hamlet

Honestly I have to admit that I am a +to healing whore and even if you give me all the reasons in the world not to emphasize +to healing I will most likely stick with it. My goal was to get a mana pool and mana regen that will allow me to last through any length fight with minimal down time. Once I hit that I went to emphasizing all +to healing. I have done all the math on how inefficient it is and all the arguments against it as a shaman but honestly I think it is the only way to become a more effective shaman healer. do you really need more mana? more mana regen? all of these allow you to last longer to a point but they dont make you a better healer.
Bored at work and I have lurked these forums for awhile and just figured I would see your guys opinions on the matter. That and too much warrior discussion had to change the subject some.

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◊ Lord BEEF

It's a good thing, especially for chain heal.

In before gurgthock

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◊ Praetorian

A mix of regen and +healing is the way to improve your ability to heal.

Every point of +healing makes your mana pool more efficient, and in turn, makes items that increase your mana or mana regen more useful. Conversely, the more mana you have, the more you can stretch the benefit of each additional point of +healing.

If you have tons of +healing and little regen, you should work on regen. If you have tons of regen and little +healing, work on +healing. Simple.

But yeah, I'm a +healing whore myself as a shaman. When I can finally piece together the rest of my Ten Storms set I'll have over +500 healing total (though really most of it comes from my Healing Power'd Lok'amir, Red Dragonscale Protector, and Rejuvenating Gem). My LHWs regularly break 1200, and I can cast Rank 5 LHW to heal 900+, which is more than some shamans' Rank 6 LHW. Huge mana efficiency there.

One other reason why +healing is good for shamans: Chain Heal.

The spell takes 2.5 seconds to cast, so it gets 71.4% (2.5/3.5) of your +healing bonus applied to the first target. What makes it shine, however, is the way that benefit carries through to subsequent targets.

+100 to healing will increase the healing to your first target by 71, to your second by 36, and your third by 18. That's a total of +125hp healed per cast, thanks to having +100 to healing.

With the Ten Storms' bonus, it's even better. Instead of 100/50/25 scaling, you get 100/65/32.5.

That's 71/46/23 added from +100 to healing, or +140hp healed per cast, for each +100 healing.

Right now, with +440 to healing, a typical chain heal will do 902, 589, 293 on its three hops. And one of them will almost always crit, but even if it doesn't... that's 1784 points of healing, for 405 mana. Good stuff. (And people say Chain Heal sucks....)

If that's not efficient, I don't know what is.

 

hamlet

yes that is my opinion as well. I find the people working toward 8 and 9k mana pools fairly funny cause I just dont see the need other than for Epeen. I do need to work on my mana per 5 a bit(would like to get and extra 10 mana) but it is nice to see some more support. Now I need to decide if sacrificing my armor to get more mana regen and +to healing is worth it, personally until I can replace with more EF and TS I think it is. Not like I am gonna be tanking a whole lot. Just dont want to become a fat green squishy priest.

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◊ Lord BEEF

Chain heal is especially awesome when you're doing broodlord since all of your tanks take some damage from the cleaves and blast waves. Once we're injured, a matrix of yellow laser beams come and restore us to full and give us +25% armor through ancestral fortitude.

As long as you cast it on a target that's outside of your group, chain heal is very smart about who it bounces to. If you cast it on someone within your group, it'll try to bounce to people in your group. (I believe this is how it works anyway)

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• Wodin

I will also note that chain heal is amazingly nice as melee DPS, because it hops intelligently. So much of the time I'll be at half health, not really want to back out and bandage or chug a pot, and then zap, a chain heal second hop hits me, patches me up to 80%, and I'm fine to keep going.

Paladins get even more benefit out of +healing than shaman. I'd venture to say that they should approach it as their primary stat, with mana regen and spell crit secondary. Flash of Light gets so ridiculously efficient it's not even funny.

 

Mistikman

My main problem with Chain Heal is that you cant guarantee that the jumps will be healing the right people or not.

I am reminded of an MC run where my chain heal tried to jump to my grace of air totem

EDIT: although I suppose that could be a super rare fluke, as I also once had my grounding totem absorb a heal that I cast on myself

 

hamlet

personally I dont like spell crit too much outside of with the combo of chain heals cause right now my big heal will crit for 3k damage which creates nasty amounts of aggro. I went with a new group to MC to help them a bit and give some pointers and if the MT lost aggro(I think he was still learning or something) the stinking mob went after me all the time. My fault sure but still creating way to much aggro. crits just compound that. The pesky thing is I really like ancestral but to give someone the extra 25% armor it has to crit. what can ya do.

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hamlet

never had that happen personally but I can see it happening. The odds of it selecting the totem seem fairly remote. I will still use chain heal alot just so I can have less over heal.

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Gankin

Speaking of warrior discussion. Improved Revenge/improved sunder/improved heroic strike/concussion blow need to be buffed. 3 of the 4 are our staple tanking abilities and yet 2 just reduce rage when its already hard to dump off rage on raid bosses. And the other 2 are stuns that every mob above BRS is immune to. What makes it worse is Conc blow is required for shield slam!

And give shield slam a formula similar to MS. It shouldn't do as much dmg, but it shouldn't be a set #. Even with a set #, it is mitigated by armor. I shield slammed a warrior for 179 dmg last night. Giving up 30 rage for 179 dmg is completely unnacceptable.

/hijack

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Overhealing doesn't create additional threat beyond the amount healed. In the situation you described, it was probably against a molten giant which did a knockback on the tank, which lowers his threat. If he tanks them properly against a wall, he'll be able to taunt it back immediately. Don't change your playstyle or discount spell crit becuase of noob tanks

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hamlet

see, warriors always getting in the way. Go spam sunder and HS more. :P

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Shin

Example of Concentration Shaman: Doombert
Example of +Healing Shaman: Conando

I rest my case.

 

fuzzy

I did some math awhile ago, so here is some stuff from a guild post. It is sort of argumentative because I'm trying to prove that +heal IS benefitial to flash heal even though it doesn't get full heal bonus applied to it. The starting heal numbers used are with my pure PVE holy/disc inspiration build.

May your heals be fuzzier. Oh and one big reason I spec'd inspiration is to give me SOME sort of benefit to overhealing. If I crit spamming flash heal with the MT at 100% at least they get some ac out of it.

 

Elfan

Its pretty cool when you paladins have so much mana regen that they end fights at 90+%

 

hamlet

BTW is my signature too sexy for you?

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Shin

A little piece of me died inside.

 

jubelio

i always wonder how alliance guilds can run out of mana in a raid. they must be really good at wasting mana.

 

hamlet

I guess I could waste alot of mana on horde side if I had to. Ofcourse we dont have that liberty.

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• Bad Luck

IT KEEPS DISTRACTING ME!

 

MrKiddieGrinder

I have pretty pathetic concentration when compared with other, better-geared shamans. I have maybe +45 mana/5 seconds, while people like Brownbread have twice that amount. I want a good mix of concentration, +healing, and spirit, since I'd be weak in the other areas if I were to just concentrate in one.

edit: I am good at running out of mana in fights. The things I would do for blessing and seal of wisdom (maybe even kill a man! :o )

I APPRECIATE HELLSOAP

 

hamlet

I am not a big fan of spirit since well it stops when we cast and we have no skill that benefits from spirit. mana every 5 is far superior IMO.

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◊ Praetorian

I still get spirit ticks in between spells while casting on most fights. And the most mana-intensive fights tends to involve stricter healing rotations with people cycling in and out to spirit up as needed. Spirit helps there.

Yes, shamans get the greatest benefit of any class in the game from mana/5, I'd argue, but spirit is important too.

Personally, as stated above, I go for an even balance of stats: I have +443 healing and 54 mana/5, and I feel extremely effective as a raid healer.

 

hamlet

I understand but more my argument is with spirit in general. I dont try to balance spirit and mana/5. I will replace spirit with mana/5 everytime. Ofcourse just wait blizzard will buff it and I will have to change my mindset.

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Oof

It already got buffed like hell with the new version of the 5 second rule, closing the gap between a shaman and priest considerably when it comes to healing endurance.

Buff it more, and I'll throw my priest in the bin.