Resto Shaman - What can I do to improve?

Hiya! So, off the bat, sorry if this is not the best thing to post. Anyway:

I’m new to Resto Shaman and just had my first heroic raid the other night, and, generally, I’m not very happy with my performance. According to the logs my median performance is just 9.4 and my highest hps was only ~27k. Now, I know gear is an issue (447) and so is inexperience, but I’m just really, really stressed about the numbers.

I’ve tried to watch some videos, and I’ve used WoWAnalyzer as best I can; the problem I’m running into is that the consistent thing WoWAnalyzer offers is to use Riptide and Unleash Life more often, but the reason I’m not using those abilities is because no one needs them – and that goes for a lot of things in general. I feel like the majority of the time the raid was healed to full before I even got my chain heal off.

I guess I’m not exactly sure what to specifically ask for. I want to do more to make a positive impression with my raid team, I feel like I’ve got an okay handle on the class, and now I just… don’t know what to do to improve. What are ways I can practice? What are some resources beyond the basic guides?

Thanks in advance. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Sounds like you should DPS more or use utility like interupts/stuns more often. I’m just starting to get into Resto myself so take this with a huge grain of salt.

Healing parses arent the big thing that officer check in performance as a healer, since it can be abuse like solo healing and stuff. If no one is dying then you squeeze in dps since there nothing to heal, like heroic atm can be solo by a geared healer and decent brain dps/tank.

If you want to impress your raid, just keep putting the effort in wanting to improve, showing up and putting effort in gearing up since you are low ilvl

Best place to learn how to heal and learning your kit is in m+ or pvp, that what i did

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Thanks! I try my best o squeeze in DPS (and things like Earthen Wall) when I can. I guess I just get pretty anxious about this stuff; it’s only my second time rolling with a dedicated group, and that was with hpal, which I was a lot more confident with.

Since you’re in a raid team, i’d suggest talking to your teammates (especially the healers) asking them those same questions you posted here. No better way to show them you’re interested in getting better.

Healing meters only matter to non-healers. Just ignore it completely.

Doing the most healing is like a car company being excited about the most airbag deployments.

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If you post on your shammy, we can look at your talents and try to make some educated guesses.

The thing about shaman heals is that they all interact with each other through buffs. None of our heals are just straight heals aside from Healing Wave and Healing Surge

The reason WoW analyzer is telling you to use riptide and unleash life more often is due to the buffs they provide: riptide giving a stack of Tidal Waves, and unleash life giving a buff to any subsequent heal.

I recommend just practicing and understanding exactly what each of your spells do and how they will effect your next spell.

Sham resto can be complicated and isn’t for everyone, and certainly no-one would blame you for giving it up.

But as a paladin, you’re in luck: you can just stack three glimmer traits with one Breaking Dawn trait and holy shock/light of dawn meme heal your way to to all those delicious orange parses.

It feels like there’s a weird sort of talking-down in your post, which I… don’t understand. (Necroing a two week old post to say that I might not be smart enough to play resto shaman? Come on, man.)

But anyway, I got AOTC and I’m doing just fine with resto now.

4 Likes

No no no. Sorry if it came off that way. I’m saying that Shaman can get pretty complicated when trying to heal effectively due to all the spell/buff interactions and it can be confusing to someone not familiarized with them, beginners particularly.

That last bit there was just my wild jealously coming through over holy paladins getting 80k heals and orange parses with just two heals. lol.

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I wouldn’t really worry to much about that 27k. It is a little low for 447 ilvl but that’s likely due to your other healers outgearing you by quite a bit. I imagine if it was the current heroic raid, then the other healers would have atleast 20 ilvl on you (if not more). This would mean they have more powerfull healing spells and very likely much more haste. They would just top people up before you really had much to heal or you get your heals off.

Gear, corruption and essences go a long way. Not sure if you have Rank 3 Vision of Perfection unlocked yet but that helps alot in a larger raid when put into your major slot as the Healing Tide procs quite often. For Azerite Gear, having atleast 1 of each (Turn of the Tide, Overflowing Shores, and Spouting Spirits) in your gear is a good way to start.

I also wouldn’t worry to much about WoWAnalyzer. It’s not the greatest for healers as it basicaly tells you to cast spells/abilites on cooldown. Healing is very situational and there are times where there is nothing to heal so there is no sense wasting mana. It’s better to just toss out a few lighting bolts or a lavaburst and get some damage in those cases.

If you do post on your shaman we would be able to take a look at your gear and stats and offer more helpfull adivce.

I think you will be just fine. You will get more gear and a higher item level over time and when you get to the same item level as your other healers in the raid, your numbers will likely jump up close to theirs. Just keep gearing up and have fun with it.

On my Resto shaman I use riptide on CD, to keep the buff you get from it up as much as can.
I’ve gotten better now that I anticipate when the raid is about to take a lot of damage by charging my cloud burst totems.
Not sure what the optimal way to charge your cloudburst is but I usually start with unleash life then chain heal, making sure I have high tide so I can cast chain heal twice then assess the situation.
I’m doing normal Ny’alotha right now, so I’m a difficulty below you but it helped me a lot in the raid this week. I went from 32k HPS to 45k HPS.
Though I did get some better gear throughout the week so that also had a factor.