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Daidalos · 01/14/08, 6:18 PM

Originally Posted by Kastr

If you have a shadow priest in your group, haste CRUSHES crit (esp. for chain heals). If you're not w/ a spriest then on most fights you kinda do need a reasonable amount of mp5 in place of haste but yeah.

Once you have the 2 pc T6 bonus haste is great for Chain heals even without a shadow priest. Haste is better for chain heals than crit, but crit affects all spells where haste only benefits ones that are longer than 1.5s. I personally stack haste since I am mostly a chain heal bot, but to be fair the armor on tanks from the crit in addition to helping out LHW or that CL you chuck when the boss is at 1% is nice. The raid top off on archimonde or najentus during bubble are good examples where LHW crit can be nice.

Overall I would go with haste over crit simply because 90% of the time I am spamming chain heals where haste is extremely good. In terms of HPS haste is 2x the amount of healing crit is (since crits are only 50% additonal healing).

I could see picking up the shield off supremus or getting a little crit on some other item for that other 10% though. If you have access to items and they would otherwise go to waste it somthing to consider but not somthing I would go out of my way to gear for.

galzohar · 01/14/08, 9:34 PM

Haste is more than 2x becuase you need 22.1 crit rating for 1% (0.5% HPS, less since you don't start at 0 crit) while you only need 15.7 haste rating for 1% haste (and it'll be closer to actual 1% if you don't really have haste gear to start with). Not to mention haste is reliable HPS where crit is not, when you're needing HPS to save someone from dying you don't assume the heal will crit you will cast it if the non-crit fills him up, thus a lot of the low HPS you do from crit is lost.

Flopi · 01/15/08, 3:52 AM

Originally Posted by Kastr

Honestly you just need to get in the habit of refreshing it whenever you have a 1-2 seconds waiting for someone to take damage or when you have to move for something. It's almost like a nervous tick for me these days, hitting my Water Shield hotkey. There's no benefit to letting it fall off so, just refresh it whenever you've got a brief break from casting regardless of stacks or time left.

Btw, Water Shield hotkey for me is 4

I'd like to share this little line of code that is inserted into 'interface\addons\sct\sct_event_config.lua'
Inside the file there is a line local sct_Event_Config = { Next to that is a custom events list. I replaced 'lightning shield' event since it's usefulness is none to me. The file itself contains pretty clear explanations and examples for custom events so feel free to modify.

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"--+ Water Shield Faded +--", type="fadeself", search="Water Shield", r=256/256, g=256/256, b=256/256, iscrit=1, soundwave="Interface\\AddOns\\sct\\test.wav", class={"Shaman"}},

It gives you warning when Water Shield fades. test.wav is your own to pick. I used one of windows system sounds. Really helps me to keep track. Also I'm using Totem Timers and that nice addon has a frame for self-shields. I dragged it next to casting bar and it flashes red when Water Shield fades. Now I'm rarely without one.

Skyhoof · 01/15/08, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Flopi

I'd like to share this little line of code that is inserted into 'interface\addons\sct\sct_event_config.lua'
Inside the file there is a line local sct_Event_Config = { Next to that is a custom events list. I replaced 'lightning shield' event since it's usefulness is none to me. The file itself contains pretty clear explanations and examples for custom events so feel free to modify.

It gives you warning when Water Shield fades. test.wav is your own to pick. I used one of windows system sounds. Really helps me to keep track. Also I'm using Totem Timers and that nice addon has a frame for self-shields. I dragged it next to casting bar and it flashes red when Water Shield fades. Now I'm rarely without one.

Pure genius. Thank you for sharing. Shamanfriend also has an audible warning for when your water shield fades and you can chose from six different sounds. I like your modification since you can choose any sound file you want.

Can anyone verify if this is true? It seems like as soon a you cast water shield you get 50 mana (rather than receiving the mana at the end of the first five seconds). Then if you cast it again 1.5 seconds later you get another 50 mana. I can't seem to get Eavesdrop to show the mana returned from Water Shield so I'm having difficulty testing the theory. However, if true, you could spam this during combat and double your mana regen.

Teewee · 01/15/08, 7:56 AM

Originally Posted by Kastr

Honestly you just need to get in the habit of refreshing it whenever you have a 1-2 seconds waiting for someone to take damage or when you have to move for something. It's almost like a nervous tick for me these days, hitting my Water Shield hotkey. There's no benefit to letting it fall off so, just refresh it whenever you've got a brief break from casting regardless of stacks or time left.

Btw, Water Shield hotkey for me is 4

You can grab the shamanfriend mod, and make it play a sound when water shield expires, as a reminder, which should help. (Beaten twice, oh well)

Also in raiding you really shouldn't ever not be casting, unless you are moving to avoid damage or moving to heal someone out of line of sight or range. While waiting for someone to take damage you should still be casting, then moving to cancel it if they don't take the damage. That or if the damage is very very light and you know there won't be any damage incoming, you could be spamming rank 1 healing wave to refresh healing way and ancestral healing procs. Also if you can use [Totem of the Maelstrom] you could also regen mana while you do this too.

I try to refresh water shield immediately after I finish casting something, that way the loss of a GCD isn't as noticeable.

galzohar · 01/15/08, 11:21 AM

SCT and its addons can also show debuff gains/losses as well as cooldowns ready.

sovelis41 · 01/15/08, 11:27 AM

Using Parrot I made a Water Shield notification back with the old short-duration water shield. I made it's own scroll area that ends up being right at the top of my grid panel. When WS goes away for whatever reason it pops up with a sound in big blue text.

Kastr · 01/15/08, 11:38 AM

Naturally, everyone (even people w/ default UI) will have a notification when water shield falls off. Having a sound notification as well is doubly nice. However, that doesn't mean it's ideal to wait until it's off to refresh it. It could fall of from dmg or just time out at a very inopportune moment when you cannot spare your GCD for anything but heals. It's best to just refresh it when you can spare the GCD when no one is taking big dmg and you're spamming min-rank heals on the tank.

Skyhoof · 01/15/08, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Kastr

Naturally, everyone (even people w/ default UI) will have a notification when water shield falls off. Having a sound notification as well is doubly nice. However, that doesn't mean it's ideal to wait until it's off to refresh it. It could fall of from dmg or just time out at a very inopportune moment when you cannot spare your GCD for anything but heals. It's best to just refresh it when you can spare the GCD when no one is taking big dmg and you're spamming min-rank heals on the tank.

Very good point. Any time my shield has less than 3 charges or less than 5 minutes and I have a global cooldown to spare, I refresh.

Daidalos · 01/15/08, 2:16 PM

Originally Posted by Skyhoof

Very good point. Any time my shield has less than 3 charges or less than 5 minutes and I have a global cooldown to spare, I refresh.

I don't refresh quite that often... I usually refresh with 1 charge left or 1-2 mins remaining however that brings up an interesting point. Any mods out there where you could set those paramters? So it gives plays a different sound as a warning that water shield is low?

PSGarak · 01/15/08, 4:27 PM

I assume if you're healing you watch Grid (or equivalent) as well. For Grid, if you have the Missing Group Buffs plugin, you can configure it to display watershield for shamans when its off, in combat. Since I'm usually a raid leader I've configured mine to show people who are missing any class self-buffs (hunter aspects, shaman shields, and mage/warlock armors) on the main center icon of the cell, and it's seamless. There's definitely enough options to make it work in-combat for yourself only.
But, as you say, it's better to refresh early than reactively. Every second that it's down is ten mana unregened.

Shinwei · 01/15/08, 5:31 PM

Can anyone confirm or show me the math behind the 15.7 Haste Rating -> 1% Haste?

At the moment I have the following items:
[Brooch of Nature's Mercy]
[Hex Lord's Voodoo Pauldrons]
[Cloak of Ancient Rituals]
[Hauberk of the Empire's Champion]
[Living Earth Bindings]
[Man'kin'do's Belt]

When I wear these, this bring's my spell haste total to: 186

186/15.7 = 11.847133

So I should have ~11.85% haste. 100%-11.85% = 88.15%. Chain Heal's cast time is 2.5 seconds.
2.5 * 88.15% = 2.20375

So theoretically my Chain Heal cast time should be 2.20375 seconds long with that haste gear on. However, my tooltip says my chain heal cast time is 2.24 seconds!

Am I missing something fundamental about spell haste calculation or is "15.7 Haste Rating -> 1% Haste" wrong? Can anyone answer this question?

Daidalos · 01/15/08, 5:44 PM

Originally Posted by Shinwei

Can anyone confirm or show me the math behind the 15.7 Haste Rating -> 1% Haste?

At the moment I have the following items:
[Brooch of Nature's Mercy]
[Hex Lord's Voodoo Pauldrons]
[Cloak of Ancient Rituals]
[Hauberk of the Empire's Champion]
[Living Earth Bindings]
[Man'kin'do's Belt]

When I wear these, this bring's my spell haste total to: 186

186/15.7 = 11.847133

So I should have ~11.85% haste. 100%-11.85% = 88.15%. Chain Heal's cast time is 2.5 seconds.
2.5 * 88.15% = 2.20375

So theoretically my Chain Heal cast time should be 2.20375 seconds long with that haste gear on. However, my tooltip says my chain heal cast time is 2.24 seconds!

Am I missing something fundamental about spell haste calculation or is "15.7 Haste Rating -> 1% Haste" wrong? Can anyone answer this question?

Cast time * ( 1 / (1+(haste%/100) ) ) = resulting cast time. Cast time is calculated after talents.
2.5s * (1/1.1185) = 2.235s. 1% Haste is 1% more attacks in the same amount of time not 1% less casting time.

If you have further questions read the threads on haste.

Shinwei · 01/15/08, 5:50 PM

Ah, ok. Thank you.

Siggidzweie · 01/15/08, 6:11 PM

I use Elkanor's Buffbar to manage my water-shield and some other important short-time-buffs like trinkets, bloodlust and so on.

I created a buffbar for my buffs, debuffs and a mini-bar that only shows those special-buffs like water shield, trinkets, a.s.o. . I placed it just above my raidframes and let it grow upwards - very comfortable.

Flopi · 01/16/08, 2:57 AM

Originally Posted by Daidalos

I don't refresh quite that often... I usually refresh with 1 charge left or 1-2 mins remaining however that brings up an interesting point. Any mods out there where you could set those paramters? So it gives plays a different sound as a warning that water shield is low?

Well you can use the SCT line if you want. There is the option for 'charges'. I really don't remember it from the top of my head but it's described in the file. Basically you can make 3 events for: 2 charges, 1 charge and faded. I haven't tested it that way but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

Oh and one more time about water shield. Someone here stated that you get 50 mana instantly when you cast water shield. I tried it last night and it looks like he was right. Sadly I was in a raid and mana was incoming from multiple sources so I can't be sure.

TheSilverHand · 01/16/08, 11:05 PM

I think I did some empirical testing that proved that it does give 50 mana on cast.

Basically, after I worked my way into a deficit of mana, I spammed Water Shield and watched my mana. Indeed, I was gaining ticks mana more times than just once per 2 seconds. There was always a small increase of mana synchronized with the casting of Water Shield, independent of MP5. I think that is enough proof to say that it is indeed giving mana on the cast.

Slothrop · 01/17/08, 3:01 AM

How can "Boar's Speed" be said to be objectively the best enchant for boots? Is there a calculation or estimation of the effect of Boar's Speed on healing performance?

Habanero · 01/17/08, 3:53 AM

Originally Posted by TheSilverHand

I think I did some empirical testing that proved that it does give 50 mana on cast.

Basically, after I worked my way into a deficit of mana, I spammed Water Shield and watched my mana. Indeed, I was gaining ticks mana more times than just once per 2 seconds. There was always a small increase of mana synchronized with the casting of Water Shield, independent of MP5. I think that is enough proof to say that it is indeed giving mana on the cast.

That is not proof. Good proof would be numbers showing that more mana was gained between two times -- while refreshing water shield repeatedly -- than the character sheet shows.

Simoon · 01/17/08, 4:40 AM

I tried:
- remove all mp5 gear (so you have 0 mp5)
- remove water shield buff
- cast some heals to get your mana to <100% and put you in the 5sr
- cast water shield

I didn't notice my mana increase by 50 on casting water shield.

However, if you already had water shield up and recast it, then the recast may coincide with an mp5 tick (or some other effect), in which case it might look like you got mana from casting water shield.

• Raut · 01/17/08, 5:39 AM

Casting Water Shield will not ruin your spirit regen either. So, after five seconds you will see incoming mana from spirit unless you actually spend some to reset the CD.

Remove all mp5 gear, cancel WS, cast a totem, cast WS. This should result in you having more mana 0.1 second after WS is cast. Is this the theory?

Skyhoof · 01/17/08, 7:17 AM

Originally Posted by Slothrop

How can "Boar's Speed" be said to be objectively the best enchant for boots? Is there a calculation or estimation of the effect of Boar's Speed on healing performance?

Here's some math from the Enhancement Shaman thread. The calculations deal with DPS but I think the results hold true for HPS as well.

Let D be your dps without a boot enchant. For the run speed to provide more benefit, we need:
(D+12A)(T-t) < (D+6A)(T-t/1.08)
which simplifies to
T < [(1-k)D + (2-k)6A]t/(6A)
where k = 1/1.08. For example, gives A = .16286, and so we have
T < (.07581D + 1.074) t
Using some actual data, a shaman that does betwen 900 and 1000 dps will have T < 76.88t
For 5 minutes, we would need t > 3.90 seconds and for 6 minutes we would need t > 4.68 seconds.

So for a 5 minute fight if you spend roughly 4 seconds moving between adds, running to the boss, etc, Run Speed provides a superior DPS benefit.

Also, most players have either a speed enchant on their boots or the meta gem that increases speed. In fights that have a lot of running around it can be difficult to keep people in healing range if they are moving 8% faster than you.

• Raut · 01/17/08, 7:43 AM

You are not able to back Boar's Speed up with math. You can, to some extent, do this for enhancement shamans since they have to follow a target, but you have a larger range by far. It's one of those "nice to have" enchants. It costs you 4 mp5, but you get to move in range of your target faster, avoid AoE faster, run away from Doomfires, etc.

If you are starved for regen, go for Vit. If not, go for Boar's.

Habanero · 01/17/08, 1:08 PM

Originally Posted by Raut

You are not able to back Boar's Speed up with math. You can, to some extent, do this for enhancement shamans since they have to follow a target, but you have a larger range by far. It's one of those "nice to have" enchants. It costs you 4 mp5, but you get to move in range of your target faster, avoid AoE faster, run away from Doomfires, etc.

If you are starved for regen, go for Vit. If not, go for Boar's.

As a healer, 9 stamina is not really worth 300 gold. Minor run speed is fine with me even though I may never replace these boots.

Kastr · 01/17/08, 3:13 PM

I'm not ready to drink the boar-speed-over-vitality kool aid just yet. I have boar's speed on my SR boots for mother but, outside that I can't honestly see it helping that much, outside of *maybe* Archimonde or Council. Even then, it's not a "get this and your life is 10x easier" type change. /shrug