xarg

I've dodged taking healing way for a fair while now, it's so rarely useful. Especially once you have t6 set bonuses, chain heal is so much a better spell that you're better off with chain heal, even if it's only hitting one target. It's rare for healing way to be stacked to 3 so I don't see the point in having it at all. The problem with losing improved healing wave is that you're basically resigning yourself to never casting the spell, as with a longer cast time it's inferior to chain heal in every way.

It's up to you if you are comfortable with this - look through wws for your last few raids and make sure you never cast it. And also weigh up the loss of this spell compared to the benefits from whatever other talent you're putting points into.

 

Anedris

Illidan is one fight where it makes a lot of sense to have shaman tank healing (in phase 1/3/5). They're not very well suited to dealing with parasite or agonizing flames damage. (Of course, the healing in phases 1/3/5 is not terribly demanding, but just an example to throw out.)

I would think the talent would be more pertinent if you ever run any heroics though. (Which it is of course entirely possible that you do not, or that you outgear them so badly that they really don't matter, which is probable.)

 

Mishael

I have some questions regarding haste that I have not seen answered on here, and I think we may want to look at re-evaluating HEP values for T6.5 level gear given the answer.

As I have geared up in Sunwell and seen my haste number skyrocket I have noticed that haste is clearly not a liner stat. Sitting at 21% (344) haste my HW/CH still takes 2.05 seconds to cast while a linear scaling would have it at 1.975 seconds. My speculation is that haste is applied percent by percent with each percent based on the scaling cast time rather than the base cast time. If this is the case the 21st percent of hast would be worth ~.8 what the 1st percent is worth.

Can anyone confirm this math?

If this is the case, given a diminishing return on haste, the scaling benefit of +healing with haste, and the abundance of haste on SWP gear, I think that haste should be given a slightly lower score. Additionally, given the small amount of stam on SWP T6 I think stam should be rated higher (I have seen my buffed HP drop about 500 in SWP and every fight has heavy raid damage).

Thoughts?

 

Hodor

What haste does, is increase your casting speed.

In short: With 10% haste, you cast 10% more spells in the same time. With 20% haste, you cast 20% more spells in the same time. With 100% haste, you cast 100% more spells in the same time.

Haste does not have diminishing returns.

If Haste would decrease the cast time of your spells linearly, it would have increasing returns.

 

TheDooft

Hi, I have a question about downranking coefficient and last rank of healing spell.

The formula to calculate downranking coefficient is afaik :
(lvl_learned + 5)/70

Does it mean that applied to HW rank 12 (learned at level 70), the coefficient will roughly be 1.07, or is the coefficient capped to 1 ?

 

lrdx

The Wiki currently shows [Ring of Flowing Life] as best resto shaman ring, and [Blessed Band of Karabor] beeing second best. While this is true when going by the HEP values you provided, I disagree, I believe you still overvaluate MP5.

I have created a Google Spreadsheet to show the math. (if you don't have Google Docs: Excel export here ) Fill the heal, haste and MP5, and set an amount of target heal-per-sec. If you want to compare more combinations, you can copy a column as many times as you like, the equations in it should not go broke.

The spreadsheet will calculate the healing done to the first target by chain heal rank 5, 4 and 3 (light blue fields), and calculate the percent of CH3/4/5's you should cast to reach the target HPS (green fields). Finally it sums up the mana you will miss in every 5 sec with those spell combinations. The calculation assumes that you have all heal talents and at least 4T6. I ignored crit and the -mana totems, but I believe they change only the absolute numbers, and keeps the order. The calculation could be done for other spells and ranks, but Chain Heal is the most revelant, we use this spell most of the time.

I compared the two rings, with an arbitary gear (I wanted to write mine, but the Armory is down) and with "the best" gear from the Wiki. With both "base gear", by converting 2% of total spellcasts from CH5 to CH4, the shaman will heal the same amount with [Blessed Band of Karabor] as with [Ring of Flowing Life], but will preserve 2 MP5 more, even though Karabor has 2 MP5 less. So Karabor is clearly better choise.

The second-third-fourth column compares what amount of +heal, haste or MP5 you need to reach the same mana efficieny while maintaining the same HPS: the bottom line is that 60 MP5 equals to 100 haste and 100 +heal for mana efficiency, so don't trade 3 MP5 for 5 (or more) +heal or 5 (or more) haste. (In the case of these rings: Flowing life trades 2 MP5 for 7 +heal)

 

Skyhoof

There is an entire section on Spell Haste in the Wiki: Shaman: Restoration

The formula is: Level at which the next rank is learned +5/70

There is no downrank penalty on Rank 12 Healing Wave. Therefore the formula does not apply to this spell at all. The spell receives 86% of your +healing.

However, this reminds me that we need to refine the downranking section of the wiki with the formula Boko derived. I believe the consensus was: (Level Learned + 11)/70

You're not taking into account that the [Ring of Flowing Life] has +7 Stamina and +8 Intellect over the [Blessed Band of Karabor].

 

lrdx

I ignored stamina yes. But stamina does not help me heal. And I do take intellect into account, as 8 int = 8*0.3 heal, just look what the cell contains. (Plus crit what I don't calculate with.) Anyway, what I wanted to say is not the comparasion of the two rings, it's just an excuse. Please take a look on the math, and tell me your thoughts.

 

Zure

It seems you may have omitted Kings, which turns the advantage into 8.8 Int. In addition to healing, Int also gives mana, of course. Over a 10 minute fight with two mana tides, 8.8 Int is worth 1.65 mp5. This closes the gap you listed significantly.

 

Sprout

I find your first statement interesting. I actually value STA much higher in Sunwell due to the massive raid damage you take (at least in the 1st 2 fights I have experienced). Discounting the value of Sta seems rather short sighted.

 

Habanero

Not even close. It's actually more like 1/2 an mp5.

 

Macblade

Why don't you both show your work and the assumptions you are starting from instead of exchanging e-mails on the level of: "Yes it is" ... "No, it's not" .... "Yes it is" ... "No it's not"

 

Krypt0s

8.8 * 15 = 132 mana.
Mana tide = .24 * 132 = 31.68 mana gained per mana tide.
Once per 5 minutes = 31.68 / 60 = 0.528 mp5.

Wowhead also says mana tide costs 3% of your base mana, which would increase the cost of mana tide by 3.96 mana per casting. So it's actually .462 mp5.

 

Anedris

You've neglected to include the starting mana gained from the int.

10 minutes is 600 seconds.
132 / 600 * 5 = 1.1
1.1 mp5 + 0.528 mp5 (from mana tide) = 1.6 mp5 total from the intellect. Using the more accurate measure including mana tide's own mana cost we get 1.56 mp5.

 

comablack

its 3% of your base mana, not mana modifed by int or other gear

for a tauren its 88 mana naked or 88 mana in sunwell gear

 

Habanero

Back to Irdx's point: it's disingenuous downgrading your real stats to get minor upgrades to mp5 and Intellect. For all intents and purposes the rings are equivalent and discussing the distinction between the two is pretty silly. In this case, the Wiki should probably just list them both as tied for the best ring.

Change of direction: does anyone recall if there was a discussion where the precise logic behind Chain Heal was discovered, i.e. some function of the initial target and the relative position and health deficit (relative or absolute) of other raid members around them? I'm interested in the possibility of making one of the heal-monitor add-ons display a best guess at in-flight Chain Heal 2nd and 3rd jumps.

 

Zalein

Jewelcrafting for the trinket, then drop it and get Alchemy. On the other slot I'd level up enchanting and keep that until you have 2x [Blessed Band of Karabor] and enchant them with +20 healing (you only need 370 enchanting to do this enchant). Then drop it and get Leatherworking. If money is not an issue, that's the win thing to do with a new shaman (and exactly what I did when I levelled mine!)

 

Reklaw

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I wanted to talk about resto DPS. I think we are all called on to DPS on the occasional encounter, and to be our best we have to anticipate raid damage and be able to DPS when healing isn't necessary. I know this is situational, but as a 8/0/53 I find myself getting resisted a ton when DPSing. I have T5 gloves with +hit enchant to swap in, but even then my resist rate is criminal. I've been wondering if respeccing for nature's guidance might be worth it?

My guild is currently working Hyjal for progression, but we do dip into previous instances to farm as well. I find fights like Leo frusterating if I can't DPS well because healing tends to only be needed during certain times (after bleeds, etc).

I've also seen talk of people dropping healing wave/healing way as they progress (mostly BT on up). Is this feasible in Hyjall? Would a build like this serve me better? I'm about 2200 +heal raidbuffed and I usually spam CH4 on the raid or DPS when that isn't necessary.

 

TheDooft

From 1.12 patch notes :


But i don't think it's possible for an addon to predict jump, because it can't know the range between each player.

 

Skyhoof

There's nothing wrong with tossing the occasional flame shock, searing totem or even lightning bolt on a boss during a break in healing. However, you should be spending nearly 100% of your time and mana healing. If healing is that easy on a fight, it's time to bring fewer healers and pick up another DPS class. This will increase the raid DPS far more than you could no matter what your spec.

Nature's Guidance: Yes, there are some good reasons to take this talent. Namely on fights where the shaman is asked to interrupt due to the lack of other classes with that ability ((Magtheridon and Council come to mind). I would not take this talent to improve my DPS by getting fewer resists.

Personally, I would never drop Healing Wave or Healing Way as a talent even if my role in the raid that night was to spam Chain Heal. You never know when a main tank healer is going to die and you will have to take their place. Sacrificing these crucial talents makes you a one-trick chain healing pony. And what you gain is fairly minimal (more hit for instance).

 

Habanero

Thanks for finding that for me; I will still have to determine the range if I'm gonna try it. Each player can determine whether they are approximately 10/30/more yards away from another player. If one of those testable ranges aligns closely with one of those, and I think 10 yards may be about correct, then it's quite possible to add incomign chain heal jump predictions IF your initial chain heal target has a hypothetical add-on that cooperates with yours to help you predict that jump. Perhaps it would be best implemented locally on the Shaman's side if there is already a raid-wide inter-player-range survey mod already available.

 

Tyde

I actually *just* implemented an addon like this using exactly the method you described. It has each raid member poll for nearby units (11yds) and distribute the information to the raid through the add-on channel. It only gives information about the first jump, but I felt that that was enough to make the mod useful, at least, if not totally perfect.

The receiving mod is a custom status for Grid that can do a few different types of processing. One mode checks the different ranks of chain heal (1,4,5 atm) and colors the raid frame to show the highest rank that will meet an efficiency cutoff (80% atm, but I want it to be configurable). This mode is intended to control for excessive overheal. The other mode just counts the number of people in 11yd range with some damage and colors their frame accordingly (red for isolated, yellow for one other target, green for two plus other targets). Of course this isn't perfect because chain heal jumps from the 2nd target as well as the 1st, but it does help prevent using chain heal on isolated units and provides the info on the raid frames instead of having to visually scan the raid.

I have a pretty crappy video of the second mode working with just myself as an information source. If you look really carefully you can see my raid frame changing colors as I move among units. You can see it here: YouTube - GridStatusChainRule: Density Status. I've tested both modes with a few other people using the "helper" in Kara, but the hardest part of the whole process is getting all your guildies to use it.

The usefulness of such a mod is of course debatable, with common arguments being that knowledge of positioning in the fight makes the second mode worthless and that preemptive casting reduces the effectiveness of the first. But, in my own limited use as a freshly minted shaman, I've found that there were quite a few situations where I was staring at the health bars and not noticing that I was chain healing the hunter that was all by himself over to the side. I think the add-on could have helped there.

Any comments about the general idea behind the mod would be valued.

 

wilfan

As said before, if you're consistently having nothing to heal through the whole encounter, you either have too many healers or are outgearing the content. The only places where a healer can DPS is trash, last phase of Archimonde and those rare "boss at 1%, all tanks dead, everybody DPS" moments. Of those, only DPSing Hyal trash (after tanks stabilize) makes a difference and even that is pretty insignificant.

Breaking your build is pointless for just that. Get [Hammer of Judgement] and [Sunward Crest] and swap to them when necessary. You'll get almost as much hit as from Nature Guidance and some spell damage to boot.

 

Zalein

Sounds awesome and very useful imo. Gief!

I guess there's no way to have it work without everyone having installed it?

 

Mandrachalos

I think it would be useful to implement some examples in the theorycrafting section under haste on how much haste you actually need to reach some typical new cast times. I think many people aren't aware of the way how it is calculated and can't do much with the formulae.
I calculated the typical marks you might want to reach. Maybe you would like to add them to the theorycrafting section under haste for Chain Heal/HW:

Haste ratings needed to reach these casting speeds:

2,4 seconds = 66 haste rating
2,3 seconds = 137 haste rating
2,2 seconds = 215 haste rating
2,1 seconds = 300 haste rating
2 seconds = 394 haste rating
1,9 seconds = 498 haste rating

P.S.: Correct me if I miscalculated something.