Something I just realized: since Improved Water Shield is becoming Resurgence, Improved Shields should no longer have any effect on the amount of Mana received from spell crits. This makes a TC/EP build even more attractive than it is now, since Improved Shields's only effect is the boost to Earth Shield.

I would like to think the idea was to offset the MTT nerf with the 50% buff to our current IWS mana regen. But the math on that just does not seem to add up favorably either.

From my most recent kill of Chogall, 75k IWS becomes 112.5K for a 37.5k increase.

MTT nerf would kill off ~44k mana if used twice, assuming Tsunami and 2p tier bonus, and a lot more if you used a Jar and/or Heartsong.

Ignoring WS:
3435 mp5/5 = 678 mp1*16sec = 10,992*4 = 43968. Half of this is lost in 4.2, and 2 tides brings it back to this amount lost in total.

Its close and with the buff to crit it may well balance out with more crit being the norm, and of course be different on other fights, but its not a solid buff even personally.

My understanding from the guide in the original post is that after Intellect, Spirit is generally the most important stat. However, upon using Rawr for my Resto Shaman, and putting in mind that Rawr's Resto Shaman model is actively maintained, which means it should be trustworthy (at least for me and lots of other users), Rawr is recommending reforges to Crit across the board. This really surprised me, as it even recommends reforges from Spirit to Crit! My understanding is that several (if not all) Rawr model authors are either part of Elitist Jerks or very active on the forums here, so can someone please clarify this apparent contradiction?

I trust Rawr and have used it for years, and trust it even more when I notice that the model used is actively maintained, so I really want to get this straight and understand why all guides put Spirit after Intellect for perhaps all healers, yet we sometimes get these reforging recommendations and gear recommendations from Rawr.

As Amilie said, it's even worse if you talented into Improved Shields. Currently IWS returns 1744 mana with IS, but Resurgence is only 2292. So it's only about 31% more than before.

The ICD lowering is for popping actual orbs of Water Shield as a result of taking damage. The Improved Water Shield procs from healing crits do not have an internal cooldown. There's no reason to believe that Resurgence procs will have an internal cooldown, either.

With my current gear (heroic Jar, Tsunami and 4-set) I get an additional 9780 MP5 during Mana Tide, which results in 9780 * 16.8/5 = 32861 mana. Most fights I'm able to squeeze in 3 Mana Tides resulting in 98583 mana (a "loss" of 49291 mana with the changes in 4.2).

I decided to do a small breakdown of the IWS/Resurgence change in 4.2:

Spell	IWS	IWS+IS	Resurgence
Healing Wave	1517	1744.5	2292
Greater Healing Wave	1517	1744.5	2292
Riptide	1517	1744.5	1375
Healing Surge	910.2	1046.7	1375
Chain Heal	455.1	523.35	763
Unleash Life	0	0	1375
Water Shield*	1517	1744.5	758**

* This is relevant for any non-periodic damage you take during a fight. Keep in mind that the current ICD is 7 seconds and will be changed to 3.5 seconds in 4.2.
** With Improved Shields it's 871.7 mana per orb.

Running those numbers on my general spell/crit distribution for Valiona & Theralion heroic, I get the following:

Spell	Triggers*	IWS+IS	Resurgence+IS
Healing Wave	2	3489	4584
Greater Healing Wave	7	12211,5	16044
Riptide	15	26167,5	20625
Healing Surge	6	6280,2	8250
Chain Heal	18	9420,3	13734
Unleash Life	2	0	2750
Water Shield	13	22678,5	11332,1**
Total	-	80247	77319.1

* Triggers are crits for spells and non-periodic damage procs of Water Shield.
** With a lowered ICD on Water Shield procs this number will be higher.

I've also tried running the numbers on some other fights and if you take the ICD change to Water Shield into account, you can expect a 10-15% boost in mana regeneration from Improved Water Shield to Resurgence.
The Mana Tide change is going to be a huge, and somewhat needed, nerf to all healers (that is, if you're bringing a resto shaman to your raids). Personally we'll get a small buff to our personal mana regeneration, but nothing big.

It has been known for some time that UE interacts strangely with Riptide. It seems we should have tested this further after 4.1. Kipolle posted this on the german boards.

Apparently at least Riptide, HW, GHW, HS and CH do not receive Purification bonus on the bonus healing from both UE and FI. The effects work fine with elemental spec, but will drop to about 24% with Elemental Weapons in Resto spec. Chain Heal is a little off, and gets buffed by 17.4% without Elemental Weapons and 26.1% with (or with FI). I confirmed the tooltip with 50 FIed GHWs on a Stormwind citizen, so the factor should be reasonably correct. A sample equation for that: Imagine a heal for 10000. FI or talented Ue would give you 30% for it, which is 3000. Now, as a healer you get 25% purification, but it only affects the 10000, your heal gets buffed to 12500. 3000/12500 is 0.24, you get effectively 24%. As for Chain Heal, the glyph reduces the initial jump by 10%. The observed numbers match the following formula: 10000 for your base Chain Heal. The glyph substracts 1000, but you still get 2500 from Purification and another 3000 from UE/FI netting you 14500 instead of 11500 without FI/UE, with is about 26.1%.

Kipolle also claims that Earth Shielded targets only get 15% instead of 18%, which I can also confirm. The missing factor again indicates missing Purification.

All in all, the implementation of Purification seems to be a complete mess, considering that there was a similar issue with HST.

It is worth noting that using your numbers, you can split haste and spirit in an attempt to compare. 128 haste rating will increase HPS by 1% and the 51 Spirit points left over will give ~36 MP5 (personal) up to ~70MP5 (7 healers).

In addition, 1% crit will increase HPS by more than 1% with AA procs. This indicates that crit is at least on par with haste/spirit mixing and may by flat out superior in 10man raiding for regen and throughput combined.

I have a question, I'm not looking for hand holding here, but I'm really distressed. I run a 10 man with a Resto Shaman (me), a Holy priest, and a Resto Druid. I'm the tank healer for our 10 man. Mana tide has been invaluable to us in a lot of fights, especially H Omni and H Twin Dragons. We are 7/13 so not as well off as other guilds, as such, I don't have the experience of Sinestra and even H Nef.

How many of you guys are tank healers for your 10 mans? I realize that a lot of shamans are raiding 25's, as such most have Holy Paladins as the tank healer. We are starting on H Nefarian this week, did a couple of attempts tonight. I'm healing the Onyxia tank for phase 1, the adds are being Crowd Controlled and are positioned near the Nefarian tank, so I'm pretty much not able to heal anyone else obviously. Anyways by the end of phase 1, going into phase 2, I'm near OOM with mana tide on CD already.

I realize that alot of my problems are ranging from learning a new Heroic mode. I'm just curious to see if maybe my position in our raid is wrong. If shamans shouldn't necessarily be tank healers, maybe our holy priest would be better off as Disc.

I'm hoping that with the upcoming changes to mana tide, that it might be possible to drop spirit as much as possible and stack crit. With the new Improved Water Shield and the crit change, it will be a boost to our personal mana regeneration. I think this will help out a great deal for shaman tank healers. I've read through this entire post and all through the pages and I've seen several posts of people stacking crit instead, but I'm not seeing any definitive answers regarding this. Would this be a bad thing to do? I'm really not that great with math, doing the numbers myself because I honestly don't know what I'm doing. Not asking for someone to do the math for me, just looking for opinions.

I appreciate any feedback regarding this.

Your problems remind me of how I felt while learning normal Nef, also 10man tank healing the Ony tank. At the time I fixed it by swapping to crit stacking.

I have also healed the Ony tank on heroic 10s, stacking haste with no jar, and had no issues with mana by spamming riptide/HW, and pre-casting GHW for breaths only.

We more recently have the Ony tank pick up the adds also and have 2 healers on him while we burn Ony down ignoring everything else, it makes P1 very quick.

I run 10-man as well, and I heal the Nef tank. We push Nef to 70% in P1, killing Ony just a hair before the 3rd Electrocute. I drop Mana Tide sometime after the 1st Electrocute, depending on how things go. During P2, Telluric Currents is invaluable. I keep Riptides up, Earth Shield up, and work in Lightning Bolts between Healing Waves. I usually go into P3 with > 100k mana. YMMV.