Mogo has been restoration specced since the day she was born. She's been main or only healer in the vast majority of instances she's been in so I knew I needed all the healing oomph I could get. I also wanted to see if Mana Tide Totem was worth it.

Right now she is level 57 and has 43 points in restoration and 5 in enhancement (all in Ancestral Knowledge - increases maximum mana by 5%). Her restoration tree is as follows.

• Tidal Focus 5/5 - reduces the mana cost of healing spells by 5%.
• Ancestral Healing 5/5 - increases target's armor value by 25% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells.
• Totemic Focus 5/5 - reduces the mana cost of your totems by 10%.
• Combat endurance 1/1 - Allows 10% of health regeneration to work while in combat.
• Improved Lesser Healing Wave 5/5 - Gives you a 75% chance to avoid interruption cause by damage while casting Lesser Healing Wave.
• Eventide 5/5 (required for Mana tide totem) - increases the duration of healing stream and mana spring totems by 10 seconds.
• Tidal Mastery 5/5 - increases the critical effect chance of healing and lightning spells by 5%.
• Nature's Swiftness 1/1 - When activated next nature spell with a casting time less than 10 sec becomes an instant cast spell.
• Improved mana spring totem 5/5 (required for mana tide totem) - increases the effect of your mana spring totem by 25%.
• Purification 5/5 - increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%.
• Mana Tide Totem 1/1 - summons a mana tide totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster for 12 sec that restores 155 mana every 3 seconds to group members within 20 yards (increases mana restored with new ranks of the totem learned).

She'll have 3 more points to spend by the time she hits 60. The debate is either 2 in improved reincarnation (reduces the cooldown on reincarnation by 10 minutes a point) and spend a silly single point elsewhere or all 3 in improved healing wave (reduces the casting time of healing wave by 0.1 sec/point). I can also take out the point in combat endurance if I want and have 4 points in improved healing wave or possibly 4 points in enhancement for shield spec (increases chance to block with a shield by 1% per point spent) or 4 points in improved lightning bolt (reduces mana cost of lightning bolt by 3% per point).

Improved reincarnation is nice, but it has rarely been an issue where I've died a second time while reincarnation was in cooldown. It has happened, but not enough to make me really feel like it's necessary for me.

She used to have a full 5 points in improved healing wave to cut the casting time down to 2.5 seconds, but she did a respec to tighten up her spent points a bit more. Most of time, 3 seconds is short enough for that bigger heal to land and if not, I've got nature's swiftness available most of the time and warstomp to buy me a little bit more time to heal as well. The only issue with warstomp is that I have to be by the critters hurting whoever needs the healing, but oh well. I love stomp.

Shield spec would be slightly tasty, but she doesn't tank that often and when she does, she just heals with her improved lesser healing wave instead and/or warstomps.

If she's out in the world or not main/only healer, most of her DPS is through lightning bolt so that one is slightly ahead of the others in terms of want. First and foremost though, she is a healer.

I've also been debating on dropping mana tide and it's pre-reqs which will free up a lot of points, but whenever I do think more about it, then I get in groups comprised of all mana users and it helps out everyone in the group so I want to keep it. And now that I've got the trinket that's similar, just think of the mana regen I can help with.

Anyway, any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

So I went to the talent calculator at the blizzard WoW page and entered your build so I could fiddle with it some. What I've come up with is that the best course of action may be to remove 1 point from Combat Endurance and 2 points from Ancestral Healing (or Totemic Focus, your choice really). This would give you 3 extra points to go with the 3 you already have available. So then you could go down the enhancement tree and get the ability to use two-handed weapons. This would give you the ability to use items like Hammer of the Grand Crusader or various other ones that might be useful to you as a healer. I'm not sure if you will end up using a two-hander or a 1-hander/offhand/shield combo, but at least you would have the choice. Another option would be to take the 5 out of Ancestral Knowledge as well and then move those 11 points over to Elemental so that you can get Elemental Focus (the clearcasting talent). If you use shocks at all, then the extra 10% off of their cost could probably more than make up for the mana loss from Ancestral Knowledge being gone. This is assuming of course that you would get the two shock talents on the way to Elemental Focus instead of getting the lightning one and then some other random one. May be a bad assumption on my part.

So yeah, my opinion is that you should try for one of the 1 point 3rd tier talents in the non-restoration trees. Getting either of them may be more worthwhile than where you would otherwise be putting the points. If nothing else, its something to consider. : )

Ancestral healing is a big help to Mogo's healing abilities. At least around non-magic using critters. I'd really rather not lose even 10% armor bonus by taking out two points from it. Totemic focus is a big factor in how I like to play as well. I need to be able to plop down totems and still have enough mana to be main/only healer. It's great though when I get to group with Kosch. He does the offensive totems (strength of earth, grace of air, etc) and I can do the defensive totems (stoneskin/tremor, any of the water totems and grounding if necessary, etc). In duoing with Marn, the totems basically only get dropped in those ever so wonderful "Oh crap" moments and usually they occur only when I'm at half mana or lower, so I need to be able to drop totems and heal at the same time with little mana.

Mogo did use staves for a long time, but most of the time a one-hander/shield (or offhand if I get some nice ones) is more effective. I don't have the stamina that some shaman do (or so I've been told ) so that shield is a big help to me so I can stay alive and keep healing. I have debated many times allowing Mogo to use the two-handers, but then I end up seeing just how often my shields save my butt.



They are very good suggestions (thanks btw), but that's a more offensive build than what Mogo was designed for. I don't use shocks that frequently because they are mana hogs. I'll frost shock any runners, earthshock the nasty casters and sometimes fire shock the heavily armored critters, but more often will just drop a fire totem (depending upon number of critters around) and/or use flametongue weapon. Yeah, I know. I play Mogo like a gimp. So sue me. But man can she heal in nasty situations. Most of her mana is used for healing in instances and when the whole group isn't overlevelled, she'll run right down to the last drop frequently and that's with that extra mana from ancestral knowledge.

You have definitely given me something else to think about though. Thanks for making the decision even harder.

Edit: I really do swear that American English is my native language. Any grammar errors you see must just be figments of your imagination.

Well, I was going to delete my idea when I saw this, but I've already done the work, so...

Should SirD decide to stay with us regularly for instances (Hi SirD!) you won't be relied on to get every ounce out of your healing. If that happens, perhaps you might consider something like this:

Restoration/Lightning Build

This drops mana tide and its prereqs, squeezes a point from Ancestral Healing and Purification, and puts 21 points into Elemental. Unlike the cookie cutter 21 point elemental build, it forgoes Reverberation in favor of Improved lightning bolt.

With Tidal Focus and Call of Thunder, you'll have at least 16% crit rate on your lightning. You get the big crits on them too, and the clearcasts. Your shocks will do more damage and be less mana hoggish for when you do use them.

It's still a healing focused build but would buff up your current favorite offensive weapon, the lightning bolt. It seems natural to boost your offensive with spells rather than melee as you've got the healer gear and improved mana pool to support it.

Since my highest shaman is 18, I can't pretend to know a lot about it though

To follow a similiar train of thought...here is a slightly different take on the elemental portion of that build. I kind of took your idea of building up the lightning that she likes to use and said "hey, why not build up the fire totems that she meantions she uses a good amount?".

So in this version you have stronger lightning skills, clearcasting, and improved fire totems. Its basically a build aimed directly at how she plays. Healing? Yeah, we have alot of that...just no mana tide totem and losing one point in ancestral healing. Lightning bolts? Yeah we have those being cheaper and criting more often and for more damage. Fire totems? Yeah we have those doing more damage and fire nova totem being easier to use as well.

Its not how I would build it for my own character, but it feels like it hits all the points that she likes. It suffers the same problem as the other builds I suggested though. Its still losing a point from ancestral healing which she seems to not like at all (not like to lose that is) and its still a bit more damage focused instead of being all healing. Yet another idea to toy with though.

This little tweaking of the build vor_lord had originally suggested does fit slightly better with how I play Mogo. If I were to drop tide, this would probably be the way to go. I do usually use nova a bit more than magma (I tried to see if I could squeeze out the boost to magma totem too without losing too much in restoration) in instances since it's just a one time shot instead of having to worry about how long magma is going to fire off. Frequently, things are dead before the magma wears off anyway so it just sits there, trying to piss off any critters that happen to wander through on their patrol route.

I don't really see myself using shocks that much more even with the damage increase and the mana reduction. I use them more for utility than for their damage, even though the damage is nice. Flame shock is the exception. If we have CCers around, then I lay off the flame shock too. DoTs just don't seem to play well with CC.

Thanks so much to both of you and I'm glad you didn't just delete it vor_lord. Now, to decide if tide is really worth it or not.

Just for fun, here is a non-mana tide build with enhancement instead of elemental. My thinking behind this one was based off of two lines you said.





So basically the idea was to go enhancement, but avoid the improved melee skills. Instead I went with the more mana, the defensive skills, the improved totems, and two handed. Going this route you would gain a better stoneskin which you say you use. You would also get parry, more blocks, and more +defense for those occassions you do get hit. Plus the extra mana and the choice for two handed weapons. There is a bit of a conflict in this build though. On the one hand you have shield spec and on the other hand you have two-handed weapons. You will always only be using one of these talents. The closest you could come to using them both would be to use a two-hander normally and then when you start getting hit, switch to a shield, then back again when the mob is taken off you. So not really sure how the build would work, but I wanted to toy with the idea. : )

Going back to your original question of where to spend the 3 or 4 (losing combat endurance) points if you keep tide and the two ancestrals. The skills I see as being choices for you are Improved Stoneskin Totem, Shield Specialization, Improved Lightning Bolt, Improved Healing Wave, and Improved Reincarnation. Now since we are keeping everything else in this build healing focused, I'm throwing out shield spec and bolt. You say that you didn't really notice Improved Healing Wave being all that helpful when you had it. So I'm thinking maybe 3 in Improved Stoneskin Totem and one in Improved Reincarnation (or back in Combat Endurance if you must : p ). This is based off the idea that you use stoneskin all the time and so improving it means everyone takes even less damage (a small amount less, but less is less) and so thus helps your healing. The beauty of Improved Reincarnation is also that its not an all or nothing skill. Since it just reduces the time on it, you can just throw one point in it and it still will possibly get some use. Feels less silly than one in Improved Healing Wave at least. : ) So I guess my advice on where to spend the 4 points is either like that or all 4 in Improved Healing Wave depending on how useful you feel Improved Healing Wave will be.

Not a talent-related comment, but if you use shocks for utility (Earthshock for interrupt, Frostshock for slowing runners), have you put out rank 1 of both of these? The damage is nice, but keeping mana for heals while still getting the utility is even better if you are running to the last drop healing.

Just a thought.

For clarification, Improved Stoneskin is 99.9% useless. Stoneskin's reduction is applied before armor.

Rank 6 Stoneskin: Reduces damage by 27
Assuming 30% damage reduction by armor:
Actual Stoneskin reduction: 18.9

Rank 6 Stoneskin, fully Improved: Reduces damage by 32.4
Assuming 30% damage reduction by armor:
Actual Stoneskin reduction: 22.68

Three talent points to take 3.78 less damage per hit? No thanks. It gets worse the better your armor is.

I'm pretty sure they changed how resists work to use the clvl the spell is revieved instead of the clvl of the person casting it. So level 1 Arcane Explosion (recieved at 14) won't be nearly as effective at flushing out stealthed 60 Rogues. I know I saw this on the official forums and probably even a thread about it here but whether or not it was actually implemented; I'm not sure.

I think there was a lot of chicken little regarding changes to the way clvl worked with spell levels. The first rank of spells is still very effective for the utility, with little to no real change in how they work. There indeed was a large outcry when the changes were made, but the initial panic quickly died as people started playing again. The initial reports were severely exaggerated. You are correct in seeing it here though.

Just wanted to update:

I have decided where to put Mogo's last few points (even if Sir D doesn't like the talent ). They're going into thundering strikes. I figure more chance to crit when I'm trying to conserve mana is a good thing. Yeah, it'll only get to 3% instead of 5%, but every little bit helps.

And after a few hairy pulls when Mogo and Marn were duoing BRD before the scheduled run, mana tide is most definitely staying. I can plop a tide down, use my trinket to throw down another decent mana regen totem and still have potions available for drinking if need be. Having just tide or just the trinket wouldn't have allowed us to live through the hairy stuff. Having both did so tide is staying.

I don't know where you got that I thought thundering strikes was a bad talent, I wouldn't make a shaman without it. It's ancestral healing I think you overrate and the pre-reqs for mana tide are among the worst in the game.

When I told you I was putting the points into thundering strikes, you "meh"d it and said you didn't see the point of putting them in there. Jandrey is one of yours, correct? When physical damage is being dealt, that ancestral healing does make a difference, especially when you are the only healer and don't get all the nice healing tricks a druid, priest or even paladin get. I notice on tanks in Molten Core when they get hit with the priest version of it (inspiration) and yes, it matters if there is any physical damage being thrown around.

And yes, the pre-reqs for mana tide blow. I've never said otherwise. Mana tide itself is handy though and has saved groups from wipes.

Edit: I may be thinking of the incorrect character name. Jandrey isn't SirD's. That's Uzra's. I'll have to look up SirD's shaman with the "j" name.

Edit2: Maybe it was Jandrey after all who said "Meh" to it. I really don't think it came from Jodal. My apologies SirD.