Hi all,

I'm quite contented 'bout the new resto-talents. I use a 0/10/51-Spec and I'm curious, if it'll work fine for me on my next sunwell-raid. I'm still unshure 'bout spending 1 point for tidal force or not. I don't like the idea, that those three buffs will be eaten up by one Chain Heal. Otherwise tidalwaves is better than one percent of static crit value, so I think, that I'll use it on my next raid.

What I like the most, are the fine interactions between ch, riptide and tidal waves, that make the use of different healing-spells more interesting for all of us.

I saw, that some people left out Ancestral healing which is imo still a very strong feature for all prot-paladins and -warris, so I wouldn't give it up.

I did a search of this thread, and read through most of the posts regarding Ancestral Awakening. I recall reading that it was broken and only healing that with the lowest HP (pets) versus the lowest health. I know CoH and Wild Growth were doing the same and both were fixed. Has anyone been able to test whether AA was also fixed?

(My guild isn't raiding currently so I can't find people online to test things out.)

Siggidzweie, Tidal Force is an activated talent, so you get to choose which spells you follow it up with. If you don't want chain heal to use it, then don't activate it before casting chain heal. It is really good and getting your Water Shield orbs eaten with Imp Water Shield as long as you follow it up with HW and LHW.

We are way better off with the new talents, since healing is more interesting. You have more choices to make, no more 1 button whack-a-mole. Tidal Waves and Riptide have done more to improve the resto role in terms of fun, interest, and usefulness than any previous build I have encountered. Once we can adapt to the increase in mana usage or Blizz fine tunes it well enough so that it is not so frustrating without Replenishment, then I believe we can start nitpicking on things like Ancestral Healing vs Healing Way vs Imp Shields, etc.

There is currently a in "bug" with Tidal Force and macros. Basically, Tidal Force is triggering an instant-cast GCD when it's cast it. This in turn is producing 2 different unexpected behaviors with macros. The first example:

/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Tidal Force
/cast Healing Wave

Both Nature's Swiftness and Tidal Force will cast, but it won't cast the Healing Wave. Due to the instant-cast GCD that Tidal Force activated, and Healing Wave's cast time being reduced to instant. Second example:

/cast Tidal Force
/cast Nature's Swiftness
/cast Healing Wave

This time you'll get Tidal Force up, and a cast a normal cast time Healing Wave. Nature's Swiftness will refuse to cast this time, again due to the instant-cast GCD Tidal Force triggered. This behavior is a little odd, and likely should be fixed.

Any macro that doesn't involve instant cast abilities works just fine with Tidal Force.

I do believe this is intentional, that Tidal Force linked with an NS macro would be considered OP.

I believe the point that Aikiwoce is making is that the "instant GCD" that Tidal Force triggers does not follow standard macro behavior. If it acted like a normal instant cast spell, then the second macro linked should would trigger a 1.5s GCD after the Tidal force, meaning that the healing wave would not be cast at all. The fact that the macro skips over NS and casts a normal healing wave anyway means that Tidal Force does not conform to expected macro behavior. This is likely a bug.

The only question is whether Tidal Force is intended to trigger GCD, making its use in macros very limited, or whether it is intended to function like NS and not trigger any GCD at all. The latter is much more likely.

I cant get macros to work with riptide or tidal force. For example, I have a macro for my trinket and earth shield. I cast it the fist time and then even though my trinket is on cooldown, I cast the same macro a second time and it still cast earthshield. (I get a message "That item isnt ready yet" but ES still cast) With tidal force, it will cast it once, but then if you try to cast it a second time using the same macro, it locks it out. Same thing with the Riptides 6 sec cooldown and say LHW. Any suggestions?

Roseluna: If I understand your premise correctly that's because macro execution will end if you try to use a spell that's not ready yet, whereas trying to use an item on cooldown does not end the execution, it just yields an error message. So you may have a macro enabling several trinkets before using a certain spell.

A NS+HW macro won't start to cast HW if NS is on cooldown. A mage won't start casting pyroblast if PoM is on cooldown. And so on.

If a spell which when cast would cause global cooldown then it's not possible to cast another spell which would cause a global cooldown in the same macro. So if Nature's Swiftness fails, Healing Wave will start casting. However, should you try to macro riptide and Healing Wave then healing wave will not start to cast because Riptide (if successful) would cause a global cooldown. At least this is how it was before the patch, admittedly I've not tested it after.

Ancestral Awakening should be procing properly, for a long time in the alpha and beta it would only heal the shaman, and then later, only heal warlock & hunter pets. It does heal players more frequently now, and is useful in a pinch. Was working properly on the PTR, and as far as i can tell, has worked with the latest patch.

I really think though that it feels way too "lucky" and almost like windfury for resto. I'm not 100% sure Recount is at full functionality, but when looking at the breakdown of my healing output, AA only accounted for 2-4% of my total healing, due to the number of times I had to cast HW/LHW.

I haven't done any math to see how viable it would be with the obscene crit rates we can pull off in a 25 man raid, but as it is currently, the talent just doesn't justify the points for the number of times we would be needed to cast single target heals. Riptide crits don't provide much of a help for it either, though getting a free 1k heal on someone is nice, the chance of it being useful when it happens are slim. The reduction to 30% from 60% hurt it, and it still hurts by not being tied to Chain heal (we need something to compare to Circle of Healing).

If it proced off of chain heal, it would be a must-have talent. Otherwise, I really don't think it will be useful outside of 5 and at a stretch 10 mans (dependent on healer count).

That said; while running Naxxramas at level 80 on beta, I found myself casting less chain heals due to the nature of the instance. It was quite useful there, especially on Loatheb, and the entire spider wing. It was still was a very small portion of my output - but in the end was more output.

I'm still on the fence and toying with it, wanted to give a non-riptide enhancement-support build (imp. shields & weapon buffs) a go for a bit.

Seems to be a bug in SWP, we had priests doing 33k GH on trash after Muru

Why .... Give us Number !!

Riptide is too weak, why ?
AA is a very poor talent, why ?
I love riptide and TW, why ?
LHW/HW are still too weak, why ?
LHW and HW really needs buffing, why ?

Give us numbers or your opinion is not worth it !

I myself decided i just dont use HW unless its a macro'd NS cast. And I like to use TF(tidal force) to crank out a few crit CH's just after some AOE damage. So i skipped AA and TW entirly. Once i grab 3 more levels ill have IWS maxed out and ill get riptide, after that I will probably get the threat reduction talents and i dont really know where i will put those last 4 points on the way to 80. Perhaps I will dump them into improving totems, or dump 4 points into tidal waves.

I just dont see the point in trying to improve HW and LHW. Most of the time when i bother to cast a HW a paladin or priest will land a heal .5 seconds ahead of me, and their spell will heal for more than mine even if you take AA into account. My wife is landing 13-14k HL crits from her paladin right now, for example. And i only use LHW to spot heal when CH just is not worth it, or when its casting time feels to large to keep the person alive. I have a feeling that riptide will largely fill that role as well. I.E. - Riptide the tank, LHW a melee, CH the tank, and hope it bounces to the melee.

So for now, while i wait for time and math to bear out data to prove me wrong on this, i went with the following build.
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Shaman -> Talent Calculator

I too would like to see some numbers. In BT and SWP our Resto Shaman were BY FAR the top healers. I'm typically elemental, but for SWP I needed to heal, and being my first healing experience post patch i was BLOWN AWAY by averaging 2.6 HPS for the raid.

I didn't get down to riptide, instead I took advantage of Improved shields and elemental weapons to get the biggest advantage of the INSANE crit rate (37.5 actual) giving Mana back via Imp Water Shield.

At one point i couldn't help but just laugh when my ES crit an off tank for 3022. Some of the pulls were amazing because of the spam; I just sat back and watch the earliving ticks! My build did not include riptide, or any points in tidal waves, but i am looking foward to being able to utilize the new talents.

I should also note that Ancestral Awakening was taken since I heal a 3v3 team (and spam LHW).

Like i said earlier, I raid heal about 1/3 of the time and mixing in a 2pc of the Ele T6 bonus is very possible now with the spell power changes. Overall I'm more excited about the healing changes than elemental (possibly b/c i'm not going to regem for hit for 3 week worth of raiding).

Last night in Sunwell I did what I did pre-patch: spam Chain Heal. However, I specced this: 0/10/51 and still, at the end I was 2nd on Healing Meters (top was Ret Pally; though JoL is currently bugged) with:
- 86% of healing done through Chain Heal
- 7% of healing done through EL Weapon
- 4% of healing done through Earth Shield
- 3% of healing done through Riptide

I'm strongly considering speccing this for the remainder of TBC: 0/16/45 as I believe it'll give a higher net healing. My general rotation was (with a 1.94 sec cast on CH) Riptide > CH > CH > Riptide etc.

I just can not bring myself to invest 3 points in Elemental Weapons as a healer.

Earth living weapon is nice, it gives 150bonus healing untalented, but only gives 195 fully talented. Just not sure that 45 bonus healing at lvl 80 is worth the loss of a self rez cooldown, an improved flametongue totem, or IWS.

Oh and it would seem that with the new 5 minute totems spending 5 points reducing their mana cost is no longer worth it. Especially considering blizzards intent to lower the duration of boss fights in the future. Shamans just wont be casting totems enough for a 25% reduction to = much MP5. I could very easily be wrong though.

I am thinking that this will be my build at lvl 80.

I don't think there can be any debate that focused mind should not normally be considered in any PVE build. Yes it can be great situationally, but maybe a half-dozen tbc fights had silence mechanics, and even then some of those like the ZA bear were trivial.

Elemental weapons, AA, and even Natures Guardian would be superior choices.

Yep, that last point got shoved into focused mind because i simply couldnt decide on a spot for it, but i suppose putting it in Elemental Weapons would be a better choice, albiet a small diference. We are talking 10% less time silenced vs 15 bonus healing.

I personally have 0 complaints with the restoration build. After clearing Sunwell with the new talents compared to prior. It just feels good. Riptide is like a mini NS that you can use every 6 seconds. Yes it might not be #1 in efficiency, as chain healing 90% of the time is usually the most HPS, but it's versatility is outstanding. I probably saved 5 extra people the other night on KJ because of it.

My one complaint is our glyphs. I love the LHW glyph, it's stellar. However Healing Wave and Chain Heal glyphs seem lacking.

As for total HPS, On KJ I was pushing 2550ish using riptide, chain heal, chain heal, riptide, chain heal, chain heal. etc.

I know it could of been more, but It just felt better getting crit riptides and making clutch heals.

Input?

I personally like riptide, shamans have needed an instance cast heal for a while. And riptide is the reason i will spec into IWS as i level up. It may not be a huge heal, but it serves its purpose well, and bolsters the LHW spot healing aspect of our healing arsenal well. Am i the only person that almost NEVER casys HW? I mean i genuinly HATE that spell, long cast time, bad co-efficient, and it requires a 3 point talent to become 70% of what HL is.

HW is used by myself only on pre-nerf Brutallus and pre-nerf M'uru. Even then it was not very efficient, but it got the job done. I am very tempted to just not put points into Healing Way, if any, just 1. If I assign myself to tank healing I will have 3 stacks up even with 1/3 in the talent. 15 seconds to get a 33% chances on a 2.5 second cast. Yeah...no problem.

The only thing I liked about Healing Way 3/3 is that I could toss the MT a Healing Wave and heal him again before 15 seconds knowing it would heal harder.

Blizzard should making Healing Wave less mana cost, Then I would be very pleased.

Healing wave is supposed to be bad. Different healers have different strengths and weakness and efficient high output single target healing is ours. Frankly with with changes via imp water shield, AA, and riptide it may become situationally more useful during 25 man raids.

In a situations where a limited number of spread out targets are taking a decent chunk of damage (eg Mags cube clickers) and incoming raid damage is on a known timer or in a temporary lull, why not use healing wave?