Resto Shaman

[Talibear 3]

Is there a way to increase my speed to keep up with tanks? Also, are there ways to cast while moving?

What is a combat rez and how do I pull it off?

I am sure it goes without me saying... but clearly I am on my first toon and first time on WoW. Lvl 70. Hordes.

Appreciate any pointers!

[Mike 1]

Hi!

I am playing resto shammy for 1 year. It is a very decent heal at high levels, with plenty of utility stuff for party or raid.

First of all, lvl 70 - is quite low to understand the mechanics of shammy. Keep leveling At this levels you should be able to heal your party very efficiently, if they don't do weird things.

You standard one-target healing cycle is: Riptide - Healing wave - Healing wave, or when big amout of damage comes - Riptide - Greater Heal - Greater Heal. Use Healing Surge only during critical situations, like when tank lower then 30% HP, otherwise you just wasting mana.

Keep your earthliving weapon, water shield and earth shield on tank up. This should be enough till 85 or even 90 lvl.

Combat rez - is not about you You have no abilty to resurrect somebody during the combat.

You cannot cast while moving. You will get a very strong skill 'Spiritewalker grace' which gives you ability to cast while moving for 12 seconds at 85 lvl. This skill quite useful in certain raid encounters, but it is not a killer-feature of shaman.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Mike

[Stoove 347]

If you absolutely have to move and heal, then using Riptide and Unleash Elements will give you a small amount of healing while you move. Also, if you spec into Ancestral Swiftness then you will be able to instant cast one heal every so often. That's quite useful.

A good way to speed up is to use Ghost Wolf form - I have it bound to shift-mouse4. I recommend that you use it whenever moving! :)

Good luck!

[Krakir 28]

Is there a way to increase my speed to keep up with tanks?

At level 70, they're moving fast through the dungeons. It will slow down when they hit higher levels. At low levels everything is just mass-pulled and AoEd down.

Make sure you have Earth Shield and Riptide on him at all times. That should keep him up 90% of the time. Also keep popping Healing Stream Totem down on every cooldown. These three things will continue to be your stable at endgame and practicing 100% uptime is a good thing. Also make sure Earthliving Weapon is on your weapon, that will trigger another HoT (Heal over Time) on the tank.

Also, are there ways to cast while moving?

You can cast your instant spells on the move. Like I mentioned before: Earth Shield, Riptide (Don't glyph it low levels, it should give you a half-decent initial heal). Same with Healing Stream Totem. Unleash Elements is also instant. (Gained at level 81). You should target your tank with that. You can talent into Ancestral Swiftness that's a cooldown that gives you an instant spell. So you could press it and then use Greater Healing Wave to hit a big instant heal.

At level 85 you will gainSpiritwalker's Grace which is a cooldown that lets you cast while moving for 15 sec every 2 minutes.

What is a combat rez and how do I pull it off?

You can't pull it off since you're a shaman. Combat res (a.k.a Rebirth) is a spell originally given to druids. They could then res players in the middle of the fight. Death Knights and Warlocks also have this ability today with Raise Ally and Soulstone, respectively. You can battle res yourself with Reincarnate or Ankh as most people call it, since in vanilla you had to have reagent called Ankh to do this. Reincarnation gives you the ability to res yourself when you die in combat, but you can't res others in combat. Hence no combat res for your

I am sure it goes without me saying... but clearly I am on my first toon and first time on WoW. Lvl 70. Hordes.

Gratz, welcome to WoW!

Appreciate any pointers!

1) Start practicing with keybinds. Find a good guide on keybinds (google: wow keybinds) and practice, it will make you a better player. You'll want to have keybinds for abilities and turn with your mouse instead of keyboard. Avoid backpaddling (using S to walk backwards, turn the mouse and walk).

2) Get a good healing addon that lets you see everything that is going on like debuffs and track your ES charges and your riptides.

3) Have fun with your tools. Hex is a great way to minimize dmg in dungeons. Tanks get hit less, you don't have to heal as much. Same with Bind Elemental.

4) Practice interrupting, Wind Shear is a great range interupt spell. Watch for cast bars on enemies and practice interrupting. Interrupting flame bolt is easier than healing it up on the tank.

5) Have fun and experiment with your totems.

- You can minimize tank dmg when he masspuls by placing Capicator Totem to stun everybody.

- You can remove fear by placing Tremor Totem.

- You can minimize damage sometimes by using Grounding Totem.

- If you get aggro, you can throw earthbind or earthgrab totem and kite the adds. Or to slow them for the tank.

In short, go through your spellbook and have fun with it. See what happens when you do certain things, try out your spells. Knowing your full toolkit will make you a better player that can react to different scenarios.

Good luck and remember to have fun, its a game!

Edited July 23, 2013 by Krakir

[Talibear 3]

Hi!

Hello :)

First of all, lvl 70 - is quite low to understand the mechanics of shammy. Keep leveling At this levels you should be able to heal your party very efficiently, if they don't do weird things.

The major problem i'm having is the tank running out of my range before a spell hits off and/or lose LoS.

You standard one-target healing cycle is: Riptide - Healing wave - Healing wave, or when big amout of damage comes - Riptide - Greater Heal - Greater Heal. Use Healing Surge only during critical situations, like when tank lower then 30% HP, otherwise you just wasting mana.

at these levels, i usually run across a tank with another player who thinks he's tank. so far, i've been throwing on primary tank Earth Shield - Riptide - Chain Heal. Depending on boss, i will also throw Healing Rain. I am guilty of Healing Surge, so I'll keep that in check.

Keep your earthliving weapon, water shield and earth shield on tank up. This should be enough till 85 or even 90 lvl.

Shows how much i know... I will go look up earthliving weapon. I thought I could only throw one elemental shield at a time? I've been throwing water shield on myself and earth shield on tank.

Combat rez - is not about you You have no abilty to resurrect somebody during the combat.

You cannot cast while moving. You will get a very strong skill 'Spiritewalker grace' which gives you ability to cast while moving for 12 seconds at 85 lvl. This skill quite useful in certain raid encounters, but it is not a killer-feature of shaman.

Drat T.T;; Ah well. I will play with that when I get it.

[Talibear 3]

If you absolutely have to move and heal, then using Riptide and Unleash Elements will give you a small amount of healing while you move. Also, if you spec into Ancestral Swiftness then you will be able to instant cast one heal every so often. That's quite useful.

A good way to speed up is to use Ghost Wolf form - I have it bound to shift-mouse4. I recommend that you use it whenever moving!

Good luck!

Thanks!! Ghost Wolf has been my saving grace. I'm a key-binder by habit, so i got it on ";". Though, I have yet to learn how to use a mouse, since I pretty much only used laptops my whole life. It kind of sits useless next to my laptop, only used when looting or need/greed. I have all the party members key-bound right now since I can't do raids. I use the keys to move since when I use the mouse, I tend to zoom instead of move.

[Talibear 3]

1) Start practicing with keybinds. Find a good guide on keybinds (google: wow keybinds) and practice, it will make you a better player. You'll want to have keybinds for abilities and turn with your mouse instead of keyboard. Avoid backpaddling (using S to walk backwards, turn the mouse and walk).

2) Get a good healing addon that lets you see everything that is going on like debuffs and track your ES charges and your riptides.

3) Have fun with your tools. Hex is a great way to minimize dmg in dungeons. Tanks get hit less, you don't have to heal as much. Same with Bind Elemental.

4) Practice interrupting, Wind Shear is a great range interupt spell. Watch for cast bars on enemies and practice interrupting. Interrupting flame bolt is easier than healing it up on the tank.

5) Have fun and experiment with your totems.

- You can minimize tank dmg when he masspuls by placing Capicator Totem to stun everybody.

- You can remove fear by placing Tremor Totem.

- You can minimize damage sometimes by using Grounding Totem.

- If you get aggro, you can throw earthbind or earthgrab totem and kite the adds. Or to slow them for the tank.

In short, go through your spellbook and have fun with it. See what happens when you do certain things, try out your spells. Knowing your full toolkit will make you a better player that can react to different scenarios.

Good luck and remember to have fun, its a game!

I mentioned my relationship to my mouse above. Key-binds are what i'm just comfortable with, but I am suspicious that I'll need to change this up a lot when I'm high level enough to raid and such. I'll definitely have to read up on my spellbook because my totems are sitting on my bars wondering if they'll ever get used probably.

Where can I find addons?

[Nemo 27]

Welcome to the game and these lovely forums

Thumps up for asking all these questions. Seeking help when in doubt is the tell of someone who's got the potential to be a great player.

Like you I'm fairly new to shaman healing. Therefore I'll let more experienced people help you out with the specifics such as spell usage and the like (while keeping an eye out for pointers).

Addons however, I know.

First of all I would warmly recommend the addon ElvUI. It's a complete user-interface, which can be extensively customized to fit your requirements. It also works great right out of the box. ElvUI offers nearly(!) all the things you'll need to play the game at the highest level, so instead of having 20 addons which all need to be set up individually, you can settle at four or five. Of course you might be one of those people who love to search the web for new addons

A lot of people who frequent this site have found ElvUI very much to their liking. It can be found at www.tukui.org along with a client that makes updating it and searching for plugins (if you want to customize it even more) very easy.

Most other addons can be found at www.curse.com, there are thousands of them, so make sure to research a bit before you start downloading.

Also be sure to note if an addon you are about to download is updated to work with the current version of the game - patch 5.3. It usually says so in the description.

Beyond ElvUI I would personally recommend looking at the addon-sections of the class guides on this site, for inspiration.

Addons are a lot like friends: It's better to have a few, but very good ones, than to have many mediocre.

At least that is my philosophy.

Best of luck

Edited July 23, 2013 by Nemo

[Talibear 3]

Thanks for the encouragement!

Today I focused on using totems. I haven't added the add on yet but all the code on this site frankly confuses me. Do I need to keep typing thsm in or is it a one-time deal?

[Mike 1]

The major problem i'm having is the tank running out of my range before a spell hits off and/or lose LoS.

Then just ask them to stay close. If they want to live - they have to :)

at these levels, i usually run across a tank with another player who thinks he's tank. so far, i've been throwing on primary tank Earth Shield - Riptide - Chain Heal. Depending on boss, i will also throw Healing Rain. I am guilty of Healing Surge, so I'll keep that in check.

5ppl instances are not a good place for Healing Rain - to low number of people under it.

Major feature of Riptide - is hasting up 2 following healing waves. It doesn't haste Chain Heal. But for Chain Heal there is also a buff from Riptide - if the first target of Chain Heal has Riptide on it, than amount of Chain heal is greatly increased.

Don't forget about Healing Stream Totem. In my gear it gives 10-20% of healing done.

Shows how much i know... I will go look up earthliving weapon. I thought I could only throw one elemental shield at a time? I've been throwing water shield on myself and earth shield on tank.

Yes, you did absolutely correct.

Couple of words about keybinds.

All my heals are binded to Q, E, R, T, F, V, C, X, Z keys. They are pretty close to ASWD cross, and could be pressed with Alt to heal myself. Major cooldowns I bind to F1-F4 keys. Or Shift+Z - Shift+V. This is just an opinion. Experiment and find out the appropriate scheme for you!

[Drafty53 17]

If there is one thing I can recommend based on your original and then subsequent posts is to learn to play with a mouse. I cannot even begin to explain how large of an improvement you will see. If you plan to play at max level and get involved in end game content (Anything from 5-mans to LFRs to normals and Heroics) mouse-over macro's of some variation are a must (It can be with add-ons like Clique or standard @mousover macros). This can only be achieved by using a mouse. I highly reccommend switching to the WASD keys to move and using the mouse to help. You can strafe by right clicking on the screen and hitting either A or D. It will feel strange for a bit, but it will help tremendously down the road. After a while you will wonder how you ever played without it...I know from experience .

Now, I know you are new and you may know it, but a mouse over macro process looks like this...Click open the little computer icon (mini menu opens up), Click on Macros. From there you should click New and then pick an icon and name. I always match the ability icons so if we are making a macro for "Healing Wave", we would select the Healing Wave icon from the list and name it something like "HW". In the macro text box we would put:

#showtooltip Healing Wave (Makes it so that when we hover over the icon we still get the toolbox)

/cast [@mouseover,exists,help][@target,exists,help][@player] Healing Wave

Now it looks complicated but it's not. This tool will now allow you to just HOVER over a persons name with the mouse pointer to heal. If you are not actively hovering over a person at the time you press the bind it will heal your current target if it can. If either of those two requirements are not met, it will cast it on yourself. So lets say we bound this macro to "1". We would simply put the mouse over the person name we want to heal and hit 1. You don't actually have to click the persons name and then click a bind or spell to heal them. This serves two beneficial purposes. 1. You can keep an enemy target/boss as your main target in order to see important cast's, debuffs, mechanics coming up that happen at certain boss %'s, etc. 2. It actually saves a tiny bit of time, which sometimes can be life or death (dramatic, but it's true). I still recommend keeping the Main Tank as your focus.

Again, I know you are new and at this point just by coming and posting on forums and reading guides like the ones here at Icy veins you are leaps and bounds ahead of the other new player's. So keep it up. As you hit later and eventually max level's you should really spend the time to research topics such as UI layouts, Add-ons, Keybind layout and Macro's. Those four areas can take you from an average player to a really good player with some playing around.

Hope none of this seems to daunting, at first it was for me as well, but after a while, playing around with and learning about add-ons, my UI and macro's has become one of the more fun games withing the game. Keep it up and enjoy your shaman, they are great!

Edited July 24, 2013 by Drafty53

[Stoove 347]

Regarding playing with a mouse, you can find a happy medium using an addon such as Clique or Vuh'do (I use the latter). These allow you to bind your heals to specific key+click combinations. Eg: Healing Wave I have set to left mouse, Riptide to right mouse. Earth Shield is Shift+mouse4. All you have to do is hover your mouse over the target and press the key combination.

The advantage of this method over mouseover macros are twofold; 1) You don't fill your macro storage up before you can do anything interesting, and 2) you have more space on your keyboard for binding things like damage spells, extra totems, and big cooldowns.

For instance, I have Spacebar set up as a keybind. Without Vuh'do I'd be using that for a Riptide mouseover macro but with Vuh'do I can use that for Wind Shear instead. Once you have that bound to space you'll never miss an interrupt again! :)

A good guide on best practices in keybinding can be found here. It should give you a good idea on how some players set it up, but don't take it as gospel. There are advantages to other schemes that you can make up yourself :)

Finally, I'd say that if there's one thing that I'd recommend if you're wanting to raid or something is to get used to using that mouse for movement! It can save your raid.

Good luck! ^__^

[Stoove 347]

Also, we've had some fantastic responses to this thread. I'm very proud of that. Likes for everyone!

[Nemo 27]

Thanks for the encouragement!

Today I focused on using totems. I haven't added the add on yet but all the code on this site frankly confuses me. Do I need to keep typing thsm in or is it a one-time deal?

Good idea with the totems. Practising using them is a great idea, since they offer a huge amount of utility once you get to know them

Regarding code:

I'm not quite sure what you are referring to, but I believe you might be confusing addons with macros. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

With addons you shouldn't worry about coding at all. They are plugin-programs that, once downloaded, will add or change certain aspects of the game. The addon 'Recount', for example, will add a number of graphs to your screen, which are helpful to compare your output to that of other players you are playing with. It looks like this.

There are a great many addons, which can help you play the game at your highest potential.

Once again, I would like to recommend ElvUI (it really is awsome!) which can be set up to look something like this.

Addons are installed either via a client program, which means you just have to hit the 'download and install-button'. Then, when you log into the game they will be in effect and you can start setting them up the way you like. There are some great guides on youtube.com on how to do this

The other way to install addons is by downloading the files from your internet browser and then dragging the files directly into the WoW folders on your computer. I believe the path is something like WoW > interface > addons.

Otherwise just google "how to install addons, wow", there are sure to be helpful guides

Macros are a whole different beast.

The essence of a macro is when you code a button to do more (or simply something different) than what it would otherwise do.

The simplest macro is probably when you setup a button, which you then place somewhere on your actionbars, to cast two different spells with only one press.

Something like this:

#showtooltip

/cast Elemental Mastery

/cast Ascendance

You only have to set this macro up once (for every computer you use to play the game). From then on it's as simple as pressing the button.

Drafty53's explanation of mouseover-macros are also pretty good example. Most likely a better one

Making macros is done ingame, once again as explained by Drafty53.

It looks complicated, but actually it is fairly easy to learn on a basic level, which is all you need.

I encourage you to play around with macros. Once you've grown used to them (i.e. learned how to make them) you'll fall in love with them.

If you are still a bit unsure about the whole thing, which is perfectly understandably, go look up some short guides on youtube. There is a lot of good stuff out there.

Last I would like to remind you that playing the game in this way (with macros, addons and whatnot) is by no means the 'right' way to play WoW.

However it is all but required if you want to play the game at the highest level - be that raiding or pvping - and this is what most people on these forums enjoy doing.

I certainly find looking for addons, building macros and customizing my user-interface to be very enjoyable. Also I love seeing the results I can achieve by experimenting with these things. It's a whole different level of the game - not a better one, mind you - than what comes in the box.

However, if that's not for you, then that is absolutely fine! We are all just playing to have fun, after all and you can certainly have great fun without all these things

Edited July 24, 2013 by Nemo

[Moozedude 47]

While speaking of addons, I would definitely recommend Deadly Boss Mods (or similar boss-tracking addon). It's especially great as you're learning the fights. It will tell you when the big hits are coming, when to interrupt key abilities, and other assorted alerts. Even though it's primarily for raiding, it's a nifty tool and it's good to get used to the big blue text.