Restoration Shaman Healing in Firelands 4.2

Now that you’re geared up for healing in Firelands, what else can you do to prepare as a restoration shaman?  You will want to have everything enchanted, gemmed, glyphed, and reforged properly.  You will want to have the best talents for your playstyle and your raid’s needs.  And you will want to know the tips and tricks for healing in the land of fire, home to Ragnaros and his legion.

Don’t forget other raid preparations like having Seafood Magnifique or other foods, and either a Battle Cauldron available or Flask of the Draconic Mind.  Make sure you are repaired and not in PVP gear!  Be prepared for the specific encounter you’ll be facing as well as for the tricks of the trash mobs you’ll be encountering.

Riptide

Riptide is one of the best healing spells for restoration shamans.  It should be used at every cooldown.  If you have gotten the Tier 12 2-pc set bonus, your Riptide is even more powerful.

The Tier 12 2-pc bonus provides a chance for 1% of your mana back each time someone receives a heal from Riptide.  If you have at least 916 haste, the first haste cap, your Riptide becomes even better.  Don’t forget to have Glyph of Riptide!

Staying out of the Fire

There is obviously going to be alot of fire damage in all Firelands encounters.  Don’t stand in the fire.  Raid awareness is more important than ever in Firelands and you don’t want to be the cause of wipes because you weren’t willing to move.

For all the rest of your fire damage, have your Healing Stream Totem with Glyph of Healing Stream Totem to act as extra healing AND resistance to elemental damage, such as fire.  The areas in Firelands are big, so you may wish to increase the range of your totems in case your group is spread out.  To do this use Totemic Reach talent in the Enhancement tree.

Always remember to heal yourself.  You can’t heal anyone if you’re dead.  If you find yourself in the fire, move while healing so you can get safely away and heal the players you’re meant to be healing.

Moving while Healing

If you haven’t mastered healing on the run yet, Firelands will be a challenge.  Do you best to increase your healing mobility.  As a restoration shaman, you have several instant heals as your disposal.  Riptide, Unleash Elements with Earthliving Weapon, and Earth Shield are all instant cast and can be used on anyone while you move.  Healing Stream Totem will heal all who need it and are in range.  Nature’s Swiftness is our emergency go-to ability for an instant heal.  You cast Nature’s Swiftness and the next spell, like Greater Healing Wave or Healing Rain, becomes and instant heal.

Spiritwalker’s Grace is a spell you can cast instantly which lets you cast all spells while running.  The spells won’t be instant unless they are always instant or you use Nature’s Swiftness with it – which you probably won’t want to do as you can cast a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave while moving.

Try to move as little as possible.  If you need to move, move the minimum amount.  If players are going out of range unnecessarily, make sure they know to stay closer.  The more you move, the less you can heal.  Take a few steps rather than running across a large area.

Mana in Firelands

Keep your Water Shield up.  It can be annoying because it uses up your global cooldown.  On fights like the Beth’tilac encounter, you will be casting Water Shield alot.  You’ll need the mana for phase 2, so it’s just best to keep it up as much as you can.

Use your Mana Tide Totem.  It will help you and it will help your mana-using raid members.  Mana Tide Totem has had its effectiveness reduced in 4.2 so you may not be the mana battery you had hoped to be for your raid.  All raiders will have to learn how to conserve their mana wisely. Heal too much and your overhealing goes up and you are out of mana.  Heal too little, and people die.   Use any other tricks or cooldowns you may have at your disposal including mana potions like Mythical Mana Potions.

Healing Assignments

If you have a healing assignment, follow it.  It will help you conserve mana and it will keep you in the location of the raid members you are meant to heal.  If you don’t have one, consider asking because it will make the healing team’s job easier.

Shamans are no longer just raid healers.  Druids are the best raid healers now and Shamans can handle tank healing quite well.   Don’t hesitate to heal your assignment and to change glyphs if you need to.

For healing the raid, you’ll want to always use Riptide, with Chain Heal, Healing Rain and Spirit Link Totem when everyone is grouped up.  If you are healing the raid when people are spread out, use Riptide, Unleash Elements with Earthliving Weapon, Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave as needed.

For tank healing, keep Earth Shield up, use Riptide, Unleash Elements with Earthliving Weapon, and Greater Healing Wave or Healing Wave depending on how much healing the tank takes.  Know the fights so you have an idea for when to expect the largest damage spikes.

Crowd Control

Many of the trash mobs in Firelands can be made easier with crowd control and you may be asked to help.  The large groups, such as the hellhound mobs and the fire nagas can be controlled in several ways by a ready and knowledgeable restoration shaman.

You can Hex humanoids and beasts and you can Bind Elementals.  Firelands has lots of these so be prepared to help out if your raid is low on CC classes.  With 4.2, you will no longer cause the mobs to attack you when you cast Hex or Bind Elemental.  When the effect wears off, the creature won’t automatically attack the player who cast it and his friend monsters won’t automatically attack your group either.

Tactics for Specific Boss Fights

Icy-veins –  Here you’ll find all the Firelands raid bosses with tips for each of the bosses.

MMO-champion – The forums here are useful for specific classes as well as specific bosses.  You may need to search to find specifically what you are looking for.

Wowpedia – The Firelands guide includes everything you need to know in great detail – from Ancient Core Hounds in the Molten Fields to Ragnaros.

Wowhead – From strategies to loot tables to comments, all the information about Firelands can be found at Wowhead.

WoWInsider – Features articles on all the Firelands bosses including class and role specific advice.

Addons

Finally, some addons you should have, even if you’ve never used them before for raiding.  These are addons that not everyone might use.  Most raids expect healers to have Healbot or some type of healing addon and something like Deadly Boss Mods or BigWigs for each boss encounter.

TellMeWhen is awesome for tracking cooldowns, buffs, debuffs, totems and spell casts.  It is customizable, including a feature which plays a sound when various attributes change and an option to set have a text announcement when an attribute changes.  It’s taking me a little while to get used to it, but I like it.

TotemTimers helps manage your shamany abilities, including totems, shields and weapon buffs as well as totem ranges.

GTFO is a great addon for healers who are already overburdened with visual cues.  GTFO makes sounds, annoying bad ow-ow-ow alarms to warn you to MOVE IT!  You don’t have to know what it causing the damage or why, just move fast and when you’re in a safe spot, it’s quiet.

You should now be ready to tackle anything that the Firelands can toss at you.  You will be prepared with gear, talents, glyphs, gems, enchantments, consumables, tactics and addons. You know the shaman specific tricks and abilities to bring to the raid.  Good luck and don’t forget to Riptide!

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