Shaman Cataclysm Pre-raid Wisdom

Gotta credit Vixsin from Life in Group 5 with this bit of wisdom.

This was his reply to someone on his blog post, but I think it deserves a page on its own.

Cataclysm Resto Shaman Stat Guide

In hard mode encounters, I would argue that Crit is your least valuable stat (Mastery and Haste are top contenders). But in normal mode encounters, Crit will come in a close second to Haste. Think of it like balancing a scale–you don’t want to load everything on one side right from the start, because the scale will simply tip over. What you want to do is load a little bit on each side, gradually working your way up to higher and higher levels.

At present, based on my own experiences in Tier 11, I would advise a Resto Shaman to pursue the following:

Pre-raiding stats:
- At least 700 haste (provided that you glyph RT, this will get you an extra tick)
- At least 1.8k Spirit
- Even contribution of Mastery and Crit

When working your way through normal mode raids:
- At least 900 haste (if you don’t have RT glyphed you will need to get > 916 haste)
- At least 2.1k Spirit
- An even contribution of Mastery and Crit
- If you’re sitting in mostly epics and haven’t gotten into hard modes yet, haste will be the key to increasing your HPS

Prior to entering hard modes:
- At least 900 haste
- At least 2.2k Spirit (this should increase to >2500 Spirit as you upgrade to ilvl372 gear)
- More than 700 Mastery
- After these points, increase your Haste or Mastery depending on your healing style and needs of your healing team. Mastery will ultimately make your spells hit a LOT harder, while haste will enable you to deliver faster heals. (I personally stack Mastery past 900 haste).

As for the reasoning as to why each stat is rated valuable or invaluable:

- Haste: in conditions where healers have plenty of mana, and thus can overheal in greater amounts without fear of running OOM, haste will be the key to higher HPS because it enables you to beat other healers to the punch. In other words, in a non-triage environment, haste will prove valuable because speed is of greater value than strength.

- Mastery: in triage conditions, Mastery will be the key to greater HPS because it increases your throughput and is at its most powerful when players are at low levels of health. (These are conditions seen in most hard mode encounters). In these conditions, healing-per-mana becomes more important than healing-per-second.

- Crit: unfortunately, it isn’t that favored of a stat this tier because of the reduced stat levels across the board. This means that its contributions through Imp. Water Shield and Ancestral Awakening aren’t as powerful as they once were, and point-for-point, your return on investment for Crit rating is comparatively lower than with Haste and Mastery. That being said, in normal mode encounters and environments where resto shaman are tank healing exclusively, crit is on par with Mastery.


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Crap does my shaman need to work on his Resto set !!

Why insert a shaman piece? So many players state guides for what stat to favor.

Int > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit

Which items are BiS and which gems to use.

Nobody puts information on what minimum stats to bring to endgame content.
Some folks stop at Heroics. Some folks stop at 10 man Raids. Others shoot for 25 man Hardmodes. Each of these has a sliding scale of requirements.

Gospel? Maybe not. I'm just loving that someone listed base numbers