What you seem to be missing is that these shamans ARE focussing on the tanks. They will heal up the raid - on their own or with the aid of shadowpriests - as a side effect. That pretty much means that any raidhealing your priest is doing is completely wasted and he should be focusing entirely on the tanks as you suggested.

Thats the advantage of shamans, and their ability to "mindlessly chain-heal the tanks". Not only does chain heal still heal for a large amount on the tank, but it intelligently jumps to the next two lowest targets nearby, healing them for a respectable amount.

Combined with the fact that chain heal combines great hp/sec and hp/mana AS WELL AS intelligent target choice AND proccing Ancestral Fortitude on tanks PLUS totems and heroism/bloodlust, there's really no other healer as well suited for this job.

I give up, you're having 2 of your healers using their worst tank healing spell on tanks, and wondering why your tanks die.

Also, stop talking about heroism, ancestral fort, and totems, because you don't lose those by changing the jobs people are doing.

I would suggest you stop while you're behind.

Your alternative has a priest hitting the tank with 6k heals every 2.3 seconds and another priest keeping a renew up on him.

The shaman alternative has two shaman hitting the tank with two 4k heals every 2.3 seconds and healing the raid up as a side effect.


Shaman version has more HPS on tank, has heals hitting more frequently, and has a higher uptime on Inspiration/Ancestral. Why on earth would you think the first version is superior?

You don't lose the shaman in your first example, I'm not sure why people are assuming if the shaman aren't chain healing on tank they magically disappear.

What? I replaced two shamans chain healing the tank (what the majority here suggest is the best solution) with one priest greater healing the tank and another priest healing groups and putting renew up (what you suggest). 2 for 2. You can replace "one priest greater healing the tank" with "one shaman healing waving the tank" if you want in that alternative, it doesn't make one bit of difference since I didn't even get into group synergies.

Two shamans chain healing a tank is better tank healing than one shaman/priest healing that tank at full efficiency. And since the shamans heal the rest of the raid automatically, you don't need to assign anyone to that.

From the last page, you said:
In fact, the shaman tactic means you assign zero healers to do the job one can manage. Sure, they get reduced efficiency on the other job they're doing, but they're still more effective at that than any single player.

Don't try to give the illusion of fair comparisons if you're doing the opposite. Coh is instant cast, that gives him freedom to do more than just keep up groups. He doesn't have to do much to make up the extra heals above the 8k tank heals the shaman are doing, considering someone (be it shaman or priest) is doing 6-7k on tank by themselves in the same time frame.

I suppose the fairest way to resolve this would be wws for healers in both setups.

I don't think it is realistic for a priest to be spamming circle of healing for 6 minutes straight. On the other hand it's not to big of a stretch for a shaman to be chain healing for 6 minutes. For reference on our kills we use:

2x holy paladin
1x impDS priest
3x resto shaman
2x resto druid

Priest chains gheal/flash on the tank for inspiration
Druids hot the tanks. 1 helps on burns
Paladins spam the tank. 1 helps on burns
2 shamans spam chain heal on the tank, 1 heals the raid.

Mana problems are rare if they happen at all.

We use one shadow priest for VE healing.

We find that this is the best way to maximize inspiration uptime and use the least amount of raid healers (just 1), and keeping the max amount of heals on the tank to avoid unnecessary gibs. If we had less shaman we would have to adjust, but having 5 shaman for this fight is pretty nice so we will likely continue with this for the foreseeable future.

Here is a wws from one of our kills:
WWS Loading...

we are a tiny bit behind the enrage, but our ret paladin is a holy pally in full s3, ie: crap.

Only a hunter would be this stupid with healing assignments.

You're effectively crippling the potential output of a shaman if you take them off chain heal duty. Spamming HW is no where near as efficient nor as much composite HPS. I don't understand why you hate your healers enough to make them have to work harder by using a different setup.

You're saying on a fight with high spike damage and a lot of raid damage that your shaman shouldn't use a tool uniquely suited to the fight? The fight seems designed for maximum chain heal abuse, and you refuse to use it? Bizarre. Years of steady shot must have rotted your brains.

Ya, I'm also stupid enough to use 3 tanks to negate the burst of this fight, all the smart kids are using 2 I hear.

Yes, you are. The burst is not very difficult to deal with if you have competent healers, it just requires coordination and timing. If your healers can't handle that, what are they doing in sunwell?

We just bring 3 resto shaman and they all chain heal off the tank, no one even needs to be assigned to raid heal. Holy priest chains max rank GH on the tank, that's all there is to it. Just make your shaman direct chain heals off the tank non stop and you're getting a respectable stream of incoming HPS on the tank while maintaining very high AF uptime, while covering raid damage all at the same time. How can you go wrong there ? This means with our set up we have 5 full time tank healers and 2 to cover burn and heal tank when burn targeting allows them. Basically everyone heals the tank and 2 tank healers heal burn when they have to. We have minimal tank deaths so with many healers watching tanks.

Some people have had MORE success with two than with three, for various reasons. Obviously your experience is different - I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Assuming that a two-tank strategy is used due to lack of experimentation is just plain insulting.

Just because something works for you doesn't mean it's the best solution period, and it certainly doesn't mean it will be the best solution for every other guild out there. Get over yourself.

Unless you're doing 3 tanks / 5 healers, what's the problem with people using 2 tanks / 7 healers and having no problem keeping tanks up? Unless you sneak in an extra dps with your method it seems a loss for the raid.

Killing stuff, you?

Well, your method is very inefficient, as has been said over and over in this thread, as well as being ignorant and jarring to read and understand where you are coming from. It's one thing to say things, but it is another to not substantiate it in any convincing way nor attempt to rebut our confusion other then to go ad hom. on us. We'll miss your contributions to this thread in the future. Truly a great loss suffered here.

You can't come into a thread spouting off about how dumb someones way of killing a mob is when you've not been able to kill the mob in question with your own superior way. So don't run in spouting off and calling people names in a thread you have no business participating in.

You can't come into a thread spouting off about how dumb two tanks on Brutallus is when a many guilds (not all, mind you) have tried both two and three and concluded two as the superior way. So don't run in spouting off and throwing random insults regarding that matter in a thread you have no business being an asshole in.

Pretty sure most guilds watch a video and play paint by numbers, that doesn't make the strategy best, it makes it the most well known and copied.

Assigning Shaman to bounce chain heals off the tanks is the smartest use of your Resto Shaman on Brutallus, there is no arguing this fact. If you can tell me a smarter delegation for them I am all ears.

Pretty sure I didn't say "most guilds".