[Shaman] - Resto Shaman Theorycrafting

Baite · 05/11/07, 6:39 PM

After being a resto shaman for quite some time now, both pre-TBC and in TBC, I have been debating with myself/guildies over the proper usage of shaman healing spells. I have tried almost every resto spec across the board and currently use a 16/0/45 spec to allow myself to quest at least marginally well while still maintainging the ability to be quite an effective arena and raid healer.

What I would like to ask the resto shaman community is two fold: (1) Which healing spell do you use most exclusively (LHW/HW) and (2) How do you maximize your mana efficiency i.e. downranking.

Now, with the spec that I have been using, I chose to pass up imp. healing wave and healing way. After my experience in everything from kara/gruul's/mag/SSC, I felt that I used LHW more and the talent points spent in those 2 areas were not worth it for how I want to play. With those two talents taken into account, the Healing per second of a max rank healing wave far outpaces that of a lesser healing wave, but you cant really take that into account due to the randomness of combat. From my perspective, alot of times i dont have time to cast a 2.5 or 3 second heal in a raid because the tank will die if i cant get a fast heal off. In summary, i was just interested in wondering how you guys feel about the viability of those two talents and then the two questions earlier.

Sorry to drag on a bit, and thanks for your responses.

Binkenstein · 05/11/07, 7:14 PM

Speaking as a PvE healer, I tend to focus on HW for tank healing (getting 4.5k with 3 healing way buffs up), Chain heal for raid healing, and LHW for emergency top ups or when there's little left to heal.

In terms of mana efficiency, I focus on regen & cast cancelling rather than downranking, as it gives you more control, without sacrificing power.

Kerulak · 05/11/07, 7:26 PM

As with all encounters, it depends on the fight, and the Shaman class is already up against a wall without having a HoT, save Healing Stream (which definitely can be used to your advantage at times).

For sustained long-duration MT assignments, I almost exclusively use Rank 10 HW, popping the Lower City Prayerbook as often as it is up. It goes without saying that you should be pre-healing and cancelling appropriately, otherwise you'll empty your mana pool out in the first few minutes of the fight. In an encounter like this, LHW is almost never used, except when the tank is spiked and your NS is down -- a couple of LHW 7s should suffice (Hopefully you have other healers helping).

If your assignment is more FFA-ish, and to keep the raid generally healed/topped-off, obviously CH is your best friend; I move between ranks 4 & 5 as needed, mostly focusing on CH 4. You really only want to use CH when you know you are going to be hitting a crowd and they are taking reasonable damage. I would hope it is self-explanatory, but CH is not exceptionally mana efficient and shouldn't be used to keep a tank up if that is your role.

Heroics can be tricky, again, I find myself mostly prepping HW 10 and waiting to see if the heal needs to land or if I should cancel. Most heroic players are (should?) be smart enough to position themselves appropriately during trash pulls/CC that they aren't taking residual damage, so again...not very much CH unless necessary.

I often like to pop a healing trinket and then drop healing stream before a crazy pull. It's no Lifebloom, but it sometimes helps take the edge off.

As for spec, I'm 8/0/53, and the 5/5 Concussion is more than enough to get you around Outland to quest. I ground out Exalted Sha'tar rep at Death's Door in Blade's Edge and was easily able to kill 3-4 felguards at once with ES up -- anyone who tells you a Resto Shaman can't quest/grind is lying or lazy.

Imp HW is a must to be a competitive raid healer, and if you are ever assigned an MT to cover (see Gruul above) Healing Way 3/3 is only going to make your job easier. The "randomness of combat" you refer to are offset by other Shaman healing techniques, ie Trinketed Healing Stream, pre-casting HW and cancelling if necessary, etc.

Baite · 05/11/07, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by Kerulak

Heroics can be tricky, again, I find myself mostly prepping HW 10 and waiting to see if the heal needs to land or if I should cancel. Most heroic players are (should?) be smart enough to position themselves appropriately during trash pulls/CC that they aren't taking residual damage, so again...not very much CH unless necessary.

I often like to pop a healing trinket and then drop healing stream before a crazy pull. It's no Lifebloom, but it sometimes helps take the edge off.

<3 Kerulak. Anyways, I had felt like my build was pretty good until i ran into heroic Arcatraz. Being the only healer made it rough and at points even chain casting max rank heals on the tank wasn't enough. I'll try out some varied builds and see what I can get. Thanks for the input.

Jeffonious · 05/11/07, 11:22 PM

Preface: Ignore my armory right now, in my crappy elemental gear and spec to grind gold/pvp on the weekend.

I find that going 0/5/56 works best for me. I would rather gimp myself in all other areas and becoming an amazing healer then be subpar at everything. How powerful a shaman is at healing depends on two factors, the skill level of the shaman and the fight mechanics. On fights like Kazzak or the trash in TK, where there is lots of AoE dmg that is unavoidable we become godly. For example on Kazzak, if I am the only resto shaman, I will be a good 10% higher then the next nearest person for effective healing, hell our enhancement shaman will be above all the healers on Kazzak. The reason for this is chain heal. This spell is simply amazing, learn when and how to use it and you will become invaluable to your guild.

As for downrank and efficiency... I agree with Binkenstein -

In terms of mana efficiency, I focus on regen & cast cancelling rather than downranking, as it gives you more control, without sacrificing power.

I aim to maximize my mp5 while keeping my healing at around 1400. Right now it puts me at 1410 healing and 170 mp5 (while casting ofcourse). There are few fights that I have mana issues on, granted I do chug pots very liberally. One fight where mana can be an issue is Fathom-Lord Karathress. I solo heal the tank and rogue on the priest until the other adds are down (we kill priest last and usually the tank is a fury warrior wearing a hybrid gear of tank and dps) this fight is just me spamming largest healing wave and chain heal. Using every pot/mana tide/trinket I still am gasping for mana by the time the priest is dead.

I personally am not a fan of MT healing, IMO its not the best roll for shaman, but sometimes we do need to do it. MT healing we are basically a paladin with way less mana efficiency.

As for the OPs statement...

Now, with the spec that I have been using, I chose to pass up imp. healing wave and healing way.

I feel that is a very poor decision, those are both very useful and power talents. I know I said I dont like to downrank earlier in my post, but with imp hw and healing way is a very good way to MT/single target heal. 18% more healing done by healing wave spells can make down ranking powerful and more efficient.

As for LHW I use that alot on trash, when I am being lazy or someone takes massive spike dmg and NS is down.

Final note to the guy who said you can quest/grind as resto.... Yea you can, but I would rather slam my face into a brick wall.

GamingManiac · 05/12/07, 2:57 AM

Resto shamans can kill anything. The only problem is how long they're given to kill it. I'm not going to stay specced resto, beat on an elite for 3 minutes only to have someone gank me when the mob's at 10%. No reason to waste your time, herbalism is a perfect compliment to shamans anyway (ghost wolf, stoneclaw totems), so no reason to kill yourself farming money if you don't want to respec.

Back to the OT, I used to heal like you did pre-TBC, strictly LHW with slow HWs whenever I knew the damage was going to be steady and controlled or bursted when the HW ends. When TBC came out and I leveled to 70, I couldn't convince myself that LHW's efficiency could come close to HW's anymore. At 60, with Totem of Life and lots of regen gear, it worked out fine if you can appropriately cancel. However, with the newer ranks, the efficiency of HW is starting to pull away from LHW. LHW was a nice, safe spell that you could use to top off a tank (my excuse to avoid becoming a HW shaman pre2.0), but with stacking hots, earth shield, a tank goes from 90 to 100 very quickly nowadays so that job is obsolete. That leaves trying to use LHW strictly as an "oh shit" spell.

The more experience I get with healing, the more obvious it becomes healing is a rhythm task. Sure, there are bursts where either the boss spikes down the tank or the tank goes on a mitigation streak, but that's what cancelling (and LHW) is for. Looking beyond those incidents, it's VERY easy to predict what kind of healing spells you should be using for different fights once you've done an attempt or two. If the tank is taking steady damage as well as steady healing, chain casting R6 is what I do. If it's more spiky and/or there are fewer healers on my tank, I switch to HW10, and cancel appropriately. As far as LHW goes, I don't downrank it since the only times I ever use it is in an emergency and in an emergency you need a power heal.

There's no "magic" rank you should be using universally for every fight though. Those are just what I personally use, and I don't use those two spells for all my fights. For example, I change my bindings for certain fights such as Gruul, a fight where I gradually scale up the heals I'm using by how many growths, from 6 to 8 to 9 and finally 10 when I know I can sustain chain casting until Gruul's dead. No reason to end a fight at half mana. None.

Kandrel · 05/12/07, 5:24 AM

The thing that's helped me the most in efficiency is creating a stopcast/recast healing wave macro. That way, I can keep hitting my '5' button until the tank's health drops to where that 4k will really make the difference. Beyond that, being a jewelcrafter with the Talasite Owl, mana regen seems to have improved to the point that I'm only experiencing trouble with endurance fights, such as the high-stamina heroic bosses.

Retta · 05/12/07, 5:36 AM

I tend to use HW 7,10 and 11 myself - using the cookie-cutter 0/5/56. For regen I usually use prayer book or the trinket from Aran. Found the regen from activating the trinket and then putting four totems down useful

But for the majority I tend to downrank and stick to Hw - tend not to use LHW or chain heal much

Eury · 05/12/07, 5:57 AM

I will stick my head out and claim that shamans are the best raid healers and that is largely due to chain healing, so that would be the spell I use mostly.
I prefer using max ranks and canceling over downranking, rarely do I run into mana trouble thanks to chain healing being as efficient as it is.

Regarding spec I use 8/0/53 for increased survivability, elemental warding is a really nice talent to have and nature guardian have saved me quite a few times.

Morde · 05/12/07, 7:16 AM

I'm no longer restoration as I've transfered off my old server and changed guilds so I had the option to move away from that aspect of the class. However I did spend the best part of the last 6 months playing as restoration from Attumen too Magtheridon.

I tended to use rank 6 Healing Wave for the majority of my healing as I liked the ability to heal for long periods of time without really having to worry about cancelling (I could just spam). Many people will say that's a boring way to play and doesn't show any ability, and they could be right, but it's the way I liked to play the spec and the way I will continue to if I ever revert back to restoration. That's not to say I ignored my other heals, I used Chain Heal and other ranks of Healing Wave etc, but my primary heal was rank 6 closely followed by 7.

As for ignoring Imp Healing Wave and Healing way, I'm not too sure I could live without those talents because of the way I heal. To be honest, I think that if you're going to go restoration on a long-term basis you may aswell go the hole-hog and burn every point into that tree. I was locked into the 0/5/56 mind-set for ages before I really didn't see much benefit of 5% more mana over the tasty talents that I had skipped in restoration.

Baite · 05/12/07, 12:12 PM

Thanks for all the feedback, and I just had another question come up, how do you guys feel about the viability of ancestral healing?

Ashiya · 05/12/07, 12:54 PM

There is no reason not to take Ancestral Healing. Shit hits hard nowadays, you want your tank to have as much armor as possible. Combined with Tidal Mastery, you'll find yourself critting a *lot*.

Crazytrucker · 05/12/07, 2:12 PM

Originally Posted by Ashiya

There is no reason not to take Ancestral Healing. Shit hits hard nowadays, you want your tank to have as much armor as possible. Combined with Tidal Mastery, you'll find yourself critting a *lot*.

I've thought that Tidal Mastery is Critical Effect not Spell/Healing Crit?

Friedrich · 05/12/07, 3:14 PM

When I'm in Resto mode, I spec 8/0/53 for pvp/raid healing purposes.

I have 1425 +healing and 115 mp5 while casting with my current gear (since I'm primarily Enhancement I haven't really focused on improving this too much). With my gear setup, you can see the hp/sec and hp/mana values of various Shaman heals (assuming full resto talents):

Direct, single target heals (no Healing Way stack):
HW12: 1.54 khp/sec, 5.64 hp/mana
HW10: 1.29 khp/sec, 5.46 hp/mana
HW8: 0.949 khp/sec, 5.67 hp/mana
LHW: 1.26 khp/sec, 3.02 hp/mana

Group Heals (assuming max # of targets):
CH: 1.76 khp/sec, 8.56 hp/mana
HST (2 min duration): 0.36 khp/sec, 473 hp/mana

Earth Shield - can't say as I don't know the precise scaling. Someone help with this? Remember it gets no purification when cast on other players (or so says wowwiki).

Anyway, the numbers tell you pretty obvious things.
Chain Heal whenever it makes sense. Best heal you have.
Spiky damage? HW12. Continuously cast/cancel HW12 if it's a spiky fight (think Maulgar) and let more efficient healers deal with the topping off if the tank is close to full.
Need to top someone off but there's no rush? HW8/12.
Are there lots and lots of healers on your target with you? HW8 - same efficiency as HW12, just lower throughput, so you can really spam it more and not care about overhealing as much. As an added bonus, you get to proc Ancestral Healing more often since you'll have more uncanceled casts.
Never use LHW unless it's an emergency.
Try to let HST do the work of topping off your group for you, if you can at all afford it.

Athinira · 05/12/07, 3:20 PM

Originally Posted by Crazytrucker

I've thought that Tidal Mastery is Critical Effect not Spell/Healing Crit?

No, its critchance indeed.