I had several questions regarding Restoration Shamans gear in Arenas and talent specs.

First off some background and what I am expecting. The shaman that I have is fairly new to 70. I previously had leveled a Draenei hunter to 70, but found the playstyle not that interesting. I then decided to go back and become a healbot. I recently got asked to be on a 5s team and so have begun the process of gearing up for pvp healing. Personally, I like to be a healbot and that is what I would like my gear and spec considerations to be able to give me the best opportunity to do this.

When choosing a spec, it did not seem like there was much outside of restoration tree that would aid my ability to heal, mostly in a pve environment, but also now in a pvp environment. With that in mind I went 0/0/61. Are there any talents that I should pick up to help my survivability and help maintain my healing power in the other talent trees. It did not seem like it, but since I am fairly new to the class I was wondering if I could get some input on the issue. Damage/farming is not an issue at least personally as I have a well geared 70 hunter to meet all my farming needs.

I have started the slow process of getting the pvp blues and epics to help fill some serious stamina holes in my gear. The blue pvp set seems really nice to provide a bridge towards arena gear. My current healbot gear can be found in my profile (6200 hp needs fixing ASAP I know). I am also in the process of getting some badges for the rewards there that really seemed to be geared towards pvp healing (high stamina mixed with good healing stats). I was wondering what is your preferred stat on gear in a pvp healing environment. How would you rate:

Stamina
MP5
Healing
Intellect
Resilience
Spell Crit

My personal feelings tend to rank them as listed, but that is basically my impression of shamies in a pve environment with just adding stamina at the top and resilience near the bottom.

Finally, in looking at the level 70 pvp epic items (cape, boots, belt, bracers, neck), I noticed that there was not really any pure healing items available from pvp. Everything has spell crit and spell damage, no pure healing and mp5 items. How do people feel about these items from a healing standpoint? Are their better alternatives?

For instance:

Marshal's Mail Sabatons vs. Auchenai Boots

A very similar option exits for the belt:
Marshal's Mail Girdle vs. Tarren Mill Defender's Cinch

Both of the blues being socketed with 12 sta gems or something similar. Another example is the Seal of the Exorcist which wastes alot of points into things that I will not use much I assume healing.

Well, gear depends probably pretty much on your team setup. I for instance can almost always except to be kept under some pressure at first, but on the other hand, we play with three healers (paladin, druid, shaman, double warrior), so I'm not only on healing duty, but keep an opposite pala or druid from healing, and for this purpose a 16/0/45 build with imp. shock cd. is rather nice: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=GgczxZZvz0tVcsted As the fight turns into a mana war I almost always change my gear to PvE-mp5-gear when I get low on mana (what can happen really really quickly with heroism + lhw spam).

And well, it's sad there aren't any BG-epics for restos (why? ), I wen't for the BG-Items till I reached 10k HP unbuffed and the rest is normal PvE-Gear. I uterly lack now in terms of +heal (some 800) and manareg(next to 0), but I can't help myself.

You will generally be one of the first targets picked for Focus Fire so you really need to build your toon around that.

I prioritize Stam, Resilience, +healing, Int, MP5, crit basically in that order.

In terms of "gear to get", the most important item is your PvP trinket, followed by probably the gloves which increase the range on your shocks. Talisman of the breaker is currently the best PvP neck by far and is easy to get, however it will be changed after the patch and in some cases it wont be as good as the PvP honor neck. There are a couple nice items available with heroic tokens, the healing Shield, Ring and Neck are all very solid. You will also want to plan out your arena/honor purchases based on getting the double 2-piece bonus (+35 resilience)

As for enchants and gems, go +12 stam where ever possible. Get the 18 stam 5% stun resist meta gem, and get +9 stam and run speed to boots (you will be kiting a lot).

As for Spec, I would recommend going 15 or 16 in elemental so you can get the casting time reduction on shocks, and the 10% reduction from fire/frost/nature damage. I would put everything else in resto.

Int is really good for a shaman in arenas since they're so short, and while I'd definitely put stam/resilience above it in most cases, it's better than mp5 in most any given arena match. If I were to min/max for arenas I'd probably put 30 int on my weapon rather than healing or spellsurge.

I don't pvp now as much as I used to, but when playing the role of team healer I found it advantageous to wear dmg/heal gear instead of pure healing gear. As a shaman and a healer you'll get singled out in nearly every fight, and I found having the ability to provide some wider team support and also be able to fend for myself when needed as desirable over a purely defensive gear selection.

Stacking Int as Beef mentioned is very beneficial. The class isn't supremely mana efficient, and much of the time you'll find that there's no time to wait around for mana to regen.

One of the Elemental Shaman or possibly two will end up healing. That's just all there is to it. Even with a team that DPS heavy, someone is going to get assisted on the Shaman team too. It really comes down to how well this team played after they instantly gibbed the first person with NS/CL. I've seen setups like this before with AP/PoM/Pyro teams. They kill one player super fast and then struggle to get anyone else down. The same might be true for this team. Casting time is casting time. On a 1v1 basis, I'll take the MS Warrior vs. elemental Shaman 1v1 with a Paladin healing the Warrior > an elemental Shaman trying to heal another Shaman.

Thanks for the replies. Definately good food for thought. The arena team that we are thinking of fielding is:

MS Warrior
Disc Priest
Affliction Lock
Destro Lock/Fire Mage
Resto Shamie

The two locks and the mage will be switching out based on whoever is on and interested.

We are not really looking to be a 2000+ team, just competitive and have a good time. Good idea about changing out to the mp5 gear if you happen to need the regen late fight. With this info in mind I will probably pick up the epic boot/belt/bracers, they seem to be a pretty nice upgrade all around in light of the conversation.

Yeah, I do think that I was underrating int for pvp healing as well. Now I need to find another healing weapon so I can put int on it instead of spellsurge.

Vazu, not really sure where the elemental shaman came into the conversation, let alone more, but I am going to be the primary healer and so speaking restoration.

Edit: What are peoples feelings about Totem of the Third Wind for healing as well. Right now I use Totem of the Plains for PVP healing since my main heal is LHW.

Agree mostly with what's been said here. My stat priorities are:

Sta
Resilience
+heal
+crit
+dmg
int
mp5

I learnt early on that either you die first or you die last. Getting some spell damage (the bg rewards I guess - tho I don't have much patience for honour grinding) is an insurance policy just to make sure you can finish someone off if you end up 1v1 and by some miracle have any mana left.

+crit is worth it doubly because ancestral healing can be kinda nice.

Basically I see resto shamans in arenas as a tank first healer second. With a competent second healer you can take an enormous amount of damage and continue to deflect many of the other teams abilities - tremor/grounding/poison totems are key.

We found with our new look team(as of last night), that the teams that beat us are the ones that co-ordinate taking out tremor totems before the fear-paintrain.

I use a 18/0/43 spec for Arenas. Reverberation, Elemental Focus, and Eye of the Storm are talents that I utilize constantly. Having read up on how crit-to-proc talents and Resilience work together, the EotS talent is just awesome. Of course, Nature's Guardian is a must as well.

As people have stated above, survivability is extremely important as a Restoration Shaman in Arenas considering that I'm usually focus target 1 or 2 (the other being an SL 'Lock).

1. Socket everything with Solid Stars of Elune. Everything!
2. I'd take the Gladiator Pieces over the Auchenei Boots and Tarren Defender's Cinch any day.
3. Personally, I'm aiming for 2 pieces of the Elemental and Restoration Gladiator sets. The Elemental glove on-equip bonus is bananas and way too valuable to trade for the Restoration glove's +3% LHW crit. You get two 35 Resilience set bonuses rather than a crap 4 piece set bonus.


Neck- I use Talisman of the Breaker. Absolutely necessary for any Arena healer until 2.1.
Cloak- I use the Light-Touched Stole of Altruism (Heroic Maladaar). Highest Stamina +healing cloak I found.
Rings- Violet Ring of the Grand Restorer (lots of stats, particularly Stam and Int) and Ashyen's Gift (28 Stamina on a ring). Band of Halos is also a good choice too.
Trinket- Timelapse Shard (25 Stamina, 35 Resilience) is my pick. I use a Scarab of Infinite Cycle in the other slot.

I thought the intention was just to have the blue set stack with the arena set... is this the case that multiple arena set bonuses stack? Man, if so, sucks to be a rogue. :[

Damn, that is a good thought. In light of that I need to rethink what gear I am getting where. Thanks for the info.


Sorry, I am not sure what is change in 2.1 that would make you not want this neck. Can you please enlighten me?