Mojoman’s Basic Guide to PvP Resto Shamanism

With the closure of WotLK upon us, I believe I should impart my knowledge of PvP’ing with a Resto Shaman to you all. I’ve been playing Resto Shaman for about 2 or 3 months (not everyday, I DO have a life ) at a competitive level and I have discovered many things while going through battlegrounds, arenas and duels. I thought I would impart some of that wisdom to other people. Not that I am very good with Resto Shaman (in fact, since I don’t use many macros and almost no add-ons, I don’t exactly play the game seriously).

I guess this is Part 1 of the guide, but I have no idea how many “parts” there will be.

TALENTS

This is just about the most important (and easiest) part in building your character. No sweat, no raiding, no honor-farming. Just get to the magic level, and you’ve got your talents.

Resto Shamans consist of a vast majority of points in the Restoration tree, and the dumps in the Enhancement tree. No Restoration Shaman should ever dump the remainder of their talent points in the Elemental tree. Ever. It’s not worth it.

It’s fitting to say that compared to the Restoration Druid, the Resto Shaman’s counterpart, the Shaman has very little survivability. There can be as many heated arguments as wanted, but no one can ignore the fact that when healing yourself against an opponent, healing-over-time (HoTs) spells are the way to go. Why? Almost all HoTs are instant cast, which means you just pop them and you’re good to go. The Shaman is more reputable as a burst healer and not a healing-over-time specialist. This means that the Shaman uses a lot of cast time, which is susceptible to interrupting moves that Arcane Mages, Shadow Priests, Death Knights and just about every other class has. And once they interrupt your healing when you’re trying to bring your HP back up, all they need is a little burst and you’re gone, as opposed to the Druid, who can HoT up, Swiftmend, and transform into Bear to raise armor drastically.

But there are many talents in both trees that increase the Shaman’s survivability very well. Technically, there are 2 major PvPtalent trees: a survivability one, and a burst healing one. Also keep in mind that the Resto Shaman PvP talent spec is very different to the Resto Shaman PvE spec. I’ll post the talent trees I use below:

Survivability (0/20/51): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xRIoVZx0euhosvzbGRt:LqjVcM
Burst Healing (0/19/52): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xgIoZx0euhxsxzbIRt:LqjVcM

As you can probably see, the main difference between the two is Nature’s Guardian (4/5) and Toughness (5/5) in exchange for a lack of critical strike rating from Tidal Mastery and Thundering Strikes. You can also tell this is PvP by noting the lack of Healing Grace (reduces threat on healing), Healing Way (increases healing power of Healing Wave), and Improved Chain Heal (increases healing power of Chain Heal). Mana Tide Totem is not in either talent tree because although the mana given is really good, any good PvP opponent WILL destroy beneficiary totems quickly. Not to mention the daunting 5 minute cooldown. Not worth it IMO.

Then again, if you really want them, I’ve got some that includes full Nature’s Guardian (burst heal), full Mana Tide (burst heal), and both (burst heal).

Burst heal w/ Mana Tide (0/16/55): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xghoZx0eufxsxkbIRt:LqjVcM
Burst heal w/ Nature’s Guardian (0/14/57): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xGhoZx0euhxsEzbIRt:LqjVcM
Burst heal w/ Mana Tide + Nature’s Guardian (0/10/61): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#hZ0xMhZx0euIxsEkbIRt:LqjVcM

Another thing to note is the Improved Healing Wave over Totemic Focus in the Restoration Tree. Why do I have that while not having Healing Way? The beauty of burst healing is that you can cast one Healing Wave, crit, and heal well over half of your own HP. However, Healing Wave has one daunting issue in that its cast time is about as slow as a Cow on Chains of Ice. To make up for that, Improved Healing Wave reduces its cast time by 0.5 seconds, which is indeed something to be proud of. In addition, when healing other players while they are above 50%, it is ideal to use Healing Wave. Not to mention that each Healing Wave you use actually does get a healing bonus, because you are launching your Healing Waves faster than usual (this does mean that every 5 Healing Waves you are getting 1 for free). Yayyy. But Totemic Focus is indeed a very good talent especially in Arena where the survivability of your team is as long as your mana pool (which Shamans are notorious to use up faster than any other healing class).

And why do I have Improved Ghost Wolf over Thundering Strikes? Because in any fast-paced Arena or Battleground game, you’ve got to have mobility to ensure that you’re drinking or you don’t die. The 2-second casting time is too much, really, in PvP, even though Ghost Wolf is basically useless in PvE.

As for glyphs, well, you can tell all of them are the same thing: Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, Glyph of Earth Shield, and Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem. And these should always be your three glyphs, no matter what. Glyph of LHW increases your healing done on targets with Earth Shield by 20% – if you have the minimum 2000 healing spell power with pre-raid / Deadly Gladiator’s gear, you are healing for about 4k per LHW. On a target with Earth Shield, you are healing almost 5k. That’s a big bonus. The Earth Shield bonus gives each Earth Shield charge more healing power, meaning it heals for more. Why is this excellent? Because you are no longer dead against Death Knights, Warlocks or Hunters (well, regarding Death Knight… less dead than usual). No doubt your opponent will send in their pet to attack you to deal additional damage. What they aren’t thinking of is each time the pet hits you when you have Earth Shield on, you are actually healing more with each Earth Shield charge than the pet does to you. More survivability, yay. Lastly, Stoneclaw Totem gives you about a 5k shield each time you drop it for 15 seconds, which is the lesser equivalent of, say, Ice Barrier from Frost Mages or Sacrifice for Warlocks with Voidwalker pets. Another beneficiary glyph for survivability, when you think you’re almost gone, pop the Stoneclaw Totem and fire a Healing Wave while your opponent gets angry at the “Absorbs” coming up instead of damage.

As for minor glyphs, I picked the three I like to use the best, but it doesn’t matter really.

MACROS

I’ve got little to no macros on my Shaman, but I have a couple that most Restos absolutely NEED to have. Such as this one:

/stopcasting
#showtooltip Nature’s Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/stopcasting
/cast Healing Wave

This is something I like to call the Shaman’s Lay on Hands. What happens here is, once you push that one button, it will make your next Healing Wave instant cast and 60% more likely to be a critical heal. And once your Healing Wave crits, it should heal you for at least 12k. Talk about Lay on Hands. And to make it even more awesome, the talent Ancestral Awakening heals you or your lowest percentage health party member by 30% of the amount healed (thats another 3.6k healing), and Ancestral Fortitude reduces damage against you by 10% for the next 15 seconds. AND you get some mana healed from Improved Water Shield. Even better, Nature’s Swiftness has a 2 minute cooldown, and Tidal Force has a 3 minute cooldown, meaning every 2 minutes you can blast off a free Healing Wave, and if you wait for 3 minutes, you get another Lay on Hands.

Another:

#showtooltip Wind Shear
/cast [target=focus] Wind Shear

This focuses the target on Wind Shear, which means that if you target one enemy, use Wind Shear on him, then target someone else, you can press this macro and it’ll Wind Shear the original enemy. What’s Wind Shear again? It’s the spell interrupting attack that Shamans have. In arena, this macro means that when your ally is bursting down one guy, you can focus Wind Shear on the healer to make sure that he/she doesn’t heal. Good stuff. If you’re still in 3.1.3, then replace Wind Shear with Earth Shock.

That’s all for Part 1… next time, we’ll get a good gear guide going, including enchants and gemming.

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