[Resto] Cataclysm Raiding and Discussion
 

Welcome to the Cataclysm discussion and theorycrafting thread. The goal of this thread is to provide a centralized place for discussion of the Shaman Restoration spec and serve as a one-stop reference for any and all changes thereto.
The OP is divided into three separate posts: the first post contains a "Resto for Dummies"-style FAQ that provides general information in a quick, pithy format. Post two provides qualitative analysis, while post three contains quantitative data and the like.

In addition to the respecting the forum rules, please PM any factual errors to me rather than post them directly in the thread. This will help keep the thread clutter-free so we can focus on discussion.

Restoration for Dummies
 

Q. What's a good Resto talent spec?
A. 3/7/31 or some variant thereof. If you don't tank heal very much, you can replace the points in Nature's Blessing with Ancestral Resolve (recommended) or Focused Insight.

Q. Ancestral Swiftness? Really?
A. Definitely. Most Shaman consider it a core talent for any spec. It lets you avoid the fire quicker, helps you get into position faster, and improves your play overall. The 15% boost is better than a standard run speed enchant, so the other minor benefit is that it lets you use something better on your boots.

Q. But I want to use Telluric Currents!
A. Drop one point in Nature’s Blessing and one point in Acuity for it. Don’t go for an Elemental Precision based build, which gives up the extra run speed from Ancestral Swiftness and the throughput from most of the early enhancement talents. Your miss rate on LBs will be higher, but it’s not worth giving up the run speed.

Q. Isn't Totemic Focus a waste of points?
A. No. It affects the duration of Mana Tide Totem.

Q. What Primal Glyphs should I use?
A. Earth Shield, Earthliving Weapon, and Riptide. If you find yourself running out of mana often, consider replacing Earthliving Weapon with Water Shield. Remember, though, that Glyph of Water Shield is only a static bonus and therefore does not scale with gear.

Q. What Major Glyphs should I use?
A. Chain Heal, Healing Stream Totem, and Healing Wave are the only three which really affect anything in a standard raid situation. Healing Wave is the weakest of the three and could be dropped for something like Hex or Ghost Wolf on particular fights.

Q. But doesn't the Chain Heal glyph make Chain Heal weaker?
A. Not if you're hitting at least three targets. Chain Heal is no longer the one-hit wonder that it once was and should only be used when you're going to get multiple bounces.

Q. What Meta Gem do I want?
A. Either Insightful Earthsiege (Yes, the level 80 one; there is no level 85 equivalent) or Ember Shadowspirit (54 int and 2% mana)

Q. What stats do I want?
A. Intellect, Spirit, Mastery, Haste, and Crit. Intellect increases starting mana pool, mp5 (via Replenishment), and spellpower, making it a very powerful stat in a world where overhealing matters and mana is a concern.

Q. So what’s a good strategy for gemming and reforging?
A. Gem for intellect. Read the debates in the thread about different suggested stat priorities to see what secondary stat you should reforge into; there are differing opinions, and your personal situation will affect your decision.

Q. What is the haste soft cap?
A. There are two caps people talk about. The traditional haste soft cap is defined as the amount of haste rating it takes to lower a 1.5s cast time spell to a 1.0s cast time (i.e. the minimum global cooldown). In Cataclysm, this value is 5489 with Wrath of Air Totem. Good luck with that!

The other important cap is the amount of haste required to achieve an additional tick from HoT spells. See the information below for those values.

Q. That's too much information, just tell me what gear to choose!
A. If you prefer to use HEP values, the following can get you started. Once you have a feel for what you're doing and you've caught up on the discussion in this thread, you'll be able to adjust for your personal situation. If you need more mana regen, you should value spirit and crit higher. If your raid is usually below 50% health, you should value mastery higher.

intellect	1.2
spell power	1.0
spirit	0.9
crit	0.6
haste	0.6
mastery	0.6

Q. How do I properly use Unleash Life (UnL)?
A. Use it when you expect the tank to take heavy damage in the next several seconds or when you expect the raid to need healing very shortly. Never use it with Healing Surge (Greater Healing Wave would end up being just as fast with less mana burned), Healing Wave (If the target doesn't need much healing, why are you blowing a 15s cooldown?), or Riptide (same as Healing Wave, except UnL only affects the initial heal.)

Q. How do I properly use Healing Rain?
A. Try to anticipate when a large source of damage is coming and cast it on the melee clump. The radius is large enough that on many bosses you can hit all the melee as well as the tank. The same applies to a clump of ranged players, but ranged is generally less likely to be as grouped up as melee. Be sure to keep in mind any movement or repositioning that may occur!

Q. Does Healing Rain proc Earthliving?
A. This has gone back and forth over the past several Beta patches that I'm not 100% confident, but the answer seems to be "Yes, but at a greatly reduced proc chance".

Q. I'm not getting as many Earthliving procs as I used to. Why?
A. Patch 4.0.3 changed Chain Heal so that it only has 25% of the normal chance to proc. With 2/2 Blessing of the Eternals, there is a 5% chance to proc on targets above 35% health and a 21.25% chance to proc on targets below 35% health.

Qualitative Analysis
 

In-depth Talent Analysis

Legend:

* Required - This talent is one of the core building blocks of any effective Restoration Shaman build. It should not be skipped under any circumstances, as doing so would cripple your effectiveness.
* Recommended - This talent will be very useful to nearly all Restoration Shamans, but there are some edge cases in which it might be skipped. This assessment is mostly reserved for raid healing talents that a dedicated tank healer shaman could consider skipping in certain situations.
* Optional - This talent will be useful in some situations, but there are generally better places to spend points. This assessment is also given for tank healing talents that a dedicated raid healer shaman could consider skipping.
* Skip - Under no circumstances is this talent worth taking in a raid centric build.



Restoration Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Ancestral Resolve	Optional	Can be useful as filler. Value increases in encounters with heavy raid damage.
Tidal Focus	Required	Mana efficiency matters much more in Cataclysm than it did in LK. The large efficiency boost is difficult to overlook.
Spark of Life	Required	A straight 6% boost to healing without any difficult conditions to meet. The additional healing received stacks multiplicatively (with 3 points, self heals are increased by 21.9%.)
Improved Water Shield	Required	Our staple mana regeneration talent for all PvE content. Provides much more mana over the course of a typical fight than Mana Tide Totem by allowing mana regeneration to scale with crit rating.
Totemic Focus	Required	The only reason to take this talent is to increase the duration of Mana Tide Totem (and perhaps Fire Elemental Totem). Benefits to totems other than Mana Tide and Fire Elemental can be ignored.
Focused Insight	Optional	Don't think of this as strictly a DPS talent -- it's actually an incredibly powerful healing tool that happens to provide some damage. Helps handle burst damage if you are able to anticipate when the burst will come and have a GCD to spare beforehand. Use with Flame Shock for optimal mana efficiency. Note that the shock must actually hit for damage for the talent to proc, so try to shock a low-level add if possible. A strong talent, but it requires some work and luck to utilize it.
Nature's Guardian	Skip	Mainly a PvP talent. Too situational to fit in a raid-centric build.
Ancestral Healing	Required	Mainly useful for reducing incoming tank damage, but also situationally useful on the raid. Chain heal will often bounce to or be chained through tanks, making this pickup a no-brainer. Ancestral Healing and the Priest version (Inspiration) will overwrite each other, thereby allowing for maximum coverage.
Nature's Swiftness	Required	Required to provide clutch healing to targets at critical health. Can also be used to cast a spell while moving and Spiritwalker's Grace is on cooldown.
Nature's Blessing	Optional	This talent is mainly useful if you are casting Chain Heal through the tank or are otherwise filling a tank healer role. This talent drops off in effectiveness dramatically if you are assigned to heal the raid - the most common role for a Resto Shaman. This talent is, however, a good place to spend points if you need to get further down into the tree.
Soothing Rains	Recommended	Highly Recommended for any shaman filling a raid healer role; has very little use for a shaman who is tank healing. Keep in mind the role you generally fill when choosing to take or skip this talent.
Improved Cleanse Spirit	Recommended	If your raid leader never, ever assigns you to handle dispels, then you can conceivably consider skipping this talent. For 99% of Shaman out there, however, this is a mandatory pickup.
Cleansing Waters	Optional	Requires Improved Cleanse Spirit. Generally more of a PvP talent, but can be useful on cleansing-heavy PvE encounters or if you are often your guild's designated cleanser. With two points, the heal is slightly stronger than the direct heal portion of Riptide, and scales accordingly. The decrease in mana cost is another nice benefit.
Ancestral Awakening	Required	Requires 2 points in Ancestral Healing. A staple of our single target healing. Very versatile and not worth skipping under any circumstance.
Mana Tide Totem	Required	Our main means of burst mana regen. Note that the mana regen effect only works on party members (not raid members), so make sure that you raid leader places you in a group with other mana users.
Telluric Currents	Optional	This talent can provide a small amount of mana regen during a lull in the encounter, but without a lot of hit rating is quite reliant on luck. It can be picked up if you overgear the content or on specific fights in which healers may be required to DPS for part of the encounter.
Tidal Waves	Required	This talent is the cornerstone of Shaman healing, providing a solid HPS and HPM boost to Healing Surge and greatly increasing the HPS and general usability of Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave.
Blessing of the Eternals	Recommended	With two talent points, the Earthliving HoT will always apply on targets below 35% health. This talent is one of the weaker healing talents in the tree, as even on raid damage-heavy encounters with this talent Earthliving rarely surpasses ~10% effective healing. Still, the throughput boost is worth the talent point investment and skipping it should only be considered if you generally heal tanks rather than the raid. Note that with Chain Heal, the proc chance will only be increased to 21.25%.
Riptide	Required	A single target, instant cast heal on a short cooldown that also sets up a more powerful Chain Heal to better handle incoming burst damage. Riptide is an incredibly versatile spell and there is never a good reason to skip it.

Enhancement Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Elemental Weapons	Recommended	The passive benefits do not scale with gear, but the improved Unleashed Life portion does. Required to get down to Tier 2.
Focused Strikes	Skip	Restoration will never use Primal Strike in a raid situation. Skip.
Improved Shields	Required	Improves both our mana regeneration and the efficacy of Earth Shield. Even those rare Shaman who choose to go down the elemental tree should pick up this talent.
Elemental Devastation	Skip	Intended for Enhancement Shaman. Skip.
Flurry	Skip	Intended for Enhancement Shaman. Skip.
Ancestral Swiftness	Recommended	Virtually mandatory for serious Restoration Shaman. The run speed offered by this talent is stronger than that offered by boot enchants and can help you avoid raid-wide damage quicker and easier. It also reduces the totel amount of time spent moving, letting you get back to healing ASAP. Note that this talent makes Ghost Wolf instant cast; now that Ghost Wolf is usable indoors, this talent gives all shaman a powerful escape mechanism. You need an extremely good reason not to put 7 points in enhancement for this talent.
Totemic Reach	Optional	If you find your totems are often just out of range of the raid members, this talent could help; then again, why not just learn to place your totems better?

Elemental Tree

Talent Name	Recommendation	Analysis
Acuity	Recommended	Provides a flat throughput and mana regeneration bonus (due to Improved Water Shield. Generally useful in both raid and tank-healing focused builds.
Convection	Optional	Can help to provide better mana returns from Telluric Currents and lessen the impact of proccing Focused Insight. In the vast majority of cases, however, you'll see better use out of throughput-oriented talents.
Concussion	Skip	Conceivably useful if there are fights where the healers have to DPS, but in almost no circumstances is this better than Acuity or worth giving up Ancestral Swiftness for. Skip.
Call of Flame	Skip	Very rarely will Restoration be casting Lava Burst or Fire Nova in a raid situation. Leave this talent to the DPS Shaman. Skip.
Elemental Warding	Skip	If you're down this far in the elemental tree, you're probably going for some Telluric Currents/Elemental Precision build for a theoretical fight in which healers need to DPS. This is a strong talent, but you don't have the points to go this far down into the elemental tree without missing something even more important. Skip.
Reverberation	Skip	Can be useful if you like to abuse Focused Insight, but as with Elemental Warding you simply don't have the points to go down this far without missing something better. Skip.
Elemental Precision	Optional/Skip	Again, in a theoretical fight in which you have to DPS, this talent can be useful. However, unless you are able to stand still the entire fight, you'll be better off going down the Enhancement tree for Ancestral Swiftness instead. Skip this talent and throw on some +hit trinkets/jewelry.

Tier 11 Set Bonuses

• 2-piece: Increases the critical strike chance of your Healing Wave spell by 5%.
• 4-piece: Whenever you cast Riptide, you gain 540 Spirit for 6 sec.

Miscellaneous Mechanics Information


Ancestral Awakening

* The heal continues to have a slight delay of ~0.5-1 seconds.
* Unlike indicated by the tooltip, only heals for 27% of the initial crit. (Yes, this is a known bug)
* Double dips from Spark of Life. At 3/3 Spark of life, will heal you for 32.91% of the original heal or someone else for 28.6% of the original heal.
* Still incapable of critting or proccing Earthliving.
* Does not proc off Unleashed Life.

Cleansing Waters

* The heal takes place immediately as the effect is removed; there is no delay as with Ancestral Awakening.
* Can crit, but does not proc Ancestral Healing, Ancestral Awakening, or Earthliving.


Earthliving

* Now benefits from both haste and crit.


Focused Insight

* Does not proc from Wind Shear.
* Requires the shock to actually hit the target for damage. Misses will not proc Focused Insight, nor will shocking immune targets.


Glyph of Healing Wave

* Remains capable of critting
* Crits do not proc AA or Ancestral Healing (Unchanged from WOTLK).

Healing Rain

* Affected by both crit and haste.
* Crits will proc Ancestral Healing.
* Each tick has a (greatly reduced) chance to proc Earthliving.


Riptide

* The HoT portion now benefits from haste and crit.
* HoT crits do not proc AA but will proc Ancestral Healing.

Quantitative Analysis
 

This section is very much a work in progress. Any and all input is greatly appreciated!

Healing Spell Costs and Coefficients

Costs include 3/3 Tidal Focus. (Thanks to Malahi)

Spell	Cost	Coefficient
Healing Surge	5946	0.604
Healing Wave	1981	0.302
Greater Healing Wave	6607	0.806
Chain Heal (initial heal)	3744	0.320 (needs confirmation)
Earth Shield (per charge)	4183	0.152 (1.37 total)
Riptide (direct heal)	2202	0.234
Riptide (HoT)	-	0.075
Earthliving Weapon (HoT)	-	0.058
Healing Stream Totem (per tick)	-	0.083
Cleansing Waters (2/2)	3280	0.282
Healing Rain (per tick)	10130	0.083
Unleashed Life	1640	TBD

Haste Calculations

The formula below will help you calculate what your new cast time for a given spell will be based on your current haste rating. Unlike other classes, the only passive source of haste we have is the 5% from Wrath of Air totem or its equivalent.

New Cast Time = Base Cast Time / ((( 1 + (Haste Rating / 12805 )) * 1.05)


Haste Break Points for Riptide and Earthliving (Ratings updated for level 85

Riptide duration with glyph: 21 sec

# of Ticks	Time between ticks needed	Haste needed	Rating needed	Haste needed assuming WoA	Rating needed assuming WoA
7 ticks	N/A	0% Haste	N/A	N/A	N/A
8 ticks	2.7963 sec	7.2846% Haste	915 Rating	2.1758% Haste	261 Rating
9 ticks	2.4677 sec	21.5707% Haste	2745 Rating	15.7816% Haste	2005 Rating
10 ticks	2.2082 sec	35.8573% Haste	4576 Rating	29.3879% Haste	3748 Rating
11 ticks	1.9981 sec	50.1426% Haste	6406 Rating	42.993% Haste	5491 Rating

Earthliving weapon duration: 12 sec

# of Ticks	Time between ticks needed	Haste needed	Rating needed	Haste needed assuming WoA	Rating needed assuming WoA
4 ticks	N/A	0% haste	N/A	N/A	N/A
5 ticks	2.6608 sec	12.748% Haste	1602 Rating	7.3791% Haste	916 Rating
6 ticks	2.1779 sec	37.7474% Haste	4805 Rating	31.188% Haste	3966 Rating
7 ticks	1.8433 sec	62.7516% Haste	8008 Rating	55.0015% Haste	7017 Rating

From raiding 10M so far I can say that Telluric Currents at 346 ilvl gear level is VERY VERY important, there are alot of time in the encounters so far to LB and I average 50-80k mana return in these fights from TC, it's definitely worth taking out 1 point in acuity and nature's blessing for.

I haven't found any math/research on how risky Telluric Currents is, so I feel a little untrustworthy about it.

A lightning bolt gives an average return of 320 mana if I'm not mistaken, more if it crits. This would mean your next 5 LB's would have to hit to make up for any miss that occurs, and if another miss occurs, you could be in trouble.

Also does that 50-80k mana take into account the mana spent on LB needed to acquire that mana returned? If I were to assume that it did it would take nearly 10 minutes of casting LBs to get a net gain of 80,000 mana without a single miss, if my math isn't failing me.

I feel we are sacrificing talent points to obtain a potentially risky investment that, when successful, gives very minor return. Can anyone follow this up with a more reliable assessment?

the return is not minor at all, in a 10m raid, my LBs hit for roughly 5.5 on avg non-crit, that's 2200 mana return. 2200-1405 is roughly 800 mana gain per LB.

Alot of the raid content so far seems to have windows where you can spam LB, and that mana returned is definitely worth the 2 point investment especially at the gear level we are at now.

for example, on the conclave of winds fight on roshash's platform, you have more than enough time to LB your way from 40% mana to 100%

Also the bosses which has increased damage taken or fights with damage buffs, you'll gain significant amount of mana from TC.

Magmaw almost requires TC because of how mana intensive the non-expose phase is, and during expose phase 0-100% mana is entirely possible with TC.

Justin.tv

you can see how much mana I got during roshash platform and decide how useful this 2 points is yourself :)

Hello, I'm not sure this is the right place to post, but the header of the "Simple question" thread scared me. :P

I'm trying to understand the Resto Shaman stat weighting. My raid experience is null so far, and in heroics it's usualy Healing Wave, Riptide, and Healing Stream Totem doing most of the healing, followed by Greater Heal and Earthliving. The only spells who overheal are the totem and to a lesser extent earthliving and riptide.

Resto Stats:
- Intellect first, no argueing there.
- I read to favorise haste over crit over mastery (after int). I'm not sure I understand why haste is on top considering it doesn't increase the direct HpM of any spells beside riptide (and earthliving indirectly). With AA and AH, my first thought would have been to increase crit to a decent level. Is it because haste makes Healing Wave spam easier?
- I understand our mastery's value is probably lost in a raid with another healer around. But is it still bad if you're tank healing (mostly) alone?
- What about reforging for spirit on items who don't sport some? Good or bad?

About tank healing only, is there some point where it's worth it to cast a riptide before it falls off? Mostly to get Tidal Waves in a case where no dps is in need of healing.

Telluric currents is definitely situational. During the impale phase on Magmaw, I was spamming my lightning bolt and getting a lot of mana back due to the damage increase in that phase. Got a full mana bar whilst doing a lot of damage at the same time - 4-5k mana back with a 1.4k cost

I keep wondering at why people are valuing mastery so low for resto shamans. Is it just because there are no good mathematical models for this? At least my perception from raiding so far (10mans, free healing assignments) is that most of the time when I actually cast a heal, the person is at or below 50% health, making a very much best-case-scenario for Deep Healing. In fact, my gearing decision right now has been to focus on spirit first for regen, and mastery as primary secondary stat. Haste would probably be strong for raidhealing in 25mans, but with proper selection of healing targets, I'd still think you could get very good mileage from mastery in that position as well.

So, talking me off the fence, why should I, as a raider, not prioritize mastery? I just don't see it given the math we have on how the mechanic itself works, not given how the raids work currently.

From what has been said in the past by Blizzard, Telluric currents isn't suppose to give a positive amount of mana back based on what they had hoped for the talent to begin with. I am sure this talent will be changed very soon if it indeed ends up giving a good portion of mana return. The original design was to be a return on mana, but not past the amount of the lightning bolt cost because it was designed to be a leveling talent (dps) and not a mana return for healing.

How would mastery increase raid healing, seeing it only affects single target heals?

At the moment I am really liking crit, as it both improves your output and your mana regeneration, while haste improves your output at the cost of mana (assuming you are chain casting, if you aren't then i don't think haste is a good stat to begin with)

Huh? Mastery affects both Healing Rain and Chain Heal.

Hmm, doesn't CH count as a direct heal? I suppose that would explain it then, foolishly I had made the assumption it applied to all healing, but if it doesn't increase HoT-effects then it's pretty much crap except for single target heals. Time to start rethinking this then, mixture of crit/haste looks rather more inviting now, given my dual purpose in 10mans.

Hrmh, I actually just read through the entire beta thread, and there was no mention of any test having been done as to which spells or effects are increased by Deep Healing. If anyone knows the answer, it'd probably be well worth including in the thread, since it may greatly effect which roles benefit from Deep Healing to what extent.

Hmm, having just gone over some logs of the highest shaman HPS on WoL, I noticed most of them had been dropping out GHW entirely in favour of Healing Surge. Upon closer inspection, this seems to make perfect sense, as the spell is only slightly more expensive and due to the horrible scaling of heals currently, actually delivers quite closely the same amount of healing as GHW but in half the time. Need to try out using a lot more HS/CH instead of GHW next raid, see if that yields an increase in performance.