As I said, on the PTR FI is working with healing rain normally, you cast FS get FI then HR. Your HR is buffed for all the duration and the FI buff is consumed. You can cast a spell while your healing rain is ticking, there is no problem.
But the bug you are talking about is still there, so you can have a buffed HR buffed again while ticking with a non use FI buff.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in previous post.

I was raiding 10 mans until recently so I kinda stayed away from TC except certain clear cut phases of some fights. But just recently moved to a 25 man guild. I've never been to thrilled with 4set bonus for resto; because sometimes just cant afford the GCD. But I was thinking that if you are one of the shaman using the TC build with EP spec'd would the 2 set bonus from elemental be near or maybe better than the 4 set of resto. 2 set for elemental is 10% reduced casting time on LB.

Edit: I misread the 4 and the 2 on the set bonuses so disregard this post.

If you're worried about squeezing in the GCD for Riptide for the 4 pc resto bonus, then you're probably not spending much time casting Healing Wave to make use of the 2 pc resto bonus, either. In that case the set isn't worth considering for anything other than the stats on the gear as compared to the stats on other available items for those slots, including the elemental set pieces. You can still go for the 4 pc elemental without losing anything other than the spirit that you might find on preferred items, as only one elemental piece naturally has spirit on it. If that works with your healing style and how you fit into your new guild's healing roster, then 4 pc elemental might be reasonable for you. If, on the other hand, your current raiding team needs your Mana Tide to be stronger, then giving up 3 piece of spirit gear plus the 4 pc bonus is, indeed, probably not a good idea.

Before I realized it was a 4 set; what I was mainly going to discuss was if the 10% casting reduction to LB would be a better mana return than the 4 set bonus for resto if your were using the paragon telluric resto spec.

If you're using the TC/Elemental Precision spec your sole purpose is a giant mana tide totem. You stack spirit and do gimp DPS and drop your MTT when the healers need it. You glyph for DPS as well. Since you can't get 4 pieces of Elemental tier with spirit on it you'd be gimping your sole purpose for some minor DPS boost that doesn't matter because you're not meant to do high DPS.

Well that would be just pointless. Using TC and EP is still being a healer. The damage output of lightning bolts during normal fights is negligible. The reason I use TC / Elemental Precision is so that I can use big (expensive) heals, and roll in Lightning Bolts in between. The mana return on some fights is rather large. Though my experience is limited, we have two holy paladins and me healing 10 man content. So far we have killed all on normal, and Halfus on heroic. On our Nefarian kill, my last minute was literally spamming Lightning Bolt, and keeping down a Healing Rain at all times. I was out of mana about halfway into P3.

After getting used to TC/EP it feels very weird not having it. Although having two holy Paladins, I am not healing the tanks that much. So I just make sure the raid is at decent health, then cast Lightning Bolts. I must admit, on our heroic attempts I have not had time to throw barely any Lightning Bolts, but then again it's at the learning stage so I reckon people are not avoiding all the damage they could. On Halfus I start spamming bolts when all the dragons are dead, then just put down HR for furious roars.

The TC/EP spec has not altered my stats priority a bit. Int >> Spirit > Haste > Mastery >> Crit.

That would really depend on the fight. The Mana cost reduction is going to be as effective as it is now, and for any fight with at least 6 seconds between dispels (e.g. Valiona ground phase) it's still as effective as it is now too.

The alternatives are not appealing either. Assuming you already picked up 3/3 Nature's Blessing, you're left with Ancestral Resolve, Nature's Guardian, or Focused Insight. The first two have an impact on your survivability and the last one is a debatable boost to HPM (under ideal circumstances) and a HPS loss most of the time.

It still makes sense to list it as Recommended.

Any talent configuration involving Imp. Cleanse is going to be situational. If you're working on Heroic Valiona, any points in ICS and CW are wasted (since Blackout can't be dispelled), and in a 25m encounter, depending on your raid's composition and stability, you might be better off letting other classes do the dispelling. This particular pair of talents involving Cleanse Spirit is more like, "do it if you have to - and most of us have to" than truly and actually recommended.

As for Ancestral Resolve being unappealing, I have to disagree with you there. When a predictable damage burst is headed your way, you can give yourself a bit of mitigation by doing your job - casting spells. Incredibly useful for Heroic (or normal, even) Nefarian's "Crackle" ability and ANY TIME you take AE damage while you are in the process of casting a heal (frequently?). In my opinion, if you can afford to lose CW, this is a fantastic alternative.

In 4.1, when this change will be taking place, we also have a new 1-point talent in Spirit Link Totem, which allows you to get your 31 points without taking ICS or TC.

1) If most of us "have to" dispel, then isn't a talent that makes it cheaper and tosses a free heal on top of it strongly recommendable? I fail to see your point. It's just semantics.

2) Ancestral Resolve is not useless. It's a survivability talent. But it's unappealing because there are still alternatives that will, on most fights, save you Mana and heal more.

3) Yeah, okay, if you happen to be banging your head against the one fight that removes the need for Shamans dispelling, maybe ICS and CW are not needed. But that's true for what, 0.1% of the Shaman population? That still makes ICS and CW two eminently recommendable talents.

Going to have to disagree with you here Amilie, In both of my specs I have not opted for CW, it is simply not required, the heal is very average, and the mana cost is very meh.

There are far better places to be putting 2 talent points than in here, AR is certainly one of them. Of course this does totally depend on your raid setup and what you are raiding, ie 10s vs 25s and HC vs Normal. If its 10's then yes perhaps worth getting as you will no doubt be called upon to dispel more. If 25's then not so much. If its HC's then you really do want to be going for AR, that dmg reduction is extremely useful and as you mentioned saving mana and healing more, this means you dont have to pop and extra heal on yourself because you have saved the inc dmg, thus saving mana anyway.

It does therefore totally depend on your own circumstances, if you are in 10's then maybe go for it, otherwise others are better.

Think of it another way, there are not that many occasions each fight even under the best of conditions when you might dispel things, many fight require no dispelling at all. However you will always take dmg and reducing this is far better in my opinion.

Perhaps I haven't been clear enough yet in both of my posts.

Never once did I say that ICS and CW are required, which is the straw man people have been focusing on thus far. I have stated that its position as recommended is still justified, even after the 6-second nerf that's incoming next patch, because its PvE contribution has essentially not been reduced.

A recommended talent is just that -- one you should pick up unless a) you know your shit and feel you can play without it, or b) are in a situation (raid comp or otherwise) that somehow reduces its usefulness. If that's your case, great, but your anecdotal evidence still does not invalidate the claim that, for most Shamans, picking ICS and CW up is the best option out of the available talents to fill out the Resto tree.

You could not be more wrong. As a lover of the TC/EP spec I can tell you a shaman becomes incredibly versatile if their offensive spells are guaranteed not to miss. TC means you never run out of mana personally while providing some of the best throughput in the game. EP means you will never miss a Lightning Bolt, allowing you to continue healing while seemingly bone dry on mana. Let's not forget interrupting, having another person with a reliable interrupt on the shortest cooldown of all the interrupts is invaluable in this tier of content.

You spec TC/EP because the second tier talents in the enhancement tree are not useful in this tier of content at all. When have you ever found having instant ghost wolf useful, 1 fight, 2 fights(only Atramades and Nef come to mind)? It's the same argument as the ICS/CW argument; it's too situational to warrant full time talent points. As soon as you get into ghost wolf, you are no longer casting healing spells or lightning bolts. If you are going to argue that you need ghost wolf for long periods of movement, my comeback is simply SWG.

I posted that response before the buffs in 4.0.6. Prior to that, when the spec was first noticed, it was literally only for a big mana tide totem. You could see the player's armory and notice they had Glyph of Flame Shock, Lava Burst, and Flametongue.

I could list all the fights where Ghost Wolf is useful but that's already been done multiple times and I can assure you the list is longer than Atramedes and Nefarian. I'm also not sure why your comeback to "I need ghostwolf for a long period of time" is SWG because SWG does not increase your movement speed.

On the interrupt topic: EP wont matter because Wind Shear can't miss but I'd also argue there are multiple times where Wind Shear is the least valuable interrupt. Spells like Arcane Annihilator and Blast Wave (Prototype adds on Nefarian) are constantly cast unless interrupted, and the duration of the school lockout from that interrupt is what determines when the next spell will be cast. Since Wind Shear is only a 2 second lockout as opposed to Kick/Skull Bash/Rebuke's 6 second lockout, using Wind Shear causes MORE interrupts needed and will screw you over. This is *mostly* only true on 25 mans, as some of these things can be solo interrupted on 10 man.

It all comes down to personal preference, I happen to be an advocate of the EP build because A) it allows my LB's to never miss thus giving me lots of Mana to play with and B) actually causes dmg.

Now I know that many people say well you should not be using so much Mana etc, however there are many occasions where you are left not really doing anything and casting a LB here is a very good option. I also have gone a full Spirit Build as tjhis further allows both myself and fellow healers greater Mana Regen.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

This is our latest Cho'gall Kill, you will note that by gearing for Spirit and an EP build this has not gimped my output in anyway, in fact probably increases in.

In addition to being able to heal from start to finish without any downtime I also contributed to dmg. Not a huge amount I grant you, however on fights where everything matters it makes a huge difference. For example, had I not caused 600k dmg (300k in LB's) we would not have killed Cho'gall, it was that close.

However my caveat to this is that you need the gear to be able to give you the base int which means you still hit hard enough. Fortunately at the point where an EP build starts to help you as a healer, you are at the level where you are obtaining such gear. I don't think that an EP build is required when first entering into HC's as the requirements are not as harsh on Mana as they get later in the tier.

So in summary, until Mana becomes an issue for you, you won't need to go down the EP route, but once it does its a lovely thing to have it there to allow you to adapt to the greater demands placed on you.

In regards to the whole "instant golf wolf" issue, I personally very rarely used it, but I did find the +movement speed to be useful, but I have also not really found a fight where it is missed, but then I do have rocket jump for those "Oh Crap" moments.

Philondra is no longer playing the game and hasn't posted here in a few months. With patch 4.1 coming soon, Aanzeijar has kindly volunteered to take over maintaining a current resto shaman guide. (Thanks!) Please continue discussing healing mechanics and best practices in the new thread here:

http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t121202-...raiding_4_1_a/