I'm a huge fan of mouse-over healing. I think it is far better then manual targeting then a casting heal method, mainly since it's faster. I use mainly /mouseover macros for healing, with poison/disease cleansing and my NS macro setup in Clique.

I've used Grid for a long time, I like the way it's laid out. You can easily change the shape and orientation of the targeting frames if you want. I haven't tried any other raid frames since CTRaid, so I'm not that familiar with them. You can change the way Grid looks and reports information, like adding debuffs to show up for certain boss encounters.

Good luck trying to quantify +haste gear, I've always had a hard time deciding when it's best to use and when not.

I am not completely sure what mouse over healing means. Is it what healbot does ? Like you hover your mouse over your healing target and click then mouse click your healing spell ?. I think it would be a good idear to explain the different words and options the addons gives. It is hard for an outsider to understand the options in different addons and pick the right one for themselves.

I personally use healbot after testing grid, which I absolutely hated. You just have to turn of smartheal on healbot if you use it, as it is anoing, that it picks which heal to heal for you. I belive I know better wich heal to use in which situation, than healbot. It has allot of options in how to show the healthbars. Colouring choice depending on if person is cursed or poisoned e.g. incoming heal or people out of range.
But it be interesting to know if there are any other mods out there which makes me a better healer. I am close to be to dependent on healbot to heal, so if I am suddenly without healbot I don't know what to do, as using my mouse as mainhealing is not an option.
I have a G9 mouse so I can just setup some keybindings to heal with the mouse, but the options will be limited compared to healbot, as blizzard keybingdings demands you got bar your using set to current actionbar. Healbot only supports 5 mouse buttons

It could be of interest to share with each other healing tips for specific fights. I'll start with black temple boss fights (killed Illidan for the first time in August).

CH: Chain Heal
HW: Healing Wave
LWH: Lesser Healing Wave
SP: Shadow Priest

Chain heal usage: It is very important to check how many targets the CH has attained, you can use sct to show your heals (and overheal).

Najentus: It is possible to chain heal the melees usually, even though they try to spread as much as possible. Heal spread out players with HW but if the shield is about to occur, use LHW to heal them to full. Healing totem is very good in this fight (not in a SP group of course).

Supremus: Low rank chain heal on tanks and the hateful strike soakers.

Akama: Usually chain heal does not work so well. Heal with HW when possible or LHW if necessary.

Teron: Just chain heal. Alternate with lower ranks if you're not in a SP group.

Gurtog: CH works very well. During fel rage use HW.

RoS: CH works very well. In phase 2 cast your earth shield on a shadow priest for instance, the charge will not go off but it is useful for the anti-pushback. At the end of phase 2, do not forget to cast healing totem and earth shield on yourself, while you still have the aura the desire (double the heals). You will have them for the beginning of phase 3 and they are amazing with the aura of desire boost.

Mother Sharaz: CH works very well.

Council: It really depends on your role in the fight. Just a tip: when healing the melees you can see the paladin consecration animation a few seconds before damage actually starts to tick, therefore you can start the CH cast before damage occurs and have it land just at the right time.

Illidan: In phase 1 use HW. Phase 2 (elementals) go crazy with CH. Afterwards it is HW except right after the AoE damage in demon form when you use LHW. Water shield is amazing in this fight since there are a lot of effects that consumes the charges. Use earth shield during phase 2 for the anti-pushback but use water shield otherwise (you have to refresh it every 30s if not more frequently).

Let me know if you find this information useful or not at all.

Completely agree.
For us the tanks are not close enough to each other forchain heal to work. I use HW on tanks and LWH on people who get hit by volcanos.

Healing is trivial. I spot heal tanks with HW and chain heal if the raid get his with AOE. Mostly chuck lightning bolts and Chain Lightnings though.

Agreed. Complete chain heal spam. Everyone should be fairly stacked up. If you can afford it, give earth shield (I use rank 1)to a caster who is getting pushback.

Agree. We use pally soaks and I nonstop spam chain heals on them. Pallys do the fel rage healing if you are assigned to fel rage use HW though.

I usually give earth shield to mage who does more dmg than a shadow preist but still a good idea.

Sometimes I throw a LWH on someone who is ported (in healing range obviously) trying to land it before they run out of range. I usually chain heal the tanks on this one. If they aren't taking dmg I throw some chains on the raid.

Depends on role. I usually chain heal the rank since hunter pets and the melee tend to always need topping off.

Phase 1 I Down rank HW on tank and those who get parasites. Phase 2 is chain heal fest. I usually use earth shield on the tank here but if he doesn't need it casters always benefit from the anti-pushback. Agree with HW and LHW / chain as needed.

Good advice I'm sure every guild does things a little differently but thats very similar to what I do.

As far as giving Earth Shield to casters:
Healers generally have 70% pushback resistance.
So do (common Fire) Mages and (Destruction) Warlocks.
Hybrids get none (Moonkin, Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priest) so any of those should be first choice when attempting to improve raid DPS with Earth Shield. Elemental Shaman probably benefit the most due to almost entirely cast time spells, but Priests and Moonkins are close behind, and Mind Flay is especially bad when pushed back (rather, channel time is just lost). Most hunter damage isn't terribly effected by pushback, I don't think, but moreover I don't have any clue whether Earth Shield would help with things like Slam or Steady Shot. Now that I think about it, it probably doesn't.

I had that very same problem, and I found that holding down my right mouse button has the same effect as mousing over a blank space.

I can confirm this change. Just looked at one in the auction house, and as stated the yellow gem requirement was lifted.

Can't say I agree with this strategy. I use Healing Wave almost exclusively on this fight, save Lesser Healing Wave on the people who can't seem to avoid fire and volcanos. I've found that there's not enough damage going around to justify the use of Chain Heal.

Pretty spot on with the rest of the fights you've listed though. It's what I do on most of them, at least.

Forgive me if this was mentioned, but has anybody else noticed a Water Shield bug with Archimonde or Supremus? A Shaman in our guild mentioned that there seems to be some sort of pulse that eats charges, even if you're not taking any damage. Also, a Water Shield proc pulled aggro on Archimonde as we ran in for an attempt. Perhaps this is some sort of pulse to make sure everybody is in combat?

Steady Shot (and Aimed Shot, which is irrelevant when discussing DPS) is effected by pushback, and causes Auto Shot clipping when it does. I've never done any testing with Earth Shield and Steady Shot though so I can't comment on that.

Some of the information is very useful. But much of it is too general. It’s a given that some rank of Chain Heal works well in most fights. Plus, different players have different styles and techniques for healing. Let’s stick to healing tips that really add some value. For example, I like what you posted about RoS:

I also like your tips on water shield and Earth Shield for Illidan.

I think these boss-specific healing tips are very helpful and will create a section on the main post where we can compile the best ones. Let’s also add for which fights you think wearing haste gear helps. For example, someone recommended wearing haste for Teron Gorefiend – even without a shadow priest in your group due to the fast heals you need to get off the last 45 seconds of the fight and the short duration of the fight.


I’m also going to add some information on what can be purged, interrupted with Earth Shock or absorbed by grounding for different encounters. If you think that information is too broad and should be a separate post let me know. I realize it would have value for enhancement and elemental shaman as well.


I think it’s an excellent suggestion. I’ll get to work on it. What I might do is create some different categories to replace the Tiers. For example, “All-Around Best Trinkets” and “Situationally Useful” and “Oldies but Goodies” and “Easy to Get” (all those quest rewards). The “All-Around Best Trinkets” would mainly be the ones listed as Tier I now. Let me know if you have any creative suggestions for the names of various trinket categories (Vendor It?) I’ll also try to add more information for each trinket.


I’m going to have to wear my Eye of Gruul again for some fights. I never got it to proc that much. There's some theorycrafting in this post on Eye of Gruul: [Shaman] Resto-Spec

Here's the short version:

Worst Case: Healing Wave 2.5 second cast. Cast lag 0.5 seconds. 50% mana saved. 225 Mana Regenerated / ( 100 % chance / 2 % chance * 3 seconds total cast time ) ) = 1.5 mana per second = 7.5 mp5

Mid Case: Chain Heal 2.5 second cast. Cast lag 0.25 seconds. Targets hit per cast 2. 75% mana saved. 337.5 / ( 100 / 3.96 * 2.75 ) = 4.86 = 24.3 mp5

Best Case: Chain Heal 2.5 second cast. Cast lag 0 seconds. Targets hit per cast 3. 100% mana saved. 450 / ( 100 / 5.88 * 2.5) = 10.59 = 52.93 mp5


I usually got 20-25 mp5 when I wore it. However, that was pre-Patch 2.3 and perhaps on less than ideal fights. I wonder if Eye of Gruul is the sort of item where it can easily return 50+ mp5 on one boss and below 20 mp5 on another even though you spam chain heal on both fights? Perhaps due to the length of the encounter? I’ll try to wear it for BT tonight and post the WWS.

This is incredibly useful information to keep in mind. I’ll add it to the main post. I would add that paladins would get little benefit from Earth Shield due to the fact that their talents with an aura give them 100% pushback resistance. Plus, they wear plate.

Now we have to figure out if this was 1) an intended change or 2) a bug and Blizzard will go back to the old requirements in some future patch...sigh. WTB Complete Patch Notes. Were the requirements for any other gems changed in this patch besides [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]? It is now at least two blue gems. Any others?

Just a suggestion regarding the Relics section:

Could u include the math behind the living water totem and 2pc t6? does the 20 mana reduction kick in before, or after the 10% from t6? If it was to kick in before the 10%, then you would save less mana from 2pc t6. Conversely, if the 10% was to kick in first, then the 20 mana reduction would be more efficient.

Cheers.

How does spiritual attunement interact with earthshield? If they count as healing themselves it would also be better to let someone else heal them so they gain mana.

One thing to keep in mind though is that in some cases having a healer with 100% pushback resistance is more valuable than having a dps with pushback resistance. Eg, Hex Lord's spirit bolts on Zul'Jin. If you don't have a tree druid or a CoH priest you will want to get an uninterruptable chain heal (or prayer of healing). While the fight does have a DPS race component, the heal interruption is really more important at that particular point than the dps interruption.
I don't know of any other cases that highlight it quite that spectacularly, but I suspect that interruption on healing in general is more important than interruption on dps, except in specific circumstances.

I was under the impression pushback resistance wasn't additive but rather multiplicative - I'll have to pay a bit more attention next Malacrass attempt and check.

It counts as them healing themselves, same as the final "bloom" on Lifebloom. Hence, it's something I prefer not to use on our pally tank, instead saving it for the warrior or druid. However, I do put it on the paladin in situations where he's getting hit very hard and spam healed so much that he has nearly full mana the whole fight. In 5mans I put it on the pally regardless because he's getting mana spring anyway.

Ask him to double check please. Cant check it myself atm, but I'm 99% sure it doesnt give me mana.

Earthshield is great for threat since the tank gets credit for the heal. I keep it up on the Prot tank during Hyjal for all the trash, he will usually eat up all 10 charges within 40 seconds or less, it's also insanely mana efficient. I make sure the tank always has ES before aggro-wipe transitions, like from P2 to P3 Illidan, he always gets ES.

Skyhoof - I'll list all the fights I know of where watershield is 'bugged' and charges get consumed for no apparent reason. Supremus - think it's tied to him making the fire lines. Mother - charges seem to get used up very fast, there is a decent amount of raid-wide damage, but I think some of her debuffs which don't do damage will proc it. Illidan - Parasite debuff on anyone in the raid seems to be a trigger. Archimonde - no clue what procs it here, but it goes off like crazy.


I'm not sure why people are so stuck on using Healing Wave for topping off the raid. With 2000 +heal and either Chain Heal trinket your Chain Heal should be more healing per mana then Healing Wave on a single target. Now if you are going to cast multiple heals on a target, usually a tank, definitely use HW for the Healing Way buff. But if you are doing raid top-offs for most fights like myself, I barely ever use HW, CH is more mana efficent on that single target and sometimes you'll get lucky and it jumps, making it even better then HW. Average Recount for a night has me around 80% CH, 15% LHW, and 5% HW. I keep expecting Blizz to nerf CH, most likely by increasing it's mana cost. Something is a bit unbalanced when my 'AoE' heal is more mana efficient then my direct heal on a single target...

It's not more efficient if healing way is stacked on the person. If you get that lucky extra jump and it hits 2 targets then sure it will always be more efficient but single target it just isn't more efficient. Also HW7 and HW8 are more efficient even without healing way.

Here are some numbers from my spreadsheet with 2200 base healing and malestrom and and healing rains equipped for thier respective spells.

I agree completely about Healing Way stacking, however as I said, if you are doing top-offs you are constantly switching targets and don't often cast 2 heals in a row on someone.

Totem of Living Water is much better then Maelstrom for mana efficiency. The napkin-math I did last night at work showed that CH > HW for HPM, or it was so close that I'd still use CH, since all you need is 1 jump every few heals to have it pull ahead. This is without taking into consideration the 2 or 4 piece T6 bonuses, which are just godly. Not sure why our numbers don't match up, I'll have to redo my numbers tonight at some point.

For a resto chaman with +2000 heal and totem of healing rains:
The efficiency of HW rank 12 with no healing way stack is 6.43 HPM (Heal Per Mana).
The efficiency of CH rank 5 on 1 target is 5.47 HPM.
So HW is more efficent than CH.

However with the 4-piece T6 bonus the efficiency of CH on 1 target becomes 6.38 HPM so it is almost equal to HW.

With higher healpower (and still with 4T6) the efficiency of CH on 1 target becomes higher than the one of HW, so the quoted statement is true but only with the 4-piece T6 bonus.

I personnally find this quite striking as I was not aware of this fact. So I'll probably only use CH on najentus in the future (along whis LHW when necessary of course)


PS
edit: here are my numbers
For a resto chaman with +2000 heal and totem of healing rains:
HW rank 12 with no healing way heals for 4400 and costs 684 mana. 4400/684 = 6.43 HPM
With no T6 bonus, CH rank 5 on 1 target heals for 2807 and costs 513 mana. 2807/513 = 5.47 HPM
With 4-piece T6 bonus, CH rank 5 on 1 target heals for 2947 and costs 462 mana. 2947/462 = 6.38 HPM

With the 4-piece T6 bonus, +2400 heal and totem of healing rains:
HW rank 12 with no healing way heals for 4776 and costs 684 mana. 4776/684 = 6.98 HPM
CH rank 5 on 1 target heals for 3277 and costs 462 mana. 3277/462 = 7.09 HPM
CH is more effient than HW in Heal Per Mana.

Post-Post-Scriptum
HW has a much better HPS (Heal Per Second), so if you're sure the CH will not jump to a second target and you don't necessarily want to save mana, HW is better than CH, even with no healing way stack.

I am 100% certain it does. It used to be the case it didn't give mana through spiritual attunement, but this was changed in the same patch that made it so that overhealing wouldn't generate mana through spiritual attunement.

Hmm, my mistake then. It appears I've been playing with outdated information.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Likely it will depend heavily upon the group you raid with, and your healing team. On specific fights I'm actually spamming LHW even though I certainly would rather not (Najentus), others I'm all about Chain Heal. Last night on Azgalor I found myself using HW r8 a suprising amount, to the tune of 25% or more, without excessive overheal. Given that, Healing Way more than paid for itself in my spec.

Those numbers are correct if you are not using a relic for HW. There is no reason not to use a relic however since you can macro
/cast healing wave
/equip totem of the malestrom (or Spontaneous growth if you prefer).
In which case the mana used drops down to 660. This incerases HW12 HPM to 6.67.

Again if you using malestrom on HW increases HW HPM to 4776/660 = 7.236

Since there is no reason not to have an optimal relic equipped per heal it isn't apples to apples if you use a relic on chain heals but not on HW.

I thought pushback resistance was one of the few mechanics in the game that was additive. For example the 70% from Earth Shield was added to the 35% from Aura of Concentration to equal 100% resistance (105% technically).

Relics are applied before set bonuses. So, yes, you save slightly less mana from the set bonus when using the totem – 2 mana per heal (51.3 mana saved vs. 49.3 mana saved). It’s not really significant.

Mana is really not an issue for our class anymore with the change to water shield and the mana spring totem. Most shaman will want to use [Totem of Healing Rains].

Chain Heal (5) with relic and 2T6: (513-20) * .90 = 443.7 mana
Chain Heal (5) with 2T6: (513) * .90 = 461.7 mana

Looks like the change was part of Patch 2.1.0. I'll add the info on Spiritual Attunement to the section that discusses who should get an Earth Shield.