Heroic Totem has the original post (which I'm also author of) so you may check it out at heroictotem.blogspot.com
Healing 101 as a shaman is something that I think is needed since a lot of people and certainly those who are new to healing think that there is a rotation or something
While yes there are some things you need to do but a rotation is not even close.

This is for the ultimate beginner or for one that is leveling a healing shaman.

Breakdown of spells you need to cast as a healer:

Earth Shield:
If your tank healing this is a god gift. It's not going to keep the tank up but its wonderful for supplements and topping him off. mana cost vs healing this can be your best and worst spell.
If he takes little damage fast, it's going to overheal a lot, if he's getting hit big, its wonderful. Just Keep it up all the time!

Riptide:
Instant Cast: 6 second cooldown. The spell it self is good: Heal + HOT but if you take the tidal waves talent (and its needed!) it becomes awesome! with the changes in 3.2 you get 30% cast time of your HW and 25% crit extra on your LHW for 2 charges. which means that one of those two your going to crit with LHW. (believe me at lvl80 you have 25% crit chance)
IF your tank needs to get up fast, this is a nice way to do it without blowing all the CD's

LHW:
Basic spell, also the one your going to use the most, It shines because its fast and it heals decently. I would say use this as your prime healing source

HW:
It's long and clunky but its such a big heal!
If you are tank healing and you know he will take a huge damage spike and then won't get damaged for 2seconds: hit this: it heals a good deal of his health.
Mostly I only use this in conjunction with natures swiftness: instant heal or tidal force: love to see that one critting.

CH:
Chain heal is a remarkable spell that I love to use when AOE hits the Raid/party.
Use it on the person with the most damage and see it jump.
If AOE really hits the fan this is a macro:
/cast nature's swiftness
/cast Tidal force
/cast Chain Heal (rank X)
Instant critable CH... there is nothing more

Nature's swiftness:
3min CD (2min in 3.2) next nature spell that has a cast time under 10sec is instant... enough said. (use it all the time if the tank or raid members are taking immense damage!)

Tidal Force:
3 charges: 60% - 40% -20% extra chance to crit... again enough said.

Earthliving weapon:
Healing power + small hot, have it on all the time. It's great! Even the small hot will save you mana and make your life a lot easier.

Gift of the Naaru:
Yes Gift of the naaru! Mana almost out? want to heal yourself very very fast after that aoe and want to pop everyone to full health again? Gift yourself (or another) it's fast and it's free.

Heroism:
40sec. of 30% faster casting/smashing... yes this is awesome for healing.. absolutely fantastic if you know damage is going to come in fast, and the raid really needs to get the boss down: use it and love it. Do note that it costs a lot of mana, so be sure you have enough mana to do it.

How to use them?

following examples are my personal preference, I am not responsible for any raid or party members that using these combinations of spells and/or talents. Use at your own responsibility and risk.

Preparing:
[1- Earthliving + Watershield, keep them up, always!
2- keep your earthshield up all the time!
3- know your buttons, if you are click healing or hotbar healing, know them by hart.
4- full mana before every boss.

In the fight
Single person taking damage
1- Start with Riptide - It will get you faster casting for your next two spells
2- lhw the guy (hopefully the tank) that is taking damage
3- lhw until riptide is up
4- rinse repeat
This is the basic set up for one guy taking damage against a mob. This should heal them through the whole fight without problems.

single person takes damage + group AOE damage
1- start with riptide at the tank.
2- if group > 90% => lhw the tank
if group <90% => Chain heal on the tank so it jumps to the group.
I'm starting with CH on the tank since he needs to be topped off and is your most important target to keep alive, in a raid you should start with a healer or your highest dps or ofc, the guy with the most damage.
3- rinse repeat
Easy enough again, do note that here, you already should start thinking, will the CH complete on time? will the guys have enough damage to make it worth it? can the tank keep up so long without putting myself in problems? etc.

group takes damage and is spread out
Spam LHW until you are sick of it!
really nothing else to say here, spam it and try to keep everyone alive, if you see healers taking a spike, don't worry about giving them one too. most of them are so concentrated they probably don't even notice that they took damage. If its getting hard, don't be afraid to pop tidal force for some extra power.

Group takes damage and is close together
No not Spam CH ...
Here you must look and see that CH is going to be worth the mana, time and heal.
Fe: 3 guys have 5K, 2K and 900 damage on them. then I will not use CH but just one lhw on the 5K damage and wait with the other two. I'm not a guy who overheals a lot (about 8%) I try to conserve mana and be a precise healer when necessary, I don't care if that lowers my hps by a 100, cause that 100hps is wasted anyway.

OH @### OH @### OH MY M<3mins of swearing>GOD!
oh yeah baby, we all have those moments: one of the best things to do is:
/cast nature's swiftness
/cast Tidal force
/cast Chain Heal (rank X)
really you'll thank me.
This is also a good alternative if you don't have 2 the time to cast them both: the nature's swiftness followed by chain heal then a tidal force and lhw/RT (riptide) like a madman!
If your not a Raidhealer change the CH to HW and do the same.

OOM I'm OOM and 50% to go at boss!
that happens if a tank pulls and your not ready. Learn to live with it.
well first thing ofc is drink a potion. second thing to do is: Mana tide, if you haven't already
third: nature swiftness and HW. its big and buys you time. then gift of the naaru the tank or who ever needs it, tidal force and use RT. by then your mana should be almost depleted or actually back on normal lvls.
You see at end game raiding, you should never go oom, but before end game you have quite a good chance too. Especially in a pug...
Also if your oom check your watershield, there is a good change its out.
If -BIG if only comes in if there is a bad tank in a pug - I go oom, i wait 3seconds, and I can start
LHWing again every 2 seconds again.



READ ONLY IF YOU ARE DESPERATE AND ARE A RISK TAKER
(or if you want to scare the living sh1t out of the tank)
There is one more thing you could do but I only tried it once in a pug group and think I saved our lifes with it but still....
stand in the fire.
You'll get damage and get mana... or even more risky...
you'll die, use reincarnate and have 35% of your mana back.

So that's it for now, hope you liked it!

Grtz
Ari

EDIT: forgot the mana tide! ty for reminding me
EDIT2: changed general appearance + spelling

Any idea's or comments are welcome!

very nice guide.

To keep mana up I use mana tide when I am on 60-70% mana. Im then on 95% mana again. But if the fight takes more than 5 minutes its possible for me to use it again.

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Q u o t e:

Riptide:
Instant Cast: 6 second cooldown. The spell it self is good: Heal + HOT but if you take the tidal waves talent (and its needed!) it becomes awesome! with the changes in 3.2 you get 30% cast time of your HW and 25% crit extra on your LHW for 2 charges. which means that one of those two your going to crit with LHW. (believe me at lvl80 you have 25% critchance)
IF your tank needs to get up fast, this is a nice way to do it without blowing all the CD's

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Okay your math is a bit off here. Two casts with a 50% chance to crit is not a 100% chance to crit on one of them, I'm sure you know this.

Only thing I will comment on, as I haven't ever played a shaman before. Good idea, and reelativly easy to read, though I think you could even better with the spelling and layout of the whole thing. If you do this it might be worth a sticky.

Edit: Just reread it and when I said easy to read I meant: Thank god it's not a wall of text... but your spelling and layout could really need some serious rework. It doesn't take much effort to up it to a sticky-worthy level, so do it for your own and future shamans sake.

Checked my spelling and indeed was a bit off.
Thought on the riptide bit: you need some serious bad luck to not crit with one of them.
Probz this post is going to be lost in the storm, so I don't think it matters much :<

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Q u o t e:
Checked my spelling and indeed was a bit off.
Thought on the riptide bit: you need some serious bad luck to not crit with one of them.
Probz this post is going to be lost in the storm, so I don't think it matters much :<

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For those two LHW you have 50% crit chance. Chances of missing Crit with both is; 0.5*0.5 = 0.25 => 25% or one in four. That will happen a lot in each instance. Obviously it's the same chance to crit with both too, so it's all swings and roundabouts.

It's a nice overall intro though I don't agree with everything it certainly gives somewhere to start from.
The resurection idea would require two points in Improved Res though, which isn't a common raiding build.

My tiny tip would be; Earthshield's strength is based on your spell power when it's cast, not when it heals. So when you put it up before the pull, make sure you have Flametounge totem out, you can pop a trinket to max it out, or even put Flametounge on your weapon for the cast before switching back.

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Q u o t e:
For those two LHW you have 50% crit chance. Chances of missing Crit with both is; 0.5*0.5 = 0.25 => 25% or one in four. That will happen a lot in each instance. Obviously it's the same chance to crit with both too, so it's all swings and roundabouts.

You have a 25% that none will crit
25% chance that the first will crit
25% chance that the second will crit
25% change that both of them will Crit
thats the total math.

It's a nice overall intro though I don't agree with everything it certainly gives somewhere to start from.
The resurection idea would require two points in Improved Res though, which isn't a common raiding build.

Even without the improved rez you can do this once an hour. Like I said it's nothing that I actually recommend but its viable, already tried it once or twice when everything looked grimmed and it save uss from a whipe those times. Ofc this is not the best solution, only a last ditch effort.

My tiny tip would be; Earthshield's strength is based on your spell power when it's cast, not when it heals. So when you put it up before the pull, make sure you have Flametounge totem out, you can pop a trinket to max it out, or even put Flametounge on your weapon for the cast before switching back.

Thats not even a tiny tip, its a good and large one. Though I didnt really wan't to go indepth on this post and restricted myself to spells only.

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Q u o t e:
Even without the improved rez you can do this once an hour. Like I said it's noting that I actually recommend but its viable, already tried it once or twice when everything looked grimmed and it save uss from a whipe those times. Ofc this is not the best solution, only a last ditch effort.

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The idea I was getting at is the other part of Improved Reincarnation.

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Q u o t e:
Improved Reincarnation Rank 2
Reduces the cooldown of your Reincarnation spell by 20 min and increases the amount of health and mana you reincarnate with by an additional 20%.

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Without that extra 20% (it's off your total HP/Mana not of the amount Reincarnated with) you come back in a pretty poor shape.

Oh, if you insert various [/Quote] (end of blocks) and [Quote] (start of blocks) you don't need to do that bolding thing you're trying out above.

Oops Sorry about that, forgot the 20% increase it did.
Well frankly I am running with the talent maxed. I don't want a druid to come and pick me up from the floor, while I can do it better myself. Yes I know that not many ppl take the talent, but thats a personal choice.
I don't use a straight out of the box Talent spec, even if it is the "best". I give it my personal tweak (look at Elloëns MM build)

But as Said is this all really important? We all know this ain't going to be stickied and that in 2 days no-one will even see this post again.
In the meanwhile it's (what I think) a nice stepping stone to true healing, explaining some of the basic spells and "rotations".

Still, thank you all for the input, no matter how posi/negative it was.

For Earth Shield, the spell is extremely useful when not tankhealing too. All too often I see a shaman not assigned to a tank forget to keep her ES up on a free tank or important healer. Even when it's just on a healer who can use it to skip part of the pushback and get some health back, it's an amazing tool to use.

Or in other words:
If you are Resto, you should never not have a ES up somewhere.

Well it might stay up. There's an Ele DPS one that got stickied and if this generates discussion it might get the same treatment.

Any addons that tell you when ES is down?
I think DoTimer will do it but are there any shaman specific ones?

Well indeed Dotimer does it.
any shaman specifics I have no clue, i used to use Totemcaddy, but that doesn't show it.
Grid has a plug in for it, but as far as i know it ain't working.
best is to use Dotimer and place it near the center of the screen next to sct/sctd and keep a watch on it (or place it above/next to./ in the area of Grid so your watching it carefully.

I use ShieldsUp, it's awesome. It tracks your lightning shield, water shield and your earth shield and even displays the name of the player that has your earth shield.

Thanks for the guide. First time I'm leveling a healing class/planing on healing at 80 and I chose shaman, so this could be very useful for me. Bookmarked.

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Q u o t e:
I use ShieldsUp, it's awesome. It tracks your lightning shield, water shield and your earth shield and even displays the name of the player that has your earth shield.

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I use this too, and it's great.

Shields up?
okaj i'll give it a try. Should be easier then watching DoTimer alll the time.

Grtz
Ari

group takes damage and is spread out : you wrote spam LHW but i think its still using LHW + riptide on every cooldown for faster lhw

You have given the basics about resto spells, yes, but you haven't given the information needed too really get started.
You made your guide for leveling and raiding but haven't helped on how too spend the tallents,
how too gem, what addons can help you, macro's, etc.

Here is some information you could use:

These sites are pretty good too get more information:
http://www.ensidia.com/home/shaman-restoration-part-1-general/
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t24796-shaman_restoration/

you could add a Add-on’s selection with common addons like Grid.

I made a setup in grid on my shaman so that I could see:
Earth Shield
Ancestral Healing Buff
Riptide Dot
Riptide Buff
Earthliving Dot
I also made it show only the debuffs that we can dispel.
Sadly these settings have too be done by your own.
You can’t save em and share them with others.
But when you have it installed it’s worth the effort.

My only help with making this was a post on the EJ Druid forum, how a druid made his setup.
http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t42073-resto_ui_discussion/
post #15

Almost all my healing spells are put intro mouse-over macro so I can make full use of grid:
#showtooltip (no need for spellname, I'll choose automatically the first spell in macro)
/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=targettarget,help][target=target,help][target=player]<spellname>

Ps: I'm just trying too help too make your sticky a more usefull one, try and make avantage of it.

Edit: changed macro too the one from masadist (see post 20)

hmm.. guess the OP is on vacation or doesn't read the reactions anymore :(