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10-17-10, 02:52 PM   #1
OldHarry
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Resto shammy looking for advice

I am coming to a resto shammy with a warrior background. I know melee and tanking but casting and healing are very new to me. I find I am loving my shammy and love to heal. I think knowledge from the instances I tanked have helped me in healing them. I am still learning a lot and looking for advice from all you experienced resto shammies out there. Healbot is great. Healing with lag is not great. I am seriously considering making my shammy my main toon and am open to any helpful advice out there.

He does have an elemental off spec.
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10-17-10, 03:27 PM   #2
Aerials
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Have u tried using the blizz frames with Clique? it's pretty much the same thing but you set up the click combinations on your own. I use that with the 'use raid style party frames' and i turn on 'class colored bars', and some other options it has under raid frames to mke the frames really nice.

There's really no need for unit frame addons anymore, other than maybe for player and target and focus (maybe one to hide the player frame since it's included in the raid style frames).

All i ever experienced from heal bot the mny times i tried it was annoyance, lag and people dieing due to it not updating their bars fast enough.

Clique and the blizz frames are the same functionality done right.
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10-19-10, 03:25 AM   #3
Phanx
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The default Blizzard frames are not configurable enough for many people. The minimum size is way too big, you can't configure specific buffs or debuffs you want to see, and all buffs and debuffs are shown as tiny icons that are hard to see. If they work for you, that's great, but they don't work for everyone.

That said, for some general advice from someone whose main was a resto shaman for about 5 years (enhancement for the last few months):

1. Filter out anything and everything that doesn't directly affect your gameplay choices. The only things my healing raid frames show are missing health, incoming heals, Earth Shield cast by anyone, Riptide cast by me only, a single generic indication for any/all significant HoTs, aggro, dispellable debuffs, and a very small number of individual boss debuffs. That's it. Having information on your screen that doesn't directly affect you just makes it harder to notice the information that does affect you. If it's just "neat to know about", get rid of it.

2. Disable Recount or whatever other combat meter addon you use. Healing meters are worthless, and paying attention to them will make you a worse healer, not a better one. If you are keeping people alive, managing your mana, dispelling debuffs, keeping buff totems down, and not standing in fire out of fire, you are a good healer. The actual amount of healing you're doing is not important as long as nobody is dying.

3. Learn to heal proactively, rather than reactively. If people are dying because you're not casting heals until your raid frames show them at 20% health, the problem is in your playstyle, not your raid frames. If someone gets aggro, start casting a heal on them. If someone gets the boss's DoT, start casting a heal on them. If you're healing the tank, start casting a heal even if he hasn't taken any damage yet, because he's going to get hit.

4. Try other raid frame addons. Healbot is not the only thing out there. I've used Grid for almost 5 years now, and have never had it "lag" or delay updating anyone's health bar; when its original author quit WoW, I took over as the addon's maintainer. If Grid doesn't do it for you, there are numerous other addons out there. VuhDo, PerfectRaid, PitBull4, Shadowed Unit Frames, and many others are either dedicated raid frame addons, or general unit frame addons that can do raid frames.

4b. Most addons don't include built-in click-casting. If you like click-casting, get Clique and get used to using it. It works for all addons, not just one, and even works with the default Blizzard unit frames.
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10-19-10, 08:02 AM   #4
OldHarry
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I went into a raid with the ingame raid panels showing and it was a total disaster. For some reason they would not let me click through them. And there was no transparency to them that I could see or find in a hurry to fix. I had to say wait a minute, stop and disable then and restart healbot. I may have just been missing something never having had a need to use raid frames on a tank or a melee toon.

One of the things I find very unique to playing a shammy healer is with the cast times of the heals. I do a lot of randoms right now and the first pulls are and adjustment to see how the tank, gear-wise and skill-wise, takes damage and holds aggro. Every run like that is a different experience and each dungeon holds its own special challenges learning experiences. Yesterday I learned I would much rather heal HOR than POS. Were I to go in on a different toon and tank it would be the other way around.

As a non employable physically handicapped person one of the things I love most about this game is the way it keeps my mind agile and active.
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10-19-10, 08:22 AM   #5
Flarin
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Originally Posted by OldHarry View Post
I went into a raid with the ingame raid panels showing and it was a total disaster. For some reason they would not let me click through them. And there was no transparency to them that I could see or find in a hurry to fix. I had to say wait a minute, stop and disable then and restart healbot. I may have just been missing something never having had a need to use raid frames on a tank or a melee toon.

One of the things I find very unique to playing a shammy healer is with the cast times of the heals. I do a lot of randoms right now and the first pulls are and adjustment to see how the tank, gear-wise and skill-wise, takes damage and holds aggro. Every run like that is a different experience and each dungeon holds its own special challenges learning experiences. Yesterday I learned I would much rather heal HOR than POS. Were I to go in on a different toon and tank it would be the other way around.

As a non employable physically handicapped person one of the things I love most about this game is the way it keeps my mind agile and active.
I have not healed with a shammy yet, but I have healed with Druids, Pally's and Priests. Shammy is next for me - I am raising him up to 80 as Enhancement because it is so fast, then going to dual spec.

Healing is an adventure. I like VuhDo for heals - it seems to have served me well and I never have had any problem with lag.

I have tanked with all of the classes, and I kinda have it down so I know what to do. As a healer, I have found:

1. Good players playing tanks are easy to heal - doesn't matter which class they are. They know what they are doing, they hold agro and have enough gear to tank (doesn't mean necessarily elite gear, just the right stats and spec)

2. Pally's - As long as they are Prot, in my experience it doesn't matter if they are good players or not. As long as they have righteous fury turned on and they consecrate you are good. They only downside with bad players that play pally's is they won't know how to manage mana, so there will be big downtime between fights

3. Bad players (besides Pally's) - this is just a crap shoot. If you are uber geared you "may" be able to keep everyone alive. Be prepared for the tank to lose agro, be the wrong spec, have the wrong enchants/gems/gear. Be prepared (in randoms) to be blamed for the inevitable wipe. Be prepared for the DPS classes to pull agro like crazy. Your best bet is to get the DPS arguing with the Tank and stay neutral. Worst case they both blame you. Don't get trapped into the argument - it can be frustrating to try and tell them how to play, offer advice, etc. As I know how to tank all of the classes I have often fell into the trap of trying to provide guidance to DPS or Tanks, and that has not had good results. I even once got kicked from a group for suggesting the Pally turn on Righteous Fury and wield his shield. Yep, kicked.

Sorry for the rant, but, just wanted to tell you what to expect, and to tell you for the most part wipes won't be your fault.

Enjoy!
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WoWInterface » General Discussion » Class Discussions » Resto shammy looking for advice

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