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[Resto] Raiding 4.1 - updating for 4.3
Following Jessamy's call this will be a new iteration of the "Cataclysm Raiding and Discussion" thread. As most people I mainly raid one format (currently 25mans) so, if you spot something that's missing for the other format, drop me a note. Also I am not a native speaker, so don't hesitate to correct spelling or unusual wording if you spot it.
If you need to abbreviate my name, Aanze is just fine, thank you. [top]Newfound Vigor - 4.3 in a nutshell
[top]I'm on my elemental alt and need to fill in for our missing healer in 5 minutes. Help!This section will give you a recommendation for starting out at diamond compression level. No explanations, no alternatives. Read later sections for that. Please don't reply with recommendations based on advanced strategies. These are starting points for people without experience. Talents: 2/7/32 Glyphs: Riptide, Earth Shield, Earthliving Weapon, Chain Heal, Healing Stream Totem, Healing Wave Items: Don't wear cloth or leather. Get good set bonuses. Get higher item level. Prefer spirit items. Gems: [Ember Shadowspirit Diamond], [Brilliant Inferno Ruby], [Reckless Ember Topaz], [Purified Demonseye] Enchants: Heartsong on weapon. Int on everything else where possible. Best haste/crit/mastery enchant where not. Consumables: Flask of Draconic Mind, Severed Sagefish Head, Mana Potions General spells: Keep totems up. Keep your Water Shield up. Keep Earth Shield up. Keep Riptide on cooldown. Communicate which totems are needed. Use your Mana Tide. Use your trinkets. Remember you've got Spiritwalker's Grace and Nature's Swiftness if you're in a tight spot. Remember you've got instant Ghost Wolf. Remember you are able to dispel, kick and purge. Use Unleash Wepon only on Chimaeron Massacre and during movement. How to heal tanks: Heal with Healing Wave, switch to Greater Healing Wave if the tank drops. Avoid Healing Surge. How to heal raid: Save your mana with Healing Wave in phases without much damage. Use Healing Rain and Chain Heal in damage phases. Learn to anticipate those on each boss. [top]Your roles as a shamanMore important than anything else: Do not mistake 10mans for 25mans or vice versa. For shamans they are different worlds and throwing them together will lead to total confusion. Always tell others wether you are raiding 10mans or 25mans, and if normal modes or hard modes. Shamans have always been the jack of all trades, master of nothing class. Since our arguably overpowered apex in sunwell, Blizzard has taken extreme care to not let that happen again. So contrary to other classes, there is no one true way to play resto shaman, but a set of vaguely defined roles in your raid that seem to work well. You will almost never do one of these roles alone, but knowing about them will help you identify spots where you fit. [top]The raid healerIn the minds of the average raid leader shamans are raid healers. Your role here is to provide the necessary HPS to keep the whole lot of non tanks alive. Healing Rain is the shaman's great AoE heal, and scales well if five or more people are standing in it. You can only ever cast one of these, so you can fill the rest of time with our signature spell, the Chain Heal. Earthliving Weapon procs will be a significant portion of your healing on 25mans. But there is a downside to this. If DPS do not watch to stand in your Healing Rain, you will waste tons of mana without actually healing someone. Also your Chain Heal is useless if the raid is spread out and takes random spot damage, like on Halfus heroic or in the later stages of Ascendant Council. These constraints are usually more of a problem on 10mans, but can also affect you in 25mans if your raid does not mind your weaknesses. [top]The tank healerThroughout WotLK paladins were the tank healer period. Now this role can be filled by every healer to a certain degree, including shamans who turn out to be very good at it. Earth Shield and Ancestral Healing provide a passive buffer to the tank, and Greater Healing Wave is the single strongest tank healing spell in the game. Your weakness here is the Tidal Waves buff. You can not have it up all the times, and without it your heals are drastically weaker. Also shaman do not have a lot of instant heals so you will have a harder time healing the tank if you need to move a lot. Also paladins remain more efficient when healing more than one tank because of their Beacon of Light mechanic. [top]The mana batteryMana Tide post 4.0.6 scales for every healer in your raid with your spirit. Your spirit is their mana. Always keep that in mind when deciding on gear or strategy. Placing your Mana Tide should always be done to profit the raid, not your personal mana bar. Talk with your fellow healers when the first Mana Tide is most useful, and then remember to place it, even if you don't need the mana yourself. place it so that all healers are in range. 4.2 drastically reduces Mana Tide, but even then it remains the strongest mana cooldown in the game when seen on the entire mana pool of the healers. [top]The backup healerSince shaman have little wind-up time for their strongest heals (as opposed to druids or discipline priests for example), but cannot sustain them without having time to regenerate mana in phases with few healing needed, you can think of yourself as the joker for your raid. Heal all out when necessary, heal nothing or regenerate using Telluric Currents else. This will also ensure you're getting your worth from our mastery which performs poorly when used to top people off. The downside is that it is much harder to anticipate when you need to switch styles. [top]TalentsLegend:
[top]Restoration Tree
[top]Enhancement Tree
[top]Elemental Tree
[top]Talent BuildsThere is currently no one and only resto build. Whatever you do, do not just copy a build blindly from a fellow shaman without considering his decisions first. There may be vast differences in your play styles. If you design your build, these are the questions at hand:
Here are some sample specs for your convenience. Try to understand the patterns, and make your own. Sample specs for 25mans generally all take Blessing of the Eternals, but may lose points in Ancestral Awakening. 10mans vice versa. 25mans optionally drop Ancestral Healing. All Elemental Precision specs take 2/3, as more is generally overkill at decent spirit values. Concussion is taken over Convection as most players will reach the breakpoint of 8800 lightning bolt damage eventually.
[top]Glyphs[top]Prime Glyphs
[top]Major Glyphs
[top]Stats[top]Stat RatingsIf you must have stat ratings, use these. But keep in mind, that if you do, you only fool yourself. There are no stat ratings.
If you are smart enough to read this sentence, then consider these values completely arbitrary (see the stamina value). The gist of resto shaman gearing still is the same as in the first section. Don't wear cloth or leather because the 5% bonus to intellect is so strong. Get set bonuses if they are strong. Get higher item level because those items have more intellect. Prefer spirit items because then you will have more spirit compared to reforging for spirit. If this sounds easy to you, well, it is. The hard job is choosing your favorite secondary stat. And for that, you will not get an easy answer. Do read on. [top]IntellectIntellect is the main stat. Get lots of it. And then get more. It directly converts to spell power. It is part of the regen formula and slightly boosts the value of spirit. It converts weakly into crit. It gives you a bigger mana pool which again boosts your regen. [top]SpiritSpirit is the main regeneration stat. It's the strongest stat for that by far. Although it is technically a secondary stat it is important enough for us to be treated as a primary stat. Acceptable spirit levels for T13 range from as low as 1800 to nearly 4000 depending on your raid size and composition, difficulty, and your role and mana management skills. There is no one answer. Get as much as you think you need, then stop. [top]Intellect vs. SpiritWhenever you get the chance to boost one of them, you should do so. Intellect is derived from item level, so the only way to boost it is to get better gear or gem/enchant for it, the latter of which you should generally do. Spirit is a regular secondary stat and can be reforged, but you should look for gear with native spirit on it. Certain trinkets have very strong spirit procs, for example [Jar of Ancient Remedies] and [Darkmoon Card: Tsunami]. In those cases where you have to decide between intellect and spirit you will want intellect. Previous versions of his entry recommended Heartsong over Power Torrent as a weapon enchant. The both have a similar budget of around 126-130 stat points (#342), but the Heartsong proc has a higher uptime and is more reliable. It also scales with Mana Tide. As of T13 this distinction is mostly a matter of personal preference, and shamans who will have to play hybrid as elemental will want Power Torrent on their best weapon to be used for both specs. One exception was to gem and enchant everything possible into spirit, essentially turning yourself into a mana battery for other healers. This tactic was popular before the purification buff in cutting edge 25man raids. The practice was already out of favor in late T11, and the changes to Mana Tide in 4.2 have completely killed off any value in doing so. [top]HasteHaste is the main throughput secondary stat. It comes with the side effect of negative mana regeneration, because you will burn your mana faster with more haste. At lv85 we need 128.057 rating for 1% haste. All direct heals (Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Greater Healing Wave, Chain Heal) are affected directly by haste. For those it is the strongest thoughput stat by a large margin. As haste will also reduce the global cooldown, it will have full effect on the cast time of all your instant casts. Hot effects however will not scale as well with haste. The hot portion of Riptide and Healing Rain and all Earthliving procs will get additional ticks at certain breakpoints. These breakpoints are affected by Wreath of Air (+5%), being a goblin (+1%) and having Dark Intent (+3%) from a warlock. These are the first few breakpoints for each combination. Riptide glyphed: 21 sec
Earthliving weapon duration: 12 sec
Riptide unglyphed: 15 sec
Healing Rain (HR +1 initial tick, see SQ&A#103)
These values are derived from Keldion's Warlock DOT Haste Spreadsheet. The most prominent of these are the 608 breakpoint for a 7 tick Healing Rain, and the 780/916 for 5 ticks Earthliving. If you are near one of these breakpoints and have a healing style that makes use of the affected spells, it might be a good idea to target them. Do not overvalue these breakpoints though. While the first ones are strong and easy to get, #183 has an example calculation that puts the 916 breakpoint at less than 150 HPS. Especially on 10man where you don't have as much Earthliving uptime you can almost ignore these. On 25mans the Earthliving effect will take a larger portion. For Firelands hardmode raiders the 1858/2005 breakpoint of Riptide may be interesting, as Riptide tends to be a large portion of healing 10mans. The large loss in mastery and crit will mean a massive loss in mana efficiency though. With lower gear, these are too hard to achieve and should be ignored. The DOT clipping mechanic does apply for our Riptide though. If you refresh a Riptide with only the last tick remaining, the remaining time will get added to the new Riptide, essentially voiding the breakpoint. If you roll Riptides on one or two tanks most of the time, this greatly reduces the value of Riptide breakpoints for you (R41#197). It has been suggested to aim for a second Healing Rain breakpoint (commonly 2892 or 3049) for Dragon Soul hardmodes but no actual data supports this yet. (R41#290 TODO: backup with live data) Note that the goblin racial is 1% haste (1), not haste rating. Ratings get summed up before being converted into a haste percentage, so the racial is actually stronger than 128 rating. According to Maltese, Gift of the Naaru scaled with haste as well (CT#69). This was apparantly changed when changing Gift of the Naaru to a percentage base heal.
[top]CritCrit is a hybrid stat that affects all heals you have in one or more ways, and also comes with a small mana regeneration component via Improved Water Shield. It will also proc Ancestral Fortitude and Ancestral Awakening. The regeneration component is roughly 3-5 times weaker than pure spirit for comparison (#47, R41#146). At lv85 we need 179.28 rating for 1% crit. In terms of throughput crit will be generally weaker than both Haste and mastery for spells that are affected by those, but stronger than haste for single target healing in 4.2. Almost all of your spells can crit though. R41#146 shows that after 4.2 crit is stronger than a mix of haste and spirit. Still, keep in mind that critting is unpredictable and you cannot rely on a crit when the tank drops. Do not overvalue crit based talents other than Improved Water Shield. A single Riptide on the tank will generally keep Ancestral Fortitude up most of the time, regardless of your gear. Ancestral Awakening will very rarely exceed 5% of your overall healing unless you are tank healing in 10mans hardmodes. A common misconception is that haste is more valuable for Telluric Currents. Haste is in theory slightly better in spam situations, but in actual combat situations the time gained through haste will very seldom be enough to get off another lightning bolt. You will only start casting heals again faster and gain no extra mana (R41#329). [top]MasteryMastery is a throughput stat that grows stronger the lower the health of your healing targets is. It affects all heals since 4.1, and most before that. If your target is at 1 HP you will get the full benefit out of your mastery, and at 30% you will get 70% out of your mastery. Healing someone at 90% health will get you only 10% out of your mastery. A common misconception is that mastery makes your heals smarter and thus saves mana. This is incorrect, as you will spend that mana anyway, but possibly will have to heal less later. The smarts stay with you. Also keep in mind, that if you keep healing someone, you will effectively get only half the benefit out of your mastery, because heals on the target when near full will cancel your mastery gains when healing near death (#250). At lv85 we need 179.28 rating for 1 mastery. Since mastery scales with the percentage of health the raid has, it is possible to calculate breakpoints of health levels where 1 mastery rating is equal to 1 rating of other stats. You can read a brief history of this discussion in these posts: #20, #28, #33, #143, #160, #250, #301, #312, #316, #322. The rough breakpoints for mastery to beat the other stats in #322 were further updated in R41#4 for 4.0.6 spell coefficients, R41#240 fixes an error in the calculations, and R41#115 updates them again for the 4.2 crit changes:
Spells with .95 crit modifier are all spells affected by Ancestral Awakening, as the extra 30% crit healing equate to 1.5 * 1.3 = 1.95. In 4.2 spells crit for 200% instead of 150%, so the single target multiplier is 2 * 1.3 = 2.6. These breakpoints have been shown to be not fixed, and will move down a little with higher level gear (#316). You can find an example simulation of the workings in post #322. Note that these are purely based on throughput. The mana returns from crit and additional mana cost for haste is not included. [top]Haste vs. Mastery vs. CritJust to be clear: No stat is bad. No not even crit. All three are very close for shamans since 4.2. (R41#326) Finding your favorite in these three depends on a lot of factors. As opposed to other classes, there is no easy HEP chart anymore. Every stat has it's strengths and weaknesses. In terms of raw throughput haste beats both mastery and crit on average. Mastery gets the strongest stat by far when everyone is low, which is arguably when you need those big heals. Haste burns your mana faster, crit returns mana, mastery is neutral but does nothing for Telluric Currents. A lot of effects do not scale with haste or mastery (see "What affects what?" section). Following is a list of situations where combinations of stats has proven useful. All of these will value intellect higher than everything and will value spirit over everything else until "enough" for the current content is reached.
At this point you will have to decide for yourself. Run a few raids, make a log, have a look at your spell composition. have an open eye for the health levels of your raid. If you find that your raid is topped very quickly after incoming damage, your mastery is better spent in crit. If you struggle to keep your mana up, maybe you should cut down on haste and take mmore efficient stats. If you struggle with people dying before your heals land, maybe you need more haste. If your Earthliving is only 5% of your overall healing, maybe you can ignore the 916(780) breakpoint. TODO: provide better pointers to find throughput estimates and mana estimates for each stat. [top]Items[top]Meta GemsThere are currently three meta gems available.
* - These estimates are very rough and should give you an order of magnitude. Don't quote them without doing the math for your gear, raid, and target boss. See #164ff and CT#119ff for discussion. Most will take [Ember Shadowspirit Diamond] for its balanced throughput and regen over Insightful. At epic gear levels the mana gain of Insightful is only slightly better than Ember in a 6 minute fight. Revitalizing provides slightly less mana, but is interesting for its superior throughput. R41#212ff has a discussion about Ember vs. Revitalizing. [top]TrinketsNote: this is only roughly rated at best. All major trinkets should be present, but only one version, usually normal mode for epic trinkets and heroic mode for blue trinkets, will be listed. See R41#37 for a spreadsheet to rank them for your favorite stats. For 4.2 trinket analysis, have a look at Jadeira's blog: Totem Forest - Resto Shaman Trinkets in 4.2.
TODO43: need more math for Shard of Woe post patch [top]Set Bonuses
[top]Spells and Talents[top]Standard SpellsEvery healing class nowadays has at least a cheap, a fast, and a large heal. So do shamans. Healing Wave is the cheap heal. It's HPS are weak, but you will quickly reach a spirit point where Healing Wave is essentially free to cast or will even generate you mana (#22). With the [Glyph of Healing Wave] you will heal yourself for a portion of every Healing Wave, which is especially nice in heroic 5mans. Unfortunately the higher incoming damage forces healers in later progression stages to mostly drop Healing Wave in favor of stronger but more expensive heals. This is especially true if you are specced into Telluric Currents as the time you'd be casting a low HPS could be spend to regenerate a little mana. Greater Healing Wave is the large heal. Best single target HPS regardless of Tidal Waves effect. Since the Healing Surge nerf this will be your primary single target spell once you grow out of Healing Wave. In combination with our mastery this is on of the strongest single target spells in the game. Healing Surge is the fast heal. Designed to be expensive, the recent 20% nerf makes it virtually useless for PvE. Do not cast this spell unless you are sure the extra second to cast a Greater Healing Wave would kill the target and no other healer can help out. (TODO: provide pointers to HPM and spreadsheets) [top]Non Standard SpellsRiptide is a talent that gives shaman an instant heal. The duration can and should be glyphed to 21 seconds. If you cast Chain Heal on someone with a Riptide HoT, it is consumed and the Chain Heal is increased by 25% on all jumps. Only a direct Chain Heal will consume Riptide, not the jumps. Chain Heal from other shaman will not consume your Riptide. The 4pcT12 bonus prevents Riptide from being consumed too. For single target spells Riptide gives you 2 charges Tidal Waves, which will improve your next 2 Healing Wave, Healing Surge or Greater Healing Waves. The 4pcT11 bonus will grant you 540 spirit for 6s after casting Riptide, which makes this spell even stronger. Crits from the HoT portion will trigger Ancestral Fortitude. It is our second most mana efficient spell after Earth Shield. Riptide is one of our strongest heals and in the current content you should strive to use it as often as possible for all of its side effects. Chain Heal is the shaman signature heal, a very efficient smart AoE heal even if it doesn't hit all 4 targets. Jumps are based on who is missing the most health (by absolute value) which makes Chain Heal very good for stacking Mastery (CT#82). If there are no targets in range below 100% it will not jump. The heal can jump back to the shaman if they have taken damage. Chain Heal can crit on any (or all) of the four jumps. The healing done to the next target is based on the non-crit healing done. Crits from chain heal will proc Ancestral Fortitude. Shaman's Fire and Earth Elementals are guardians and not considered part of the party/raid/group. Therefore, chain heal will not bounce to Elementals if you first target a raid member for healing. However, if you first target an Elemental, chain heal will bounce to members of the raid (CT#20). Many trinkets will proc based on a "direct healing spells". Each jump of chain heal is considered a direct heal. Other trinkets proc based on "each spell cast." In those cases, the jumps do not count as separate spells. There is a known bug with Chain Heal. If Chain Heal jumps back to you on its first jump (the second heal), it will not jump to a third target. It is sometimes better to target yourself for the first heal to make sure it jumps to two other targets. (TODO this still the case?) As a rule of thumb only cast chain heal if you have a decent chance to get the third jump out of it. It is slightly less efficient than single target heals when healing two targets and weak when healing single target. Healing Rain is the other AoE healing ability of shamans. It is the strongest HPCT spell in the shaman's arsenal. Like most HoTs it gains additional ticks on certain haste breakpoints, see the Haste section for these. Since 4.1 Healing Rain works with Focused Insight, but will receive only 24% due to a known bug. Due to another known bug the initial tick and every tick gained from haste will not receive bonuses from Focused Insight. If you are on group heal duty, this is one of your strongest tools. Unleash Elements. Due to a bug the next direct heal is only buffed by 16/24% (without/with Elemental Weapons talent) instead of 20/30%. Usually the wasted global cooldown is not worth the trouble, but it has a niche while moving or when anticipating massive single target damage. If you have time to plan ahead you can Unleash, then cast a large heal like Greater Healing Wave or Chain Heal, and queue a Riptide before the heal finishes. Your Unleash will then benefit both the direct heal, the direct component of your Riptide and the HoT portion of your Riptide, making it a very strong combination (#30). Unleashing does not wok with Healing Rain. Earth Shield How much healing the Earth Shield does is based on the spellpower at the time it is cast, not when it procs. You can drop Flametongue and use a trinket to supercharge the Earth Shield before a pull. The healing (and aggro) is attributed to the person who cast the shield starting in Patch 3.0.2 (TODO: still?). In addition, Earth Shields placed on protection paladins with the talent Touched by the Light will heal the tank for up to 30% more when they crit. (TODO this still correct?) Earth Shield healing interacts strangely with talents that boost outgoing healing like Spark of Life or Divinity of Paladins. The Earth Shield as a spell is buffed by the shamans talents, but each heal itself is again affected by such talents of the shielded player. As such paladins for example get 6% more healing than warriors. Another strong reason to shield someone is to get the increased healing from Nature's Blessing on them. Due to a bug this is only 15% instead of 18%, but it's still worth the trouble. [top]Other TalentsShamans have relatively few direct spells compared to other classes but make up for that with additional mechanics tied to these spells. [top]Ancestral AwakeningEach time you crit with Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Greater Healing Wave, Riptide, or Unleash Life, you instantly heal the raid member with the lowest percentage of health within 40 yards for 30% of the amount healed, calculated after crit and mastery including any overhealing. As of Patch 4.1, previous issues with the percentage seem to be fixed and the heal is once again 30% flat. Ancestral Awakening cannot crit and will not proc Earthliving. (TODO instantly? wasn't there a delay?) Ancestral Awakening percentage of your healing will seldomly exeed 8-10%, and will only reach this much if you are purely on single target duty. [top]Earth Living WeaponMake sure that this buff is always on your weapon. Earth Living Weapon (ELW) causes any direct heals to proc a small hot called Earthliving on the target and gives you a flat healing power bonus. Earthliving will proc off: Riptide, Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave, any bounce of Chain Heal, and any Healing Rain ticks. The proc has no internal cool down and can potentially proc off every such heal, but all Healing Rain and Chain Heal have a greatly reduced proc chance. Earthliving will not proc off: Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield, Ancestral Awakening, or Glyph of Healing Wave. [top]Tidal WavesWhen you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave or Greater healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of your Healing Surge spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast. This effect will make or break these three spells, so be sure to keep an eye on it. [top]Spiritwalker's GraceSpiritwalker's Grace is a cooldown that allows us to keep on casting while moving, jumping or getting thrown around. The duration was increased to 15s in 4.0.6. It may be cast while casting other spells, but there is a known bug that Healing Rain will get interrupted when Spiritwalker's Grace is cast (R41#20). [top]Mana Tide TotemMana Tide was reworked in 4.0.6 to affect the whole raid and provide 400% of the casting shaman's spirit for it's duration. The duration can be talented to last longer, which you should do. In exchange for that it no longer is affected by "short-lived spirit buffs". This was done to prohibit popping 2k spirit trinkets together with Mana Tide, but in reality certain effects still count:
If you want to know how much of your spirit will work for other healers, #179 has some easy napkin math on that. For each 250 spirit on your gear, each additional healer will gain 91 spirit over the course of a boss fight if you put down your Mana Tide on cooldown. So (purely academically) giving you a heroic Jar for 580 permanent spirit affecting your Mana Tide while having 5 other healers in your raid boosts the mana regeneration of your raid by 580 * (1 + 5*91/250) = 1635 spirit. In case you are wondering: Mana Tides do stack (#233). [top]Mechanics[top]What affects what?(raw version taken from #50)
TODO: Verify and complete all of this [top]Base StatsThese are the stats of a naked 0/0/0 resto specced lv85 draenai shaman, see CT#68.
[top]CoefficientsCosts include 3/3 Tidal Focus. Coefficients updated by Amilie, method for determination in R41#3. In those cases where the coefficients calculated by Amilie matched those reported by Horpti on his guide in at least two significant digits, the values are taken from there, needing confirmation.
[top]Telluric CurrentsTelluric Currents is a perennial topic since it was first announced. The spell concept is simple, you get 40% of your lightning bolt damage back as mana. When asked why they would make such a talent Ghostcrawler stated it was to give shamans something to do when not healing, and not having to worry about burning their valuable mana with dps (TODO find that quote). In reality however Telluric Currents does return mana, so casting it with decent gear is an active method of mana regeneration. This was later confirmed in a Q&A: Quote:
Quote:
TC will be harder to play so resto shaman beginners should first learn the standard style. Do not underestimate the additional cognitive load of reevaluating the healing situation on every cast. Every death you could have prevented by not casting lightning bolts will be essentially your fault (CT#130). Because of this and because the mana gain scales with better gear the Telluric Currents style is currently more often found in high end progression. If you do not spec into Elemental Precision you will have 17% miss, making the returns from TC less predictable. TC will excel on any fight involving damage buffs, which are currently Halfus (after you have kept your tanks alive during drake burns), Magmaw (exposed phase), Al'Akir (later stages of phase 2 with stack on Al'Akir) and situationally Maloriak (during his brief green phase). TC scales well with both Haste and Crit. Haste scales roughly 1.87 times better than Crit for Lightning Bolt damage, but Crit is roughly seven times more effective for TC regeneration as it does not increase the initial mana cost (#335). [top]Focused InsightIt does not work with Wind Shear (CT#6) and the shock does not have to hit to proc the buff since 4.1 (CT#29, official forum (german)). It does not work with Earth Shield and Unleash Life direct heal, but does buff Riptide (#30/#50). Using FI on cooldown for the sake of using it will just like Unleash Elements likely result in HPS and HPM loss (R41#76). It is however strong when used before Healing Rain. In this case the shock works out to more than 20k HPCT for ridiculous 33 HPM (#349, #351, R41#16). Less effective but still interesting is FI charging Chain Heals or Greater Healing Waves in expectation of damage bursts, like Chimaeron massacre. Keep in mind that you are still losing HPS and HPM here, but are deferring your healing until needed (R41#86ff). Unlike with Unleash Life you cannot double dip from FI by queuing an instant directly behind a non-instant heal. Due to a bug FI will only buff the affected spell by 24% instead fo 30% (R41#144). [top]Spirit Link TotemOur new raid cooldown with 4.1. Tooltip reads: Summons a Spirit Link Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. Every 1 sec, the health of all affected players is redistributed, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. Lasts 6 sec.. 3 minutes cooldown. It's a air totem so it will spawn in the left behind position. Keep this in mind when you place it. It's affected by Totemic Focus so the real time will be 8.4 seconds. The damage dealt by the totem is nature damage. It could be resisted on the PTR (#333) but not on live anymore (R41#55, R41#91). In fact, the damage and healing dealt is unaffected by any damage and healing modifiers, including mortal strike effects. This can be abused on Halfus (healing a tank with 98% reduced healing back to full), Chimaeron (getting a tank up again in the last phase), and Cho'Gall (healing dps with 100 stacks corruption) (R41#92-97). [top]Known Shaman Bugs and Oddities
[top]Fixed Shaman IssuesThese problems have been fixed. If someone tells you he heard that foogrizzle doesn't frobnicate our barfoodle, maybe it's yesterday's news. Fixed in 4.1
Fixed in 4.3
[top]Changes[top]4.1
[top]Hotfixes
[top]4.2
[top]4.3
[top]Hotfixes
[top]ResourcesTODO List of spreadsheets, simulators. (yes I didn't forget about the hps and trinket spreadsheets) [top]GlossaryAlthough I will mostly not abbreviate things in this post, you will see most things shortened in actual discussion. Note that most of these are either spells, talents or notable trinkets.
[top]Credits and SourcesVast parts of this collection of information are not written by me. Structure and raw information have been taken from previous resto shaman guides here on Elitist Jerks and the late TTT entry. After that, whenever I copied a bit of wisdom I tried to keep a reference next to it. This way you can find the source if you want to until someone is crazy enough to make them into links (hint: most likely never). These references will be in the following form: Thread Shortcut # post-number...with the following shortcuts:
All parts with a TODO attached to them are to be taken with a grain of salt and contributions are highly appreciated. They serve both for me as jump markers, and for you to identify outdated information. If it's three days after a patch, and some info bears a <patch-number>TODO, most likely it's not updated. If it does not have a TODO tag and is wrong, than I'm either not aware of it being wrong or I blatantly screwed up and forgot to edit something. In both of these cases, please remind me. |
The forum seems to support very long posts, so having this one placeholder seems to be enough. The rest will be added over the next few days, so fire away if you want.
Recent changes:
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A quick note about the spell coefficients.
I determined most of them by switching to my Elemental spec and varying my character's spell healing a few times. The tooltips seemed to match the observed values, due to lack of Spark of Life, but I spammed myself a few dozen times just to make sure. Riptide (edit: and Earth Shield) are the exception, obviously, since you have to be Resto to use them. I'll probably test them again later to make sure. The biggest correction from the old thread is GHW: 96.70% coefficient, instead of 80.60%. There's currently a couple of annoyances with Healing Stream Totem. One is that the estimated and observed values always seem to be off a few digits -- not sure why. Another, a clear bug, is that the tooltip takes into account spell damage instead of healing. You can easily verify this by switching between ELW and FTW. |
The numbers you have for your breakpoints are incorrect. The math he did was based upon someone having actual stats that weren't stacked evenly. Which as I (and you noted) can cause breakpoints to shift.
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84% 67% 48% Which makes a lot more sense vs his numbers because these scale more evenly from 4.01 values. you're also overvaluing haste compared to mastery. And mastery without a doubt is better than crit. I mean, it has increasing returns when stacked. 2k points of mastery ~= 4k points worth of crit at 50% hp. Mastery just plain blows it out of the water. The points you're leaving out with haste vs mastery is that haste does not affect a good portion of your healing. For HR, ES and ELW haste past a breakpoint is basically non existent for increasing hps. For Riptide and UE, haste has diminished returns. Though granted, it's still mostly effective. Where this leads is that, yes, most every fight is going to involve an average raid hp level of everyone you heal to be above the haste breakpoint. but haste does not fully affect all your healing. And while mastery currently does not either, it affects more overalll healing, and will affect all of it come next patch. Now am I saying mastery > haste? Well no. It's at this moment completely dependent upon your raid encounter and how you're personally set up. The post on the person who mathed out his logs I think was brilliant, and basically has it right. the harder your raid gets hit, the better mastery is. the easier your raid is, the better haste is. What that means is individual to each raider, but it also means that mastery is on par with haste as the goto stat for a lot of people if their circumstances call for it. I liked that you quote Vixsin, because I think she nailed it perfectly with this graph at the bottom of this post. Getting a Handle on Tier 11 Best In Slot | Life in Group 5 - A Resto Shaman Blog Haste and mastery compliment each other in a very unique way. There is no real set HEP rule in saying one is better than the other. The best answer is "it depends". edit: And for glyphs, SCT > Healing Wave for 2 reasons. #1, we never use healing wave when it matters, and rarely use it regardless. So the proc is wasted vast majority of the time, and the healing from it adds up to nothing. #2, SCT is a ~15k shield. I can't think of a time when a 1k heal would have really helped me, but I can think of tons of examples where tossing a 15k instant shield on myself means a lot. Considering our choices for majors, SCT, HST and CH are all required in my opinion as there is nothing else that really comes close to competing. all this being said, amazing guide. Very well written, and is motivating me to finish mine... |
Quick read through, you list Mandala of Stirring Patterns as not affect MTT, I can confirm for certain that it does as it is a static +Spirit increase (+321).
The whole Haste vs Mastery debate is a tricky one, because it totally depends on where you are raiding progression wise, if in the later stages of HC's then Mastery is certain to be far better, if still doing Normal's then Haste is. TC, is a vital talent also, but again only if you are doing HC's Points that I use LB's in fights: Magmaw - Exposed Head (+dmg) Omnitron - Inside a Pool (+dmg) Maloriak - Green Phase (+dmg) Astramedes - Air Phase Chim - P2 (does not really count here) Nefarian - Pillars and about each 5% breakpoint also Halfus - Anytime after Dragon is killed (+dmg) Valiona - No Bonus here, I do it when she is breathing in a direction Council - Again no bonus - do it whenever required Cho'gall - Shadowlords and Elementals Sinestra - Not found a good spot really yet here Conclaive - depends on your job, but Mana not really an issue for this fight Al'akir - Adds and boss when debuffed Even on HC's there are plenty of times when you can easily get off a LB that will help with regen, dont forget to use SWG when moving to take advantage of it there if needed. Also, you have Glyph of Riptide as Recommended, I think that is a certain required Glyph |
This caught my eye:
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While it may not be best in slot for the resto shaman personally, as far as a raid benefit goes, intuitively I would think that Jar+DMC:Tsunami would be best in slot, provided the healers in your raid benefit from the extra mana.
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That depends on whether you're working on 10- or 25-player content. In a 10-player raid, you're only sharing your Mana Tide with 2 other healers, so a trinket with more personal throughput or regen benefit (such as Tyrande's doll) is a fine choice. But in a 25-player raid, you're sharing your spirit with 6 other players, which outweighs other considerations.
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Regarding trinkets, is there a reason for just sticking with listing epic trinkets? Particularly, [Heart of Ignacious] provides 385 spell power with some conscious effort (keeping Flame Shock ticking), whereas [Gale of Shadows] is 340 spell power and 285 haste with zero extra effort and close to 100% uptime on the spell power portion, making it far superior to many other options for raw throughput despite being a pre-raid option.
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Gale is not a bad trinket, however the reason it is not listed as a BiS item, or even appears on one is because it just increases SP. It therefore has no effect on Quantity of Mana, nor is it effected by buffs like Kings and therefore on replenishment effects.
I do agree that its an excellent trinket however and takes a while to upgrade. In regards to the Jar, I personally do not think its worth it, if I am going to be gearing for Spirit for regen and MTT contribution I use Tsunami and then Mandala of Stirring Patterns. Jars give 580 Spirit, its a nice chunk for certain, but lacks any throughput whatso ever. Mandala gives 321 Spirit but then procs a lovely throughput buff every minute. Of course if you and your fellow healers are really struggling for Mana then go for Jar, but I would put Mandala as the default option there and then only go to Jar if really really needed. As a case in Point, Cho'gall can be very mana intensive, yet I still did not go with Jar here and we managed just fine. |
First of all, I apologise for my bad English but I’ve got a question,that nobody can answer.
I often help out at healing with my shaman, the only thing I have to do is group heal. Which means, I use all my mana in heavy AoE situation. In lower ones, I restore mana with Telluric Currents, that’s why I also skilled Elemental Precision. So in my case, I’m around the hitcap. In this discussion it is said: “Focused Insight: The original guide recommended this, but in the time since then it has mostly fallen out of favor. If you want to overcharge a heal, Unleash Elements does that job without needing to spec into it.” Well in single target situation I understand that point but how das it work with Healing Rain? Is the Healing Rain increased by 30% and how effective is it? Focused Insight Rank 3 After casting any Shock spell, your next heal's mana cost is reduced by 75% of the cost of the Shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 30%. |
According to my spreadsheet, using FI with HR (for a Shaman at ~350 iLevel with low Mastery and 6 targets at 50% health) yields a bonus 4K HPS for HR. So over 10 seconds, you're generating 40K extra healing for a GCD. For the same casting time, CH (no RT on primary target) would have yielded approximately 16K healing. So in the larger picture, it's a gain.
It's funny because when you consider HR versus FI + HR, the latter is always a HPCT loss. (Edit: maybe I shouldn't post before noon anymore.) |
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4k Hps bonus for the HR is for the next 10sec, it is a 4x10 = 40k heal bonus in 1.5sec (with no haste) so FI worth 26k HPCT in your case. So no, it is not a HPCT loss |
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