olsweddy

I'm working on my first Shaman, level 47 now, hopefully 48 tonight. So far I'm going the enhancement route as it's proven to be absurdly fast. I don't want to stay Enh, however, at least not strictly.

What I *really* want to do is play a hybrid. I'd love to know which of the below mixtures work as a hybrid. When I say work I mean fulfill one or more of the roles in a five-man run well, and possibly even be useful in a raid:

Elem/Resto
Enh/Resto
Heavy Resto (45+) with a splash of ?

I'd love to be able to have enough healing skills that I can slap on a good heal suit and handle five mans all the way up to (but not necessarily including) heroics. But I'd really like to know how low in resto talents I can go and still do this, so as to be able to play to other strengths as well.

The raiding thing, well, my expectation is that you pretty much have to be strongly committed to one role to raid, and I can accept that.

ED: thanks for moving this...was worried that as it's just a question it wasn't meaty enough for this forum :P

 

◊ Gwaihir

The only way you will really play as a hybrid, in my experience, is in 5 man groups, usually heroics. Just about any heroic goes much smother with one dedicated healer, and one hybrid class dpsing, buy able to heal for the three or so "hard mob pulls" (or bosses) in every heroic. Things like double Coilfang Defenders, Felguard Annihilators, Lt. Drake in Durnholde, Underbog lrods, whatever.

In a raid, you are nearly always either healing full time, or dpsing full time, with not much crossover. The best example of a hybrid raid role would be in something like Gruul, where you are dpsing, and then stop to heal up people after shatters.

Elemental/resto works much better for those times compared to enh/resto. Simply because, you will have unrelenting storm for a 50 mp5 bonus, and the dps gear you wear will already have a good deal of spellpower, which of course benefits heals. Enhance, while having the ability to fill your mana bar with Shamanistic Rage, will not have nearly as powerful heals, and is much better suited to being a "rogue in mail."

A very good compromise spec for both dpsing and maintaining quite good mainhealing capability is 30/0/31. You don't have the totally easy time healing 5 mans that earthshield provides, but you still retain quite a bit of healing power thanks to healing way and purification, in addition to manatide and Unrelenting storm.

 

◊ Praetorian

Moving this to the class subforum, where it's a better fit.

 

zepi

Just looking at the shaman talent trees tells me the following things:

If you plan on DPS:ing with elemental, 31p in elemental tree is the minimum. If you plan to DPS in raiding content, 34p is the minimum. Key talents for DPS is Lightning Mastery, which requires for you to invest atleast 30p to the tree. Elemental Fury and Unrelenting Storms from the 5'th tier however are so good, that you can't skip them.

If you plan on DPS'ing in raid-content at all, even in hybrid role, You can't leave Elemental Precision unchosen, so that is 34p minimum assuming you can deal with 30yard bolt range. If you want the 36yard range, make it 36 points. This leaves us with 25-27p for restoration. With such talents as Healing Way and Naturess Swiftness being available with 24p resto tree, it's clear that you are still a very capable healer.

Talents that synergize well with the Gear/Talent combo we are looking here are Ancestral Healing and Tidal Mastery. Choosing these gives you a great deal of +25% armor buff uptime, which makes you a good hybrid for example for Gruul. DPS for the first 3 minutes, topping people of with your LHW and Chain Heal after shatters, and once you've got maybe 7-8 growths stacked, change for MT / OT healing. You'll increase the average armor level of tanks by substantial amount which really helps countering the increasing damage your tanks face against him.

Summary, Elemental/Resto hybrid talents with a splash of raid dps:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GE0zy0MqAZZxcbt0eo

The another alternative which makes you a better healer / manabuffer, but sacrifices raid dps. You'll still be able to dps quite well in 5man content however.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GE0zy00aVZZxcbtVeoz

Note: Choosing from tier 1-3 resto talents seems hard for me, Tidal Forus, Totemic Focus, Healing Focus, Healing Grace and Totemic Mastery all seem ok talents, but taking elemetal as far as we now are, there just is not enough points to take them all.

My guess is, that you'd be able to solo heal atleast some, if not most of the heroics with both builds. Also, I'd guess that both builds could work fairly well in Karazhan also.

 

Grital

Totemic Focus is roughly 3mp/5 per point if you're just refreshing Totems. When you have to change them a lot it becomes a bit better, but that doesn't happen much in PvE. By contrast each point of Tidal Focus is worth 14.4mp/5 for (talented) HW, 10.8 mp/5 for CH, and 14.7 mp/5 for LWH. Meaning that is how much mana you save over a five second period of casting those spells with 1 point in Tidal Focus. Healing Focus is an excellent talent but has to be contrasted against Nature's Guidance which is an important hybrid talent for Ele/Rest because you don't need as much +spell hit on gear. That is the serious trade-off in early tiers of Resto.

In Elemental, Reverberation doesn't really do much. Shocks are used for utility if you're nuking or healing. The 1sec can be critical in PvP, not so much in PvE. Elemental Warding is a better choice.

Pure Resto
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GVcZZEc0tAeoted
You won't be doing anything but healing with this. You can solo heal Heroics with this spec though (assuming you're geared up for it).

Elem/Rest Hybrid
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hEckV0MqAoZZeccz0eo

Two throughput talents are talented HW and Healing Way. Biggest boosts to a Shaman's overall HP/S which is really important in healing. Elemental Mastery guaruntees a spirit tick every time you use it, so 100+ mana in addition to two free spells, one of which is going to crit. Definately worth a point. I just tossed that one point in Call of Flame because I wanted to get to the good part of the tree, really you can put it anywhere you feel like.

You'd never really want to do an Enh/Rest hybrid.

 

Zifna

Either Enh or Ele can be a little hybridy in 5-mans, and all shaman are hybridy in PvP.

However, your best bet for Raiding Hybridization is to not try to hybridize your spec at all, but to be ready to heal a bit if needed. The way Blizzard has done gear does not favor a true hybrid... Elemental would be better than Enhance in terms of this, but only by a bit.

 

Skiace

this is the thread that discusses the elemental/restoration hybrid build in great detail: [Shaman] Elemental vs Restoration