happening) and finally it didn't cover a lot of the the cooldowns I can use.

I wanted a more. Ideally something that was in the middle of the screen with a single prompt telling me what was recommended based on some rules I could manage. After all computers are supposed to be able to process information fast, why shouldn't I be able to get some of this power working for me!

This is when I found http://www.curse.com.../wow/clctracker. This provides a customisable heads-up display base on LUA code you can write. So after installing the add-on and following the basic setup instructions https://sites.google...iki/first-steps I was ready to explore my own personal heads-up display.

I started with simple steps... If a cooldown is available put it up on the screen. This was good for a while but with soooo many for Restoration Shaman I had to consolidate them plus I wanted to build some level of intelligence into the tool providing a recommendation based on the state of my toon and the raid.

In the end I created a script which provides awareness of some key points and based on this it makes a recommendation on which cooldown or spell I MIGHT need to cast to keep up buffs like Tidal Waves and let me know when cooldowns like Healing Stream Totem were ready to use again. It can never replace situational awareness and understanding your class capabilities but it does take some of the heavy lifting out.

So back to the question at hand... How do you manage your cooldowns ?

Edited July 1, 2013 by grautod

[Stoove 347]

For me, managing cooldowns is all about careful preparation before the fight. When it comes to big throughput CD's, Shaman have LOADS (I personally think too many) so planning exactly when to use them is key! For fights like Megaera, I ask my fellow healers to take a cooldown rotation with me - normally I cover 90% of the mechanics with at lease something and we try to work it so that both the others get to use their 3min cooldowns twice as well.

On less predictable fights I tend to say this; pop cooldowns at the first sign of danger and they will usually be up for the end of the fight (where they are important to use to ensure victory). Primordius is a good example of this!

In terms of HUDs I use Vuh'do and Power Auras 5 (the beta that was retracted). Vuh'do sits to the left of my screen (to keep the centre of the screen free) and I have my Auras looking like their WoW icons below the centre of the screen. I have timers built into the Auras, and I keep track of all the major cooldowns (incl. Spiritwalker's Grace & Mana Tide) as well as Riptide, Healing Stream, Chain Heal, Healing Rain, Unleash Elements, my elementals, and some more. I vary icon size by importance, so Riptide, HST, CH, and HR are very big and UE & elementals are very small.

I think dropping HST on cooldown is so important that I even put an annoying sound in to tell me when it comes off cooldown.

[Stoove 347]

As an interesting addition to this subject, those of you not shy of numbers could check out my Experimentalcraft ™ regarding Ancestral Guidance, Healing Tide Totem, and Ascendance. The results may surprise you (the Theorycraft I tested certainly surprised me!).