Totem Talk: Restoration mail bag

Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast

Last week we talked about one of most useful and versatile addons available to any player and discussed how it can be helpful for a restoration shaman. Prior to that, Rich Maloy had a fantastic write-up about using the very same addon for enhancement.

This week, I thought I would do something a little different. Lately there has been quite a bit of email coming my way with questions regarding addons, shaman mechanics and making the switch to restoration. Part of my goal has ever been to provide information to players whether they are just starting out or just need a few things clarified. So this week I wanted to take some time to recover from USA's getting eliminated from the World Cup and answer some questions from readers.

So, let us dive right into it, shall we?

Making a switch

Shakura, this is a fairly common question. And to be honest, no, it's not something that you should be overly concerned about. At the end of The Burning Crusade and even early into Wrath, this would be a stat you wanted to stack, but that has changed, especially in the end game. Restoration shaman share a lot of stats with elemental shaman. Haste will help out by increasing the healing efficiency of your spells like Chain Heal and Healing Wave. Crit rating will help proc restoration talents such as Ancestral Awakening. Crit also allows you to take advantage of Improved Water Shield. This talent really goes a long way to make up for the lack of MP5, so as long as you have those two stats covered with decent spellpower, you can heal in a pinch and be fairly effective at it as long as you have the right talent spec supporting it.

Power Auras clarification

Alicja, you've actually caught onto something there that I should have covered. Since receiving your email, I have tested this out and have encountered the same error. After much poring over the buffs and the addon power aura, I believe that I have the answer to your question. Power Auras Classic allows you to specify spell by either name or spell ID. Spell ID can be found through wowhead.com quite easily.

The solace trinket is http://www.wowhead.com/spell=67696 for normal mode trinket, spell ID 67696. Heroic is http://www.wowhead.com/spell=67750, spell ID 67750. Totem Energized buff http://www.wowhead.com/spell=71220 is spell ID 71220.

Instead of the name of the spell, you can put the spell ID where the name would go -- [71220] for the totem, and so forth. I hope that gives you the answer you are looking for. I tested this out and it worked pretty spot on!

Just the basics

Vorin, these are very common questions among players just starting down the restoration shaman path, so let's see if I can give them a nice solid answer.

1A: Once a person with Riptide is targeted by a successfully cast Chain Heal, all remaining HoT effects of the spell are consumed immediately. This occur even if it is in between ticks. There is no "rounding up" on the timer, so to speak, so any healing effects from the HoT left are lost.

1B: The wording of the spell is very specific here:

This means that it will only be consumed and buff your healing if the person is the first target of your Chain Heal. Due to the nature of CH, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as it will effect the healing totals of all your other jumps after the first (sort of like a super charge).

2: The short answer is yes, they all have the same multiplier. Spell critical heals will only heal for 150% of their normal amount. That said, it is possible to cast two critical heals of the same spell back to back and have different results, as our spellpower fluctuates or what the total of the base heal was before the crit. You can test this yourself; a spell that heals for around 5k will heal for somewhere around 7.5k when it crits. This is different than DPS crits, which can be pushed higher than 150% by talents.

3. Blizzard has already increased the range of the spell in a previous patch. Pre-patch 3.2, Chain Heal would jump up to 10 yards. Post patch 3.2 it now jumps up to 12.5 yards. Restoration shaman were seeing less and less use in hard mode encounters, as many required raid members to be further than 10 yards apart to avoid certain encounter effects. While they've increased it once to bring us up to speed with other healing classes and to make sure we were viable in hard modes, it is very unlikely they will increase it again. On top of having a good range between jumps, it is still a smart heal, and so it goes where it's needed within that range. I don't think it will get buffed anytime soon. That said, Glyph of Chain Heal does pretty darn good by increasing the maximum targets affected by chain heal by one.

Hope that answers your questions!

That's it for this week. If you have any questions you want answered or anything you want clarified, feel free to email me or to ask on twitter. Be sure to add the tag #asklodur.

Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Mike Sacco's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, we have you covered.