Basic Numbers for Restoration

So what are the most sought after Stats for Resto Shaman?

That's debatable and being hammered out in many places. Personally I have 4 stats that are of importance to me at this point while leveling. Spellpower, INT, Crit Chance and MP5. So lets cover a little about them.

Spellpower - At least while I am leveling this is going to be my most important focus. The biggest reason is the return. Yes it definitely adds to your overall healing numbers but it also goes a long way in determining how hard your offensive abilities hit. This is important now that I am Resto and don't have the raw offensive power of Enhancement. While I will never hit as hard as an Elemental shammy, I still want to hit as hard as possible.

INT - This is also very valuable as it also adds to spellpower as well as your overall mana pool. The more mana, the longer you can cast. Simple as that. It also adds to your spell crit chances which is also highly beneficial.

Crit Chance - Given the wide number of Resto abilities that only get better when you crit leads me to want to have a high rating here as well. I list this in the number 3 spot because crit is not a constant, therefore I want to always be looking to increase this, it isn't as important as SP and INT.

MP5 - This stat is valuable as it determines how fast you regenerate your mana. Outside of the obvious, this is a stat that I believe is possibly more valuable than crit. Time will tell on this as I level higher and I am able to experiment and learn more about how all of these numbers interact and determine what's happening when. Absolutely the higher this value the better cause this can have a huge impact on the course of a longer fight and your ability to keep up with your responsibilities in it.

Currently my numbers are definitley not even close to where I want in them in this regard, but at level 71 it isn't something I am beginning to sweat yet. As I get closer to level 80 then I will begin to take a closer look at what numbers I should be looking at. I am hoping that by then a lot of the theorycrafting sites have been able to come up with reliable numbers as minimums for the varying difficutlies of Raids and Dungeons. Thus far, all the theorycrafting for Resto isn't willing to give anything definitive yet. As more info becomes available and I get more experience in this spec, I'll do my best to keep everyone informed.

Dhar

It's Done

So, I've done it. I've gone full Restoration.

I can now say for the first time this isn't so bad so far. I've already almost cleared a full half level of XP in this spec and while questing is moving a little slower, it's not impossible. Far from it actually. It is taking a little getting used to and I am having to make sure I am always using my totems but that's no biggy really. I haven't done a dungeon yet but I soon will and then we'll so how the healing thing goes.

As I get more famaliar with things I will start posting more on all that is good for Resto shaman. Hopefully I can begin to contribute here more fully with a good measure of understanding.

Restoration???

So the debate is on. I've been Enhancement for almost my entire life except for a couple of months during my tenure of BC soon after I hit 70. I specced to Resto then and attempted to see what I could do. What I found was frustration.... I did well healing on group quests and when I would party up with my friends, but in instances I did really poorly. This is in part to not understanding a whole lot about healing and what spells and totems to use in what situations and such. I found I almost never used chain heal and this is probably the biggest reason I had difficulty. Now back then you also had to keep track of a lot of different stats and factors to ensure you were an efficient healer. Now though this isn't so true. With the changes that have happened since patch 3.0.2 and the release of Wrath of the Lich King Resto has a lot more ability to be offensive than before.

Blizzard wrapped up all the abilities like +heal, shadow, fire and such into spellpower. They also changed the co-efficeints and scaling this ability gets from gear. While the numbers look lower than what they were under the old formulas for BC, you are actually doing a little better in your heals and damage. The curious part of this is that very few people actually have figured out the formula's or affect this new system has on casters and healers, even though most people seem to really enjoy the added firepower they have so to saay.

For Resto shaman this does open the door to two things, more effective healing and being better able to level while specced Resto. Why? Because spellpower carries over to our offensive spells and totems as well. So depending upon how we build our talent trees this can be very beneficail in several ways. Another nice thing about the changes is that spellpower scales even better than ever before with our shocks and totems. Prior to these patches, we had to choose what we would be enhanceing with our gear. Most shaman just added overall spell damage and left specifics like +nature and +fire alone (although quite a few would do +fire) and that was if you were specced elemental. Resto shaman could not afford to do this so selecting any talents in the Elemental tree was futile at best. Now this isn't so true any more.

Depending upon what your intent is, you can build a hybrid Resto/Elem shammy that is capable of being offensively powerful enough to do all his quests solo and have enough healing power to keep a 5-man alive. This build seems well designed for the regular BG's as well, though I'm not so sure about the Arena's. Other variations in include builds that allow for shaman to go deep enough in the enhancement tree to get DW, and retain solid healing as well. All of this is possible becaue of the changes and Blizz allowing better scaling of Spellpower with talents and spells. As for the exact specifics of this scaling and such, I have yet to determine why this is so.

This has be definitely debating that I will change specs soon to Resto. I am doing more research and when I can get a good handle on how this all work, I'll make the change and level my remaining levels in that spec.

Dhar