Edit: Please check out Shaman Raid build 2.0 for updates.
I have gone over the shaman trees over and over again. I have looked for synergies between each skill and tried to maximize the Resto build to be both viable for the normal raid healing chain heal casting Resto shaman and the crit happy proc shaman. All that work has now resulted in the following build.
Resto Shaman Raid Build – 0/13/58
The main concepts behind this build was maximize spell crit potential to increase the proc percentage of ancestral healing, improved water shield (augmented by improved shields in the enhancement tree) and ancestral awakening while still giving the shaman the standard healing talents for healing efficiency with mana and threat reduction.
One obvious omission from this build was the improved earth shield. The extra 2 charges stacked with the 10% healing on each charge would be nice, but I did not want to sacrifice any crit or threat reduction talents. I did think about dropping Tidal Force and Cleanse Spirit to give me the two points for improved earth shield, but I have found Cleanse Spirit too convenient to drop and Tidal Force would give me a much better chance to proc during tank healing.
Glyphs for this build should be as follows:
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Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave (Major) – Your Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more if the target is also affected by your Earth Shield.
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Glyph of Healing Wave (Major) – Your Healing Wave also heals you for 20% of the healing effect when you heal someone else.
-
OR
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Glyph of Earthliving Weapon (Major) – Increases the chance for your Earthliving weapon to trigger by 5%.
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Glyph of Water Mastery (Major) – Increases the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%.
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Glyph of Water Shield (Minor) – Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1
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Glyph of Water Breathing (Minor) – Your Water Breathing spell no longer requires a reagent
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Glyph of Renewed Life (Minor) – All stats increased by 5% for 1 min when you reincarnate.
To round out the proc shaman, the lesser healing wave glyph is a must for LHW spam for tank healing. As for the Healing Wave vs. Earthlinving it is a toss up based on your play style. If you find that you don’t cast HW that much then you might want to take the increases HoT proc, but having an ability that heals myself without having to think about it is a win in my book.
As for the minor glyphs it is always a toss up. I find the underwater breathing glyph to be very convenient and the extra 5% after a reincarnation could help fix a bad pull or boss fight. As for the water shield, it is probably negligible, but the less I have to cast it and waste a global cool down the better.
Keep in mind the build/glyph combo is not perfect and I am sure there are others viable versions out there. All my work on this build so far has been done in pieces while healing 5 mans and I won’t have the full workings of the build completely hammered out until raiding starts, but till then I will be confident that my experience and research have lead to a viable raid build.
Hoof n' Healz 
31 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 2, 2008 at 6:03 am
Aurik
I’ve also spent a lot of time hemming and hawing about talent choices and I’m not sure I’m entirely satisfied with what I have but there are a few things I would think about changing from what you have for a raid build.
First and foremost I’d remove the points from healing grace. These are really, honestly, not needed. I was raiding without healing grace pre-Wrath and I’ve now done a few raids without it within Wrath and aggro is really, truly, not an issue.
The other talent I’ve missed out for raiding is healing focus. With the current way knockback now affects casting this is nearly worthless and, in a raid, you should not find yourself taking much or any knockback.
The third is debatable but I’ve found it to work very well – putting only one point in improved water shield. I have tried 3/3 and 1/3 and, for raiding, I’ve found 1/3 gives me a nice amount of regen without having to sacrifice too many GCD’s refreshing my water shield. Personal taste, really, but on some bosses I’m really glad not to be losing my water shield every few heals.
So, where would I put the points?
Improved earth shield – my earth shield accounted for about 12% of my healing on our Patchwerk fk – not insignificant and certainly a nice buffer for your tank. In ten-mans I’ve found the significance of Earth Shield rises even further.
Having two extra charges i also really nice when you’re fighting the GCD.
Elemental Weapons – You’re going to use earthliving anyway, might as well make it more useful. This is a debateable talent as it really doesn’t amount to much extra +healing.
If you’re going to be doing ten mans primarily and know you’ll be the only shaman there then putting points in enhancing totems isn’t a terrible idea either.
Focused Mind – You could swap points from healing focus into here but I’m not sure it’s terribly worth it unless you’re going to be up against bosses that you know will do silence or interrupt effects. I have one point in it, at the moment.
Imp. Reincarnation – This talent has gotten a lot of hate but, in my opinion, it is invaluable when learning new fights and paired with the reincarnation minor glyph can be a make-or-break for a boss kill. Reincarnation, without imp. reinc is pretty much useless – you have almost no mana to heal with and will most likely die quickly again if the boss does any splash dmg. Really this should be made trainable >o
Glyphs: Any reason why you don’t reccomend glyph of chain heal? Its not a whole lot of healing but it does still scale and unless there are only shamans in your raid group you’ll still find yourself throwing around a lot of these buggers (especially since it procs those tasty fast LHW/HW’s).
Personally I’d say this build was more suited to what you say you’ve been running – 5 mans. I’ll be doing similar to you, though, and slowly tweaking my build about to see what actually gives the most benefit for raiding in the long run.
I’ve heard tell of some interesting enhance/resto builds for dedicated chain-healers which allow for dual weilding, double earthliving and, of course, extra spellpower from enchants. Certainly something different – and something I’d love to see the numbers on!
Love your blog btw, been following it for a while but I’m a bit of a shy commenter ^^; (you wouldn’t believe that from the above essay, right?)
/hug
December 2, 2008 at 1:15 pm
drug
I agree with Aurik on the Healing Grace question. Just drop that one. Healing doesn’t generate enough aggro to make it worth. And if you pull aggro, it is because your tank has near to zero aggro on a mob and there healing grace won’t help you.
In my own blog I recommended leaving out healing focus as well, as I did fine like that in a raiding environment. Unfortunately my gild has still no raiding holy paladin, so without concentration aura and with me doing a lot of heroic instances i switched it back in, in heroic instances many loose mobs will beat on you making this talent insanely helpful.
I did leave out Ancestral Awakening, as in a raid it feels crappy. You’ll still use chainheal too much and when it proccs, a lot of healing is eaten by some sort of pets. If I respecc the next time I absolutely want to try it out for heroic runs though where I’m just LHW spamming.
I updated my discussion of resto talents on my blog and posted an adjusted build at the end:
http://www.shieldsup.ch/2008/11/24/resto-talent-discussion-pre-naxx/
December 2, 2008 at 4:03 pm
jagerbombz
@ Aurik: Wow, you might be a shy commentor, but when you have something to say it is well worth it. I agree with you on healing grace. I don’t have it in my build yet at 76 and honestly I haven’t had it since 3.0.1 came out and after your comment I might reconcider dropping it.
Honestly I totally forgot about the chain heal glyph. A think the choice on the third glyph is going to be based more on play style than requirement. I find that I still cast CH, but defiently not as much as I used to. I find that I use Riptide/LHW and HW much more now and I think that will be the same in raids atm since in 10 mans I am the main healer.
But yeah, there is going to be some tweaking as more of us get to raiding but I think the fact that we are not required to be CH spam machines now opens up a whole new area for the shaman healer.
December 2, 2008 at 4:18 pm
jagerbombz
@drug: Yeah healing focus is a must in 5 mans/Heroics. I ran Strathome last night and without healing focus things would have been much worse and for that reason I am going to keep it atleast until I am healing raids 100%.
December 3, 2008 at 9:54 am
flowtrol
Hi, i’ld like too say something, as others said, healing grace is no longer needed. But i’ld like to ad tho, I’ve been trying to work out a viable WOTLK raid-healing build, and i’ve come up with 0/16/55
Yes shamans are no longer limited to spamming chain heal, and have become “not to bad” tank healers as well, having said that, i’m lucky enough to be in a very good guild, and have allready cleared every heroic raid in wotlk available at the moment, you are, and allways will be a chain heal machine. period. I put 16 points in the enhanced tree like urself (intellect, shield, crit & IMPROVED WEAPON BUFF) (30% more healing from earthliving weapon is nice :))
the spec i use is roughly the same as urs, only i have improved earth shield (either for tank or for boomkin/shadowpriests to keep em from having spell pushback), and i have 3 points in elemental weapons in enhanced tree, furthermore, i only spec 3/5 in tidal waves, because:
1: you get a lot of haste on T7 / 213level gear
2: we are imo still chainheal spammers, by the time we need to cast a LHW or HW, the 60% chance is bound to have procced by then
glyphs i use are :
Glyph of chain heal
Glyph of water mastery
Glyph of earthliving
i know without HW & LHW the procchance of imp water shield is kinda lowered, but i try to use riptide whenever possible to get a proc of it / top of tank
build :
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0xxIZxceuVxoxkrIRu
December 8, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Patrik
As I have cleared Naxx 25man now I can say this.
In my guild we are 2 Resto shammy’s.
Me with glyph and some specc for LHW spam and such and the otherone with a more CH specc and glyphs.
With my specc I always end up before my CH buddy and I got faster response time then my holy paladin friends.
On Patchwerk I ended up before the paladin on tank heal, LHW spam.
I must say also that Ancestral Aweking is just not that good. In a raid enviorment it does 2% or maybe 4% of my effective healing done, 4% in longer raids. Therefor I think I will leave it out it’s not worth the points.
And for the Healing Focus, you shouldn’t be needing that one. Not even in a heroic instance with large groups of mobs as all tanks have some kind of AoE ability/spell. DK-Death and Decay, Warriors-Thunderclap and Shout, Paladins-Cencercrate, Druids-Swipe and Shout.
Healer will never take aggro, well only if tank and healer have large space between then and if healer get spawns on them.
Earthliving, yes it’s really nice but I wouldn’t use the glyph as I think there are better ones to have.
My major glyphs today are:
– Mana Tide, for raiding it’s very nice.
– Lesser Healing Wave, as I’m going for tank healing.
– Water Mastery, it’s a must.
My rotation, if you can have one as healer, are something like this:
CH – LHW – LHW – Riptide/CH – LHW – LHW – Water Shield rebuff – Riptide
My current build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZhLxhZxbeuVxoxkrIRt
But will try without AA and imp Anhk on next raid week.
Also I very much like and think you should use Imp Earth Shield, saves mana on that you don’t have too reapply it that often. =)
December 9, 2008 at 10:53 am
flowtrol
Ok after some more extensive testing, i’m now pretty sure the spec i mentioned earlier is the way to go for the raid-healing shammy, i’ve stayed my spec since i specced like that and the other shaman in my guild (did roughly the same amount on healing when we were both full sunwell/T6, with same spec, so he we are the same lvl of skill) specced differently to notice the difference. He has specced into LHW/HW with the required glyphs etc. , and got nowhere even close to me (7 healers, CoH priest doing 19% healing, me 18.7% healing, other CoH priest 16%, LHW shaman 11.1% then pala’s en druids. He complained that, with the druids keeping hots on the tanks, and the palas making sure that the tanks are ok, he felt a bit “useless” (for example Patchwerk, if he spams LHW, he was still 60% full mana when he died, whilst i was at 15% mana left (without using pot) yet i did a lot more healing as my chainhealspamming jumped of to the other tanks that were getting hatefull strikes)
yes i ran oom faster, but i don’t run oom anywhere in Naxx/maly/sarth – not running oom is important but i don’t see the point in having 75% of ur mana left troughout every fight you encounter? we usually have both resto shamans in 1 healergroup anyway for double mana spring/tide 🙂 also a comment on earthliving, my “rotation” is basicly spamming Chain heal with riptide on the MT then i do chainheal of the MT when riptide is about to run off, for the rest i use riptide only to for example, top somebody / save somebody when i’m running or need to react fast, and i’ve noticed my healing is : 91% chain heal 4.5% riptide 3% earthliving . Wich is imo quite a lot seeing as i do use LHW / HW in extremis when tanks are getting low or some lock got aggro or something like hthat, and i don’t even get more then 1.5% of those 2 toghetter. Might be my playstyle tho. But recount kinda likes me (5.9k HPS on gloatheb :P) and i hear from every where CoH priests are that much in front of everybody, wich is just, not true here, they are allways first, but ‘im allways right behind them, then leaving a big gap to the other healers
December 9, 2008 at 3:12 pm
jagerbombz
@ flowtrol: thanks for posting your findings. It seems that you are running a lot of 25 man raids. At the moment we will being 10 mans so I am usually in the roll as main healer and I am not sure spam chain heals will work all the time. I will be able to have a better idea after tonight when we run our first Naxx run. It should be fun…three healers…all resto shamans.
December 9, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Patrik
@flowtool
I did better on Patchwerk as LHW spamming shaman then my resto buddy, was on seconed place when hit was down. And I had ~40% mana left and only used Mana Tide (you can get 2 in this fight).
And I don’t know about you but using Chain Heal on Patch is a big no no. Most beacuse you have to have all you melee so low in hp so hateful strikes never hits em and easiest way is too have them go down in slime once, and Chain Heal wil heal them up therefor when OT takes hateful and are not toped melee gets killed.
And know it feels like I should try CH specc and glyphs just too se if I can compete with the CoH priests and druids on Malygos too. =/
December 9, 2008 at 4:06 pm
flowtrol
i will try the healingwave spec this reset, as it would appear its very viable also (i’m kinda a habbitual person so i’m not really keen on changing my way to heal, but better healing is better healing :P, ur comment about patchwerk is a bit wrong tho imo, melee don’t really take a lot of damage afaik, and chain heal allways jumps to the person that needs the healing most? (i could be misinterpretting certain tooltips tho :)) our tanks have :(MT 42k hp, 2 OTS 33-35k hp) i don’t see any melee comming close to that tbh, so i don’t really see the reason why i shouldn’t chain heal? we usually have 2 pala’s on the MT, 1 shammie each on an OT, then holy priest & druids spamming the 3 of them, no raid healing :))
@ jagerbombz, i do totally agree that chain healing spec is probably not a good idea with 3 resto shammise 😀 i’m talking only about the 25-man raids, if you want a 5 man / 10 man spec i’m sure there are much better specs then the one i suggested
@ topic: i changed my spec to 0/19/52 ( I dropped Ancestral Awakening as it doesn’t proc with chain heal, i’ve put it into Enhanced totems (15% more SoA & Flametongue) (we don’t have an enhanced shammy atm ) Seems to work very well (i’m 1847+ healing unbuffed), thx to enhanced talents etc. i get too 2100+ healing selfbuffed now, and my fellow casters love me for the improved flametongue totem 🙂
haven’t checked if the imp strength of air stacks with horn of winter and/or its better 🙂
many greetings
December 10, 2008 at 3:47 pm
flowtrol
Ok, 0/19/52 is useless as flametongue totem & wrath of air totem don’t stack, and we usually have a elemental shammie in the raid so ignore my last @topic 🙂 for the ppl interested, SoA-totem overwrites horn of winter when you specced it as it does 15% more agi & str then horn of winter 🙂
December 17, 2008 at 8:22 am
Haioken
I’ve found the best possible spec/glphs for me at least is 0/16/55
I dont use threat reduction healing grace, its unecessary. Tidal Force.. I avoid because I’ve never ever used it, it seems to be more of an on-demand talent and I’ve never found a time where I’ve said “damn I wish I had that”.
Now I get a lot of shit from people because I don’t spam chain heal. The reason I don’t is because chain heal is also an on demand heal for me. I use it when it’s necessary, such as when we have ranged stacked. If people are spread out I’m not wasting a 2.5 second cast (2.2 with my gear/totem) that might only hit one person. I can easily get 2 lessers off and a riptide then 2 more lessers at 0.9 seconds each. Makes more sense to me.
I put points into ancestral awakening because thats my new chain heal.
I never use Healing Wave (therefore no points in healing way). Also no points into the interrupt/silence talent and nothing in nature’s guardian (pvp imo).
The point I sacrifice (and I”ve been laughed at but it hasn’t bothered me yet, especially since only 2 disruptions now anyway) is in Healing Focus.
I use Water Mastery, Lesser healing wave and Earthliving weapon glyphs.
Reincarnation I pay no attention to, I rarely have to ankh as it is and it’s a waste of points.
So all in all in enhancement tree, 5 in intellect, 5 in crit, 3 in imp shields and 3 in imp weapons (NOT totems).
I am proud to be a resto shaman who relies heavily on riptide and lesser healing wave and no one I raid/party with complains in the slightest. Ciao.
December 17, 2008 at 8:27 am
Haioken
Oh and I just noticed something. Chain heal is supposed to be the most mana efficient spell in our arsenal but with Imp Water shield and 2piece t7 im casting lessers for 90 mana and riptides for ~50. Coupled with a raid buffed 527 mp5 in combat I’m gaining 106 mana per second. I’m not good at math but that’s pretty mana efficient to me.
December 18, 2008 at 2:08 pm
flowtrol
Haioken, u make a very good point but if you wanna talk mana efficiency talk about healing/mana, in wich chain heal is still KING. if your chain heal never jumps you might wanna talk to ur raidmembers to not spread out so much (ofc in fights like sapphiron etc where you have to be spread, chain heal is less mana/healing efficient then LHW, but the second it jumps more then 1 target it becomes the most mana/healing efficient spell again. If only imp water shield would proc of chain heal crits 😦 )
December 19, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Foogawz
@ flowtrol So since the 0/19/52 is useless. Did you go back to the 0/16/55? Or what does your talent tree lookl like atm?
December 26, 2008 at 8:20 am
flowtrol
yes i went back to 0/16/55 but i did change my Earthliving Glyph into a Lesser Healing Wave Glyph, as it gives me more “utility”
January 11, 2009 at 9:59 am
Hirogen
Most of you have made some valid points for resto build I am currently using Arena/raid healing spec 0/15/56 which has worked nicely for both despite have Improved ghostwolf in place of the shield bonus skill. however what I noticed in many ppl claimed rotation of heals is that they do not work in riptide nearly enough. I never cast more then 3 heals whether they be CH,LHW or HW without hitting riptide as the 30% haste bonus to all healing spells and the fact that it also boosts the effectiveness of your next CH within 8 seconds. my typical rotation riptide/CH/HW/LHW repeat
January 20, 2009 at 10:23 am
Mosshair
Why Glyph of Healing Wave? Healing wave is for emergencies -only-. it’s practically ade for either PvP or hitting Nature’s Swiftness and that increased crit chance thing. We spam Chain Heal, Not Healing wave, therefore I reccomend Glyph of Chain Heal
January 20, 2009 at 4:17 pm
jagerbombz
@Mosshair – Healing Wave is not an emergencies only heal, but I admit that I do not use it that much. The one Naxx encounter in 10 man where I think this glyph is well worth it is Loatheb. Hitting the tank with HW and getting healed myself makes the three second window of healing a little easier.
If I ran 25 man content more I would think about dropping it and going the chain heal glyph but in 10 mans I am more than happy with my HW glyph.
January 20, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Haioken
Updates. (look me up on armory Haioken on bonechewer)
Glyph of chain heal is worthless. The extra target you hit is for 500 hp wow.
And what? Healing uses rotations? Since when? Well… i guess I use one rotation. On the MT i pretty much spam LHW and ill do LHW + Riptide immediately if he takes a big spike and I pretty much make sure riptides up so I get the haste bonus. 0.89 sec LHW with my gear). As far as raid healing.. spam chain heal in a 25 man and LHW Riptide LHW LHW LHW LHW LHW Riptide in 10 mans with the occasional chain heal on melee if they need it.
January 20, 2009 at 5:29 pm
jagerbombz
@ Haioken – I think labeling things as a healing rotation is not an acurate term, it should be more like spell combinations such as Riptide+HW/LHW for the added healing boost and cast reduction of the Riptide+Chain Heal for the bigger chain heal effects. I have found myslef using the term spell rotation and never realized since your comment that it was not the best term for the casting of a healer.
As for the extra chain heal, 500 is 500 but I rather get the 2k from the HW glyph when healing the tank since I can make up for the lost 500 on the 4th target by not having to heal myself in tight situations.
February 1, 2009 at 3:40 am
Shamnit
Hi All,
I think it really depends on a shaman’s role in the raid group.
For me, I am most of the time tasked to heal MT. I use Riptide + LHW cos it is faster cast and occasionally throw LHW on some other folks that need it. I will throw CH only when there is raid wide damage e.g Anub’s spikes and I know the group that got damage are close to each other.
I reckon I should grab Healing wave talent and change to Riptide + HW + LHW to get the extra heal boost. And also take Earthliving Glyph instead of Healing wave Glyph.
Btw, any recommendation on not going oom. I find it extremely hard to not be oom on Sapphiron whereas my druid counterpart is still doing good.
Cheers – Shamnit
February 8, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Vitatribuo of Shadowsong
I actually Disagree with the spec. The threat reduction is kinda useless for 10 -25 man content. Its nice to have i guess but if your tank is any good @ all you won’t pull aggro. I took the three out of there, put 2 in the imp Earth shield, and 2 in Imp elemental Weapons for that extra +heal from Earthliving Wep. =P
February 10, 2009 at 10:06 pm
jagerbombz
@Vitatribuo of Shadowsong: yeah this was an old build and I posted a link to the updated version. Threat is not an issue and the talent is basically useless atm.
February 20, 2009 at 3:55 am
whyubanaga
i dont understand the hate in chain heal. riptide + chain heal on the mt will crit for 10 k plus any melee around him, if you are healing naxx in 10 or 25 there is a lot of raid damage and trash and boss’s, it would be silly not to, druids and coh priests now have cd’s on their aoe heals. there is no use in glyphing differently for mt healing, on patchwork a druid and i healed the mt and i ended up with 2150 hps on a single target. bashing on chain heal will do you no good, you wouldnt single target lhw on gluth after everyones health is low, it would take too long, with the new content coming out, im sure raid healing will be a necessity as it was in bc content, i.e. najentus, illidan/azzinoth phase, council/ tanks on mother/ brutallis, no reason to become a single heal bot, people dont recruit shamans for that
February 20, 2009 at 8:52 pm
jagerbombz
@whyubanaga – This is one of those things that comes iwth writing a post like this and not going back to address things as progression and gear changes.
I will admit, I chain heal MUCH more than I did when I walked into Naxx. When I first entered I was asked to be the tank healer and with the gear I walked in with, chain heal struggled so I moved to LHW and ES. That did very well but as I got more gear and the stats went up I started to see the 10-11K chain heal crits and now use it much more than I did. Now that our group has three healers I sit back and primarily chain heal all the time now.
March 11, 2009 at 2:43 am
Mike Darling
raiding wise you dont need healing focus
July 22, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Martijn
Maybe a lot has changed lately; I (re-)started playing when this thread finished, and I play in a different manner now…
I hardly ever use Chain Heal and LHW. I mostly spam Riptide / HW / HW. With Healing Way talent that gives me (1900 sp unbuffed) 15k crits on my second HW, an Ancestral Awakening of 4.5k on an extra target and 3 K heal on myself (HW Glyph). Since I have 5 points in Tidal Wave, I can do very high single target healing: Riptide = instant, With Haste HW goes down to 2.25 sec casting, tidal wave brings that down to about 1.5 sec…
Apart from that a lot of my healing comes from my Earth Shield: 600 mana for 8 charges that heal for 3.5k – 5k (With that glyph).
After patch 3.2 I’m considering to drop my glyph of healing stream totem (not too happy with this one, but in some fights extremely usefull: 400 hp/tick, and you have wisdom anyway, which doesn’t stack with the mana totem) to the Chain Heal glyph.
As far as the build is concerned:
* I don’t use Improved Shield
* I use Elemental Weapons
* I don’t use Healing Grace and Healing Focus, and I hardly ever miss them in 5 man Heroics.
* I use Healing Way
* I use Nature’s swiftness, but I’m having my doubts about that, although in combination with Tidal Force it is ofcourse a very strong emergency button.
* I use improved earth shield.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to your findings and updates 😉
July 22, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Martijn
Missed one part:
HW goes down to 2.25 sec casting time >> because of my haste<< (which is not very hit atm indeed)
August 29, 2009 at 9:27 pm
shizzette
http://thottbot.com/shaman/t#/gpU/EgBvftHvr
can I get some feed back on this build plz for my resto shammy… totrying to fine tune my healing…. ty
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