Dungeon Tips for Your Shaman - Part 3

Thanks to everyone who read Part 2 of this series and corrected me where I was mistaken. The beauty of an interactive blog is that the entire reader base can ensure quality control!

For those who haven’t been keeping score at home, here’s what’s happened “previously on The Game Dame”:

1. Dungeon Tips for Your Shaman - Part 1 - How to prepare
2. Dungeon Tips for Your Shaman - Part 2 - Totems and DPS

In Part 3 we’ll talk about healing and aggro/threat management inside the instance.

Healing

The game values healers. Since Shaman are healers who can wear more than just skivvies and can take a hit like a champ, we make great members of the dungeon party. Here are some general tips for healing instances.

• Know your role.
  • If you’re NOT the primary healer, don’t heal unless absolutely necessary. Don’t even heal yourself – unless the primary healer has given you permission — because the Priest may waste mana on you. Besides, healing yourself without permission will make you go blind. I swear. That’s what the nuns always told me.
  • If you ARE the primary healer, don’t worry about firing off DPS spells. Keep everyone healed and drop buffing totems when you have the mana to spare.
• Drop your Healing Stream totem.
• If things are going well, try to keep everyone over half XP by using lots of Lesser Heals to conserve mana and cast quickly. Healing Wave takes more mana and is longer to cast so it’s more easily interrupted. That said, you gotta use it, of course. Just try to balance when you need to all-out rescue someone vs. merely keeping them level.
• At level 40, you will train one of the coolest spells in WoW: Chain Heal. With this spell you can heal more than one person at a time. As the spell snakes through the crowd it loses potency, so make sure you target your most needy party mate for the first hit. This spell is a wonder to behold when it crits. Even Priests wish they had this spell! (Note the threat on this puppy, though. See below.)
• Whom do you heal first? Think about your party’s survivability and that should help you decide.
  1. Yourself. Shaman are wipe insurance for the whole party through reincarnation and resurrection. As long as you’re left alive — even if you’re the last woman standing — the party hasn’t wiped.
  2. Tank. He’s keeping the damage off you and the clothies. You can’t win if the mobs kill your DPSers so keep your tank healthy.
  3. DPSers. These are the folks who were voted “Most Likely to Kick Booty” at Azeroth High and you can’t take down bosses without them.
  4. Other healers. I’m assuming for this post that your Shaman is the primary healer in the group. Since you can do damage also, if you keep yourself and your tank alive, you can rez the other healers later.
  5. Crowd controllers. These folks are definitely nice to have, but I’m sorry, you die first if necessary.
• At level 30+, you are your party’s wipe insurance thanks to Reincarnation. Make sure you bring plenty of ankhs for this purpose. (For a two-hour instance, you may need 3, so bring 4.) This role carries responsibility. It means that if things get hairy and people start dropping, you’d better run to safety so the whole party can live to see another fight. Heal and drink up, then rez the other healers so they can start rezzing everyone else. Drink again.
• There are some good healer add-ons out there, but I have not used any of them due to my Elemental spec. I’ll do some research on them, but in the meantime, I’d ask your level 70 Priests, Resto Shaman/Druid/Pally buds what they use.

Threat Management

Between healing and DPS, Shaman generate a lot of threat, no doubt about it. When you pull aggro, remember my cardinal rule from Part 2: PULL AGGRO TO THE TANK!

The following tips tell you about the spells with which Shaman can generate the most threat. You’ll need to know about these for two reasons. First, don’t use them if you don’t intend to pull aggro to yourself! Second, use them to save the hide of a more vulnerable party member by pulling aggro to yourself. (And then taking it to the tank, right? Remember?) Okay, so it’s a list of “Don’ts” and “Do’s” all rolled up into bulletized goodness.

• Frost Shock is the fastest, single most effective way to get a mob’s attention in your direction.
• If your Frost Shock is still cooling down, you can drop a Stone Claw totem to taunt the trash to you.
• Chain Lightning is a sure-fire way (pardon the pun?) to pull multiple monsters in your direction. You’d better be sure you can handle them if you use this spell or you will be toast in, like, mere seconds. Use with caution!
• Any type of healing carries threat so if you’re healing, stay on the move and remember Rule #1 under threat management. (Don’t talk about healing?) Chain Heal carries extra threat because it affects a wider area and therefore more mobs.

This concludes my lecture series on Shaman in lower level instances. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog programming.

Please feel free to let me know your critiques and other tips!