I have a hunter so I do understand the idea of keeping pets alive. But here is the problem with that argument.

1. Hunters and locks can/should/do heal their own pets when they can.
2. Chain Heal isn't a completely random heal. If i target a member of the caster group...chances are i was intent on healing the casters. If i target a member of the melee group, i was trying to heal them. So i do have some control over who gets the heals. Where as AA is whoever or whatever has the lowest % health.
3. Chain Heal is a base skill. Ancestral Awakening is a Talent. This is the big one. I have no problem with throwing out a chain heal just to keep the pets up. But the issue is, CH is a base skill. Its free. I'm not spending 3 potentially powerful talent points to get it.

I'm still not understanding the PVE appeal this seems to have. It sounds great in theory, but in practice its one of the worst talents I've ever looked at.

Ancestral Awakening doesn't seem to be procing off anything right now (riptide/LHW/HW). Tested with a warlock (in my party) lifetapping to stay below me.

Tidal Waves is back at 1 charge instead of 2 (did I miss that somewhere?). Also the "bug" where you can't chain cast and get the benefit is still in. (HW consumes the TW buff, but doesn't cast faster)

Riptide:
- Proc's IWS / Ancestral healing

That's all I could really think of to test. I /bugged all of it, just figured some people might want to know.

Just popping this blue post here about Druid aoe healing, as I do think it's relevant to the shaman resto role as well:
This further confirmes the theory that most new talents are more or less build for 5 man groups and 10 man healing. I do believe the same is happening with our resto tree at this point. All new (L)HW talents seem to be of most use when taking a MT healing role as a healing situation. As stated, there are plenty of times when we should and could use (L)HW's when raidhealing and the new riptide will help in these situations even more so. However the most common 'healingrotation' I see us using in 25 mans will be a Riptide on the MT with raidhealing in between and then bouncing CH from tanks to melee when RT is close to end. If this is the case, I'm actually quite content with the base idea of the talents as it is now. It would allow me to skip most of the newish gimmicky talents when I start 25 manning again and focus on raw output (with talents as Elemental Weapons) and survival (Nature's Guardian <3), which I would probably have to leave out if I had to focus on improving single target healing. And on the plus side I could respec to a MT healing spec and not stress as much when my paladin tank decides to pull the most of the heroic in one pull

About healing pets. I personally take pride in the fact Chain Heal does heal pets. If your raid loses pets to AoE, you're effectively gimping your raid. Sure a hunter/lock could heal their pet, but wasting time on pet healing is time lost in dps, which results in more time spend on the boss > more damage taken > more healing needed in the end. If my 2nd or 3rd (or even 4th soon) bump of CH can keep the pet up, then yay. This is the great strength of Chain Heal. You decide who gets the biggest heal, the rest is automatic. This will be even greater with Earthliving.

On the matter of mana generation compared to healing output. Is there anyone here who can put up a WWS link to a 25 man raid at 80? I've read one beta tester saying their wws showed shaman healing being far below druids/priests, but alas there was no link. I'd be very interested in seeing actual numbers over the opinions of folks in 25 mans beta. The opinions just differ too much at this point to make heads or tails of it tbh.

Edit: grammar

Someone posted an Naxx-25 Patchwerk SWS in the US Beta Forum. There are also 2 restoration shaman included.

I'm not saying that i dont heal pets. I do and try to when i can get around to it. But my point is that i would rather a talented ability be a little smarter than chain heal. I'm ok with CH healing pets, its a skill that makes everyones life easier. But a talent should put more preference on a player rather than a pet.

This is true, but still a bass akwards way to look at it. Yes a pet that dies will ultimately reduce total raid dps by a little bit. However if that pet happens to get an AA proc instead of a player...and that player dies because of it. Well then that hurts total raid dps by a much much larger margin. And lets assume that the said player was a hunter or lock...well then the AA proc that healed their pet would've been 100% wasted anyway, since a pet cant exist without the master.

Funny that you posted this for another topic and it helps to reinforce mine. Browse the resto shammy heals and you'll find 1 total AA proc for this fight. And guess who it healed? Yup...a pet. Wonderful. And even better, it was 100% overheal.

What the SWS log shows is that AA is either bugged or that SWS didn't capture it. There should've been 3 procs. I doubt nobody else was within 40 yards (otherwise healing wouldn't have been possible).
The fact it healed 100% overheal must mean it procced when nobody was hurt. That seems pretty unlikely, but I guess it could be possible. The pet then of course had the lowest % health (100% like everypne else) and also the lowest absolute health because it's a pet.

On a sidenote: Can AA heal the same target that get healed by the crit heal it triggered off?
Exampe: Warrior has 2k health left out of 30k. Shaman has full health. Nobody else is around. Shaman heals Warrior with LHW. It crits for 6k.
Does the AA now get wasted? Does it overheal the Shamana? Does the Warrior get an extra 1.8k heal?

It looks good for PvP. Has anyone experience with that?

It's possible that AA targets similarly to Wild Growth.

Wild Growth's auto-targeting selects those with the lowest raw health. That means that even if you tank with 20k max health is at 8k, if someone's 5k max health Imp is nearby the Imp will always have priority over the tank. This is the cause of a lot of Druid consternation.

If AA functions the same way, that would account for the 100% overheal. The pet had less HP than all other raid members, but was still at full health.

Cheers for the link Shareel. One of the more interesting bits there is that one shaman used Earthliving and the other didn't, furthermore the one who didnt used Riptide, whereas the first one did not. Comparing the data Riptide almost healed as much as Earthliving did for the Chain Heal spamming shaman. Now the data is hard to truly pick apart as we have no time line, but it's notable that the healing done by Riptide is similair to that of Earthliving.

True, however this flaw is inherit to Chain Heal as well, not just AA. To fix this is not an easy matter however. You'd have to either make it not heal pets at all (which would be bad as probably no other healer would then), or just accept the flaw and accept that sometimes the AI makes a 'bad' choice. To code the spell to intelligently prioritize players over pets if they are on low health is not something I see happening, as it's just too hard to put in, but that's just my guess.

I'm pretty sure this bug was fixed. The bug used to be it healed the person on lowest health in total hp, but that should have been changed to a percentage of health. In other words, squishy clothie with 14k hp is on 50% and warrior with 21k is on 40%, the warrior gets healed. If this was not implemented at the time of the SWS, this could explain that.

one thing i would be interrested in, although a little off-topic, would be, if anyone on these forums plans to re-gem for the upcoming patch?

because as it seems for now, heroic badges won't be good for anything else, besides getting some epic gems and either sell or use them. so the question is: is there actually a need for re-gemming? i really can't tell from numbers alone how encounters like brut, twins or m'uru will be, with all these changes on manareg mechanics and the downranking nerf. how much int would be "enough"? and how much haste will be possible to maintain, i guess we'll have to wait. but i'm just being curious, if anyone plans on re-gemming (particularly int) with 3.0 coming.

my guess was to keep as much haste as possible, and in order to keep the mp5 socket bonus of the sunwell pieces, trying to put (as mentioned before) heal/int in red slots, heal/mp5 in blue ones and pure int in yellow sockets, then tweak with haste, until you meet the expectations.

Well the whole reason of my original post was to inform my fellow shaman that this talent isn't what it seems to be. It seems to be a PVP talent, and even then...a fairly weak one since the early pvp gear didnt have any crit on it. Maybe it will have tons of int and thus alot of crit. But it's too early to know for sure on that.

I wanted someone to add something to the discussion that i didn't already know, perhaps look at it from a different light, and test it to see if it can actually work. My test run showed this talent in a 5-man PVE environment (with 1 lock and 1 hunter in the party) has about a 15% chance to land on a party member as opposed to a 85% chance of it landing on a pet. And the numbers (in theory) only get worse if you add more locks and hunters to the mix.

I understand the flaw that hurts AA is inherently the same flaw in Chain Heal. But i can live with chain heal because its a skill. Thats something people don't seem to understand. Chain heal is a skill. Its not a trade off. Its not a choice of either chain heal or mana tide totem. Its there regardless. Ancestral Awakening on the other hand is a talent. You lose something in order to get it. Thats why i keep banging on about this. If Blizzard meant for this to be a PVE talent...then why isn't anyone else seeing how bad this is and suggesting changes? If its a PVP only talent...then where is the crit rating on the gear? And why are so many people still picking this talent up in their raid builds? It seems like a pointless talent to me. Maybe I'm missing something?

I don't see it as pointless, however, I understand the concern. Personally, I'd like to see a change made where it disregards pets entirely, as I can't imagine that it was originally designed for that purpose. If a pet is taking damage, it is probably going to be within the range of our CH targets - AA should be more flexible.

If we want to talk about talents which are more pointless, (or, at least, have lost their lustre) Healing Way should be in the running.

I'm missing Tidal Focus. Additional sources of mana may be Glyph of Water Mastery and items like Totem of Forest Growth or [Totem of Living Water].

The Totem of Forest Growth alone will be 156+ MP5 if you spam Chain Heal at maximum speed.

Well it's not that terrible to be honest. But you have to consider the role of the talent. If put in a 25 man raiding context, it will be very bad indeed. However, used in a heroic or even 10 man, this talent could shine very much. With say 30% crit, you're looking at a flat 9% increase to your Healing Wave's HPS. If you keep in mind that full Healing Way'ed HW's are pretty decent in output, AA can be a good secondary heal (reports of 12k crits would make an AA pop at 3.6k). I'm not sure if AA can proc Earthliving, but assuming it can. But as said, this is all considering its use in a 5/10 man where the Shaman is mostly MT healing. It's definitely a talent I have set for my 5/10 man build, but it's also absolutely out of there for 25 man:
My idea of a 5/10 man build
My idea of a 25 man build

The only thing missing from the list is totems I think. Looking at the parse he's had a Mana Tide down, Mana Spring and I can not see a Wrath of Air, so assuming he didnt drop that one or left it for the ele shaman to drop. That would lead to a 3% base mana for Tide, 4% for spring (assuming he dropped it again after Tide, so counting it twice), which would be a total of 11% base mana extra making for an added 483,56 extra mana spent. Nothing big, but if we're running the numbers these need to be in
Cheers for the calcs though, it's good to have something of an idea of mana gained compared to mana spend.

Replenishment (mana) gives 0.25% of max mana pool/tick, so his buffed manapool = 100/0.25*51 = 20400 mana, that leaves about 10k mana regen = 242.72 mp5.


Edit:

Taking a closer look @ the SWS:
Khaene took 82 hits of CH, assuming CH doesn't bounce back, it's save to say CH was cast 82x at minimum
With tidal focus, 2x T6 and relic, CH will cost (835-78)*0.95*0.90 = 647 mana (not sure)
82x 647 = 53054
1x HW = 1044
1x ES = 659
totems = 483,56

total = 55240
gained = 21807
manapool = 20400
Mana to regen = 13033 = 318 mp5

Not resto specific, yet good news all 2 minute totems getting upped to 5 minuntes.

Source:

This makes totemic focus even worse PVE, but is a big gain given the extra gcd's being eaten by imp water shiled.

Can someone explain this in a bit more detail. I'm under the impression that in it's current state, it really wouldn't be eating that many charges at all because we hardly ever use any spells that would proc it. Using Perdrix again from that SWS parse, he uses 1 single ability that could proc it the entire fight. Is it really such an issue GCD wise currently?

Also in response to Koe, that 318 MP/5 would leave him bone dry by the end of the fight. So, would it be right to assume a Resto Shaman will be needing around 400 buffed MP/5 at Naxx level gearing?

Totemic focus is pointless with 5 minute totems.

3 points into elemental weapons just for 30% on the ELW + heal, which equates to about 80 healing extra for a healing wave.

Imp Reincar is optional, nice for the extra mana on pop, but not required

I would actually take TW for 25 mans for this reason. When the shit hits the fan, you need a fast heal to help. Having 2 (1 in this build but should be 2 IMHO) Healing waves ready at any time (assuming your spamming CH most of the time) means you can push a couple of big heals to the target. Yeah its expensive, but .75 seconds off the cast give you a goos chance to save your tank. Same thing with RT. If necessary RT0>HW>HW is available.

No you wont use it 100% of the time, but compared to other options for those 5 points, TW seems best.

I would actually go with this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The 10 points in crit talents seems kind of wasted with this build, but I dont really see anything else which is better.

I realize this is not perfect, but I ran some tests on the ptr in a target dummy raid to see what kind of longevity I would have.

stats

12.5k mana
285 mp5 with WS
all raid buffs (all the mana ones anyways) except Mark, no druids).
1383 healing SP
11.54% haste (without totem)
26% crit (buffed)
1 Super mana pot
1 MT
No water elemental
Oiled, flasked



See post above for spec.

CH spam, simulating Brut

~1900 HPS with no jumps. 4k heals/6k crit
OOM in ~ 3 1/2 minutes. Did it 3 times all were in that neighborhood


Also, I talked to a BT geared shammie who was saying he was topping 3k HPS in Naj in a PTR raid, but ran out of mana REALLY fast. He was weaving Healing Wave into his CH spam.

True, but as I dont plan to use any HW's at all really, it's still preferred over 0,5 castingtime on a spell I won't use anyway. If I need fast heals, I'll use LHW as it's practically the same mana cost.

Well the talent gives you a flat +45 heal at level 80, which is almost equal to the main hand spellpower enchant at 80. To me having that steady increase on all your heals is a greater benefit than the occasional handy haste proc in a nasty situation (see below).

This is true, but in all reality wouldn't NS > HW function much better here? Or even a Riptide for that matter? Fast heals are absolutely a handy way of healing through tricky times or simply bad pulls when learning bosses. But if it's purely quick heals on the MT you want, you'd still be better of with a Riptide or LHW with the EaS glyph in terms of speed and getting heals on the tank. In the end this is what you want, to give the MT healers some room to breath. Yes this could be even quicker with the Tidal Wave talent, but spending 5 points for an occasional bad spot? I don't know, I'm not convinced yet.

The Impr. Reincarnation is filler to get to Riptide by the way.

Even if you needed to stomp down WoA, Mana Spring, SoE and Flametongue for a boss totemic focus would give you about 400 mana (if you were to cast them directly before the pull and regging back to full when the fight starts). In a 5 minute fight this not even 7 mp5. In a 4 minute fight you wouldn't have any profit (except for a tiny amount for mana tide/mana spring). In an 8 minute fight it would be ~4 mp5. (Of course this assumes a stationary fight without stuff like grounding totem but it should cover most encounters)

I think you would needlessly limit your healing capabilities by not taking improved HW.


And if I learned anything while healing through BC it's that "occasional bad spots" are what healing is about.

@sprout: when u say all raid buffs except for mark do u mean also replenishment? and still seeing your total intellect I guess you didn't regem any part of your equipment with int or crit, how much haste did you have in case you had any?

@ribs: that at the moment tidal waves is not that much required for healing, at least for what I've seen on PTR, maybe that 20% more healing wave will be more valuable at 80 but till now I could get it only if they really give to riptide too the chance to proc it with chain heal. This way we could really have a nice fast heal that could help when nature swiftness cooldown is up.
and about improved healing wave I surely prefer it to totemic focus because you never know which role you have to play in a raid and with totems lasting for 5 min that talent became nearly useless pve wise

With the Tidal Wave buff up:
Riptide, Instant cast time, 1.5 GCD - heals for 1.9k (plus hot)
LHW, 1.05s cast time, 1.05s GCD - heals for 4k
HW, 1.75s cast time, 1.5s GCD - heals for 9k

If I cast a Riptide, I can't land a LHW for another 2.55 seconds. Is a 1.9k heal plus a low powered hot going to save someone that is in trouble for 2.5 seconds? The initial hit of Riptide is too low, IMO. I'd be more apt to use the TW-boosted LHW in an emergency.