drats

This might be a bit offtopic, but since most Elemental gear has +dmg/healing is it possible to effectively heal 70 raids in elemental gear while still doing a decent amount of dps? More importantly, what balance of +dmg vs +heal should we be looking for endgame?

 

• missiletoad

Definitely, as a secondary healer. If you're the main healer, you'll want healing gear. For your second question, it'd be subjective on our raid's class balance I suppose. Play around with gear and see what works for you.

 

Argrax

A couple thoughts to build on what has been said.

The more I think about it and run the numbers in my head, the more I lean towards 30/0/31 being the ideal build or better said, the ideal compromise amongst all the Shaman builds.

Pitting a healer with only 31 points in the tree up against a pure Restoration build and attempting to go strictly by the numbers, this is how I see it.

The first drop in effectiveness the hybrid sees is 3% from only having two points in Tidal Focus, the second drop would be an additional 2.5% from not having any points in Tidal Mastery (chose Healing Way instead) and lastly another ~5% from not having Improved Chain Heal (going under the assumption that it comprises 25% of your heals). So from this quick and dirty analysis, is it reasonable to think that a 30/0/31 build is ~90% the healer a full blown Restoration build is? I think the answer is not really given that there are a few obvious details not included in the breakdown.

The first of which is the loss of 5% crit chance on your heals, as I’ve already stated, in terms of pure healing output it’s a loss of 2.5% but what about ancestral fortitude? The problem is of course that it’s something that’s extremely hard to quantify. If there’s sufficient number of Priests and Shamans healing the main tank to ensure the uptime of the armor buff is 100% than the side effect of critical heals is of little value, if it’s not though, what then, how much is it worth? Perhaps if people were to provide some insight as to the average crit chance of a priest and the mitigation boost provided at current armor levels than it might be possible to get at least a ballpark value.

Moving on, the next issue with the initial 90% figure is the assumption that Chain Heal comprises 25% of your healing done. Over the course of an entire instance, this may be true but it’s ultimately the opposite dilemma that Healing Way faces. If I’m charged with healing the main tank than the talent has no value to me, if on the other hand I’m spot healing the raid, depending on how much I mix in Lesser Healing Way, the talent is worth up to a 20% increase in healing power. It is worth noting however that most all healers can fill the role of ‘main tank healer’ acceptably well, while Chain Heal allows the Shaman to perform a rather unique role and thus it’s much more likely that they’ll be tasked with the latter rather than the former.

The last major omission is Earth Shield. Though it’s certainly nice to see that others are not regarding it as a must have talent much the same as I do, it does have tangible increases, only that they’re a bit trickier to quantify. On the basis that Earth Shield scales at a rate of 10/3.5, it would go something along the lines of this:

Shaman A expends 30,000 mana over the course of a five minute fight, ten charges of Earth Shield expire every ~40 seconds (may be off here) allowing them to cast ~7 Earth Shields at 900 mana each or ~21% of your total mana spent. At 1000 +healing, Earth Shield is 40% more mana efficient than Healing Wave rank 12 with actual healing values on the order of 95% versus 80% of traditional heals, or 19% more efficient in that respect.

Let ‘x’ be the efficiency (hitpoints per mana) of Healing Wave rank 12.

Without Earth Shield
(30,000)*(x) = 30,000x hitpoints healed

With Earth Shield
(30,000)*(0.79)*(x) + (30,000)*(0.21)*(x)*(1.4)*(1.19) = 34,196x hitpoints healed

Percent Increase
(34,196x) / (30,000x) = 1.14

The above number surprises me a little bit in that it’s higher than expected but at the same time with it being the supposed pinnacle of the tree, I think any less would be disappointing. The percent increase does stand to vary somewhat based on the actual time required to expend all ten charges and the spell only stands to get better with improved gear.

It’s also worth noting that although mana efficiency is improved by ~14% by throwing Earth Shield into the mix, throughput or HPS is only increased by 8.5% (10% if it takes only 30 seconds to use up all the charges). Another point of interest would be that each cast of Earth Shield can be seen as freeing up ~4 seconds of your time to focus on other targets/tasks given that that’s approximately the time required to output the same amount of healing by conventional means.

Having looked at the omissions from the quick and dirty breakdown, can we now reasonably put a number to paper in so far as what fraction of healer is a 30/0/31 hybrid versus a x/x/41+ healer? Having fleshed out my thoughts above, I’m relatively confident in penning that value at 80-85%.

As Gurgthock already stated, the emphasis of the healing role has shifted largely in favour of throughput with a reduced importance on efficiency and with that said I think it’s fair to bias my assessment based on talents which favour volume versus efficiency. Realizing too that the aforementioned talents are split in the role they improve, I also think it’s reasonable, for the most part, to look at their benefits individually rather than cumulatively.

That is, if I’m healing the main tank I’m putting Earth Shield and an increased heal crit rate to maximum use yielding a benefit of 10-15% over someone with only 31 points in the tree, if I’m spot healing the raid I’m putting Improved Chain Heal to maximum use producing a benefit of up to 20% over someone without Improved Chain Heal, the point of all this being I can’t do both roles at once and thus the maximum benefit I’m seeing at any given time is the higher of the two percentages.

At the end of it all, I believe a 30/0/31 build leaves you as the ultimate switch hitter, able to perform at 80-85% of that of a full Restoration Shaman or able to perform at 90% of the capacity of a full Elemental Shaman in large part thanks to Mana Tide Totem making up for many lost Elemental talents.

Is this then the ultimate hybrid build?

 

drats

With earth sheild, don't forget you can trinket (ZHC in particular) and use it for a dramatic increase in healing power. If you use outfitter, you can throw on full +heal gear, trinket, drop ES on the tank and a healing totem, then switch back to heal/dmg gear before the pull.

So I ran Karazhan last night as resto and I have to say I'm *very* impressed with shaman healing now. I'm running at around 47 points in resto and with two other priest my healing wasn't really needed for most encounters. I'm probably going to try picking up some more +dmg gear and put a few more points in elemental so my damage is more effective.

 

◊ Binkenstein

[insert newbie poster stuff here]

I've done some TC wrt dps output of various Elemental, Resto and hybrid builds.

I think I've got everything calculating correctly, but from what I can tell a 30/0/31 build can do about as much damage as a 41/0/20 build. Also added into the mix were a 31/0/30 build and a 21/0/40 build as well (as this is looking at damage output I've ignored anything heal-centric like Earth Shield/Purification/etc).

All of these were calculated using a base set of stats provided by an elemental shaman on the google shaman group (around 330 int, 615 dmg, 55 crit rating, 67mp5), and the only things that have not been included as yet are the +hit calculations.

the calculations are available at www.binky.orcon.net.nz/shamandps.xls Feedback would be good (except for layout stuff, for I suck at layout stuff).

Boils down to the fact that Mana Tide seems to be about as good as EM, LO and ToW put together, which means Argrax is mostly correct in his assessment, except that a 30/0/31 build is more like a full elemental build, minus ToW.

Once I get the +hit talents into the equation, I expect to see an elemental build improve, but not by much, and that improvement depends on the targets level at any-rate.

These calculations initially arose from a query on whether a Nature's Blessing resto/ele build would be viable as raid dps or not.



As for healing itself, from my short experiences in 5 mans, LHW does not cut it anymore, except as a minor top up. Imp HW and Healing Way are going to be very necessary to shaman to function as a MT healer given our lack of HoT spells.

Also, it may be worth taking a look at where the heal agro for each ES charge goes, on to the caster or the target. If the latter, it'll be as useful as PoM for initial healing and agro-generation for tanks.

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

Teewee

The healing agro for ES charges goes to the target, it counts as their heal.

 

Argrax

Binkenstein, I'm not sure if this was intentional but one of the first things I noticed was that under your Rrestoration tab, you had the 21st point in Elemental meaning that you couldn't grab Earth Shield. Attempting to set the talent cell for elemental fury to zero didn't actually change the final numbers since those numbers drew directly from the crit rate at the top.

Otherwise it looks really very good, exactly the sort of thing I had in mind!

Edit - I'm not sure if the sheet is taken into account any points spent in Lightning Overload.

 

◊ Binkenstein

Hmmm. Thought I had all that done wrt that Ele 21st point. I'll take a stab at correcting that calculation. And done.
Noticed I missed out Elemental Focus too *fixes*

Ok, uploaded a fixed copy. If it's quiet at work today I'll try to add in all the talents in Ele/Resto (mostly so you can get the talent point totals) and add in some +hit stuff once I work out how I should impliment it (probably with a "mob level" variable).

LO is taken into account, but not as Crit. One of the advantages of having that "# of Casts" value is that I was able to put a multiply by 1+LO% calc on it, so it calcs as it works (ie: for every 20 casts, 1 of these will be a "double", and still account for crits on neither, one, or both of the casts when it procs).

[edit]Got the talent stuff in, and have added a basic +hit calculation. The only problem is how to model the hit chance. Currently I assume that any hit will not be resisted, and any "miss" is a full resist.
Shall upload it shortly[/edit]

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

◊ Binkenstein

Adjusted and uploaded.

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

Mekias

Bink, like the spreadsheet. It's fun to play around with.

There's been some confusion with the Elemental Precision talent. Some websites still have it as +1% to hit. In game however, it's 2% to hit per talent with a max of 6%.

Also, I think your hit frequency based on level is a little off. From Maledict's post earlier in this thread:

If the target is +1 level compared to you: 95%
+2 levels: 94%
+3 levels: 83% if the target is a mob, 87% if the target is a player.
+4 levels: mob: 72% player: 80%
+5 levels: mob: 61% player: 73%

I think those numbers are right, never confirmed them.

 

Argrax

Posted today by a Blizzard Rep:
http://www.blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/75339112.htm

 

• Viator

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I so want to go elemental but (as I said in the other, enhancement-y thread) I can't justify it if there's not an enh. shammy ready to go. Not that I hate enhancement but I prefer hitting up a truer hybrid role with better gear overlap between damage and healing.

Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork

 

◊ Binkenstein

Silly question time: Is purification still calculated off base heal, or does it include +heal now?

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

◊ Oggie

it includes +heal, as does Healing Way- in fact, these two are multiplicative.

This actually makes shaman the best scalers in every possible way with +healing, and even so mana/5 is probably our best stat. damn our lack of mana recovery options....

 

◊ Binkenstein

Just checking.

Going to add in a healing section to that lb tc calc.

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

Nya

I've been toying around with various Resto/Elemental builds with PvP (2v2 or 3v3 arena mostly) in mind. The only must-haves seem to be 4-5/5 Reverberation and NS. Other than that it's like a choice of either improved healing or burst DPS.

Earth shield seems nice in 2v2 when there are many popular combos that do not support dispells such as Pally/Rogue, Pally/Warrior, Druid/Rogue etc.

My only concern is that with the new Stamina and Resilience stuff that people will be stacking up on, the DPS provided by a shaman doesn't make the cut at all, and we're better off just healing. What would you guys spec in PvP? and what kind of partner would you pick up for 2v2?

 

Cascade

I'm 11/0/50 currently and I'm starting to wonder, if Earth Shield not being an almost exclusive PvP toy right now. Yeah, I know it's a bit of exaggarated and ankward to say this, but after my first amusement about how brilliant 41 point talent did the shamans receive as their top tier restoration talent, we started to raid Karazhan.

Said that, my biggest problem is the amount for which the mobs hit for. We are not too deep into the instance (trying Romulo and his sweetheart right now), but even the trash started to hit for perverse amounts (Skelethal Ushers, anyone?). Obviously, only the tanks can endure this incoming damage for long. This makes Earth Shield an exclusive tank HoT tool, not really the heal and forget kind of stuff, because everyone else in the raid will be one or two shotted once they got aggro no matter what, even with Earth Shield on. Secondary use for Earth Shield is to actually heal and forget raid members (especially rogues) for collateral / splash damage, but in this case you can use Chain Heal more effectively 90% of the time.

All in all, I'm starting to think that Elemental Fury is a better option for obvious reasons. Improved Chain Heal and Purification is what a restoration shaman is all about: a healing powerhouse with above average damage output.

Don't make me wrong, Earth Shield has it's uses and does a quite good job when utilized. However, after some long Karazhan runs I do feel, that you can be a much more efficient member of your raid, if you are a bit higher on the damage side of things (talking about 21/0/40 at least). This was a really strong feeling of mine on the Moroes fight especially (and going to be on the Curator I guess, too).


Thanks Argrax for the great post, by the way.

However, the shaman didn't care.

 

Teewee

Since our problem isn't damage or healing power, it is how we can sustain our mana, I think an elemental shield and a weapon enhancement that help with mana regen would really help us out.

Water shield is great, but it only helps if we are getting hit. In raids and groups where we just dps, we aren't really supposed to be hit. We could get an elemental shield that would give us X amount of mana per 5 while we have it up. Either this, or adding extra mana regen to water shield would be great.

And if we are restoration or elemental we aren't using our weapons. A weapon enhancement spell that gives us X mana per 5 as long as we aren't swinging the weapon would be a nice way to make us want to continue casting and not swinging our weapons for extra dps.

Both of these things won't really change our PVP and solo game, however it will help us and our problems with mana in groups and raiding.

 

• RK

Going with water shield being X mana/5 while active (so not being mana efficient while in melee, but being mana-efficient if you're not being hit) seems wise. Lightning Shield is already the shield for if you're being hit, Water Shield should be the shield for if you're not being hit. Fairly simple fix for the mana regen problem, although in AoE raid fights where the shield keeps being worn down quick it may or may not be of benefit.

 

◊ Binkenstein

Haven't tried it in Karazhan yet (damn DP >.<) but the fact that it adds ~30% of your +heal to each charge (I think it's 31-33%) it means that you get >300% of your +heal on a base 2700 heal that costs 900 mana (3 hp per mana), so with my current 911 +heal each charge goes for roughly ~600 (includes purification) for 6000 hp for 900 mana (6.67 hp per mana).

That's a pretty good reason IMO to have it (plus the whole causes agro for the person with the buff thing like PoM).

<Sporks> quote of the day: "it's like the vague leading the blind directing the clueless guiding the stupid around here"
Yahtzee In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Nite_Moogle The correct answer here is to blame Asgorath.
Nemesis This is the BB, temporal constraints are for lesser forums.

 

Nya

I think Earth Shield is more a solid talent in PvE than PvP, given that it's still a high-cost dispellable buff. By treating it as an HoT that heals for 400+ per tick which almost guarantees that it won't be over healing and won't require you to cast it a second time for at least 30 seconds would make it a very very solid heal on its own, I could see how Earth Shield would be God-send on fights like Maexxna.

I can't really see how they will change the mechanics of Water Shield to a passive MP5, it would be giving shamans two passive mana regeneration skills (Mana Spring). It would be like paladins asking for Seal of Wisdom being changed to passive MP5 (well, maybe not that extreme).

Anyways, I am looking at this spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hxchxZZxcbtVcsted
I was thinking of a hybrid PvP/PvE spec in mind so I kept Mana Tide. The only thing that I think I'm missing is tidal mastery, in place of which I took Nature's Guardian. Healing's Grace and Tidal focus is not worth the 3 points IMO and since I'm on Alliance side BoW/BoS should be aplenty.

Given the high percentage increase on nature's blessing (30%), I was thinking of stacking intellect on my gems instead of going for pure healing effect, I'm not good at math, but what would the numbers look like?

 

• RK

Mana Spring isn't purely passive. It must be recast every minute, has a limited radius, and most importantly can't be used in any fight where you require fire resistance, poison cleansing, or disease cleansing (and heck, healing spring is no longer as shabby as it once was...)

MP5 Water Shield (passive buff) and Mana Spring (short-term buff that can't be used at the same time as other useful stuff) seems pretty analogous to Blessing of Wisdom (passive buff) and Seal of Wisdom (short-term buff that can't be used at the same time as other useful stuff).

 

Nya