It really depends on your comp. Obviously if you're not ever getting focused you can skip double resil. But, for example, if the only thing your team consistently loses to is say cleave teams that tunnelvision you then the double resil is probably more valuable. Personally I got double resil because earlier this season I was getting my shit pushed in by anything and everything. Next season I'm probably going to go with the 4pc.

I use:

` - mouseover ES
1 - mouseover LHW
2 - mouseover Riptide
3 - mouseover CH
C+2 - mouseover HW
S+2 - mouseover NS+HW

I use Grid + Clique + mouseover macros so I can cleanse/heal without changing targets, allowing for quick burst damage or easier interrupts.

E - focus Earth Shock
S+E - focus Wind Shock
Q - Frost Shock
S+Q - Flame Shock
F - Lightning Bolt
S+F - Chain Lightning
C+F - Lava Burst
G - Tidal Force
S+G - PvP trinket

Z - Water Shield
S+Z - Lightning Shield
X - Purge
S+X - Tremor Totem
C+X - Poison Cleansing (soon to be just Cleansing =D)
C - Grounding Totem
C+C - Earthbind
V - Hex


The rest of my totems are bound to the numpad, because I was running out of room. =/

F1 - Caster totem macro (WoA, FT, Mana, SoE/Stoneskin)
F2 - Melee totem macro (WF, FT, Mana, SoE/Stoneskin)
F3 - PVP totem macro (Grounding, Tremor, Poison/Disease, FrR)

Thanks, Adapted! I will try those out and see how quickly I can get used to them although sadly I have no numberpad (laptop user -_-)

Just out of curiosity; you don't bind Ghost Wolf? I would have thought that talented it would be something that would get a fair bit of use for mobility / positioning...?

Ah, forgot about that:

H - GW
S+H - Mount
and a couple others..
R - I don't have bound to anything because I prefer using it to reply to whispers, but it's a good idea to use it for something important because it's in an easy-to-reach button
T - plain old attack, mostly to get rid of other shaman totems, because my mouse is always busy on Grid

As for not having a numpad, you may as well just click all the non-essential totems or bind them to F keys.

I would love to play my elemental shaman in 2s or 3s but I cant see it happening evne with the changes in 3.1

I am trying to get some resto pvp gear before 3.1 and I am going to arena in resto while keeping elemental as my raiding spec. Are resto shamans as commonly targeted as elemental?

Yes, but keep in mind, you really don't need to get "resto" gear per se. I'm running 2pc/2pc still, but I'm starting to get the other Ele pieces to run 5pc Elemental set as resto. I just find the crit to be far superior (as do a number of other fairly high-rated shamans, mind you.)

It's really just going to be something to drop when you're getting focused and you don't want to get interrupted or if you get counterspelled/shocked. Or if you can anticipate some coming burst and you have a second to prepare for it.

Well it always depends on the comp, people go after the easiest target to kill for their comp and the target that loses the most effectiveness while under focus fire. Resto shaman do not have any personal (IE not targetable) defensive cooldown. Their only personal defense is Natures guardian, which is RNG and has an internal cooldown, it helps but it isn't iceblock/bubble/CloS etc. If you have a lock on you team then they might FF the lock/pet (because of the same reason). If you have a rogue or a druid against a melee team they will likely focus them. However, even while focused as resto you don't lose all of your effectiveness because of riptide and tidal wave lhw, you don't have to do longer casts to be effective.

Yeah I really think we are going to be the healer with the most potential in 3.1. I only say potential because resto shaman is not an easy class to play very well. There is a pretty big difference between a mediocre resto shaman and a good resto shaman but you can't really say the same about the current ridiculous class, paladins.

Concerning keybinds: I wouldn't really try to use mouseover macros for healing in pvp. The main problem is that they can't be used while holding the right mouse button for turning, which is something i do at least 50% of the time. This means you must build the macros such that they will use your target if no mouseover is present. This can work in theory, but it's easy to heal the wrong person by thinking you are currently healing the target when you have your mouse over something unintended.

Concerning elemental/resto gear: Crit and mp5 are both quite bad. Mp5 will not help at all in short games, but on the other hand crit doesn't do anything at all when you're purging, dropping totems, interrupting, hexing etc. In general i would say mp5 has a slight advantage, but the difference is so small that I might still get the elemental gear next season to be able to play as elemental. For the set bonuses i would almost always go with 3+2. Grounding Totem is a great spell, but i rarely use it as soon as it's up since it will just catch a random Waterbolt or Death Coil. I prefer to save it for being able to catch a Chains of Ice when escaping or if i get Interrupted. Of course there could be situations where I really want to use it and it still has 1.5 seconds cooldown, but overall I feel that 50 resilience is a lot better.

Concerning Lava Burst: If you are resto, trying to boost your Lava Bursts with Flame Shocks is usually a very bad idea. Many people play arena with 900-1000 resilience, and even dk's/palas tend to run with 700ish. This means a crit Lava Burst will not hit for much more than a noncrit, and Frost Shock->Lava Burst is actually more damage than Flame Shock->Lava Burst. Slightly related, Flame Shock glyph seems pretty awful to me. You're still not going to "keep it up" just to prevent a restealth, and if you get to a situation where it's "shit he's gonna restealth", 12 seconds is more than enough. On live it's a decent option to all the other awful/horrible/silly glyphs, but post-patch no resto shaman should use it regardless of bracket/setup.

I think I mostly agree with you especially with the advent of warlock teams (locks are on almost every common 3s team). Before I hardly saw any. Healing wave is much, much more useful versus warlock teams for obvious reasons. I still use flame shock in 2s over the water shield glyph though because lots of people use pve gear (namely DK's, the class I'm most often nuking) and any bit of damage can help. It's also really nice to be able to flame shock before your cc is up and then you can lead into your cc chain with a shock and still have the auto crit lvb. Obviously it's pretty situational and since I play with a ret paladin and spec mana tide so I hardly have mana issues anyways.