Nah, we use CH far far more, far more. CH first bounce is even more mana efficient then a lot of HW ranks (without healing way)
But yes, for raid healing Tidal Waves has some use, fast single target heals, limited use, but not useless. For tank healing it's even less efficient or even viable. The talent just could be so much better/more.
Please take a moment to proofread your posts before hitting Submit. This post was borderline infractable.
Yes, I have used Riptide on beta. Yes, I'm familiar with raid healing at 80.
First off, Riptide is not primarily a raid tool. It shines in smaller situations (5, some 10-man) and in PvP. In a 25-man raid, yeah, druids have better HoTs. If someone needs a HoT, let the druid do it. I have no problem with that. But it's an extra option -- when you need to move, and you will, you can still do something to help out, whether it's tossing Riptide at a low-hp DPS class, or a small heal and HoT buffer on the tank that you can strip off later with Chain Heal.
I think concerns about HW overheal are minimal. Have you seen buffed HP pools at 80? Tanks will all have >30k, but more importantly, regular DPS classes and other healers will all have close to 20k. At that point, a 7.5k heal that crits for 12k doesn't seem small anymore. In fact, anything smaller would barely be useful.
I do think it'd be nice for Riptide's up-front heal to be a bit bigger, but otherwise I'm satisfied with resto shamans overall.
Sorry if my post was a bit scattered, but I was trying to cover alot of ground quickly. Your statement that people only use CH, and that that having a midling heal is better than none, while true, does not address the point that if doing so leaves you with no mana, all you have done is delay the inevitable. The solutions I outlined were just what I would consider BETTER options. Any of them would make us better healers in 5, 10, AND 25 man instances, and more flexible to boot.
As for Riptide, I agree with everything you said, I was just saying that your statement regarding using it as a Pre-HoT to help on tanks seems counterproductive from a use standpoint. CH is 19% mana, RT is 18%. With Both you get the TW buff (or will when they implement it). The difference though is CH can heal alot more in the process. RT is a nice movement spell, it has potential and an oh crap spell. But it wont see regaular use, nor will it significantly change the % of CH we use which was one of the stated goals of our new talents.
No idea if anybody has posted similar ideas but im going to post em anyway. Feel free to input feedback
1) Change to Improved Chain Heal:
Increases the amount healed by your Chain Heal by 10/20%, also, when 2 or more jumps of a Chain Heal crit, you have a 50/100% chance to consume a Water Shield charge.
This would allow our best heal to benefit from crit based mana regen, as i foresee the downrank nerf killing our mana with Chain Heal
2) Reverse Tidal Waves. After you cast a Healing Wave or a LHW you reduce the cast time of your next 2 Chain Heals by 30%. Maintain the extra bonus healing to HW and LHW.
3) Put back Spirit Link, an ability i was really looking forward to playing with, looked to be very original and unique to the shaman class that Blizz scrapped because they didnt feel like putting the time and effort into balancing and fixing the problems with it. Or, buff riptide hugely, as it stands its a terrible idea for a 51pt talent, and raising how much it heals doesnt change much. I heard an idea somewhere about chain heal spreading the riptide HoT effect (and possibly even the 25% boost to CH), which given proper balancing wouldn't be OP and would allow us too keep up with other healers.
As far as i see, our talents seem to make us lean towards the new tank healers, and if thats the case, im re-rolling or respeccing. Most likely respec because i love the shaman class more than any other despite Blizzard neglecting us so (except in Sunwell, that instance was the best thing to happen to raiding shamans)
These are obviously PvE healing suggestions, not PvP ones. Its been a long time since i seriously PvP'd (like season 1 early 2) but crit based mana regen is a great fix to mana regen in arena, which always drove me insane, after tide was burned (someone familiar with shamans would know to look for it and kill it asap, i know i do) you had to spam water shield and hope some hunter or lock is dumb enough to sick their pet on you. Also by making us crit-based our healing output is obviously increased by quite a bit, and Clease Spirit seems very nice as well, removing a poison, disease (will become very handy in arena vs. DKs) AND a curse, not OR.
Nah, we use CH far far more, far more. CH first bounce is even more mana efficient then a lot of HW ranks (without healing way)
But yes, for raid healing Tidal Waves has some use, fast single target heals, limited use, but not useless. For tank healing it's even less efficient or even viable. The talent just could be so much better/more.
I outlined how Riptide and Tidal Waves are excellent for tank healing about two pages back, and if they keep buffing Riptide it's going to be better than straight Healing Wave by a wider margin.
I`m just wondering how we got back to Shaman`s having poor mana regen, when we have someone that has said he has no problems with mana right now in raids. I think the real issues is simply people expecting to play the way they played in TBC. (Which is understandable, but not helpful moving forward.)
Also, as I see the healing situation, I don`t think that we can simply have a healing spell rotation, but more of a healing spell priority, were we will cast lesser healing waves in low damage encounters (which cost virtually nothing with the new watershield talents) and Riptide and chain heals in more heavy raid damage situations.
As for what we bring to raid, I feel that we bring about as much as any other class will to raids, when all is said and done. According to Blizzard, many of the changes are intended to make it so that it doesn`t matter what class you bring to raid. But simply that you can play with whom ever you want to play with. That may not sit well with people in a more competitive raid environment, but that is the intent of Blizzard.
I have checked with as many resto shamans in beta as possible . and he is the ONLY one not having mana issues. Many of the shamans are geared in the new tier gear. We have tried many different options . .none of us are "stuck in a rut" healing wise. We have changed spec's, jewels, gear, which spells cast, tank and raid healing. The result is always the same .. resto shamans have major mana issues. Our heals are weaker than priests and druids (we need scaling!), the mana cost more, our mana regen sucks. Until Blizzard fixes these problems resto shamans will struggle to find a place in a raid. Blizzard is aware of the issues and I hope they will be able to make enough adjustments to make us viable in WOLK.
I have checked with as many resto shamans in beta as possible . and he is the ONLY one not having mana issues. Many of the shamans are geared in the new tier gear. We have tried many different options . .none of us are "stuck in a rut" healing wise. We have changed spec's, jewels, gear, which spells cast, tank and raid healing. The result is always the same .. resto shamans have major mana issues. Our heals are weaker than priests and druids (we need scaling!), the mana cost more, our mana regen sucks. Until Blizzard fixes these problems resto shamans will struggle to find a place in a raid. Blizzard is aware of the issues and I hope they will be able to make enough adjustments to make us viable in WOLK.
A quick & dirty comparison puts shamans spell costs and healing numbers in the same ballpark druid heals but I didn't look very far into talents. Comparing regen is more tricky. On my druid I've got about 430 MP/5 in Naxxramas using full level 70 buffs and a mix of Sunwell/Naxxramas gear (this is a build that takes Wild Growth instead of dreamstate, though). Going with water shield (glyphed), BoW (90-110 mp/5) and say 100 mp/5 from gear I'm inclined to put shaman around 350 MP/5 with similar buffs, give or take whatever you actually get from your gear.
That means first mana pool of 16k mana gives 16 casts of wild growth or 32 casts of rejuvenation. Of course regen gives much more, especially with replenishment. When you say you are having mana issues, are you referring to not being able to heal, say, Naxxramas 10 or are you simply forced to conserve aggressively?
I'm personally quite interested in different classes' impressions on Naxxramas as I'm considering a swap to another healing class (not liking very much how druid healing seems to turn out for wotlk) or just giving up healers altogether (standing around waiting for regen is just not enough fun, no matter how much Blizzard wants to "make mana a factor").
I outlined how Riptide and Tidal Waves are excellent for tank healing about two pages back, and if they keep buffing Riptide it's going to be better than straight Healing Wave by a wider margin.
Kinda besides the point that reply..
yes, RT-HW will be better then just HW, but you're forgetting one big thing here. We first have to be assigned to tank healing for such a rotation to become really viable, and no, I do not see that happening, paladins are way ahead of us and also improving on single target healing, we wont catch up there. Our role will be raid healing, same as in TBC.
Do any of you beta Shamans gear/spec for crit at all?
Shamans can end up with:
+ 5% base crit
+ 5% from enhancement
+ 9% from resto
+ 5% from gear (hypothetically)
= 24% total crit (without any outside buffs)
If you spam LHW then you get one Water Shield orb every 6.25s. (At 0 haste)
At 460 mana per orb that's 368 mp5.
On top of it you keep topping up low health raid members. If Riptide and Chainheal get worked into imp WS then together with Tidal Wave it's going to generate a pretty large amount of mana. Of course stacking more crit and getting other crit buffs is going to make more mana. I just have the suspicion that people don't really like gearing for crit. On the face of it a combination of stacking Int and Crit should net a healthy stream of mana.
Could someone tell me what the maximum crit chance is that they think a resto shaman can get?
(I do realise that nobody wouldn't do anything but spam LHW, but with crit it gets rather mana efficient.)
I was considering if actually could Riptide be changed to affect chain heal in a different way.
Right now I don't exactly know if we really need an other spell to boost the healing of chain heal, rather I could like more if casting Riptide could give some kind of buff to the shaman like "reduces the casting time of your next chain heal by ??%" or "reduces the cost of the next cast/s by ??%".
Last edited by Zumzum : 09/30/08 at 1:02 PM.
Reason: grammar error rawr
I have suggested that riptide re-apply our water shield. I have even talked to a Dev about the whole regen issue. Which really isn't an *issue* at all. It is just a matter of us resto shamans changing our play style.
Back before chain healing was the hip thing to do, we stacked mp5 like no body's business. I think this is what we will have to do again. It makes me a little sad panda, that we might have to replace our sunwell gear with a blue or purple dungeon item with 3x as much mp5. However, I think it might be necessary for our mana pool.
Keep in mind shamans have very good base healing amounts on our heals. So +healing starting out in wrath, shouldn't matter all that much. I think it will just be important to maintain our heals over a long period of time, and being smart with healing of course. You don't have to heal the warlock every time he taps. He is a big boy, and we usually have bigger things to worry about. Tanks, off tanks, raid members who run around in black holes & through fire etc.
I have been healing on this character since I can remember, we have been through a lot. But all I can say is, mp5 is our friend. Always has been. Think of it this way, how would we gem if water shield was never invented. I guarantee there wouldn't be haste gems in them pants :P
Be careful of wishlisting talent changes in WOTLK. I just scrubbed the thread of some recent retardation with respect to wishlisting. Talking about how a talent can be tweaked is generally OK when done intelligently. Spewing out a host of new talents will always result in moderation/shit-can. Tread lightly when it comes to inventing new talents on these forums. When it's intelligently done and applied carefully it's sometimes OK - but we get to make that call.
I have suggested that riptide re-apply our water shield. I have even talked to a Dev about the whole regen issue. Which really isn't an *issue* at all. It is just a matter of us resto shamans changing our play style.
INT is a significantly better stat than mp5 for current level 80 resto shaman (see calculations someone did earlier in the thread), so I believe there is more than playstyle at work. I imagine scaling for resto shaman will be very lacking if we stack INT as our primary way to last longer in fights. Other healers could get the same benefit from INT (assuming they also have access to mana tide) while causing spirit to increase in effectiveness. This leaves shamans to get the same value out of a given amount of itemization budget at any gear level, while spirit-based healers would see increasing value from the budget as gear improves.
Lot of talk about mana problems but I haven't seen any numbers yet.
Earth shield, lesser healing wave and healing wave all cost 10% base mana per second. Riptide cost 12% base mana per sec.
At 80lvl we have 4396 base mana. With Naxx10man kit gemmed and enchanted for int we should get 18k mana pool.
Using riptide once every 15s cost 2% more mana versus pure spam healing.
We got 5% cheaper heals with talents.
Maximum mana usage in 5minute fight is:
300 * 0.1 * 0.95 * 4396 * 1.02 = 127792 mana.
Mana gains are:
18000 mana pool.
13500 replenish.
6000 water shield mp5.
6375 mana spring.
4320 manatide(no glyhp).
18400 improved water shield(460globe per 7.5s. 33.3% crit rate. Total 40proc.)
4300 mana potion.
2160 improved water elemental.
6552 improved blessing of wisdom.
Total: 73607 mana.
This leaves us 54185 mana negative that we have get from gear and other consumables. This mean 903mp5. Good gear give about 200mp5. Even when counting every mana source we gonna be dry pretty fast. Any external mana source that I forget? We can't be placed to tank healing if mana is that big issue and if we can't tank heal we have lot's of talents that have no function. We could be very good at tank healing but mana is that big issue now with current values.
I didn't count tidal waves haste effect but water shield re-cast and totem dropping cut those out pretty much.
Edit: Naxx10man set have only 81mp5 and other pieces and jewelry have 111mp5. 192mp5 from 200iLvl epic gear. All socket are reserved for int.
This leaves us 54185 mana negative that we have get from gear and other concumables. This mean 903mp5. Good gear give about 200mp5.
Only 200mp5 really? Are you thinking about using your level 70 gear in naxx or replacing it all with dungeon blues + purps.
I plan to keep 4 piece for chain heal bonus, and replace as needed with tons of mp5. To compensate for the lack of down ranking.
yes, RT-HW will be better then just HW, but you're forgetting one big thing here. We first have to be assigned to tank healing for such a rotation to become really viable, and no, I do not see that happening, paladins are way ahead of us and also improving on single target healing, we wont catch up there. Our role will be raid healing, same as in TBC.
I think my biggest concern is that the niche for resto shaman is gone. Resto shamans are currently demanded for their group healing abilities. But in WotLK, I think we'll see Holy Paladins become the new raid healers. Just throw on Beacon of Light on the MT, start FoLing the raid, and the MT gets healed for the same amount. Not to mention that this is more efficient for a paladin, as raid healing generally requires lots of small heals, which FoL is best at.
Blizzard seems to recognize this, and is improving the HPS of our direct spells, but the issue (for me and it seems, a lot of people in this thread) is that the direct spells are still extremely mana-inefficient. I'm also concerned that the Tidal Waves haste effect is just going to encourage a lot of bad or "learning the ropes" resto shammies to burn a lot of their mana fast. I'd like to see the haste portion of Tidal Waves changed to some sort of regen effect, or perhaps a "next healing spell is free" effect.
I think my biggest concern is that the niche for resto shaman is gone. Resto shamans are currently demanded for their group healing abilities. But in WotLK, I think we'll see Holy Paladins become the new raid healers. Just throw on Beacon of Light on the MT, start FoLing the raid, and the MT gets healed for the same amount. Not to mention that this is more efficient for a paladin, as raid healing generally requires lots of small heals, which FoL is best at.
Blizzard seems to recognize this, and is improving the HPS of our direct spells, but the issue (for me and it seems, a lot of people in this thread) is that the direct spells are still extremely mana-inefficient. I'm also concerned that the Tidal Waves haste effect is just going to encourage a lot of bad or "learning the ropes" resto shammies to burn a lot of their mana fast. I'd like to see the haste portion of Tidal Waves changed to some sort of regen effect, or perhaps a "next healing spell is free" effect.
no way, if there is one thing that TBC learned us is that high HPS and smart heals own, so FoL (even x2) will not cut it I think. 2x HL when there are 2 tanks, THAT will be insane (for tank healing).
And y, Tidal Waves brings an extra strain on our mana, which we can't cope with at all right now, maybe with super WotLK gear or if some things change. Besides that I also do not find the talent that hot at all, for 5 mans and PvP there is some use, but 5man are kinda unimportant and we'll still sux at PvP.
This leaves us 54185 mana negative that we have get from gear and other consumables. This mean 903mp5. Good gear give about 200mp5. Even when counting every mana source we gonna be dry pretty fast. Any external mana source that I forget? We can't be placed to tank healing if mana is that big issue and if we can't tank heal we have lot's of talents that have no function. We could be very good at tank healing but mana is that big issue now with current values.
I didn't count tidal waves haste effect but water shield re-cast and totem dropping cut those out pretty much.
Edit: Naxx10man set have only 81mp5 and other pieces and jewelry have 111mp5. 192mp5 from 200iLvl epic gear. All socket are reserved for int.
Nice numbers there, but are there fights that require 5 minutes of non-stop healing?
Nice numbers there, but are there fights that require 5 minutes of non-stop healing?
At the risk of sounding noobish (and mis-interpreting your statement), I don't really stop healing on Brutallus, Twins or M'uru (minus a few seconds for P2 transition).
Nice numbers there, but are there fights that require 5 minutes of non-stop healing?
In beta naxx, no, not really. Patchwerk is probably as close as it gets. But this is where the gap stretches open to swallow resto shamans. In situations where chain-casting is not necessary (or possible), shamans are horribly outperformed by spirit-based classes, which are suddenly drowning in mana thanks to time spent outside the 5SR. That extra regen, which dwarfs ours, lets them play fast and loose with their heals, not having to worry about mana conservation.
To borrow from Pitbuller's math, assuming you are spending 127792 mana in a 5 minute fight, but only casting for 4 of 5 minutes, you are in fact only spending (.8)(127792)= 102236 mana.
Adding 30 ticks of OO5SR regen (approx 100mp5... so 1200 mana) to our mana regeneration values, our mana deficit is now:
73607+1200-102236 = -27429.
Meanwhile, spirit-based classes gain about 8x times as much extra mana as we do from the benefit of not chain casting: 9600 mana to our 1200. They go from not having mana issues to having more than they know what to do with, and consequently can easily annihilate our throughput even on a relatively short fight. Make the fight 10 minutes long, and there is absolutely no comparison worth making.
Edit: Naxx10man set have only 81mp5 and other pieces and jewelry have 111mp5. 192mp5 from 200iLvl epic gear. All socket are reserved for int.
Gemming pure int is not the most efficient method, at least it was not with my gear. I posted an evaluation of this yesterday but it either did not post or got wiped in the purge today.
Long and short, for my gear (mostly Sunwell) the socket bonuses made using the following optimal
Blue= int/mp5
Yellow= Int
Red= SP/int
Most of my gear has +mp5 socket bonuses so it may vary somewhat with gear, but using those worked out to be a significant bonus for me.
Re: New beta build- going to DL now and test the changes.
Edit- meant int/mp5 for blue, thanks for pointing that out totemtoter
yes, RT-HW will be better then just HW, but you're forgetting one big thing here. We first have to be assigned to tank healing for such a rotation to become really viable, and no, I do not see that happening, paladins are way ahead of us and also improving on single target healing, we wont catch up there. Our role will be raid healing, same as in TBC.
As has been mentioned both in this thread and others, with 10 man raiding becoming a viable progression path, Blizzard has started designing around the absence of certain specs rather than assuming that any given raid will have at least one of each type of healer. Yes, even given the RT buffs in the latest beta build we still cannot compare with paladins for single target healing, but 10-man guilds will not always have a holy paladin on call.
I could see the new RT buffs making us competitive tank healers vs. holy priests in particular, as we have much stronger buffer heals (RT and ELW) in WOTLK than we do in TBC.
Not to derail the current discussion too much...but i'm curious...is ancestral awakening broken, or working as intended? I keep seeing so many PVE specs including this talent. And for the life of me, i cant figure out why. If this talent isn't broken, or isn't going through some adjusting on how it selects targets, then its a complete waste of 3 talent points. I ran a test to see how many times it procced on the PTR during a heroic run. It procced a fair amount, but i found that nearly 85% of the procs went to hunter and warlock pets rather than party members. In a raid situation where there are pets all over the place, its only going to get worse.
The talent as is (or as tested rather), selected targets based on the % of HP. In any situation involving some AoE, pets are almost always going to be the lowest health targets. For instance, Shadow bolt volley hits you for 2k of 10k. That drops you to 80% health. That same shadow bolt hits hunter pet A for 2k of 7k. That puts it at 71% HP, and thus the recipient of a Ancestral awakening proc should it occur. It seems like such a waste of 3 talent points. I'm not really in the mood to waste talent points on pet healing, considering they will be getting chain heals already. And lets not forget...this talent is based around the assumption that you're actually going to be using LHW, HW, or riptide. So assume it has a 25% chance to proc (crit%), on 25% of our heals (ratio of LHW, HW, Riptides : CH) and only a 20% chance (very genererous assumption imo) to hit a party/raid member...thats about 1.25% chance of actually being a worthwhile heal. For 3 talent points. I hope I'm wrong. lol
Not to derail the current discussion too much...but i'm curious...is ancestral awakening broken, or working as intended? I keep seeing so many PVE specs including this talent. And for the life of me, i cant figure out why. If this talent isn't broken, or isn't going through some adjusting on how it selects targets, then its a complete waste of 3 talent points. I ran a test to see how many times it procced on the PTR during a heroic run. It procced a fair amount, but i found that nearly 85% of the procs went to hunter and warlock pets rather than party members. In a raid situation where there are pets all over the place, its only going to get worse.
The talent as is (or as tested rather), selected targets based on the % of HP. In any situation involving some AoE, pets are almost always going to be the lowest health targets. For instance, Shadow bolt volley hits you for 2k of 10k. That drops you to 80% health. That same shadow bolt hits hunter pet A for 2k of 7k. That puts it at 71% HP, and thus the recipient of a Ancestral awakening proc should it occur. It seems like such a waste of 3 talent points. I'm not really in the mood to waste talent points on pet healing, considering they will be getting chain heals already. And lets not forget...this talent is based around the assumption that you're actually going to be using LHW, HW, or riptide. So assume it has a 25% chance to proc (crit%), on 25% of our heals (ratio of LHW, HW, Riptides : CH) and only a 20% chance (very genererous assumption imo) to hit a party/raid member...thats about 1.25% chance of actually being a worthwhile heal. For 3 talent points. I hope I'm wrong. lol
Correct me if I'm wrong please.
Pets need healing as well, if they die the damage output of the pets master will suffer, sometimes in a major way for certain specs. If the pet is fully healed by ancestral awakening then they won't be eating circle of healing or chain heal bounces, so it still enables more healing to be done to players.
Pets need healing as well, if they die the damage output of the pets master will suffer, sometimes in a major way for certain specs. If the pet is fully healed by ancestral awakening then they won't be eating circle of healing or chain heal bounces, so it still enables more healing to be done to players.
While true, no sane healer would prioritize a pet over a player. AA healing a pet before a player would come down in most people's books as flawed, even if the total sum of healing needed would be the same.
09/29/08, 3:09 PM
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