How to Heal

[Geldour]

step 1- spam your blue heal over an over until you have no mana

step 2- brag the you are #1 in heals an the best healer in the world

[Misiuggah]

There will be times when due to stupidity, lack of skill or poor gear the health bars of your tanks will be going down and all your heals are already out.
At these times put your pride aside, get off your high horse and forget about the DPS parse.
At these times DO start spamming your blue heal and celestial gaze(if you have it) until things get back to normal.
It can make the difference between a wipe and a win.
Then you can start DPS again.

Every time I would rather have a win than a wipe where I top dps chart.

Well, spamming blue heal won't help them and you can't really "spam" CG because of the long cooldown - in those 30s the tanks will either die or be saved by other heals, kiting etc.

Nukes shouldn't be a part of normal rotation if it's possible. If you know how the boss behaves (pattern of attacks, aggro reset, pauses) you can save your heal for the most risky moments. Unloading all you have just to be sure all tanks are 100% is not a good idea.

[Boesch]

Spamming blue gives really no benefit other than overwriting others and making you look like you're doing more. It's what you do outside of casting blues that make you a great healer.

I only have experience with Bear Shamans but there's a whole lot to do when the fight is difficult so you aren't just smashing it for damage instead.

-Ursine Brawl for %miss chance
-Runes for magic mitigation
-Bloodthirst Combo heals the group
-Continual attacking rather than spamming blues means you build up Nature's Wrath (extra heal on blue) and Nature's Revenge (extra heal at a 10 stack).
-Change your manifestation away from DPS (spirit/sun) and into survivability (spirit/regrowth) for -damage on the enemies and group wide extra healing.
-Use your big heal as soon as the full effects can be used so that you can maximise the amount of times it gets cycled in a fight. It's only a small amount to a geared tank so don't try to save it.
-Alternatively know the fights and the reset points and know when you can hold off a big heal. For instance, don't use your big heal in ROF at 78% health unless it's absolutely vital.
-Hit Celestial Gaze everytime it's up.
-Use Bears when you can.
-Know the timing of the various ruins so you can SFF them before they cripple the tanks. Letting them tick a few times can be worth a big heal.
-Finally, still don't slacken off on DPS. Dead bosses stop hitting. Also high DPS and you push them to various phases (75/50/25 etc) that might buy you a breather while they take other actions. Rune of Aggression should live on cooldown.

[Daynan]

Spamming blue gives really no benefit other than overwriting others and making you look like you're doing more. It's what you do outside of casting blues that make you a great healer.

Sorry to correct you. Bear Shaman heals might be different and I am used to PoM.

Wave of Life can heal 384 on target plus 192 on target every 1 second according to the tooltip.
Radiance heals 1313-1637 once a minute.
My recast is 3 seconds on Wave of Life. I take that to mean that if I spam it I can squeeze out the equivalent of a big heal every 12 seconds. If the toolip is incorrect then I apologise, I have come across other tooltips before with ambiguous info.

BTW this is the newcomers forum so they might not yet even have celestial gaze.

[Mellaus]

One more vote for not spamming blue heal.

It is useless and counterproductive. Instead, make use of your other abilities, like protection buffs, damage increase (for helping dts with their own health tap), damage output debuffs on enemies, maxing your own dps, etc.

There are many other ways of keeping your team alive apart from the obvious blue heal. Skill lies in your ability to make use of those other means.

In some cases, a fight is not meant to be sustained for ever, it is simply a dps race, because no tank whatever his skill/gear, will be able to handle an insane beating past a certain time window.
So it's the responsibility to the dps and the healers to pull their own weight so the fight does not exceed the time the tank can survive that beating.

[Mellaus]

Wave of Life can heal 384 on target plus 192 on target every 1 second according to the tooltip.

That's exactly the point, the initial burst of the blue heal does apply only if the target is not already affected by any blue heal. So by spamming it, you just lose the benefit from that initial burst.

[Daynan]

True. Sometimes a group just doesn't have the gear, aa's or even the right class mix to handle certain areas. In this case no amount of heals or strategy will help.
I'm talking about groups who are capable for their goal but have just messed up somehow and suddenly need every ounce of healing and bubbles they can produce.

[Daynan]

So you have to wait for it to expire for the 384 to work again? These tooltips really need an overhaul.

I'll keep an eye on my heal log next time I'm on pom.

[Boesch]

So you have to wait for it to expire for the 384 to work again? These tooltips really need an overhaul.

I'll keep an eye on my heal log next time I'm on pom.

There are reports that it is actually an internal cooldown on the individual characters, and regardless of if there's a blue or not, after 15 seconds the next blue will give double health.

I haven't really paid attention, I hit it around every 15 seconds anyway because that's the duration of the 45% weapon damage buff.

[Daynan]

I feel like an idiot. This is like Flurry of Blows all over again. Why do we have to come to the forums to find out what our spells feats and aa's really do?