Totem Talk: Chaos at the back of the party!

Totem Talk is written by Matthew Rossi for shamans, and the people who love them. You'd better be one of those people that love them or are them... is them? Wait, how did this paragraph get away from me so fast? Crap, don't die, don't die, don't....whew, the heal landed! I'd better burn an NS and drop a Healing Wave on it, just to be sure. Man, the paragraph's health just started bombing!

So you've decided to heal.

Maybe you're full resto, or maybe you're an enhancement or elemental shaman but you have good healing gear and you need to heal for some reason. Perhaps your raid needs just a little extra healing. Perhaps you really just want to get that Shadow Labs run out of the way before 2.4 comes in and the only slot open is for a healer. Maybe you just like being yelled at by people if you don't keep them at full health at all times. I'm not going to sit here and psychoanalyze you, oh my no. First off, have you seen my picture? If I were you (and I'm not, I'm me) I wouldn't take any mental health advice from that guy. He looks kind of insane. Secondly, it's not Totem Talk's aim to discourage you, but rather to facilitate you in any way we can. If you want to spec resto and heal, we want to help you. If you want to heal as an enhancement or elemental shaman, we're on board. If you want to rob several banks and then flee to Prince Edward Island, you're on your own. We're terribly lazy.

We've discussed the nuts and bolts of shaman healing before, so today we'll mostly touch on it but not go into detail to that extent.

The first thing to keep in mind as you go into healing is not to panic, especially if it's your first time. Yes, people's health bars are going to start dropping on you. Don't panic. First off, in Chain Heal, you have one of the best group-healing abilities in the game, especially on melee targets who are in the path of cleaves, AoE damage and so on. Make sure to keep your totems up so long as you can, as buffing your party effectively means that they can complete a trash clear faster or kill a boss in less time, meaning that they take less damage. The less damage they take, the less you have to heal.

In general, shamans are not the best main tank healers because we lack a significant heal over time spell, even if we spec restoration. Yes, there's Earth Shield, which has some similarities to the priest spell Prayer of Mending and which will tick for a healing benefit as the target takes damage, meaning that it can serve in a heal over time capacity in a pinch. But that's basically it, and it requires 41 points in resto, so if you don't have it you don't have it. Keep in mind that Healing Wave is an excellent big heal and that Chain Heal can help a lot with the splash damage non-tanking DPS players can take in a typical fight. You want to play to your strengths instead of focusing on that one kind of healing spell you don't have.

Especially important if you happen to be a non-resto shaman healing: please have gear for it. Don't tell your group "It's okay, I'm enhancement, my attack power gives me spell damage" and expect to heal a group. People get testy when they die over and over again because you're trying to heal while dual wielding. The good people at Blizzard make gear for healing for a reason, because it is required. If you haven't already acquired pieces from instance runs... you know, those mail shoulders no one wanted? The ones the hunter made you take because they had +heal on them? Yeah, dig those out for this, it turns out they'll help. I know, I was shocked too, why do you think I was healing in PvP shoulders for so long? I kept refusing to take healing mail when I was enhancement, and then when I specced resto I wanted to go back in time and punch myself in the groin. But yeah, if you haven't acquired such pieces because, like me, you refused to take them or if they just haven't dropped, then check the local AH. And don't limit yourself to mail, either.

As a DPS shaman, please consider taking that healing leather or cloth if no one else in the party is going to use it. Don't constantly roll on healing cloth against the priest who heals you, but do consider rolling against a shadow priest for it... neither one of you is a healer at the moment, but either of you might be. Feral druids usually won't mind, since they're of the same mind about healing gear as you are... pick it up if no one else is going to use it. Always be considerate of your group healer, though, as the whole point of this article is that it may very well be you someday watching a Ret Pally roll on that healing shield for his offset. Don't be that guy. Do get the gear, but don't be a jerk about it.

Once you have suitable gear, you'll still need to figure out what to do. A resto shaman has some big advantages as a healer... he'd better, since that's what he specced to do, after all. His threat will most likely be lower, his spells will heal for more and crit more often, and he'll have various abilities that can increase the armor of a target healed or which improve the next heal that lands on the target. If you don't have those abilities, all you can really do is your best. Even a non spec healer can learn to downrank his or her healing spells for maximum healing efficiency. and as a non-spec healer you'll have to be even more careful with healing aggro than a shaman who has Healing Grace already. But keep in mind that shamans healed without healing grace before patch 1.11, and you can do so now if you're careful.

Healing can be one of the most frustrating, exciting, painful, exhilarating, tedious, confusing things in the game. To some degree it's lost a bit of that whack a mole quality so often derided by healers before TBC. It's true that you have to pay more attention to what's going on around you now, meaning that you can't just bury your nose in a bunch of health bars. Honestly, I've come to enjoy it quite a lot more than I expected, especially as I started to raid on my resto shammy. But raid healing is its own bag of worms, and thankfully WoW Insider has a column for you aspiring raid healers.

Next week I'm finally going to sit down and really talk about Shamans in PvP. I warn you now, it's probably going to hurt.