Admittedly, it’s been a while since I had to gear out a shaman (since the first days of Wrath’s release, to be precise, all those months ago). So when I received numerous requests to provide a how-to-gear for newly dinged 80’s I was set back on my heels just a bit because the lists that used to sit open on my desk during heroics, Naxx, and Sarth runs, are actually a bit outdated in today’s shiny ICC environment. But with…

If you want to make waves in the Shaman community and you don’t want to mention the now-taboo Spirit Link, then you would be well advised to follow Ghostcrawler’s lead. His response to a fairly innocuous forum post on Monday raised many an eyebrow in the Resto and Healing communities and might have permanently affixed a winkled crease in my brow. But one thing’s for certain, no one could accuse the crab of giving too much away, beyond of course,…

So, it’s come down to this: it’s the end of the expansion, you either have more Emblems of Frost than you know what to do with or not enough to even put a dent in your shopping list, you’re locked to a certain level of progression which either does or does not include ICC/RS hardmodes, and all you want is a gear set that will give you a feeling of accomplishment. Or maybe you’re making the best of this time,…

We’ve been hearing the fuss for months—healing is intended to be a “triage” affair come Cataclysm. Health pools will be up while healing numbers will increase incrementally, and having players at less than full health will become acceptable again. (Hey, we might actually be able to convince dps to use … um, what were they called …. popular back in the day … bandages!) In all, a healing mana recession is poised to be released on Group 5 residents, with serious…

As many players and bloggers out there have discovered, the end of the xpac is a great time for alts, and like many others, I’ve been living it up these days on a variety of toons, including one annoying cutesy Holy Paladin. Back in the early days of the expansion, my paladin was strictly a tanking toon, my favorite tank by far, but as part of my recent interest in expanding my healing horizons, I decided to swap out her…

Yes, that title means exactly what you think it means. FH went into ICC last night, powered through 11/12 Hard Modes and got ready for a night of work on LK. Attempt #1 of the night saw him down to 22%. And 4 attempts later he was dead. On a Tuesday. With an hour left in our 5-hour raid night. During an enrage. With healers dpsing and CDs popped. With an entire vent full of players screaming, pleading, and groaning all…

For many, avoiding burnout and sustaining interest in the wind down time before Beta news floods WoW fansites means capitalizing on the chance to explore the world of healing, Resto Shaman or otherwise. In my forays through all levels of dungeons, I’ve happened across a good number of first-time healers giving the hps side of things a try and a handful of re-rolls anxious for a better healing “fit”. And wonderfully enough, (or at least as “wonderful” as things can…

With the 15% buff in place and an instance of “farm” and “progression” content to clear, a number of guilds these days are facing a very real and very scary problem—raid regression. The opposite of solid progression, regression is a compounding effect, a slippery slope with disastrous consequences should you reach the bottom. I would venture every raider out there has been at a regression crossroads at some point, where attempts have been getting better and better with each wipe,…

In the world of competitive raiding, we oftentimes depend on key people—guild leaders, raid leaders, healing leads, main tanks, uber dps—to carry heavier loads than others, to hold the reigns and contribute a little more than average on our way to victory. And, as I have [sadly] discovered multiple times over the course of my WoW career, sometimes the glue holding everything together is just one person’s tenacity. When it comes to healing, we’ve all played on teams where there’s…

When the revamped LFD (Looking for Dungeon) system was re-introduced with patch 3.3, it unleashed a wave of stories from players everywhere about the ups and downs of pugging. Horror stories became a common theme of blogs, forums, and guild sites, and I fear everyones’ noses drifted slightly higher in the air as we described our foray into heroics with the unwashed masses (which, of course, was no one we knew, just all those random baddies.) Appropriately timed with the…