[Resto Shaman] WotLK Talents and Discussion - Page 4

KnThrak · 06/15/08, 12:39 PM

It's difficult to predict, but part might actually come from the gear.
I wish we had gear to discuss with, because if gear for hybridclasses, especially Shamans and Paladins (who don't need a Shadowform or a Shapechange to hybridize), is actually hybrid then it might be possible that Blizzard is balancing around that.

It'd be odd though, seeing raids are generally made for specialists, not for allrounders.

madrix · 06/15/08, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by Kortar

Elemental Focus does not appear to reduce the cost of healing spells - only damage spells.

As to Ancestral Awakening, I do not account for it when I discuss 'single target' healing. While it's certainly useful to have that healing bounce, when we're talking about burst healing on a tank, the fact that you occaisionally get a stray raid heal out of it isn't particularly important. I did run the numbers include Ancestral Awakening in an earlier post - and HW/LHW still didn't stack up against Greater Heal/Flash Heal even including the bounce.

From the way it looks, this will not be a problem in 5-man instances, since Spirit Link will make up the shortfall in healing throughput/efficiency. However, in a 25-man raid setting, the Shaman heals appear to be dramatically inferior to what other healers receive.

Right now, as far as I can tell, there is an enormous disparity between the effectiveness of Druid/Priest healing and Shaman healing in WotLK. My suspicion is that this will be changed prior to release, but I have no idea how.

To make up the discrepancy between Healing Wave/Greater Heal, the proc would need to be roughly 5 times the power of Lifebloom. I think it's reasonable to suggest that the Earthliving proc is not going to be that powerful.

Well the reasoning to include it would be that if the tank was the lowest on hp then the bounce would go to him, giving a 60% free crit heal on the tank greatly increases the amount healed and the mana efficiency per point healed. Especially when considering all the crit talents taken by a shaman for HW in this case. Also does anyone have any idea if the 60% crit heal can also crit? I would think it unlikely but if anyone knows, was just curious on that.

edit: Also It's 60% of the critted heal, not 60% of the baseline heal. Crit for 10K, and it's going to do 6K to the lowest target (could be the one you healed.). Also likely that this heal will be cast after the first landed, like all other proc heals (not added into total and slight delay).

3.0s cast time Healing Wave (Rank 14) - 1600 mana, 3034 to 3466 healing.
Talents effecting:
tidal focus 1520 mana, 3034 to 3466 healing.
improved healing wave 2.5 second cast
Tidal Mastery 5% to crit
Healing way 18% increase to Healing wave
Purification 10% increase to healing spells
Blessing of Eternals 4% chance to crit with spell, increase earthliving healing.
Ancesteral Awakening On crit heals for 60% of amount healed. LHW and HW
Tidal wave 5% crit LHW and HW, 25% more from +healing to LHW and HW

Base coefficient:
85.71% (assuming no changes in healing coefficients in WoTLK and the spellpower change)

I'm not sure if the increase in +healing is a additive or multiplicative, though i am certain that someone here does, and will leave the math equations to those whom actually know what they are. My main point was that you need to account for all of these, and the fact that a shaman looking to go along this way of healing is going to be having somewhere well over 30-50% crit depending on how gear escalates (right now i could get 38% crit if i had these talents, unbuffed).

Anyway, someone do the math to include this and if we are still getting creamed by priests then i don't know what to say.

PSGarak · 06/15/08, 2:38 PM

All of the resources I've found (Yarr! and http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php) say that elemental focus lowers the cost of healing spells. And I would guess that Ancestral Awakening can proc onto your main heal target, if there's still healing to be done. Which basically means it can intelligently redirect overheals from crit. The spell might get its logic re-written to always select your main target unless its at full health, then the lowest-health target otherwise, which I think would be better for main-tank healing in general.

PsyBomb · 06/15/08, 3:03 PM

I was also working under the assumption that the Ancestral Healer would select your main target if he was the one still needing help.

I think, regardless of the viability of a pure Healing Wave build, most Resto shamans are going to be picking up numerous Elemental pieces to ramp up their crit for short fights. Anyone have a rough estimate of what a t4-5 Elemental shaman is looking at for their crit chance?

Think about it this way. How many bosses (or, heck, raid mobs in general), off the top of your head, deal significant amounts of physical damage to non-tanking melee. Gruul, Tidewalker, and Void Reaver come forcefully to mind, and I believe that Naj'entus needles strike for physical (splash Frost, but STRIKE physical). Any boss with a whirlwind, as well, or any that cleave with difficult positioning/displacement (nightbane fear-cleave, anyone?). Dumping Chain Heals into melee with a particularly high crit value is a very good way to preserve the lives of those who can't DPS from outside of harm's way, simply by upgrading them by an effective armor class with moderately high frequency.

I guess what this rant is saying is that, given these trees, we'll be set to customize our healing role by gear choice, fight by fight. Tons of raid-wide damage? Gear up on Spellpower and MP5 and fire Chains where they'll be needed. Tank damage more spiky than Blade's Edge? Get some crit onto your gear, and use Healing Wave, Spirit Link, and Earthshield in combination with Ancestral Fortitude to soften it up considerably and let the other healers take care of topping them off. Brutal short-duration DPS race? Forego MP5-laden resto gear and start critting like you MEAN it. The gear changes are all that will let us do this, there is no good way to do so at the moment (other than gemming, but that can only go so far.

madrix · 06/15/08, 3:07 PM

Originally Posted by PsyBomb

I was also working under the assumption that the Ancestral Healer would select your main target if he was the one still needing help.

I think, regardless of the viability of a pure Healing Wave build, most Resto shamans are going to be picking up numerous Elemental pieces to ramp up their crit for short fights. Anyone have a rough estimate of what a t4-5 Elemental shaman is looking at for their crit chance?

Think about it this way. How many bosses (or, heck, raid mobs in general), off the top of your head, deal significant amounts of physical damage to non-tanking melee. Gruul, Tidewalker, and Void Reaver come forcefully to mind, and I believe that Naj'entus needles strike for physical (splash Frost, but STRIKE physical). Any boss with a whirlwind, as well, or any that cleave with difficult positioning/displacement (nightbane fear-cleave, anyone?). Dumping Chain Heals into melee with a particularly high crit value is a very good way to preserve the lives of those who can't DPS from outside of harm's way, simply by upgrading them by an effective armor class with moderately high frequency.

I guess what this rant is saying is that, given these trees, we'll be set to customize our healing role by gear choice, fight by fight. Tons of raid-wide damage? Gear up on Spellpower and MP5 and fire Chains where they'll be needed. Tank damage more spiky than Blade's Edge? Get some crit onto your gear, and use Healing Wave, Spirit Link, and Earthshield in combination with Ancestral Fortitude to soften it up considerably and let the other healers take care of topping them off. Brutal short-duration DPS race? Forego MP5-laden resto gear and start critting like you MEAN it. The gear changes are all that will let us do this, there is no good way to do so at the moment (other than gemming, but that can only go so far.

Elemental at the t5 level is looking at over 30% crit i believe. Maybe closer to 35% but depends on gems ect.

Kortar · 06/15/08, 3:37 PM

Well the reasoning to include it would be that if the tank was the lowest on hp then the bounce would go to him, giving a 60% free crit heal on the tank greatly increases the amount healed and the mana efficiency per point healed. Especially when considering all the crit talents taken by a shaman for HW in this case.

With 10% base critical, and +3000 healing Healing Wave will heal (3250 + (1.1071 * 3000)) * 1.1 * 1.18 * (1 + (0.24 * 1.4)) assuming the free crit heal lands on the tank. The total is 11395 healing.

With the same stats, Greater Heal will heal (4270 + (1.0571 * 3000) * 1.1 * 1.15 * (1 + (0.24 * 0.5)) assuming that the tank is low enough to trigger Test of Faith (almost certain given our assumption that he can usefully receive a 240% Healing Wave critical and is the lowest health in the raid when it lands). The total is 10543 healing.
Healing Wave has a cast time of 2.5s and a post-talent cost of 1520. Greater Heal has an effective cast time of 1.64s (given IHC haste up-time based on Greater Heal cycle) and a post-talent cost of 921.

That gives Healing Wave 4558 hps @ 7.49 hpm while Greater Heal has 6429 hps @ 11.45 hpm.

I'm not trying to get into a "Priests roxxor, Shaman suxxor" debate here. I'm trying to illustrate that what people are assuming about the nature of the talents has to be taken in the context of what all the various healers get.

I'm not sure if the increase in +healing is a additive or multiplicative, though i am certain that someone here does, and will leave the math equations to those whom actually know what they are.

Right now, empowerment talents are additive with coefficient. What they will probably do is change the base coefficients of healing spells to being around 60% more than they are now. Note also that pre-existing Empowerment talents appear to be getting buffed - in all likelihood, we're a build or two away from the Priest's Empowerment talent being raised to 40% empowerment (as they have already done with the Druid empowerment talents).

All of the resources I've found (Yarr! and http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php) say that elemental focus lowers the cost of healing spells.

With 24% critical (10% base + 14% talents), the cost reduction on Elemental Focus for heals is approximately 16.89%. This would raise the hpm in the above example to around 8.76 (still substantially lower than 11.45 hpm from Greater Heal).

Anedris · 06/15/08, 4:21 PM

The priest IHC talent is absurd at the moment. I really can't see a 60% haste proc remaining in game (and I'm a priest). I would fully expect that to be nerfed before it sees live servers. (Even just 16% clearcasting is really powerful given our regen mechanics.)

Macblade · 06/15/08, 5:49 PM

Edit: Nevermind, having never played a priest I wasn't aware of inspiration, which is the exact same buff and they don't stack. So don't bother reading the below...

Originally Posted by Kortar

With 10% base critical, and +3000 healing Healing Wave will heal (3250 + (1.1071 * 3000)) * 1.1 * 1.18 * (1 + (0.24 * 1.4)) assuming the free crit heal lands on the tank. The total is 11395 healing.

With the same stats, Greater Heal will heal (4270 + (1.0571 * 3000) * 1.1 * 1.15 * (1 + (0.24 * 0.5)) assuming that the tank is low enough to trigger Test of Faith (almost certain given our assumption that he can usefully receive a 240% Healing Wave critical and is the lowest health in the raid when it lands). The total is 10543 healing.
Healing Wave has a cast time of 2.5s and a post-talent cost of 1520. Greater Heal has an effective cast time of 1.64s (given IHC haste up-time based on Greater Heal cycle) and a post-talent cost of 921.

That gives Healing Wave 4558 hps @ 7.49 hpm while Greater Heal has 6429 hps @ 11.45 hpm.

I'm not trying to get into a "Priests roxxor, Shaman suxxor" debate here. I'm trying to illustrate that what people are assuming about the nature of the talents has to be taken in the context of what all the various healers get.

Right now, empowerment talents are additive with coefficient. What they will probably do is change the base coefficients of healing spells to being around 60% more than they are now. Note also that pre-existing Empowerment talents appear to be getting buffed - in all likelihood, we're a build or two away from the Priest's Empowerment talent being raised to 40% empowerment (as they have already done with the Druid empowerment talents).

With 24% critical (10% base + 14% talents), the cost reduction on Elemental Focus for heals is approximately 16.89%. This would raise the hpm in the above example to around 8.76 (still substantially lower than 11.45 hpm from Greater Heal).

Maybe it is burried in the numbers but I still don't see where you are taking into account Ancestral Fortitude. Even if the final numbers work out the way that you suggest, a consistent 25% armor buff is so huge I find it difficult to imagine NOT having at least one resto sham in every raid stack crit and spam heals on the tank (HW,LHW, CH, whatever). Even if the HPS/HPM isn't as large as for a preist, if having a resto sham is at all possible in the raid, I don't see how, in any fight where a tank is taking a large amount of damage, having that buff up consistently won't be one of the first assignments for a resto sham. Also, I'm not simply talking about healing that won't have to occur because the tank has an extra 25% armor, but also how much the spikey-ness is dampened in a fight. On my guild's MT that's about an extra 5,000 armor, and we're only 1/6 sunwell. Who know's that that will grow to with just Nax level-80 epics and then beyond.

So yes, even if everything stays the same and preists put out a lot better number main tank healing, unless they have a buff that won't stack with ancestral fortitude and given the fact that shaman will most likely have a lot more crit gear, I still think there will be strong motivations to have at least one shaman healing the tank. Now, whether that is through spamming chain heals and hopeing they actually have someone to bounce to, or taking advantage of the new HW/LHW talents, that could be a discussion worth having.

Kortar · 06/15/08, 7:06 PM

Originally Posted by Anedris

The priest IHC talent is absurd at the moment. I really can't see a 60% haste proc remaining in game (and I'm a priest). I would fully expect that to be nerfed before it sees live servers. (Even just 16% clearcasting is really powerful given our regen mechanics.)

I don't disagree. Not only is it extremely powerful, but it encourages a strategy of spam-casting heals. Indeed, it's so potent that there are probably a number of situations where it ends up making Binding Heal a better heal than Flash Heal even when the Priest themselves is completely undamaged. My suspicion is that at the very least they'll change it to "+60% haste while clearcasting" (so the next Flash/Binding/Greater Heal consumes the Clearcasting and stops the haste benefit).

However, even in the absence of IHC, you've still got some pretty big disparities going on. Our crit-heavy Resto Shaman is still lagging pretty far behind our Holy Priest in terms of mana efficiency - and that's without even considering the impact of being refunded the mana for overheals. Coupled with the Holy Priest's significant edge in mana regeneration, that means any fight based around Holy Priest longevity will leave Resto Shaman gasping halfway through.

In terms of throughput/burst, our IHC-less Holy Priest wins anywhere above "tank is nigh-unto-dead" (and depending on how often it comes up, he may well win here, since he can prevent the 'dead' part with his 51-pt. talent). The only time you get Ancestral Awakening on your tank is when you've just thrown a critical heal that still leaves your tank the most damaged person in the raid. Which means he must have been extremely low on life in the first place. And in the "nigh-unto-dead" arena, I'd argue that you're probably better off with a Resto Druid. Resto Druids have +50% to critical with Regrowth (which is probably more than even the best geared Resto Shaman will ever have), an on-crit talent and the instant Swiftmend to add even more healing to the equation.

Which is why all this emphasis on critical healing worries me. All that critical takes a Shaman's mana efficiency from "hideously bad" to "terrible". All that critical takes a Shaman's single target healing from "truly abysmal" to "merely awful". And while critical is certainly useful in many Chain Heal applications, Chain Heal doesn't get much in the way of love with the alpha WotLK talents.

Anedris · 06/15/08, 7:11 PM

Priests do have the exact same buff (it's called inspiration for us). Same effect, doesn't stack.

I think you guys are underestimating the value of having 60% of every critical heal go exactly where it's needed most. The most powerful thing about chain heal has always been that it can make decisions faster and more accurately than a human (especially a latency-limited human). Automated healing is incredibly powerful in situations with random "gib" damage flying around, and being able to provide it while healing the tank looks amazing from my perspective.

Perhaps a "grass is greener" thing, but shaman healing looks in very good shape to me. Chain heal makes you great raid healers, and the new healing wave and LHW talents provide a reason to put shaman on tank healing as well, where they can provide perfectly acceptable throughput (not as much a a priest's, but if you could provide tank healing equal to a priest or paladin while simultaneously stabilizing the entire raid why would anyone bring more non-shaman healers than they needed for buffs?) while also getting healing to those who need it most.

Priests looks good at the moment but in a way that screams "broken." Grace, improved holy concentration, and mark of divinity are all pretty absurd in their current form, and I would be *extremely* surprised if they made it even to beta like they are.

PsyBomb · 06/15/08, 9:35 PM

Originally Posted by Anedris

Priests do have the exact same buff (it's called inspiration for us). Same effect, doesn't stack.

I think you guys are underestimating the value of having 60% of every critical heal go exactly where it's needed most. The most powerful thing about chain heal has always been that it can make decisions faster and more accurately than a human (especially a latency-limited human). Automated healing is incredibly powerful in situations with random "gib" damage flying around, and being able to provide it while healing the tank looks amazing from my perspective.

Perhaps a "grass is greener" thing, but shaman healing looks in very good shape to me. Chain heal makes you great raid healers, and the new healing wave and LHW talents provide a reason to put shaman on tank healing as well, where they can provide perfectly acceptable throughput (not as much a a priest's, but if you could provide tank healing equal to a priest or paladin while simultaneously stabilizing the entire raid why would anyone bring more non-shaman healers than they needed for buffs?) while also getting healing to those who need it most.

Priests looks good at the moment but in a way that screams "broken." Grace, improved holy concentration, and mark of divinity are all pretty absurd in their current form, and I would be *extremely* surprised if they made it even to beta like they are.

I've seen your stuff (though I'll be honest and say that my only Priest is a 39 twink, and not a very good one at that), and I think it'll get to at least Beta without TOO many nerfs. The biggest thing about Priests is that they have never been the best at any single aspect of healing... but strike me blind if they're not #2 in EVERYTHING. As I said earlier, we need the Paladin trees before we can make any final statements for Alpha. Not to mention, we don't know our 71-80 new spells for sure.

That said, I agree with the Shaman side of your statement. It is a powerful smart-heal, the same thing that made Chain Heal as infamously powerful as it is.

TheSorcerer · 06/16/08, 4:30 AM

Anybody else gets this feeling resto shamans a "nerfed" out of competition for WotLK healing? Of course they're not nerfed, but they just don't receive the buffs they need to stick around for sure, as they used to. I guess we have totems and bloodlust - we may not heal as good and efficient as other healers.
This may really be the core of it all. Go and include Mana Tide and Mana Spring, Wrath of Air (propably new rank) and maybe even Water Shield into the effiiency equatations. I guess we'll come pretty close to unbuffed priests then. And isn't that exactly what everyone wanted in the class balance thread? Support classes should be as good at a job with their own buffs, as specialists are without these buffs. So shaman with their buffs heal as efficient as priests without those buffs. Not what we've been used to, but absolutely fair - I guess.

KnThrak · 06/16/08, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by TheSorcerer

Anybody else gets this feeling resto shamans a "nerfed" out of competition for WotLK healing? Of course they're not nerfed, but they just don't receive the buffs they need to stick around for sure, as they used to. I guess we have totems and bloodlust - we may not heal as good and efficient as other healers.

Not overly.
I mean, given the fact they want the healers to specialize, it seems reasonable that "raw" power just cannot be compared.
The extreme Priest prowess numberwise is just a result of IHC right now, and as many said the chances of that going live are probably ~nil. Most likely it'll only work on the actual HC-affected heal, a reasonable talent then, but not as overly strong as it is right now.

However, I see our strength in "intelligent" healing. Ancestral Awakening and Chain Heal are AFAIK the only self-targetting heals in the game (Prayer of Mending is random?), hence they are able to react faster than any player ever can. Spirit Link would further add to this ability, buffering damage while spreading it out - perfect environment for us.

Fealinor · 06/16/08, 6:50 AM

Originally Posted by Mistaya

Ugh, hopefully that is a typo. Why have clearcast proc off heal spells then not apply to them? That makes no logical sense...

I'm really excited for Cleanse Spirit. Curse of Tongues won't utterly ruin us anymore.

well it makes sense to me. I can't imagine blizz giving a shaman a healing clearcast ability. Such things are mainly given priests. Ok Palas do have this thing with Illumination, but i won't skill clearcast for healing unless they not only change the tooltip but also the effect.

By the way what's the deal with earthliving weapon? will it be like the Windfury stuff, let's say best out there or just a gimmik?

crimsonsentinel · 06/16/08, 8:01 AM

The resto tree is looking pretty bloated right now, which makes me want to believe that blizzard wants to see resto shaman in WotLK split into two camps: MT healing, focusing on crit and HW/LHW talents plus spirit link, and raid healers, focusing on CH talents and haste. The good thing is that each complement each other. The MT healer helps out on raid healing with ancestral awakening while the CH healer evens out the damage split caused by the MT healer's spirit link. If this is the case though, spirit link should be unlinked from improved chain heal.

I don't envision CH raid healers to be heavily invested in putting up the spirit link buff themselves because it looks to be a fairly small damage mitigation that will have to be renewed fairly frequently in on a MT. That leaves very little time/mana to do any raid healing, especially if sunwell type raid damage is continued in WotLK. Keep in mind the only real aoe heal introduced so far has been flourish, so unless paladins get something amazing Shaman retain their role as king of raid healing.

Spirit link and the crit changes also happen to make shaman much better PVP healers which is pretty nice.

Edit: Also, I don't know where to post this, but has anyone else noticed the huge disparity between priest heal values and shaman heal values?

# Flash Heal (Rank 10)- 640 mana, 1684 to 1956 healing.
# Flash Heal (Rank 11)- 775 mana, 2054 to 2386 healing.

#
# Lesser Healing Wave (Rank 8) - 805 mana, 1382 to 1578 healing.
# Lesser Healing Wave (Rank 9) - 965 mana, 1606 to 1834 healing.

# Greater Heal (Rank 8)- 1095 mana, 3395 to 3945 healing.
# Greater Heal (Rank 9)- 1290 mana, 3950 to 4590 healing.

# Healing Wave (Rank 13) - 1355 mana, 2624 to 2996 healing.
# Healing Wave (Rank 14) - 1600 mana, 3034 to 3466 healing.

Kilted Raven · 06/16/08, 9:42 AM

It's bloated, but I'd say that we're still able to pick up all of the 'core' talents we'd want.

I'd expect most of us would be more likely to sacrifice the 'nice to have' talents like Improved Reincarnation, Natures Guardian and Focused Mind, so we can squeeze in most of what we'd like on the healing front to be able to do both the LWH/HW and Chain Heal roles.

11/6/54 looks pretty decent at the moment, or if the numbers on clearcasting don't support it, 0/6/65 should give you nearly everything you'd want out of the tree.

Gormane · 06/16/08, 9:50 AM

First time poster, just a quick hello (and a thanks to everyone for a lot of useful information).

Regarding Elemental Focus:

NB: I'm not trying to argue shaman vs. priest here, just trying to get some numbers straight.

Based on the talent description given in the OP ("After landing a critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, Lesser Healing Wave or Healing wave, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells by 40%"), I am assuming that EF will be triggered by LHW and HW, and will affect the mana cost of LHW, HW and CH.

Assuming that with the new spellpower mechanics, all caster gear will be useful for healers, then resto shamans should easily be able to achieve the same crit percentage as elemental shamans.

Simplifying, elemental shamans "aim" for a crit chance of 40% raid buffed, including talents; a higher crit chance is easily attainable, but not desired by elemental shamans.

Elemental shamans now receive 13% crit chance from talents+totem, while resto shamans will receive 14% from talents for LHW and HW in WotLK. Therefore, if geared for crit, resto shamans should be able to get the same 40% raid buffed crit chance, if not more. Therefore, with 40% crit chance, the average mana reduction effect of EF on LHW and HW spam is 25.6% (I borrowed this number from the elemental shaman thinktank pages).

Will it be desireable to push the crit chance to 40% or even beyond? Answering that question requires more information, especially regarding the new ranks of CH, and whether there will be any buffs to CH beyond what we already have now. But my "gut feeling" tells me that crit rating will become an important stat for shamans (also taking into account that CH is a rather crit friendly heal as well, because the overhealing due to critical heals is low on the second and third jump).

It may very well be that when WotLK goes live, priests will be the kings of MT healing and shamans will be nowhere near. What I find interesting and exciting, though, is that the new buffs to LHW and HW give us more options where CH is now inefficient: to assist on the MT, to heal a single OT, to raid heal with raid members being spread too far for CH.

And I also like the way of Ancestral Awakening sticking to the theme: Shaman heals are intelligent heals.

zoombini · 06/16/08, 9:58 AM

Y'know, the more i think about Spirit Link the more broken it sounds. Think about it: it's effectively a permanent 50% damage reduction on the MT. That's HUGE. Yes, it'll still be redirected, but the soakers will only be taking 25% damage, which will be easy to heal through. Yes it'll break after some damage (and i definitely agree that a) there will be more ranks of the spell and b) it'll scale with spellpower)) but do you think any healer worth his salt is going to let that thing drop? Even if they put a cooldown on it, I can see raids stacking restos again just to make sure the tank always has spirit link up (unless they put a forbearance type effect on it, which would make it effectively useless).

As a quick example, let's take a a random SK Gaming WWS of brutallus*:

Wow Web Stats

the MT took an average of 3130 damage per second. If he'd been Spirit Linked, that drops to 1665 DPS. The two soakers only take 832 DPS each, which a good resto druid could easily heal through using rolling lifeblooms and the occasional rejuv.

*Yes i know this analysis oversimplifies things - it's based off of a close to perfectly geared tank, it assumes damage is constant and not bursted, etc. Still, it's useful as a thought exercise.

I simply can't think of a way where they can balance between a) a guild stacking resto shamans and completely cheesing encounters or b) making having a resto shaman completely necessary in order to even think about beating content.

Habanero · 06/16/08, 9:58 AM

Given the right number of tank targets to actually use it to full effect, Spirit Link spammed with 20% haste and +3000 healing equivalent would be something like 3000 heal/s sustained. I think there's a max rank yet to come....

◊ s4dfish · 06/16/08, 1:30 PM

You're again failing to remember that spamming SL on a tank creates a healer who isn't healing. Damage to the raid did not drop, is simply spread out a bit, however raid healing drops by the value of 1 shaman, this is not an insignificant effect.