Playing a Shaman - Oberheim style

Playing a Shaman - Oberheim style

I'm not trying to be anyone, or nor do I think that what I'm going to share with you is by any means the best way of playing, it's just how I play.

So anyway, I'm going to try to cover as much as possible of the class so if you other shamans out there have any opinions or matters to discuss, please share! 'Cause that's why I'm writing this, to help not you but myself to become a better player.

RvR playstyle
I believe in survivability rather than strongest possible heals there are when playing PvP, so my gear focuses alot on Wounds and to some extent toughness, currently i have slotted wounds talismans in all slots in my pvp gear, which makes me able to kite and outstand meleetrains. Which brings me to the most important point in this thread:
A shaman never heals stationary!
Alot of slayers and witch hunters will give you their attention, how i react depends strongly on the situation, but generally I:
1) LEG IT
2) AoE Detaunt (depends on threat, don't want to waste it)
3) Use Sticky feets a few feet in front of me and run directly in it, since it takes about 1-2s for it to be cast I should have ran across it and have the meleetrain struggling behind.
4) HoT up/Don't feel nuthin/Shrug it off

Eeeek! is sometimes handy, but it's strongly situational since people usually are immune to it. An Odjira is of course essential for kiting, I don't think that the tactic "Run away!" is needed when you have the talisman slotted.

Toughness/crit reduction is also an interesting combo, I tried out with equipping "reduction in being critically hit" gear and jewelry and in combination with the -5% crit/T liniment I got my crit chance to 0%. That in combination with stacking toughness and Do Sumfin Usefull is indeed a powerfull combo. I haven't evaluated what I think is the best set up yet though, I'm still farming for more gear to try stuff out with,

Morale

Morale 1:
I usually slot Gork Sez Stop since Divine favor isn't strong enough anyway to waste your morale, and I always bring potions with me to give myself two nice instant heals. This ability is mainly for having fun, sometimes it might save your ass when kiting a WH, but when healing a group I'd prefer to save up to M2.
Morale 2:
Focused Mind situationally your best morale ability, makes you immune to CC (which btw means you can use your instant ress without getting the 3s stun), unable to be setback while casting a spell and increases buildtime with 50%. This is Shamans Godmode for spamming AoE or extremly good focus heals.
Morale 3:
Divine Protection though I rarely use it, I prefer to pop M2 and spam AoE instead, but might come in handy when I simply don't have time for that. I could slot You Weren't using Dat, but then again, I could just drink an AP pot instead if Yer Not So Bad isn't doing its job.
Morale 4: Feelz No Pain A really nice ability, though it's a bit too short. I usually use it when bombing since the damage reduction with the HoT gives some heavy support, and you're able to focusheal meanwhile.

Tactics

I usually use:

Slot 1:Dat Makes me dissy Shamans are somewhat expected to use instant ress in either RvR, but when playing scenarios i usually use Whazat Behind You? which gives a chance to detaunt stunties when they hit =) Really good for survivability!
Slot 2: Restorative Burst Is AP management a problem? Slot this tactic! Makes life alot easier, especially concidering that shamans have a heavy critical chance which basically means that this tactic procs constantly.
Slot 3: Discipline gives 160WP.
Slot 4: Extra Special Mushroom Essential! 10% extra crit doesn't hurt =)

Addons/UI
I want as much essential data as possible taking as little room as possible on my screen. Most healers have a similiar set up but I wanted to cover as much as possible so here's my set up:

Squared,
Takes extremly little room and works really well, it's easy to see when someone is out of range (especially in comparison to Healgrid) and doesn't cause any lag.

DuffTimer
A really handy addon, i've configured it so that it only shows spells cast by me, to make it easier to keep track on them. This is usefull for HoTs, mainly Ey quit bleeding and Do sumfin' useful. You get separate "bars" for friendly target, yourself and hostile target. If you don't have anything like this make sure to try it out.



Calling
This isn't a healing specific addon, but it's really handy if your premade or even WB is using it. It's an evolution of Main Assist. It makes every player able to call and target hostiles with macros you drag to you spellbar. In addition to that you get a notification on the screen of who called and who the target is. Healing takes alot of focus so this helps out alot if you want to cast a healing debuff or something since you don't have to browse for a specific target on the screen.

In addition to these I use partyhelper, paint the leader, followmylead, Minmap (nice custom minimap) and alot more, but yeah, it's all about personal preference.

Spellbar/abilities

I know this is all about how everyone prefers to play or which keys you prefer to use. I just thought I'd comment some points.

If you're looking for a new mouse I'd strongly recommend Razer Naga, it has a total of 17 buttons of which 12 are on the side easily accessable with your thumb. Which basically means that if you configure all your spells right you'll never have to click on your spells again.

What you want is that your two detaunts, Healing spells including shrug it off and Don't feel nuthing and two healing potions are easily accessible. In case you didn't know you can use both a "normal" pot and a renown pot simultaneoslu since they have separate cooldown. I put a picture below in case you want to study my layout.


I can easily access 1-5, alt 1-5 and all 12 abilitiws bound to the Naga.

Spec

Here's a link to my current 19/10/0 spec
This one is RvR/Sc oriented, I basically want the 50% Healing debuff from the Gork tree, but if you want to max out healing more you could put points in the Da Green tree and perhaps take the tactic "Gork Fix'd it" from the Mork tree (it's actually really good, but I had to sacrifice one point in favour to the healing debuff, and I'm using the detaunt/instant ress tactic instead).

Last words
I'm sure I don't have to comment on gear, since it's pretty straight forward. However I'd like to remind that hitpoints are important, so there's no point in maxing out healing if you got 4,5k HP (according to me). At current state I play with 7k HP and 320T, but with a nice combination with invader (W bonus) and other jewelry I can get up to 9k HP, which in the other hand is kind of overkill since healing is so gimped at that state. However my point is that if you have always ran around with WP talisman in your gear just try with switching to W talismans instead and see how much more focus you're able to withstand. Save your WP gear for PVE instead =)

EDIT:
I also made this video guide as a complement to this one so feel free to watch it for additional tips & tricks!