Daidalos

Good point. LHW is nice in a pinch . Especially if chain isn't hitting multiple targets. Its a throughput (CH and HW) vs latency(LHW) issue on healing done though. LHW is less healing per sec then chains on 3 ppl or healing wave but takes 1 less sec to land. Chain heal if it can jump is still better in a crunch than LHW (frequently even on Najentus I get jumps on my chain heal but there are times I don't as well so those last few ppl before breaking bubble is a good time for LHW as you point out)

 

Teenee

I have a question I haven't really seen answered anywhere. Does Chain Heal heal across groups in a raid? The spell description seems to make it fairly clear that it doesn't ("only jump to other party members."), but from some of the reading I've done on the WoW-EU forums, some people seem to think it does (specifically, in a discussion of Circle of Healing versus Chain Heal).

My shaman is just new to 70, so haven't raided yet, so haven't observed this myself, but from the little peeking in raids I did on my priest, CH does seem to heal only within groups. But it was only from a few observations, so I just want to make sure by asking here.

 

• Binkenstein

one of the patches back around 1.5 made a change that it heals within raids the same as it heals within parties.

 

Teenee

Sorry for being obtuse, but what does that mean? Does that mean it DOES heal across groups?

The patch notes for 1.12 says something about CH also searching out non-raid targets. But the description seems a bit weirdly worded to me.

Is there such a thing as a non-group targeted Chain Heal? Healing a friendly player/NPC who is nearby? Also, the text makes it sound as if there is a difference between a raid targeted CH, and a group targeted one.

Anyway, sorry for these perhaps noob questions, but CH does fascinate me a good deal. And I kinda want to get to the bottom of it.

Patch 1.12 (Release Notes - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki)

 

• Binkenstein

That means that if you target it at someone outside your party/raid, it'll go with the most damaged target.
If you're in a raid/party and you target someone in the raid/party, it'll go with the most damaged target in the raid/party.

Note that if you target your own party within in a raid, it'll behave like the raid function.

 

GamingManiac

Old chain heal had several issues, such as if you were put in the same group as your CH target in the raid and you chose to target that person, it would never jump outside of your group. It'd look for the nearest person within range inside your group, then fizzle out. This caused several problems including but not limited to guilds that used chain healing shamans for Patchwerk (including our own).

 

Amanit

Back at the op

Recently I gained the 4 piece set bonus of tier 5. I have to say it has changed my healing rotations. Before I rarely used healing wave, our guild has consistent pallies and holy priests that would heal the main tanks. Mostly the 3 shamans are put on raid healing for boss fights and trash. Chain heal was my most used spell and still is. When not spaming chain heal, I would use lesser healing wave to "save players" like a mage aoe'ing or a rogue who just pulled aggro. Healing wave was never used that much, it was too slow to save anyone and there were almost no fights were I was healing a tank.

However after getting 4 piece tier 5, I have found that I use healing wave a great deal more. Infact dare I say that the set bonus makes healing wave for me. Healing wave has a much better hpm so as long as the wave trance buff is up (It almost always is after a few chain heals since each jump can proc it), healing wave can replace lesser healing wave. The option to cast a 1.5 second max rank healing wave to save a mage aoe'ing for example is just too damn nice. Also you can replace lesser healing wave with a down ranked healing for better mana efficiency. Plus if the half casting meta gem procs thats an even faster, I've seen healing wave get down to a .5 second cast time. Seriously that set bonus makes healing wave for me. I never liked that spell before until now. Now in raids I'll chain heal and wave trance will proc. I'll save it and when someone need an emergency heal i'll throw them a healing wave which usually brings them back to over half health. Not to mention the passive reduction in healing wave cast time.

On a funnier note, both wave trance (the buff that 4/5 tier 4 gives) and the half casting meta gem are bugged. If you use quartz and stop casting macros and are quick enough the first healing wave won't consume the buff. So basicly you can get 2 1.5 second healing waves off one buff.

Honestly I thank god that I'm in a guild that has a gm that saw the potental in resto shamans and the strength of our tier 5. Our 3 main shamans (me included) now all have 4/5 tier 5. We were the top 3 healers for every raid and that lead has only increased. He's also nice enough to give healing assignments that let shamans shine, mostly we are assigned to chain heal the groups while the pallies/priest/druids keep the tanks up.

 

Incupsof

I just noticed today that the (2) and (4) piece t6 resto bonuses have changed on wowhead, is this because they have changed on PTR and are these changes going into 2.2?

old:

(2) Your Chain Heal ability costs 10% less mana.
(4) Increases the amount healed by your Lesser Healing Wave ability by 5%.

new:

(2) Your Lesser Healing Wave ability costs 10% less mana.
(4) Increases the amount healed by your Chain Heal ability by 5%.

 

• Binkenstein

Improved Lesser Healing Wave - Spells - World of Warcraft
Chain Heal Discount - Spells - World of Warcraft
The tooltips seem to be conflicting at the moment.

I'm going to assume that the Live bonuses haven't changed, so if this is an actual change then it is off the PTR. It would be a nice change though, as the big problem with LHW tends to be mana use, and more heath from CH is always good (I wonder if it will stack with purification/imp CH or not)

 

◊ Praetorian

How would that possibly be a nice change? The current t6 bonus is worth 40-50 mp5 in chain-heal intensive fights. This would be a straight nerf and I'd probably revert to using my t5 set until I get at least 4 t6.

 

Crazytrucker

Agree and then it makes us have to get another 2 pieces of set items when you could get better (eos gloves, archimonde pants). If this is the change I will be disappointed, they finally gave us a worthy set bonus and then take it away/

 

• Binkenstein

Previously the 4pc was a joke, and the 2pc was the only one people cared about.

Now the 2pc is on par with most of the others (ie: not as good as T4), and the 4pc is the desirable one.

While yes, going from -10% mana to +5% heal may be a bit of a "nerf" for CH, the reverse is a bit of a buff to LHW. Generally I'll find that I focus more on CH/HW for heals for mana efficency, but LHW tends to give me better effective healing in some situations. While the 3% mana reduction from T5 2pc is a bit laughable, a 10% reduction would be better in a spam situation for mana saving than CH with a similar reduction.

Likewise, a 5% increase to LHW is ok, but a 5% increase for CH is better (effectivly and 8.75% increase if including the three bounces).

Of course, it would be nicer if some our set bonuses were more useful.

Also, my comment was made more from the "LHW is more useful" pov, rather than the "CH is more expensive" pov you have.

 

◊ Praetorian

Honestly, in situations where I'm just casting LHW primarily I tend to not run OOM as it is, and would like more volume. In situations where I'm spamming CH all fight, mana can be a real factor and the set bonus is a big deal. Maybe I'm in a minority there but I've actually been looking forward to my 4pc LHW bonus when I can get it. There are a number of fights where I use LHW quite a lot. Two examples:

Gurgthock - WWS

Gurgthock - WWS

 

• Binkenstein

From memory, I hardly get above 5% LHW use at all, but it's mostly because CH is good, and LHW is a bit expensive mana wise. Might try using LHW a bit more next time I raid (currently having a break).

I've had a quick look at the T6 bonuses, and most of them seem to be useful, aside from the enh/resto ones (seriously, the Elemental set bonuses are what the rest should be).

Mind you, I guess we should remember that sometimes itemisation can leave a little bit to be desired in some respects.

 

Kirion

Hm. With both 2x T5 (on a sidenote, this bonus looks like bad joke now) and new 2x T6 bonus LHW will have almost same hpm as HW (not counting healing way talent). No idea why would we need it. Old bonus was better.

42.

 

Daidalos

Yes the change to t6 is annoying I was starting to stack haste and I was going to get 10% haste and use the 2 pc t6 bonus so my mana consumption wouldn't increase.. now bleh have to get 4 pc bonus.

 

Naratu

At fist i was annoyed with the changes to t6, but now i think they're alright. My guild runs 2 resto shaman, and our logs show anywhere from 20-40% LHW usage throughout a night of raiding. This actually ends up saving a lot of mana.

It also makes chain heal hit harder, which is what shaman are all about anyways. Once you have t6 you're going to have mp5 similar to mine and you'll have enough mana to spam CH for quite a while without going oom(and i'm normally in the tank group).

Another benefit is that i can use 2 piece t6 for PvP =D.

All that said, i still don't understand why they thought up a real set bonus for 1 shaman spec and then neglected to give a similar bonus to the other 2 specs.

 

Slothrop

Could anyone provide some AEP weights they use for itemization on Resto Shamans? I know that AEP weights depend on play style, gear, etc, but I'm just looking for some representative, typical values that could be used to compare gear.

 

• Binkenstein

For a rough estimate, I'd go with the following:
Heal = 1
mp5 = 3.5
Int = 0.3

 

Slothrop

And Spirit = 0 ? It seems to me that the AEP weight for Spirit is low, below Int, but wouldn't be completely 0 since you can get a bit of extra mana regen from it, even when casting a lot of heals.

 

• Binkenstein

Spirit = 0.06 aka Useless for shaman.
Spirit -> Regen = 17 + Spirit/5.
Mages/Priests have Spirit/4, and Druids/Priests have regen while casting talents.
These are why mp5 > spirit for shaman.

Also:
WTB 2.3 PTR already

 

Daidalos

This also depends on play style. Thats decent weights for starting out though.

I valued mp5 fairly highly till I got about ~170 mp5 plus the gains from my alchemist stone. With this much regen assuming you blow super mana pots at every cooldown adding additional mp5 is fairly worthless since I can sustain 10 mins of chain heal rank 4 assuming its not literally nonstop spam but even nonstop with carefull mana tide planning its nearly sustainable. With my gear I am no longer looking for additional mp5 although I do try to maintain my currently level. I look for +healing then int then mp5 with my current gear.

I'd say my personal weights are about
healing = 1.0
int = .5 (mostly due to .3 healing per int for this )
mp5 = .1

This is only due to my role in raids and my current gear. mp5 is a vital stat but at a certain point stacking more doesn't do much. Also being willing to chug super mana pots with alchemist stone gives 140 mp5.

 

Slothrop

Would Spell Crit Rating and Stamina have AEP weightings?

Just a back of the envelope calculation seems to suggest to me that Spell Crit Rating points should have an AEP weighting of about 0.34 if the average heal is about 1500 -- i.e., (0.01/22.1)*0.5*1500.

 

• Binkenstein

Crit is something I stay away from gear wise, as it's random, and you want reliability when healing.
Stam..... it's on everything. Aim for 8k unbuffed and you won't be too bad.

 

Daidalos

Crit rating is entirely dependant on your build the situation and your +heal. I actually like some crit for example on chain heal rank 4 which usually is not over healing much the total amount healed is about 4900 so 1 crit would be an additional 24.5 healing ((4900*1.5 - 4900) /100) done or about 15 +healing (24.5/1.75 /(2.5/3.5 + .2)).

Then you would assign some sort of weight for ancestral fort. This is really hard to quantify since it depends who you are healing and what type of dmg they are taking. Many times i'm just healing the raid and they are taking magic aoe dmg where ancestral fort does nothing. However on a MT on physical dmg fight ancestral can be very beneficial unless your MT is a bear and is armor capped (our feral tank is capped).

This is really situational since it can depend on so many factors. The easiest part is simply calculating the +healing equivalents for which ever heal you use most. Ancestral fort can reduce the amount of healing needed even perhaps save his life in a back to back crushing situation but other times it does nothing. Also keeping in mind it depends on how many priests and shaman are also in the raid and healing the MT and how often their heals are landing to calculate the amount of % armor increase buff time. Hrm I'll try to think of some way to quantify this.

Assume tank is not armor capped.

1 - ((1-critrate)^(15s (duration of AF) / time between heals from healer with AF/inspiration )) would be the chance to crit at least once before AF runs out. Then you you take teh results of each of those for every healing who is on the MT and subtract from one and multiply them together for the chance that none of them would crit in that 15 secs.

For example one healer with a 10%crit rate landing heals every 1.5s would have a 65.2% chance of critting in 15s.
If healer 2 had a 70% chance to crit in those 15 secs the chance either would crit would be
~89%

there would be diminishing returns as the number of heals from healers with AF/insp increase. Off the top of my head I can't think of a good weight for this maybe someone can come up with a practical way account for the AF/isnp proc to add into crit wieght.

I personally don't go out my way to stack crit but its definately usefull and scales very nicely.