◊ Gwaihir

Drop totemic focus, easy. The -mana cost on heals is worth way, way more mana saved in the long run compared to -mana cost on totems.

I usually go with this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The points in -threat and nature's guidance/imp reincarnation are really personal preference, and don't make much of a difference all told.

 

◊ Praetorian

I'm about as big a proponent of Elemental Warding as you'll find. It's SO good. Winterchill, Azgalor, Archimonde, Naj'entus, Supremus, Akama (as if it matters), Council, Illidan. Especially the top-end t6 fights (Archimonde, Illidan). It's a major benefit. My 8/0/53 spec (click name in profile) is what I've had since Karazhan, and I've never had the slightest inclination to respec.

 

Zerakor

Elemental warding is basically one of the best survival talents in game really, I wouldn't be any spec (I'm not a massive fan of enhancement) without it.

Another question from me here, has anyone here found any use for haste rating? I'm considering two blessed bands of karabor, Botanist's gloves of growth, angelista's sash and then perhaps the craftable bracers after we kill mother.
The shoulders are good to, but I'm a slacker when it comes to crafting.

Kicking down chain heal .2 - .3 seconds would seem like a great thing to do on healing intensive fights, the loss of mana (except from the bands, they are amazing) would mean this would be a second kit, but I could see where it might be useful both in t6 instances and perhaps in t7 instances, as Blizzard has taken a liking to raid damage.


Link doesn't work for me, can anyone else check it? Tried editing it.

 

◊ Praetorian

I'm seriously underwhelmed by spell haste as a PvE healer stat. It's too expensive for what it offers, I think. It's budgeted for its effects on DPS classes, where 10% haste to a mage or destro lock or elem shaman means close to a 10% net increase in their DPS. That's big. But for a healer, you aren't always chain-casting, and your target (hopefully!) isn't generally going to die in 2.4 seconds unless your heal lands before then. When neither of those is true, your spell haste is basically doing nothing for you. Yes, in theory, you could swap in spell haste for higher HPS on fights where longevity isn't an issue, but there are few such fights. And the pieces with haste, except for the Blessed Band, don't have any regen, so it's a large sacrifice indeed. Getting .2-.3 sec off chain heal would be great, but not when it comes at the expense of literally 40-50 mp5. I can't really think of fights where I'd want that, in practice.

Maybe Teron, with chain-potting and an spriest, but what if my spriest gets an early Shadow? I'll run OOM with a haste set on.

I do use a Blessed Band because it's such a balanced item with a very high ilvl, but I can't see myself using the haste belt/bracers/shoulders any time soon.

 

Illundai

Yeah, I'll spec it tomorrow to try it out.
By the way Gurg, I've noticed you have the Pendant of the Violet Eye equipped. I picked that trinket up but I kept on using my Fathom-Brooch combined with my Shard of the Scale, how are you finding that Pendant?

 

◊ Praetorian

Pendant is clearly better than Shard of the Scale, I think. First off, it's 600 mana straight-up. The Use effect, even under suboptimal circumstances, should always restore at least 300-400 mana every 2 minutes. So in an 8-minute fight, the Pendant is giving you 1800 mana. Shard of the Scale gives you 1536 mana during that time. But the 40int on the Pendant also gives you +12 dam/heal, and roughly 2/3 of a % of crit. That's decent.

But where the Pendant can really shine is in situations where you have a lull in the action, combined with HW1 and Totem of the Maelstrom. On a fight like Illidan where you have phase transitions, you can use this lull to get up to ~13 stacks of Enlightenment before the buff expires. With a Mana Spring totem down, natural regen from being outside the 5SR, and my trinket buff, I can recover upwards of 2k mana in a 20 second period if I'm afforded the luxury of being able to do this. That's a lot. Using it with HW1 solves the problem of "what if I don't have any spells to be casting?" because you can just mix in HW1s between your necessary heals, regardless, to make sure you're getting the most out of each trinket activation.

 

Illundai

I'll have to try that out then, especially since I do have that relic - but I'm a bit attached to my Shard, you don't see many Draenei with that trinket :-p

 

Zerakor

I'm quite sure that spell haste was 'nerfed' after its original introduction, which might be the reason for it being overpriced. One place I could have used a haste set would be when we were learning the trash waves before Azgalor, as they are actually quite tough, and I feel that I couldn't output as much hps as I wanted to.

I'm with you on the Teron example, but I wouldn't use a haste set here even if I had one, as I can keep the raid up for the entire fight with the original 2.5 sec cast chain heal, and of course, with chain potting and a shadow priest (I am actually going to ask for two next time, not sure if it would be effective use of them as VE healing is lost, but I'll give it a shot). Teron is more of a mana intensive fight than a fight requiring abnormal hps output. We'll just have to see when t7 is released.

 

• Binkenstein

Experimenting with Binkenstein Profile, Binkenstein Details - FileFront.com for file hosting now, seems to be a bit better.

Zera: that link is screwed for some reason :s

Re: Haste. There's only one item that I would consider using that has haste, and tbh, since it's not unique I'll have two! Blessed Band rocks, but the other haste based heal gear is mediocre at best.

What's the item valuation (blizz values) for haste anyway?

 

Illundai

I'm just going to skip haste in general, whats the point of just having two of those rings? You'll have very little haste in total in return for quite some sacrifices :|

 

◊ Praetorian

I wouldn't wear two Blessed Bands. But even aside from the haste, Blessed Band is an awesome ring. Blessed Band + Exalted Hyjal Ring strike me as the optimal endgame ring pair.

 

• Binkenstein

Oh, yes. Forgot about that one.

 

Taryenne

We had this discussion in guild and felt the only haste worth having is 4 piece set bonus from Tier 5
The drops or craftables all appear nice but lose far too much compared to usual pieces, generally trading mp5 for haste rating, which to me seems really poor, more haste=more casts=more mana used, yet no regen (except enchants) from the items

Whats the opinion of breaking the Tier 5 full set bonus for 2 piece Tier 6 bonus? Given that the majority of shamans downrank Chain Heal anyhow, Is it truly worth losing 40% haste on Healing Wave to 10% mana cost saved on Chain Heal?

 

Illundai

Considering I'll get the exalted ring in four months or so, I'm not really taking that one in consideration :p

[Jade Ring of the Everliving] and [Naaru Lightwarden's Band] are two nice rings, really

 

• Shifft

In case you're wondering I did end up going tailoring, because I figured that even if I don't use the gear for very long the cloth cooldowns will be nice moneymakers. From what I've found so far in 5-mans (only up to Mana-Tombs so it might change) the survivability really isn't an issue because I can just kite most mobs around until a tank decides to grab them. In Karazhan I don't expect to have much of anything hitting me.

 

Furbolgking

Just had a question about gem selection for any shamans in Black Temple/Hyjal.

Looking through the armory I noticed many shaman going for the 4mp/5 gems rather than healing gems. Was wondering what most shamans start gemming for once they start getting tier 6 or equivalent gear?

Because personally I find that I really don't have any mana issues at all while raid healing (which is primarily my job), and that anything past 175 -180mp/5 is more than enough.

 

◊ Praetorian

Well the friendly Hyjal ring beats both. I used Naaru's + Jade Ring, then replaced Jade Ring with the friendly Hyjal ring, then replaced Naaru's with Blessed Band. And that's that.

Regarding gems, I basically just follow the sockets in my gear, since all my socket bonuses are either +heal or +mp5, either of which I'd like to have. I default to heal/mp5 in my red and blue sockets, and then yellow sockets get a mix of int/mp5 and int/heal.

As for t5 vs. t6, I just got my second piece of t6 at the end of this past week's raid cycle, and I'll be using it in place of 4pc t5. I'll report back. It occurred to me when I got the set that maybe I should think about downranking, and I suppose I'm probably in a minority for never doing so. The only rank of chain heal I've cast, ever in TBC pretty much, has been a max rank CH5. I have five heals bound: HW12, HW8, HW1, CH5 and LHW7. I realize that I'd gain some HPM efficiency dropping to CH4, but the biggest thing I want out of my chain heal is absolute maximum HPS, and I'm loath to give up even a little of it. I figure if I've managed from heroic through Illidan with only CH5, now that it costs 10% less it should be even easier to sustain, so no need to downrank now!

 

• Binkenstein

That's my justification for it. I tried getting a negative affect on haste from the increased mana use, but the only thing I could think of negated the HPS gain.

Given my spell use, I'll probably go for 2pc T6

Don't forget the [Phoenix-Ring of Rebirth].

Currently trying to decide between that, Naaru's and Jade Ring. Probably going to drop Jade due to it's lack of stats.

 

Illundai

Yeah, I'm using Jade Ring + Hyjal ring. Just got my Honored one. If I need stamina on a fight, I'll be swapping to my Naaru Lightwarden's Band, which is pretty much every BT fight >.>.

As for Chain Heal, I do also use only max rank CH - so you're not the only one :P. I use HW 1, 6 and 12. CH 5 and LHW 7. And I want that setbonus bad! Azgalor has been a bitch and has dropped now Warrior/Shaman/Hunter tokens yet, so -.-!

 

Bigwig

I'm a downranking fiend. I use two ranks of LHW, three ranks of CH, and seven ranks of HW. Chain Heal 4 is definitely my "main" spell used because of its high HPM. As a rule I never use anything below HW6 unless the target has three stacks of Healing Way. Many of these ranks are situational; there are fights where I won't touch my HW buttons. My affinity for HW ranks stems from vanilla WoW raiding. Fights like Twin Emps where you heal one target for 15 minutes. The incoming damage has sure changed in TBC, but my keybindings haven't.

 

Teewee

If the reason you downrank is due to mana problems it sounds like you need more mp5, or you need to cancel heals that will overheal, or you need to proactively use mana potions. I get stressed with my mana usage during long fights, but I am rarely in a position where I am oom and can't do anything. And I only use max rank heals, level 8 HW, and level 1 HW with maelstrom.

If you downrank just because you want to lower the amount of your overheal then that just seems like a whole lot of work to go through.

 

Tagamogi

I switched from CH5 to CH4 mostly to avoid overhealing on my initial chain heal target. A pretty common problem for me is that by the time I finish casting chain heal, some other healer will have flash healed my initial target and I'll overheal that target by a large amount.

Going from CH5 to CH4, I heal for about 300 hp less on the first target, 150 less on the second target and 75 less on the third target. If I discount healing loss on the first target as overhealing, I'm effectively losing just 225 hp healed for 100 mana saved from downranking.

We were on early SSC content at the time I made the switch from CH5 to CH4, and I really didn't notice the difference in my healing at all. I'm starting to see some fights now where the higher healing from CH5 might not go to waste, so I'm considering going back to CH5 or casting CH5 in addition to CH4.

 

• Binkenstein

Heck, I don't downrank at all! Although I probably should, I find it easier to cast-cancel.

 

Vistol

Even as a N00B i have been an advocate of 8/0/53 for a long time, while my current 53 needs some work, its great to see that this spec is advocted by some of the high end theorycrafters.

 

Fola

Gurg,
If you professions were completely flexible again would you level jewel-crafting and alchemy to maximize performance in the trinket slot? I have passed the Aran trinket twice now, mainly because other folks needed it, but also partially due to what I felt was superior performance from the Alchemist Stone and the Talasite Owl.

Alchemist Stone:
0.25% spell crit
225 mana up front
+5 healing
40 mp/5 w/chain potting

Talasite Owl:
14 mp/5 passive
900 mana every 5 minutes (15mp/5)
Total: 29 mp/5

A couple of questions, does the talent still affect the 900 mana (1120 w/talents?) on restore from the Talasite Owl? Thus making it ~33 mp/5 trinket?

Would you still use the Pendant if you professions were still completely flexible allowing for jewel-crafting and alchemy?