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Shaman Leveling: 1-29 Restoration

27 May

Today I give you the first of the Project High Heals leveling guides, focusing today on my Restoration Shaman, Bottledwatah. At the time of my writing this she is currently sitting in her low 40’s in level, with my Holy Priest at level 30 and likely to catch up with her fairly soon.

My Shaman’s focus for this project is generalization, she’s meant to participate in all aspects of leveling pretty evenly. So far she’s done a fairly good job with that, though I have slowed down somewhat on the BG queues and questing is definitely taking longer to do in the Resto spec. I’ll get into more detail on that later on in the article.

Playing a Restoration Shaman
The Resto Shaman has been a really interesting experience so far. While I was in my teens and 20’s I was both a fantastic healer as well as an exceptional damage dealer while in my Resto spec. It was rare to see me come out of BG without being at the top of the charts in several areas, including killing blows and damage done.

Healing dungeons with her is actually a lot of fun, and I like that the style of healing even comes off differently than all of the other healers. Earth Shield is a fantastic spell that’s similar to a Priest’s bubble (sort of) except that instead of preventing damage it heals the target after they receive damage. This is especially good because early on you only have access to one, long-cast healing spell so you really need those Earth Shield heals thrown in to keep your tank alive. With only a couple of heirlooms available (since I’m not on my main server), I’m not as fantastically OP as I would be otherwise, so I’m not bored when healing on my Shaman.

A question I see a lot when I mention that I’m leveling multiple healers right now is “how does Class X do on mana?” As far as the Shaman is concerned, there’s no such thing as mana issues. In an average dungeon where morons aren’t pulling extra mobs or doing stupid crap, it’s rare that I see my mana drop below 90% unless I decide to help kill things, which I often do. Even then, the only time I have ever run out of mana on her is when I fought a level 56 Rare Spawn at level 40, and I was almost 16 minutes into the fight when I ran out only because I was casting Flame Shock every cooldown and dropping fire totems to try to kill it. I’m sure I could have finished him off in another half hour or so even being OOM, but instead I had my wife come kill it for me since I was only passing through the zone anyway.

Resto-Specific Tips
Resto Shamans are great at staying high on mana (so far, at least) and their heals are really powerful. I find that I can pretty well constantly cast my Healing Wave while keeping Earth Shield up on my tank and never have mana issues. And, unless the tank is under-geared or has over pulled, he’s not going to die either. It’s not that Shaman heals are over powered though, it’s that things just flow really well and it’s easy to stay on top of it when you pay attention.

Playing a Resto Shaman isn’t boring though, because even though it’s easy to keep your tank alive, that does involve a lot of casting. I find that my Shaman is constantly casting but never running out of mana, while my Priest is only rarely casting but often goes OOM. Some of the talents I suggest further on in the article cause your heals to be more effective and/or cost less mana when combined with damaging spells like Shocks, and utilizing those talents help keep things more interesting without negatively impacting my performance.

As far as tips are concerned, always keep your shields up both on yourself and on your tank. I personally like to use the Power Auras [Curse link] addon to keep track of shields and charges, but use whatever works best for you to be sure you aren’t robbing your tank of heals or yourself of mana.

Also, don’t dismiss your melee potential simply because you’re a caster. I have a blast in PvP watching someone close into melee with me thinking that’s going to give them the advantage when all it really does is give me free heals from my Earth Shield and allow me to use Primal Strike to bash their faces and avoid getting spell locked. I still use Primal Strike for questing, PvP, and LFG as well.

Important Spells & Abilities
Note that all numeric values are taken from the level 29 version of the spell for the purposes of this post.

Level 1-10

  • Lightning Bolt (1): Casts a bolt of lightning at the target for 39 to 43 Nature damage.
  • Primal Strike (3): An instant weapon strike that causes 10 additional damage.
  • Strength of Earth Totem (4): This totem increases the Strength and Agility of all party and raid members within 40 yards.
  • Earth Shock (5): Instantly shocks the target with concussive force, causing 49 to 51 Nature damage and reducing melee and ranged attack speed by 20% for 8 seconds.
  • Healing Wave (7): Heals a friendly target for 150 to 170.
  • Lightning Shield (8): The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lightning. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for Nature damage. This expends one lightning ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.
  • Flametongue Weapon (10): Imbue the Shaman’s Weapon with fire, increasing total spell damage by 408(?).

Lightning Bolt is your bread and butter spam attack while you’re questing. Primal Strike is an instant melee attack that I really enjoy using as a caster. Even though Shamans have access to shields I like to use a staff instead because it has better melee damage while I’m questing while still having healing stats on it.

Strength of Earth Totem ends up being my most common Earth Totem so far, mostly because the other Earth totems don’t do jack for my spell casting and I’ve had a ton of non-casters in my LFG groups. Earth Shock is one of your bread and butter attacks, it’s an instant burst of damage which also provides a nice attack speed reduction to the target for a bit of additional survivability either for you or for your tank.

Healing Wave is your spammable heal, having a fairly long cast time but a reasonably low mana cost. I cast this one the most to keep my tanks topped off when Earth Shield charges aren’t enough to heal them on their own.

At level eight you receive Lightning Shield which you’ll use right up until you get Water Shield and then you can remove this from your bars for good. Flametongue Weapon is your weapon imbue of choice for the time being and will be until level 54. Wowhead tells me that 408 Spell Power is the value at level 29, but that sounds way too high to me so I think the numbers are wrong.

By choosing Restoration as your specialization at level 10 you receive all of the following:
Earth Shield: Protects the target with an earthen shield, reducing casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 30% and causing attacks to heal the shielded target. This effect can only occur once every few seconds. 9 charges. Lasts 10 minutes. Earth Shield can only be placed on one target at a time and only one Elemental Shield can be active on a target at a time.
Purification: Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 25%, and reduces the casting time of your Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave spells.
Meditation: Allows 50% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat.
Mastery: Deep Healing: Increases the potency of your healing spells by 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more). Each point of Mastery increases healing by up to an additional 3%.

Earth Shield is the biggest benefit, which of course is why they give it to you. It’s a fantastic spell and I love having it at such a low level. Purification is the standard buff for choosing any spec, increasing the effectiveness of what you do with the spec; however, it also reduces the cast time of Healing Wave which is pretty big. Meditation is just one of the mana factors that contributes to the Resto Shaman having such great mana management.

You won’t be able to benefit from Deep Healing any time soon, but it seems like a pretty decent buff to have once it does open up, making you more effective at healing targets that are low on health which is kind of the point.

Level 11-20

  • Ancestral Spirit (12): Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 45% of maximum health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.
  • Flametongue Totem (12): This totem increases the spell power of all party and raid members within 40 yards by 6%. Lasts 5 minutes.
  • Flame Shock (14): Instantly sears the target with fire, causing 28 Fire damage immediately and 48 Fire damage over 18 seconds.
  • Ghost Wolf (16): Turns the Shaman into a Ghost Wolf, increaes speed by 30%. As a Ghost Wolf, the Shaman is less hindered by effects that would reduce movement speed.
  • Wind Shear (16): Disrupts the target’s concentration with a burst of wind, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school form being cast for 2 seconds. Also lowers your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you.
  • Cleanse Spirit (18): Removes one Curse effect from a friendly target.
  • Earthbind Totem (18): This totem slows the movement speed of enemies within 10 yards of the totem. Lasts for 45 seconds.
  • Healing Surge (20): Heals a friendly target for 299 to 341.
  • Healing Stream Totem (20): Summons a totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 5 minutes that heals party members every 2 seconds.
  • Water Shield (20): The caster is surrounded by 3 globes of water, graning 15 mana per 5 seconds. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, mana is restored to the caster. This expends one water globe. Only one globe will activate every few seconds. Lasts 10 minutes. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Ancestral Spirit is how you resurrect those freaking punk DPS who feel like they can pull the entire instance with their face just because they’re a hunter/warlock with heirlooms on, when in fact they just fail at fulfilling their role. Not that I’m bitter or anything…

Flametongue Totem is great for spell casters, making it my primary Fire Totem. Flame Shock isn’t huge for us as Resto, but I do like to use it when I’m solo questing and on bosses in LFG. During large pulls I’ll also try to spread Flame Shock around to make use of Fire Nova, but only if I have a tank with good survivability. Since Resto does really well on mana at this level I don’t mind adding DPS into my rotation and my damage while solo is pretty low in a healing spec so I make use of Flame Shock quite a bit.

Ghost Wolf is a wonderful movement speed buff, allowing us to take on the form of a wolf to move faster. That second sentence in the description above means that you cannot go below 100% movement speed while in Ghost Wolf form. So you move at 130% normally with the buff, and you cannot be slowed below the 100%. Note that that applies to effects, not conditions, so you’ll still be slowed by things such as being in water. It can be used indoors which is fantastic, but it does have a cast time for Resto until you’re pushing 85.

Wind Shear is primarily used for its spell interrupting feature, though it does also reduce your threat in a group setting. I primarily use this on crowd control spells being cast on my party (like the Sleep spell cast by the Druids in Wailing Caverns) or to counter healing spells. In PvP you can use it on Player Pets that I haven’t generated threat against to cause them to stop attacking me. An experienced PvP player will quickly put them back on you, but you’d be surprised how many players don’t notice. Cleanse Spirit can remove Curse debuffs cast on you or your party, which is actually pretty common.

Earthbind Totem is somewhat situational. It’s a great totem for PvP, especially to slow Flag Carriers or pursuers of your Flag Carrier, or for allowing you to escape a deadly situation. In PvE it can slow mobs who run away when they’re low on health or it can be used to get some distance between you and your attackers to get a heal cast if you’re in danger of dying.

Healing Stream Totem is a decent AoE healing effect, but to be quite honest I almost never bother casting it at this level since only my tank should be taking damage anyway and if not then HST probably isn’t even to heal the damage they’re taking. Healing Surge on the other hand is a great, fast healing spell. It does have a high mana cost, though, so you don’t want to cast it any more than you have to and with your other healing abilities you should be fine casting it only during emergencies.

Water Shield is your primary shield for yourself, where Earth Shield is usually on your tank. For solo questing I switch back and forth between the two as needed.

Level 21-29

  • Frost Shock (22): Instantly shocks the target with frost, causing 46 to 48 Frost damage and slowing movement speed by 50%. Lasts 8 seconds. Causes a high amount of threat.
  • Water Walking (24): Allows the friendly target to walk across water for 10 minutes. Any damage will cancel the effect.
  • Chain Lightning (28): Hurls a lightning bolt at the enemy, dealing 55 to 61 Nature damage and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Each jump reduces the damage by 30%. Affects 3 total targets.
  • Fire Nova (28): Causes the shaman’s active Flametongue, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totem to emit a wave of flames, inflicting Fire damage to enemies within 10 yards of the totem.

Frost Shock is another spell that I mention primarily for its usefulness in PvP. In PvE it’s really only useful if you need to stop runners or when mobs are coming after you and the tank hasn’t taunted.

Water Walking is a cool utility spell that allows you to move on water. It’s great for certain PvP Battlegrounds and has some small usefulness in certain dungeons as well. For PvE can save you a little travel time prior to having a flying mount by letting you cut across water without being slowed down.

Chain Lightning is our first AoE spell, and an interesting one in that it’s more multi-target than AoE. You’ll only really use this one in LFG or perhaps in PvP, unless you’re a AoE crazed leveler like myself in which case you’ll use it all the time. If you do use this one often then you’ll want to be sure to use Water Shield to keep your mana supply high.

Fire Nova is our first literal AoE spell, dealing damage in a ring around targets with our Flame Shock debuff. You can have up to three Flame Shocks up at a time (due to it’s cooldown and duration) which will cause Fire Nova to burst in a ring around all three of them. In theory it’s a great AoE tool because a single spell is like three AoE’s in one, but in practice it kind of sucks since you have to have Flame Shock active for it to do anything and using Fire Nova damages the targets that have the debuff as well, so by killing targets you’re also killing your potential.

Leveling a Resto Shaman

  • Questing Single Mob: Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock, Primal Strike, Lightning Bolt, Earth Shock
  • Questing Multi-Mob: Chain Lightning, Flame Shock, Lightning Bolt, Primal Strike, Flame Shock, Chain Lightning

Questing Single Mob
As a healer, you’re obviously missing the burst damage of a DPS spec, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still unleash some serious hurt. Start off with either a dual Lightning Bolt or a Lightning Bolt followed by a Chain Lightning to take advantage of your cast times without suffering pushback from being attacked. From there I usually stick to shocks and Primal Strike since I hate dealing with pushback while I’m trying to cast. If your damage isn’t all that great and mobs take a while to kill use Flame Shock instead of the first Earth Shock and consider casting Searing Totem right before you pull.

Questing Multi-Mob
If you know that your’e going to face multiple mobs, or multiple groups of mobs, go ahead and cast your totems before you get started on the actual combat. Just remember not to drop aggressive totems (like Searing) until you’re within range for it to hit your target(s) and you’re ready for combat to start.

Facing multiple mobs as Resto is both good and bad. On the one hand, Resto has crazy good survivability and you can easily take on multiple mobs. On the other hand, your damage is pretty weak so killing all of those mobs can take a long time. If you don’t mind a little sustained combat then go ahead and slay the masses, otherwise stick to single targets when you can.

If you do want to face multiple mobs, then this is the rotation that I suggest. If there aren’t at least three mobs, lean more towards Lightning Bolt than Chain Lightning so that you don’t run yourself out of mana. Otherwise your primary objective is to get Flame Shock on three targets and then use Fire Nova to burn them all down.

You definitely want to use Earth Shield in these situations, switching to Water Shield only when you know you can take enough hits to get enough mana back to make it worth your time. I usually keep Earth Shield up until I’m down to a single mob and then switch to Water Shield to get some mana back while I finish them off.

How to Heal: 29 Restoration Shaman
When you’re actually filling your healing role rather than questing it’s probably a good idea for you to have a clue how to actually, you know, heal. The numbers in the next section are based on the level 29 version of the spell, unmodified by talents or gear.

Healing Spells
Earth Shield: 19% base mana, instant cast, heals when attacked
Healing Wave: 9% base mana, 2.5 sec. cast, heals 150-170
Healing Surge: 27% base mana, 1.5 sec. cast, heals 299-341
Healing Stream Totem: 3% base mana, instant cast, heals for ~28 every 2 seconds
Cleanse Spirit: 14% base mana, instant cast, removes one Curse effect
Ancestral Spirit: 72% base mana, 10 sec. cast, resurrect target with 35% of their health and mana

These are the six “healing” spells that you have you have available at level 29. You have two passive/reactive heals (Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem), two direct heals (Healing Wave, Healing Surge), one decurse (Cleanse Spirit), and a non-combat resurrection (Ancestral Spirit).

The two you’ll use most often are Earth Shield and Healing Wave. Earth Shield will take care of most of your healing in this bracket and you should keep it up on your tank at all times. When solo questing you should switch back and forth between Earth Shield and Water Shield as needed. Healing Wave is cheap to cast and it heals for a decent amount given the power of Earth Shield.

Healing Surge costs three times as much as Healing Wave and heals for only twice the amount, but it is a full second faster to cast. Use this one when you need a big heal in a short amount of time, typically when your tank is taking a ton of damage and Earth Shield isn’t enough to keep him up.

I drop Healing Stream Totem when I’m fighting bosses, but I only really do it out of habit. There are only a few instances in low level play where there’s any amount of AoE damage in a dungeon where the totem would really be useful, and most of those the AoE damage is either so high that the totem doesn’t really help or so low that you don’t really need it in the first place. But, it is really cheap and the heals from it do add up over time so it’s not a bad spell it’s just not great either.

For the vast majority of dungeons I heal the whole thing with Earth Shield and Healing Wave. Once I get a feel for how much damage my tank is going to actually take I decide from there whether I’m going to need to spam Healing Waves, stay on my toes for emergency Healing Surge casts, or if I’m going to slip into DPS mode with nothing but Earth Shield and an occasional Healing Wave.

Make use of your talents. For example, we get mana returned via Water Shield when we crit with Healing Wave, so don’t be afraid to cast it for lack of mana. Also, make frequent use of your Shocks, particularly Earth Shock, when healing dungeons. Firstly because Earth Shock reduces the attack speed of the target you hit with it (thus protecting your tank), and secondly because casting Shocks reduces the mana cost and increases the effectiveness of the next healing spell we cast after the Shock. It’s a great way to get a cheaper Healing Surge off if you need a big heal but not necessarily right away.

Talent Spec: 29 Restoration Shaman

  • Spark of Life 3/3: Increases your healing done by 6% and your healing received by 15%.
  • Tidal Focus 2/3: Reduces the mana cost of your healing spells by 4%.
  • Improved Water Shield 2/2: You have a 100% chance to instantly gain mana as if you consumed a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave, Greater healing Wave, or Riptide spells, a 60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Surge spell, and a 30% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Chain Heal spell.
  • Focused Insight 3/3: After casting any Shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by 75% of the cost of the Shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 30%.
  • Nature’s Swiftness 1/1: When activated, your next Nature spell with a base cast time less than 10 seconds becomes an instant cast spell.

Spark of Life is pretty simple, it makes your heals 6% stronger. It also has that spiffy side effect of increasing the healing you yourself receive by 15% which is one of the reasons why you can survive things as Resto that others cannot. Tidal Focus gets only two of its three points right now simply because we’re moving down the tree. It reduces the mana cost of your heals which is great even if not entirely necessary at this level range.

Improved Water Shield is fantastic for LFG, allowing you to regain mana when you crit with your heals where normally you would need to get hit for Water Shield to take effect. As you can see from the percentage chance of getting that mana return on your crits, it really pays off to stick to your longer cast time spells for a higher chance of mana return and why I can spam Healing Wave for days.

Focused Insight is a really interesting talent, causing your Shocks to reduce the mana cost of your heals while also making them more powerful. I typically use Earth Shock to trigger these since ES applies an attack speed debuff which is good for my tanks, and then follow it up with either a Healing Wave because the tank doesn’t need much healing, or with a Healing Surge since the mana cost is significantly reduced.

Nature’s Swiftness is an interesting spell. The traditional use for it is to make one of your heals instant cast for when things turn ugly. However, in the leveling game where emergencies are pretty rare I actually end up using this most often to cast DPS spells, such as Chain Lightning, instantly instead.The only time I’ve used it in a dungeon so far was in Gnomer where an ignorant Hunter/Warlock/Mage (I forget which it was that time) didn’t dismiss their pet before jumping and brought half the instance down on us.

Glyphs

Prime Glyphs

Earth Shield is your top choice for sure. The healing from Earth Shield is already fantastic and this just makes it even more so. If you can’t make this, buy it. If you can’t buy it, steal it. If you can’t steal it, get Water Shield instead. Water Shield isn’t bad, but mana regen hasn’t been an issue for me at all so far. Definitely go Earth Shield if at all possible.

Major Glyphs

I really like Healing Wave because it’s really useful in PvP and it’s also a decent option for LFG which are my two favorite things to do. It’s basically worthless for solo play though. Ghost Wolf is another really good glyph even though it has nothing to do with healing. The extra run speed is simply useful for the leveling process and when gathering, so it’s a good back up. Healing Stream Totem provides a resistance buff when you use the totem. Those resistances aren’t by any means necessary when you’re leveling, but some benefit is better than none so you might decide to use this one.

Minor Glyphs

I’m a huge fan of getting rid of reagents, so Water Walking is the definite first choice here. Arctic Wolf is a simple vanity glyph that just changes the way you look in Ghost Wolf form. The only other Minor Glyph available at this level range is Thunderstorm which is a spell that only Elemental Shamans can use, so it’s completely worthless to you.

Gearing Up Your Shaman
For Resto you’re looking first and foremost at Intellect on your gear. Intellect provides Spell Power, Mana, and Spell Crit, all of which you’re interested in. I would say Haste is probably your second best, but it’s pretty hard to come by at lower levels. Even though I don’t have problems with mana, I still rank Spirit as the third stat. Just because I don’t have mana problems this level doesn’t mean the same will be true next level. From there, Crit isn’t a bad stat for us, it makes our heals bigger/better and it gives us more mana back from our talents in Improved Water Shield.

Macros

#showtooltip
/cast [harm, nodead] Earth Shock; [harm, nodead] [@targettarget] Earth Shock
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro lets me cast Earth Shock on my target, unless my target happens to be friendly (like the tank) in which case it casts it on their target instead. When I don’t have a tank that has a lot of survivability on their own I like to keep the tank as my target just so I can pay extra special attention to their health, and this macro lets me use Earth Shock on the tank’s target without having to change my actual target. I use a variation of this spell for all of my Shocks.

#showtooltip Purge
/cast [harm, nodead] Purge; [harm, nodead] [@targettarget] Purge
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This macro works just like the Shock macros up above, except that it’s all about destroying people’s buffs. This is mostly a PvP macro as few low level mobs have any buffs for you to purge.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus] Earth Shield

This is my “heal with sammich” macro, it allows me to cast Earth Shield directly on my focus without having to bother with targeting and such. I set the tank as my focus as soon as the group is created and hit this button when the spell wears off instead of tying up a slot in my healing addon. I use a variation of this for both Healing Wave and Healing Surge as well so that I can easily heal an instance with one hand while eating a sammich with the other and watching YouTube on the second monitor.

#showtooltip Wind Shear
/stopcasting
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/cast [target=focus,harm,exists] Wind Shear
/cast Wind Shear

This macro is used when I’m facing a caster mob or a caster player in PvP. Instead of focusing the tank or myself I’ll set my focus instead to the caster so that I can use Wind Shear to interrupt their important spells. If I’m in a situation where focusing to interrupt is important then I’m going to heal with my addons rather than auto-targeting macros, so having my heal target focused isn’t important.

Power Auras
And just in case anyone is interested, here are the Power Auras that I use for my Shaman. Some of them I have set up even though I don’t have the buffs associated with them just yet (like Bloodlust), but they’re set to not do anything until then anyway.

The most important ones here, to me, are the ones that monitor Earth Shield and Water Shield. The Water Shield aura simply monitors whether or not I have the buff active, so that I know when I need to recast it. There are four Earth Shield auras here, one that tells me if I have Earth Shield up on anyone at all in my party, and the other three are used to track how many charges I have left (1, 2, or 3+).

Other auras include monitoring my health/mana to let me know when I’m low for those occasions where I’m taking a lot of burst in PvP or when I’m just not paying attention to the fact that something’s eating my face in a dungeon.

Most of these aren’t mine originally, they’ve come from other blogs or from my buddy Krizhek.

Set=Resto@
Aura[1]=Version:4.20; b:0; anim1:2; g:0.0196; icon:Ability_Shaman_Heroism; buffname:Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp; r:0.9176; unitn:Only for raid/group.; texture:33; alpha:1; stacksOperator:=; size:1.5; y:0; anim2:4; finish:3; timer.h:1.5; timer.Texture:Digital; timer.enabled:true; timer.y:100; timer.Transparent:true@
Aura[2]=Version:4.20; b:0.6275; g:0; icon:Spell_Holy_SealOfMight; buffname:Stun; x:-100; bufftype:3; texture:38; alpha:1; size:0.25; anim2:4; timer.Texture:Digital; timer.enabled:true; timer.Relative:RIGHT@
Aura[3]=Version:4.20; b:0.0549; g:0; icon:Spell_Holy_Silence; buffname:Silence; x:-100; bufftype:3; texture:39; alpha:1; size:0.25; y:-10; anim2:4; timer.Texture:Digital; timer.enabled:true; timer.Relative:RIGHT@
Aura[4]=Version:4.20; b:0.8549; anim1:5; g:0.1922; icon:inv_alchemy_elixir_02; r:0.1098; unitn:Only for raid/group.; bufftype:9; texture:3; alpha:1; speed:0.5; stacksOperator:=; threshold:30; combat:true; size:1.5; torsion:1.25@
Aura[5]=Version:4.20; b:0.0078; anim1:5; g:0.0235; icon:inv_alchemy_elixir_05; r:0.7294; begin:1; unitn:Only for raid/group.; bufftype:8; texture:24; alpha:1; stacksOperator:=; threshold:40; size:1.54; torsion:1.25; anim2:1; finish:2@
Aura[6]=Version:4.20; b:0.251; g:0.4549; icon:Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; buffname:Earth Shield; x:127; texture:21; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; stacksOperator:>; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.29; y:22; ismounted:0; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:CENTER; stacks.UseOwnColor:true; stacks.Texture:AccidentalPresidency@@
Aura[7]=Version:4.20; icon:Spell_Shaman_TidalWaves; buffname:Tidal Waves; x:-176; texture:26; alpha:1; mine:true; size:0.43; y:3; texmode:2; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.LegacySizing:false; stacks.y:-65; stacks.x:-180@
Aura[8]=Version:4.20; b:0; anim1:7; icon:Spell_Frost_SummonWaterElemental; buffname:Mana Tide Totem; r:0.9765; x:-179; bufftype:15; texture:80; size:0.5; randomcolor:true; y:-144; anim2:1@
Aura[9]=Version:4.20; g:0; icon:Ability_Shaman_WaterShield; buffname:water shield; r:0.0078; x:85; texture:163; symetrie:1; size:0.94; torsion:0.79; y:-11; texmode:2; inverse:true@
Aura[10]=Version:4.20; b:0.251; g:0.4549; icon:Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; buffname:Earth Shield; x:162; stacks:3; texture:22; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.29; y:57; ismounted:0; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:CENTER; stacks.UseOwnColor:true; stacks.Texture:AccidentalPresidency@@
Aura[11]=Version:4.20; b:0.251; g:0.4549; icon:Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; buffname:Earth Shield; x:173; stacks:2; texture:22; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.29; y:18; ismounted:0; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:CENTER; stacks.UseOwnColor:true; stacks.Texture:AccidentalPresidency@@
Aura[12]=Version:4.20; b:0.251; g:0.4549; icon:Spell_Nature_SkinofEarth; buffname:Earth Shield; x:159; stacks:1; texture:22; alpha:1; mine:true; inVehicle:0; groupOrSelf:true; size:0.29; y:-19; ismounted:0; stacks.enabled:true; stacks.Relative:CENTER; stacks.UseOwnColor:true; stacks.Texture:AccidentalPresidency@@

 

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2 responses to “Shaman Leveling: 1-29 Restoration

  1. Marlinka

    June 22, 2011 at 11:42 AM

    Thanks Psynister, another great guide :) I’m an experienced healer but never tried a shammy so rolled one on the basis of this guide but I don’t seem to be having the success that you did. Mana’s not a problem in low-level dungeons, as you said, but I’m having a bad time trying to keep low-level tanks alive, even kitted out with full heirlooms. Warriors and pallies aren’t too bad, but bears are awful – often losing health so fast that Earth Shield can’t keep up (and Healing Wave takes so long to cast, even when talented and constantly spammed). Maybe I’ve just had bad bears, but my heart now sinks when I zone in and see one :) Really hoping this gets better in the 20-29 range…

     
    • Psynister

      June 22, 2011 at 12:36 PM

      Most likely that’s just the bears. I had a horrible time keeping some low level bears alive. Once I got to the upper 20’s though the bears became insanely resistant to damage. One of the bears I had in RFD I didn’t even bother healing. I gave him an Earth Shield before boss fights and that was it.

      A trend I’ve seen in some bears lately is cloth heirlooms. They think that being in bear form hiding their gear is good enough to hide what they’re wearing. I’ve also seen a lot of balance druid pretending to be feral lately. That might be your issue with them as well.

       

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