Guide to noobie healer shamans

[BGHitman]

World of Warcraft Shaman Guide - Your Guide To Healing

For the shaman, each battle brings a new set of challenges and rewards. Luckily, your class is so diverse that you can play many different roles: caster, tank, and healer. Being a tank is pretty easy, you simply have to watch your back and keep your health up, and being a caster is simple as well, and a great way to help friend out in a fight. But, being an effective healer can sometimes be a challenge until you learn the in's and out's of it.
Before you can become an effective healer for a group, you need to master the totems and elements as well as gain all the healing spells that you possibly can. While the different elements and totems will take you a bit to gain and master, you can gain enough to be fully effective by level 10.
Your healing spells, and resurrection, will also be learned by then aswell, so you can begin to run instances with a group and gain the great xp thatcomes with them. But, don't try to run an instance that is more than fivelevels above you. While your group members can help to keep you alive, it willtake a large toll on your healing abilities and your health as well. So, it isbest to run instances that are your level or only a couple higher than you are.
As you continue to level up, you should always get new spells and abilitiesany time that you can. This will ensure that you always have the most powerfulversions and newest abilities and spells for your class when you head intobattle. Having the best spells and abilities will only help you when you aretrying to find a group for an instance, and will allow you access to more xp asyou level.
As you are moving up in the ranks of the World of Warcraft, you should tryto use your healing spells as much as you can. Whether it is with a group on aquest, or by yourself, you should try to use them when you can. Place yourhealing spells on your hot keys so they are easily accessible when you needthem, because in a group situation, you'll have to use them often and quickly.You should also place these spells together and not spread them out over thedifferent keys so you have to search for them when you need them.
Now that you are ready to join a group, you should start to keep a constantwatch on your group members' health bars. When they begin toget low, heal them. If several are getting low at the same time, you shouldstart with the lowest one and work your way around until you have gotten themall healed and continue around again, making sure that all your group is fullyhealed. Make sure that you have plenty of mana drinks or potions, as you willsurely need them while in an instance. And, if you have a warlock in yourgroup, ask for a soulstone to help resurrect yourself if you die.
You should also use your totems as much as possible. Healing, mana, and buff totems should always be placed as soon as a battle begins to give the maximum amount of help possible. Make sure that you can also offer and use any buffs that you have that will help you or any of your group members. Different classes can offer different buffs that will help you with agility, strength, stealth, health, armor, and more.
Sometimes there is just no way to keep everyone alive when you are fighting, especially if someone accidentally aggros a high level, elite mob.

When this happens, you should keep yourself at a safe distance if possibleor be able to run to get away from the mobs so you can go back and resurrectyour group members. If there are a lot of mobs still over your group, youshould find out what the others in your group want to do. When you resurrectthem, remember that they will be at half health, so you will need to heal themquickly as well to help keep them alive until you can escape that mob or killit.
The main thing that you need to remember when you are a group's healer is tokeep a constant watch on everyone's health. A good healer will make sure thateveryone in their group survives each battle and in turn, that group will helpthem gain the items that they need for their quests. Once you have earned thereputation as a good healer, it won't be hard to find a group to run with, nomatter which instance you want to hit.

[Ferag]

Off topic: lol did you say being a tank is easy? It's not. On topic: Nice guide, you obviously took time to write it. +rep

[issuesbunny]

Off topic: tanking is easy, don't kid yourself.
On topic: Replace tank with melee dps. Shamans can only wear mail, and no mail has defence rating, dodge rating or block value.

Also, the much shorter version of the shaman heal guide: Spam chain heal to win.