I don't have actual resto gear on the beta and have to do with my elemental gear,
At 1486 healing on my char screen riptide is healing for 1500 ish initially and 480 ticks, my lesser healing wave is doing 3400 and critting for 5k.
If riptide is meant as a pve raid healing helper in problem situations, which seems the obvious choice for it due to the CH component, I don't see a reason to use it.
If you need to panic heal someone, 1.5k healing and a hot seems to be cutting it extremely close, when your 1.5 second heal is doing 3.4k.
Especially if you compare it to circle of healing, 41 points, no cooldown and heals multiple targets.

Hehe, comparing any heal ingame to CoH is unfair, CoH in WotLK will be ridiculous good, 6 targets with Glyph, instant, raid wide, smart and still quite cheap. The HPS, HPM and mobility offered by CoH are simply unmatched.

I completely agree, that why I'm so disappointed with Riptide, the only real use for the ability basically gets canned by Tidal waves, you will have that really fast panic heal already. Spirit link as 51 pointer was impressive and gave you, that special shaman ability feeling.
Reading the initial Beefy statement , then seeing it working now, just makes cry.
At it's current healing level and synergy it's pointless in pvp as well.

I can see riptide being quite useful in punctuated raidhealing situations, especially if the 25% bonus on CH raises the "base" from which the other jumps are calculated. Seed of corruption-like effects, bombs of any sort -- basically any situation between "HEAL THE TANK" and "HEAL EVERYONE THROUGH CONSTANT RAID DAMAGE", where the non-tank damage is spread at all and not perfectly even makes riptide interesting.

Not to say the numbers don't look like they need tweaking, of course. Though the "CH spreads riptide" idea is interesting, we already have two leave-behind heals (the earthliving HoT and the helper Ancient), so I think it really is just a numbers issue.

They could make a talent instead of Totemic Focus that gives you 25% of the mana costs back every time one of your totems get destroyed. Would be nice for PVP ;-)

If blizzard balance Riptide decently we get nice tank healing rotation. Chain heal > Riptide > Healing wave * 2-5. This would make tidal waves more beneficial.

I douple check your math and you are correct. All riptide coef should multiply by 1.88 and then it would work like other healing spells in game. If this is intentional I can't think any reason why 51pointer need some scaling reduction. When this get fixed Riptide look very good.
At 1500spell power. 2200 direct healing and 3977 from hot.

This is formula how healing spells work.
direct = [base value + (cast time /3.5) * 1.88 * spell power] * talents * buffs
hot = [base value + (hot time / 15)* 1.88 * spell power] * talents * buffs

Riptide miss that 1.88.

What you mean is Totemic Call, but i mean that when someone else destroys your totems (Mobs, Players) that you could get back 25% of the totems costs

The "point of getting the mana back situationally at a later time be[ing] better than getting the mana back instantly" is esentially a PvP consideration. If your totem gets meleed you're not getting any mana return, and it's not exactly effective to recall totems in an arena situation for mana regen. You're better off spamming WS when you can waste a GCD.

That being said, having a mana return on totem destruction type talent would be interesting...but obviously PvP-centric. =P

As far as ripetide is concerned, it's interesting seeing Blizzard return focus to CH after much of what they have done with our class changes have felt like a devaluation of CH in favor of LHW and HW. I'm not overly impressed with the numbers as of now, but expect them to be tweaked eventually. We were complaining about lack of CH love in WotLK, and this seems like at least an effort on the part of the class devs to keep us using our unique healing talent and not forcing us to feel like Paladin clones.

I think they meant that currently for 5 points your totems simply cost 25% less, so you always "get the mana back". Paying full price up front and getting 25% back sometimes would be actually doing less for you than the current talent.

Don't encourage them!

Someone at their class balance department already seems to be mistaken that every class should be forced into rotations between different spells. The game does not work like this for healers. Most of the time, we use the best spell for a given situation, because we know beforehand it will be the best spell. And then we use that spell over and over. Sure you can squeeze out a little more hpm if you use different spells, but the situation decides that, and not your "spell rotation".

If I need a fast instant to save someone from kicking the bucket, then a better scaling Riptide will come in handy, but only for the healing. The whole +25% CH stuff sounds nice on paper, but will never do for a healing strategy. The suggestion to spread the hot via CH was way better, and works nicely with the shaman already being the artillery of healing. Slow and bulky, and needs some time to get going, but then a pure hps machine.

Gnaa I want SpiritLink back. It has definitly more style than this new unimaginative riptide thing.
Especially for the reason it scales with your group, not only with your shaman's gear.
But one thing it will really help with: healing 5er/10er

This is not precisely true, but it's very close. If there is no multiplier to bonus healing with 1300 healing @ 70, the average hit with Rank 1 should be 1162, and the HoT should 396 per tick. The real numbers (1120ish and 379/tick) are a little bit less than this. The formula above without the multiplier would be dead on with 1222 healing.

With Trifle's numbers..
1820: 1645-1696 heal, 552 health per 3 secs for 15 secs

Without the bonus multiplier and using your formula for the HoT, the results equate to 2009 healing power.

(552 * 5 / 1.1) - 795 = 2009

So at 70, the results are less than expected, and at 80 they are more than expected. This is not consistent.

In other words, if there is no bonus multiplier, then the numbers scale differently at 70 and 80. But if the multiplier is applied, there is a consistent coefficient of .21 on the DD and .505 on the HoT. I vote consistent coefficients, they are just really low.

I quickly dug up some coefficients for existing spells similar to riptide (might contain mistakes):

Regrowth: 98.7%
Moonfire: 67.1%
Immolate: 85%
Pyroblast: 135%

I'd expect riptide to settle around 87% (add 1.88 from spell power of cours) which is what 15-second duration moonfire has but of course it could end up as a step down from immolate also at around 80% or something entirely different.

The problem with Riptide is that it does nothing well. It just doesn't heal for enough up front (ala Holy Shock/Swiftmend) to be useful as a 'oh crap' heal, and because of the partial front loaded heal it isn't efficient enough to use it as a true HoT (ala Rejuv/Renew). It isn't even useful for healing multiple targets in pvp (a big shaman weakness currently) because it's on a cooldown.

Clearly they wanted to avoid giving us a carbon copy of a priest/paladin/druid spell and it just hasn't been thought through well at all.

I finally realized why riptide numbers look so odd.
Riptide work now this way:
Direct = [base value + (cast time /3.5) * 1.88 * 0.5 *spell power] * talents * buffs.
Hot = [base value + (hot time / 15)* 1.88 * 0.5 * spell power] * talents * buffs.

Regrowth work exactly same way. So these might be final numbers. But this spell might be added to many talents and then get some additional benefits. Now this not look very good 51 pointer but you can say same about any 51 pointer what shaman have get.


Negg: Coef is divided to instant and hot part. Both get only half of what spell get without other part. Regrowth work just like that. Look that formula above it match every in-game test. Problem is why healing spell get this penalty but damage spells work differently. Just look at flame shock numbers.

I'm pretty sure they've forgotten the 1.88 multiplier off some spells (such as Riptide and Wild Growth). Would be good to get a blue confirmation, though (or some other explanation on why the 51-pointers have such poor scaling).

EDIT: perhaps not forgotten from riptide but I'd expect it to eventually get a custom coefficient anyway.

I take it back. Forgot about purification AGAIN.

Numbers match with 50% penalty but not with missing 1.88 multiplier.


Edit:
Direct = [base value + (cast time /3.5) * 1.88 * 0.5 *spell power] * talents * buffs.
Hot = [base value + (hot time / 15)* 1.88 * 0.5 * spell power] * talents * buffs.

Direct with 1511 spellpower = [795 + (1.5/3.5) * 1.88 * 0.5 * 1511] * 1.1 = 1544
Direct with 1676 spellpower = [795 + (1.5/3.5) * 1.88 * 0.5 * 1676] * 1.1 = 1617
Direct with 1820 spellpower = [795 + (1.5/3.5) * 1.88 * 0.5 * 1820] * 1.1 = 1681
These match with Trifles number ranges.

Hot with 1511 spellpower = [795 + (15 / 15)* 1.88 * 0.5 * 1511] * 1.1 = 2437 or 487 per tick.
Hot with 1676 spellpower = [795 + (15 / 15)* 1.88 * 0.5 * 1676] * 1.1 = 2607 or 521 per tick.
Hot with 1820 spellpower = [759 + (15 / 15)* 1.88 * 0.5 * 1820] * 1.1 = 2756 or 551 per tick.
These match with Trifles numbers perfectly.

So we know scaling formula but we don't know why healing spells get this penalty.

Actually, my numbers were also off.

Spell Healing 0.45
Spell Damage (=spellpower) (All Spells) 0.86

So if all +healing is transfered to spellpower there needs to be a 1,91 mod on each coefficient to get the same neto result.

Problem with that is:
The current Tidal Focus already gives you 25% of your totem's mana cost back when it gets destroyed. Oh, and in addition when it doesn't get destroyed, too.

Effectively what you are proposing is a very heavy nerf to Tidal Focus. Currently it always gives 25% "back", by simply reducing the cost by 25%. If it were to only give 25% back when it gets destroyed, that'd be much weaker.

Would be nice if tidal focus returned another 25% if the totem was killed though.