Resto Shaman macro/tactics/tips please

[Simulacra]

Hi All, I run 1xPally and 4xEle Shaman, last night I decided to dual spec one of my shaman resto for tougher bosses, 2 hours later I faced off Sladran in heroic as a macro test and it went well. My tank never got below 90% health with ES and spam heals and my DPS shammies didn't miss a beat and didn't need to heal at all, a really nice change.

I created an "OH CR@P" heal macro as detailed elswhere here and also a spam heal macro along the lines of:

/castsequence [target=main] riptide, lesser healing wave, lesser healing wave,,,,lesser healing wave,,,,,lesser healing wave,,,,,,chain heal


this macro is bound to the same key as the DPS button so I can just spam it. Can this macro be improved? I'm sure it can so any advice is appreciated

Could someone give me some advice on the macros you use and how you coordinate healing as the resto shammy went through his mana pretty quickly and I don't want to stop and drink all the time. Do you spam your heals or just wait till the tank is at 70% health or something? This is my first time using a resto shammy so any top tips would be appreciated.

I'd post a link to the resto but the armory is down :evil:

edit: I have searched but couldn't find anything definitive except a really good oh cr@p macro which I'm using and some high level comments

[Smoooth]

I heal with separate keys than my dps. I use keypad 1-5 to heal the player that corresponds to that number on my screen. So for keypad1 my macro is


/stopcasting [harm]
/target tankname
/castsequence reset=6 Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave

and for keypad2


/stopcasting [harm]
/target playername2
/castsequence reset=6 Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave


Then I just use my left hand for all the tanking and dps stuff and right for healing and special macros on the keypad.

[Simulacra]

thanks Smoooth, that looks like a really good setup although you'd have to really monitor the health of your toons, I'll set it up tonight. I watched a multiboxing youtube clip the other day and this guy had an addon that sent a message like a raid warning to the main toon if any of the toons needed healing, any idea what that would be? The quality of the video was really bad so it's hard to see what mods he had. Think I might do a search now.

[Ogloo]

because it is on the macro with the dps. arnt u just overhealing and wasting mana for when you need to use it? and i know the,,,,,, do something but im not sure, does that mean a .5 sec break or just more lesser healing waves?

[Simulacra]

Hi Ogloo, yeah I'm way overhealing so I'm going to implement Smooth's setup as it a lot better. Yeah the ,,, are just spaces so that there's no heals on those keypresses.

[Smoooth]

Most of the time you will just be healing the tank and I keep my unit frame sort of up at the default location so I can see all the others while i watch my own health.

I use deadly boss mods. It shows when someone is targeted from a boss ability so I can tell when someone is going to need a heal.

Jamba has an option to announce low health through a raid warning type message.

[Fef]

I also use separate keys for healing. All my macros are something like that (at work so I cannot copy/paste, might be a bit wrong) :

/cast [target=focustargettarget,harm,nodead][target=focus,nodead][target=focustarget,help,nodead][target=player] Healing spell

Focus is of course my tank. The idea is that my healer will heal, in order of priority :
- The character that my tank's target is hitting (usually the tank himself if he is going his job, but it helps on mobs that like to change target)
- The tank, without further ado if he does not target a mob
- An ally/team character if my tank targets him
- The healer himself if everything else fails (usually that means the tank is dead)

I have 4 healing keys, all with the same targeting rules.
The first three ones are specific to the healer :
- Riptide
- Healing wave
- Earth shield (really needs to be refreshed ... when needed)
The fourth is common to all shamans :
- Lesser healing wave (that's usually my "oh s**t tank is about to die" button)

Then I have a fifth healing key with chain heals all applied to target=player. This is nice to recover from or heal through AOE damage, especially since it also heals the tank if he is in range.

A little trick that I find useful is to put a copy of the main DPS macro (in my case simple Lightning Bolt) on every healing key on the three DPS characters. That way, I don't don't lose too much dps even when I have to focus too much on healing.

[Simulacra]

fef, thanks for that, the focustargettarget looks good and I think putting the dps macro on the same keybind as the heal is a great idea.
Smoooth thanks for the tips, I loaded up Jamba and set the health warnings on the slaves to match the keys I have to press to heal ie:
If the shammy who's healing key is 7 needs a heal I get this raid warning: 7. HEAL SHOEZ - takes the thinking out of it :) Also coming up
with that was after several wipes lol.

I tested my new setup in HGrundrak as I know the instance quite well. Sladran and the rhino guy were fine, Eck however caused 4 wipes
until I go the hang of it and implemented the health warning change.

Also noticed that for some stupid reason I'd unbound chain heal, which was a bit of a shock and caused one of the wipes >.<

With ES and my resto shammies 389 tick on healing stream totem plus 2 other HS totems ticking for 220ish he rarely needed to heal the tank
on the rhino guy, the tank always semed to only go to about 95% and was then quickly topped up.

I'm impressed so far with using a resto shammy but need it to do some dps so am going to implement fef's dps suggestion.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)

[Fef]

I'm glad this helped.

My main DPS macro (just Lightning Bolt, really), is not set on the healer. I found that interrupting Lightning Bolt (which is basically being cast all the time) to cast a heal was to expensive in terms of mana.

However, my healer shares the rest of DPS options :
- One macro with a castsequence of Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lava Burst
- One with Chain Lightning
- One with a castrandom of all different shocks (I use it mainly for interrupts, or to finish a dying mob)

I typically start every fight with Flame Shock x 4, Lava Burst x 4, and then a series of Lightning Bolts x 3 + necessary heals until Lava Burst x 4 is available again. Chain Lightning is nice for pack of non elite mobs when the tank doesn't need healing at all (apart from Earth Shield and totems).