Tank healing with a resto shaman.

[shaeman]

I've just started using a resto shaman for healing, and as he is a lot higher level than the rest of my team (for now) I've only been using a fraction of his abilities.
(earth shield and lesser healing wave).

I've researched what I could on the forum, but it's very scattered amongst lots of other threads, and didn't quite answer things comprehensively enough for me.

So I thought it would be a good idea to start a very specific thread so I (and others can benefit from more experienced boxers resto shaman knowledge).

My questions are :

1. Pre Pull. How do you prep the tank for the fight. Is it just earth shield and go, or do you pop other abilities too (that heal over time ability that I cant remember the name of :) )
2. Fight start. You've started the fight, what's the first thing you do. (Do you pop a chain heal for the proc?)
3. Ongoing healing. What's the bread and butter healing rotation you use - Healing wave mixed with Chain heals, just healing wave, lesser healing wave for a quick top up or something else?

[dwaine]

I havent multiboxed with my resto yet ( I have kept them elem for boxing) but since dual spec I have been gearing one of my shamies resto, and what I find to work well for raiding and 5 mans is to start with earth shield, then lesser healing wave when needed. I only use riptide as a maintanance heal, or an oh crap. One other thing thats good to do, is macro your natures swiftnes with healing wave, giving you another bigger oh crap heal. I dont find I need healing wave in my regular rotation though.

[puppychow]

always have ES up on the tank
glyph lesser heal wave, chain heal (4 targets) at least, I use water shield as 3d but there are lots of options. have 3 buttons that only your healer has assigned:

1 = lesser heal wave on tank
2 = chain heal self (/cast [target=player] Chain Heal)
3 = riptide tank or self?

as said above you should also have an emergency heal button that casts nature swiftness and healing wave, will heal the tank for 14-20k. You should also have 4 buttons (numpad, f1-f10, etc - will only be rarely used) that heals individual people with lesser healing wave, as some bosses require only specific people to be topped off after targeted random damage.

My resto shaman is back to ele 99% of the time but when I was mb'ing him as resto the fights would consist of always keeping ES up, tossing an occasional lhw at tank (hits for 7-10k when ES is up, almost as much as healing wave for a lot less mana/time), and tossing chain heals on myself (dps all stacked up) to heal the group. I would occasionally use riptide but to be honest I didn't use it that often, although the spell is nice (increases chain heal effects by 25% etc).

If you have multi shamans dropping 3-4x healing stream totems for most fights covers aoe damage, as they will be healing the group for 700-1k every 2 seconds.

[Zaelar]

ES + Glyphed LHW for tank healing. Chain heal(preferably glyphed but not required for 5-mans) for group healing. Refresh water shield frequently. You don't need to pay attention to the charges, just refresh it frequently, it costs no mana. If you have good mana regen you can simply use ES and CH spam on the tank which will get you through almost anything, but when you're starting out you probably don't have that regen. Get the minor glyph that adds an extra orb to water shield, can't recall the name. Set up a riptide the tank button for when you need faster healing, and a NS+TF+HW macro for an emergency. Sometimes I'll riptide the tank before a pull but it isn't necessary 99% of the time.

Basically your buttons should be:
ES the tank
WS
LHW the tank
RT the tank
CH the tank
CH self(or if you have the means to target specific party members do that)
NS+TF+HW emergency
All the other generic shaman stuff that you want like BL, totems, and other such perks.
Earthliving weapon, but since it's only once every half-hour you can do it manually instead of taking up a button.

At minimum, you need to keep your shields up, have a tank heal, and have a group heal.