I think that Healing Way is a talent created specifically for undergeared Shamans that are attempting to heal through incredible predictable damage. (For example, Heroic Bog Lords. Heroic Naga Guards.) Sometimes it is downright impossible to heal through this incredible damage without using all of your ability and trinket cooldowns. I've experienced these situations when my Shaman was undergeared, and having Healing Way would have made those situations much easier to deal with.

I think that Improved Healing Wave is a must; it's convenient, easily accessible, and there's not much else to spend your talent points on. Healing Wave--once again--is great for situations where you are undergeared and are in danger of going out of mana. Instead of spending your last mana points (and entering the very dangerous realm where you can't even drop a damn totem), you spam-interrupt your Healing Wave on whoever you need to keep alive, and only let the cast finish when they are at risk of dying. This risk of dying becomes much greater when your cast is .5 seconds longer.

But Healing Way? Nah; more or less useless in a 25-man raid situation. If only it applied to Lesser Healing Wave!

Old discussion, Mokkori. It falls to what your guild sets you to do. In my guild there are situations where a shaman may end up tank healing, and for that Healing Way is pretty damn awesome. If all you do is press CH, fine, spec out of it.

Maybe I just have too much +Heal, but I still don't understand why you'd want Healing Way in a raid situation. My Healing Wave--without any Healing Way stacks--will heal a tank to full, unless that tank is at a dangerous amount of HP. The dangerous amount of HP is where I would begin to worry; where are the Druid HOTs? Why did I allow the tank to get so low?

Of course, I've always been a preventative kind of guy. I don't like unexpected things to happen and I don't like dealing with the consequences (although I'm great at dealing with the consequences). I prefer perfection and prevention over troubleshooting. That's why I don't like Healing Way. --But again, Resto Shamans have a lot of leeway with their talent points, and it's not a make-or-break talent. If you find it useful, go for it.

And I apologize if I've unknowingly revived a dead horse topic.

1) I call bullshit. You tell me that one HW will heal 20k+ hp?
2) Who cares what your druids are doing? If you are tank healing, you make sure you do the best you can. Having 18% less healing just because you selected other talents isn't maximizing your potential.
3) Fix your profile before Kaubel smacks you with the ban hammer.

No, I tell you that I don't cast Healing Wave when my tanks are at 0 HP. Generally speaking, they're dead at that point.

What's wrong with my profile? I'd be shocked if I was banned over my profile as opposed to my username.

*sigh*

20k isn't a dead tank, Mokkori. Gear + buffs puts a tank over this. And there are bosses in this game that hit harder than your HW will ever heal for.

Your profile needs correct wow info. If you see below my avatar you see a link to my armory profile. Correct yours. People get warned/banned for this in this forum.

Too much plus heal?? I have ~2450 +healing and my guild is currenting working on The Eredar Twins in Sunwell so I'm goning assume you don't outgear me or have done any content I haven't. Our druid tanks have 28k+ hp our prot wars have ~22k hp fully buffed, I still find myself in situations where I need to spam healing waves on the MT e.g. corrosion on felmyst, stomp on brutalis, last rotation tank up in kalecgos and all healers are below. Those situations pretty much any healer who can will be spamming his max rank heal. In other situations I have had other shaman in guild who dropped the imp healing wave and healing way talents because they felt they were chain heal bots only for a pally to get d/c and get assigned to a tank. At that point they had to explain to the RL why he coudn't fill in as a MT healer. This is a waste of a raid spot if you pingeonhole yourself so you cannot adapt. The difference in healing done between HWs with and without healing way is huge and the the situations I list above happen all the time. Basically if a shaman in my guild showed up in Sunwell without imp healing wave and healing way I'd ask him to go respec.

Maybe other people have strats where the above situations never happen to them but I still think you are severely gimping your abilities for very little gain.

I Agree - Improved Healing Wave (and i would say Healing Way too) is a core talent for resto shaman spec. But in some situations i would say specs without those talents are solid raid-builds. One example would be an Eredar-Twins spec with imp-agi totem for a hunter-grp (resulting a 8/12/41 spec, wich looks extremly strange, but if you do only twins with it, i would say it is a valid spec).

So you would rather spec for the might be then assume that roles will be filled by the correct classes? There are certainally fights where Healing Way is must have, and I spec into it for those fights, but for a fight like Brut, where my role is to keep the raid alive and I am CH spamming, it is a wasted talent point. I am personally not afraid to respec day to day, we downed Brut yesterday and I was 0/12/49 for synergy with the Hunters/Druid tank, and today for Felmyst I will be 8/7/46 for damage reduction and instant GW. Neither fight requires me to spec into Healing Way. For the Twins I will most likely go back to a spec more like 0/0/61 or 8/0/53 and pick it back up.

I think to say that you would make a player respec if they don't have Healing Way is to gimp the total potential that our class offers.

I've got a question for the Sunwell geared shamans about a meta gem dilema.

Is it worth it to keep the [Design: Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] as the meta and switch 2 yellow or blue sockets to green gems to meet the 2 yellow and 2 blue requirement or switch to [Design: Bracing Earthstorm Diamond] and gem straight for red gems forgo'ing any gem slot bonus. I was looking at your best in slot gear and the two slots that I could see that would be the best increase would be the yellow socket on the [Shroud of Chieftain Ner'zhul] and the blue socket on [Kilt of Spiritual Reconstruction].

Switching both from red to green gems would -44 healing for 10 intellect and 8 mp5 and keep the meta proc on Insightful. Or is it better to keep the 44 healing and +26 healing from the meta. The spell haste green seems alright but its a bit on the weak side unless more stamina is needed. I guess it comes down to:

(70 healing and -2% threat) vs (10 int and 25.5mp5) vs (14 spell haste and 14 Stamina and 21.5mp5)
(91 EP) vs (82 EP) vs (96.7 EP)

I've been personally leaning towards the 70 healing is a bit better. It is too bad that there isnt a Spell Haste + Mp5 Green gem. Currently I've been gemmed for mp5 right now since we were severly stiffed on Spinal drops but now that we have a lot more, I'm trying to consider gemming straight Red and the healing meta or sacrifice 2 slots to get the Mana restore meta.

If you are willing to respec everyfight I could almost buy this argument but when you go through the entire instance in one night leaving to respec every fight seems more of a waste of the guilds time than optimizing. When you are first learning an encounter I guess its ok though. I don't really see what we offer is worth sacrificing the ability to MT heal overall.

Imp ghost wolf on felmyst is handy but not really necessary. If you have plenty of MT healing you might not have to heal the MT on corrosion so healing way might not be a big deal for you. In our guild shaman switch to heal the MT during it. Felmyst was actually the fight where the shaman who dropped healing way ended up assigned to MT healing and had to explain why he couldn't.

I've only done sunwell trash buts its pretty mana intensive. I would imagine the boss fights the same. If your socketing like I am and trying to use as many +heal gems as posible, I would sacrafice a few sockets and get the requirements for the [Design: Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]. I don't think either way is game breaking. Your not going to wipe and say to yourself man I wish I had that +70 healing now, this +300 mana I got here and there cost me the fight. It's pretty cool to see +300 mana proc. The +heal extra you get by switching to all +heal is so minor you won't even tell. And you won't drop to many bosses in sunwelle if the -2 percent threat is needed. Thats my thoughts.

I've personally scratched my head and few times and thought the same, and just said screw it. It's not worth the time comparing situations where it might help.

One more thing. "too much +heal" does not exist, and 18% to healing translates into one thing. Downrank to a skill level that heals 18% less for the same affect and save the mana, and when you need that extra 18% because the tank manages to get parry gibbed or something of the like, you can step up and fill in the gap. "I've always been a preventative kind of guy" If thats the case you would spec for every situation, including becoming the MT healer mid fight for one reason or another (MT healer dies, DC's, has to take care of something that happens IRL), as apposed to having some barely useful 3 points in enh or ele. I do not see how you can justify not choosing a spec to maximise your effectiveness at your job just because you feel like CH is the only thing you will ever cast.

I agree with you for "farm" content I spec differently, typically 0/0/61 TBH, and I can do anything. However, when learning a new encounter I prefer to spec in the most efficient possible spec for what I am EXPECTED to do. In my guild Shaman rarely MT heal as we have a buttload of pallies.

To be honest, re-specing for individual fights, even if it's progression raids, does seem a bit excessive. Time how long it takes to respec, and you're effectively adding X-1 (where X is the number of bosses for the night) times that to wasted time (which is a bigger problem imo).

You should settle for a "jack of all trades"/generalised spec, which could be any of those builds, and just stick with it for the night.

About the only progression specing I would expect to see in any raid would be some hybrid DPS types respecing healing until you get the bosses down/hit enrage timers. I'm going to do this tonight for our Kalecgos attempts, in my semi-scrub 1800 +heal set, because I know I'll be healing on the fight, and I want to get the damn kill already

Re: Healing Way. I would never go resto without it. Ever. Not being able to single target heal efficiently because all you do is raid heal is a very very very bad assumption. Downrank if you need to. Spam HW1 with the mana reduction totem if you just want to keep the buff up.

I am referring specifically to a night of attempts on a new boss, like we just did on Felmyst. Typically going into a night where we are downing multiple bosses I will be 8 0 53 or 0 0 61, and either spec includes Healing Way.

I guess I tend to disagree a bit with how you guys choose to gem, but I think I am going to aim for keeping my [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]. I will probably use [Quick Lionseye] and [Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] to meet the requirements for the meta. Everything else I will likely socket with spinels.

I've been playing around with a really heavy spell haste setup this raid week (which I think I logged in). I never had mana issues on anything in Sunwell. I rarely have the shadow priests, and usually don't have mana issues with around 330 spell haste. I'm not sure I want to keep that much haste, but it's been a lot of fun to use and play around with. When the gem vendor opens I think I'm going to keep just what I need for the [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] and socket the rest with spinels. Although, I would like to try a very heavy spell haste set just to have fun and see how it goes. From my limited experience with Eredar twins, it just seems like you can't heal fast enough.

For the record, I really don't see the big benefit from losing the Healing Wave talents. I heal tanks quite a bit in Sunwell, much like Daidalos said, it's really beneficial. You really don't spend as much time chain healing on Brutallus as it would seem. I try to switch to Healing Wave during stomp and when the raid has been topped off after a slash. Healing Wave is also really nice for the spikes during Corrosion on Felmyst. I also don't really see the point of Imp. ghost wolf, it's just not really that helpful for anything I've seen so far.

Well the thing is if you go that route, you would have to use up 4 slots from Spinals to Yellow/Purple.
4 Spinals = 88 Healing (+26 Healing Meta)
2 Quick Lionseyes + 2 Royal SA = 22 Healing + 4 mp5 + 20 Spell Haste. (+7 Healing and 4mp5 from Socket Bonuses and 17.5 mp5 from Meta)

So by sacrificing 4 gems the comparison is:
(85 Healing and -2% Threat) vs (25.5mp5 and 20 Spell Haste)
(110.5 EP) vs (116.5 EP)

I won't disagree with you there, but it is nice to have any little edge. Last night I did not have imp GW and I had no real issues getting MCd, but it would be nice to get into position sooner allowing me to resume heals on the skelly tank. Not as a "crutch" (since the issue for me is less down time between heals rather than not sucking) but as an edge. However, last night I was 8/0/53 and found Elemental Warding really had little to no impact (about ~1k total damage an attempt mitigated) so I will most likely go 0/7/53 next attempt.

Moral of the story, I think Healing Way is a very valuable Resto talent, almost every PvE build I run with has it, but I don't feel it is "must have" for a 25 man raiding Shaman. Alot of people talk about throwing the off HW on a tank on Brut or during Corrosion on Felmyst, and I do the same, the reason I think IHW is a "must have" talent, but if they are in a situation where they have to spam on the tank, and the 18% will make a difference, there is a problem somewhere else.

You can add [Book of Highborne Hymns] to the haste gear.
Thanks for a nice reading.

Fixed introduction to the thread to try to limit the number of useless posts, which seems to have been increasing lately. I have been busy with work lately (and to a lesser extent the Resto Shaman Think Tank). I have not yet fixed the HEP values but it's at the top of my list to things to do -- even ahead of laundry.

The stat values you're trying to assign don't only depend on gear level.

For efficiency, the more mana you have the more mp5 each point of +healing is worth. While this changes slowly as you change your gear stats (not to mention when you increase both mp5 and healing the changes are even smaller), but when you suddenly get +250-300 mp5 from a shadow priest it really shifts the balance. Remember at the end if you use all your mana healing done = HPM * mana available. The more mana you have available the more HPM is going to help and vice versa. Again these changes are usually not big when you adjust gear a little, but something as major as getting a shadow priest can seriously shift the +healing value VS mp5/int.

On a side note while you could go and say "I want to not be dependant on shadow priest" and increase the value of mp5, remember that using the higher mp5 value to compare items is directly gimping yourself when you do have a shadow priest. So there's no real option other than deciding wether you have or don't have a shadow priest in progression fights and gear accordingly, and where possible have alternative gear.

Last thing is the HPS burst VS efficiency - while being able to do enough healing to cover the damage without needing to use more than all the mana you have available (in other words, not go oom), if you're not able to unload large enough amounts of healing on certain fights you'll find yourself losing people while you still have mana. Choosing wether avoiding losing people when you have mana left VS avoiding going oom also greatly affects the values of haste (and +healing) when compared to mp5 (and int) - especially when haste gives hardly any efficiency gains and mp5 doesn't give any burst abilities. So to evaluate stats you really have to get priorities straightened up and decide wether not going oom is a bigger issue or not having enough burst is. Without making such a descision a comparison between items that increase both efficiency and HPS by different amounts will be impossible. And not only you have to decide what's more important, you also have to decide how much of one you're actually willing to give up to gain the other, or by how much one is more important than the other - as obviously niether is useless in any fight.