1. Intro
1.1. Hey everyone and welcome to our guide on freecasting heal. The aim of this guide is to show you when you should be faking and, more importantly, when you should just freely cast and allow yourself to be interrupted. A mistake that even the most experienced healers make is to keep fake casting while they're dropping low, resulting in them essentially faking themselves to death and having to burn through cds to survive. The goal of this guide is provide you with clear guidelines as to when you should be faking and when you should forego faking and actually just cast.
2. Letting Yourself Get Interrupted
2.1. At the end of that last example, we showed you Xonika no longer attempting to fake after dropping below 80%. Xonika chooses to allow himself to be interrupted after 80% because he knows that he can survive a lock out duration plus a stun duration as long as it happens once he's at around 80% health. As we already mentioned earlier, if you get interrupted while you're low on health, and the enemy team still has more ways to lock you down, such as a stun, you're much more likely to die. Now, the reason why Xonika wants this to happen is because as a resto shaman, after you've been interrupted, you gain an aura mastery effect for around 20 seconds, allowing you to free cast heals once the enemy team can no longer lock you down. So as long as you stop faking at above 80% health, you should be able to survive against most teams by just freecasting when you come out of any lock outs and stuns. If you don't do this, and allow yourself to be interrupted and stunned while you're much lower on health, you're a lot more likely to either die or have to use your spirit link to survive.
2.1.1. ARe
2.1.1.1. In this example we showed you earlier, Xonika attempts to fake their warrior while he's still above 80% health. Their warrior then stuns Xonika which prevents him from going for any casts. Now, coming out of this storm bolt, Xonika knows that the only remaining way for the enemy team to stop his casts is with an interrupt. Instead of wasting time trying to fake their warrior, he allows himself to be interrupted. The moment the lockout ends, their team no longer has any way of stopping his casts, and so he can just freecast healing surges to keep himself alive.
2.1.1.1.1. Editing
2.1.2. ARr
2.1.2.1. Here, we once again see Xonika not waste time attempting to fake cast the warrior, and instead he just allows himself to be interrupted while he's at 80% health. The warrior still has a stun to stop xonika from healing himself, so that's another few seconds after the lock out where Xonika is unable to heal himself. But this entire situation is calculated, and xonika knows that he'll be high enough on health when he comes out of the storm bolt to be able to just start free casting heals and survive with ease, and that's exactly what happens.
2.1.2.1.1. Editing
3. Using Totems To Freecast Heals
3.1. Moving onto the final section of this video, let's talk about a neat trick you can do to outplay your opponents and get some sneaky casts off. Because of how strong some of your totems are, the enemy team is very likely to immediately switch and attempt to kill them whenever you use them. Specifically ,we're talking about capacitor totem and skyfury totem. Whenever you drop below 80% and won't be attempting to fake cast while you're at risk of being interrupted by a melee that's sitting on you, you can drop either of these totems, and attempt to cast a heal on yourself. This is a great thing to do because if you get kicked, they're likely to be stunned by your cap totem, and if they decide to take the time to kill your totem, there's a good chance you'll actually get your cast off.
3.1.1. ARd
3.1.1.1. Here, xonika has dropped to 80% which means he will not be attempting to fake their warrior. Instead of just going for a cast and allowing himself to be interrupted, xonika drops a capacitor totem and then starts to cast a heal. Their warrior decides to use his bladestorm to avoid being stunned, and as a result, xonika is able to get an entire cast off without being interrupted.
3.1.1.1.1. Editing
3.1.2. ARi
3.1.2.1. In this example, Xonika has just come out of a stun. He's at 50% health which means he doesn't have time to fake cast and will need to just allow himself to be interrupted. he drops a skyfury totem and then attempts to get a cast off. Although the warrior does interrupt Xonika, this meant that he didn't kill the skyfury totem, and so xonikas team at least benefited from it for a few seconds. And then coming out of that lockout, xonika can then utilise his aura mastery to freecast heals and keep himself alive.
3.1.2.1.1. Editing
4. When To Fake Cast
4.1. To start things off, let's talk about when you should be attempting to fake the enemy team. Whenever you're high on health, meaning above around 80%, you have the option of fake casting simply because if you're unable to successfully fake at this point, you won't be punished for spending time on this as you're not in trouble. This means you're usually able to fake around 1-2 times before you actually need to then start finishing your casts.
4.1.1. ARe
4.1.1.1. Here, you can see that our rank 1 resto shaman, Xonika, attempts to fake his healing wave cast. Their warrior does end up using his intimidating shout to prevent him from casting, but the important take away here is that Xonika fakes his healing wave while he's at 80% health.
4.1.1.1.1. Editing
4.1.2. ARl
4.1.2.1. In this example, xonika is at around 90% health. This means that he's in a good position to attempt to fake their warrior. You can see here that he fakes his healing surge cast before then just going for the next cast as he has now dropped below 80%
4.1.2.1.1. Editing