It is very viable. I am now using the belt and boots of elemental T6 as part of my raiding healing set.

Looking at the items individually;

[Skyshatter Boots] vs [Skyshatter Treads]
- Gain 7crit rating, 6 haste rating
- Lose 5mp5

[Skyshatter Belt] vs [Skyshatter Cord]
- Gain 9crit rating, 4 haste rating
- Lose 5mp5


So then the overall gain from getting these items;
- Gain 51 crit rating
- Gain 10 haste rating
- Gain 45 spell power
- Gain 5mp5

- Lose nothing


However, we then need to consider keeping the 4pc T6 resto bonus, which I believe is still worth keeping. Before the elemental gear switch, I used 5 pieces of T6 (belt/bracers/boots/helm/chest) with sunwell gloves, shoulders and pants. I had a quick look and found that it did the least damage stat wise to switch out the shoulders and bring back T6. This of course sours the overall effect of using the elemental gear.

However the final stats of the switch become;

+36spell power
+51 crit rating
+5mp5
-14 haste

(Note my resto belt/boots were socketed with +12spell power gems, while the new elemental pieces have 5haste/6spell power)

This is still a significant increase in stats. Note also that I upgraded from the 40haste version of the battlemaster's trinket to the new 60haste version, which more than cancels out this loss in haste.


Now to someone who had only four restoration pieces equipped and as such must switch out two pieces of sunwell gear, the increase in stats lessens. However even if I had the M'uru chest piece of KJ helm, I do believe it would still result in an overall increase in stats to use the elemental pieces.

I was talking to a Mage friend of mine who decided not to get the interrupt reduction talents, since the changes to spell pushback maxes out at 1 sec. Is it plausible based on this line of thinking to just completely leave out Healing Focus now?

I looked at Shadovv's armory because I'm jealous of his gear, and discovered much to my delight that his spec is pretty much identical to mine, except that he has 2/5 tidal focus and 3/3 Ancestral Fortitude, and I have 5/5 and 0/3 respectively. I think maybe we should both have 5/5 Tidal Focus and 3/3 Ancestral Fortitude, with 0 Healing focus.

Has any Sunwell raider seen any reason to keep Healing Focus? If the answer is no, I think the difference between Shadovv's and my spec would be optimal. This allows for maximum Earth Shield output, crit talents, TW, Riptide, chainheal, as well as efficiency through Imp Water Shield and mana reduction talents.

Timeliness is far more important for a healer than it is for a DPS.

When a DPS has a spell delayed either their DPS goes down or their mana costs go up (channeling). While an individual cast can take as much as 40% longer, over the course of many fights this evens out to be less significant. It's still a DPS loss, but only on relevant fights and only if the talent points can't be spent elsewhere for greater effect.

When a healer has a delayed spell the tank can be put in jeopardy. Very often 1 second is the difference between a timely heal and a dead tank. Losing throughput at critical times can simply be disastrous for healers in a way that DPS doesn't experience. It's very fight dependent, but it's a major concern given that almost all healers can related stories of last second heals that barely did or didn't make it in time.

Well even without Healing Focus we are still better off than we were with it pre 3.0
If you got hit pre-3.0 you could stand to loose a second of your cast in 1 go, or 70% of the time not loose anything at all

Now with 0 in Healing Focus the most you will loose is 0.5s (though you will always loose 0.5)

The only fight (in swp) where i feel interrupt resist really made a life or death difference was twins

Also worth remembering you will (likely) always have 30% resistance, with a paladin in the raid (Does this stack with ES for 60%?)

As far as raiding in concerned, I don't find pushback to be all that critical a thing in deciding whether or not players I am assigned to heal live or not. It's a factor from time to time, sure, but more often I find the limiting factor is simply the normal cast time and GCD. Spending 3 talent points to keep my cast time where it already is for the vast majority of casts seems wasteful to me. In 5 mans, it's hard to say how important it is at this point because my parties outgear the instances at this point and if anything ever gets loose to whack on me for a second or two, it's like "no big deal, y'all. I'll heal tank this one while y'all kill the rest." and Riptide/ES alone will keep me in fine health.

So /shrug.

As a full SWP raider i've found resto shamans a bit worst on raid healing in terms that priests are incredibly better with the improved CoH and druids with WG. Really felt bad going down from arround 2.4k HPS to arround 1.5k HPS. But hey, shit happens :P

Anyway, I still haven't got a completely accurate build but the one i'm using at the moment is 0/10/51.
Still testing, trying to feel the use of LHW and Riptide on a rotation basis.

As for the numbers that everyone posted, atm i've got this stats and i'm finding alot hard to keep mana up. If fights are longer than 1.5-2 mins i get completely drained. Since i'm a LW i'm using Drums of Restoration + Mu'ru trinket + Mana Pot (the single chance we get to use one now) and our favorite Mana Tide. Even so i can get really low some times.
Trying the LHW + TW + IWS combo to save up some mana and throw up a few heals. Also trying to use Riptide every cooldown i can.
I'm also trying to maximize crit rating, got from 10% to 17% and that give a nice ease to mana use.

All in all, i've found that other classes got completely buffed and the only thing we had, CH, got completely "nerfed" when compared to other raid healing spells. For now, shaman is not what it was pre-3.0.2.
No more Chain Heal spam, we've got alot of new variables and new spell to use and get accustomed. =)

Without overheal and around 1300 SP, I'm seeing the following:
CH one target: 3600, HPS= 1440
CoH one target: 1200, HPS = 800

CH two targets: 5400, HPS= 2160
CoH two targets: 2400, HPS = 1600

CH three targets: 6300, HPS= 2520
CoH three targets: 3600, HPS= 2400

CH four targets: 6750, HPS= 2700
CoH four targets: 4800, HPS 3600

CoH five targets: 6000, HPS 4000

CoH six targets: 7200, HPS 4800

The main issue is that CoH is faster and instant. When the raid takes damage, COH can hit twice before the first CH lands. Then another two CoH can land before the next CH. With the HPS numbers above, CoH can output almost twice as much healing as CH. This is all at 70 with the current nerfed content. I'm not sure how things will fall out at 80.

Hi Jose,

If you are still having issues with mana and there are multiple shaman in your raid you can ask to be stacked with them for multiple mana spring.

Additionally, I would suggest trying out the [Pendant of the Violet Eye] over the [Glimmering Naaru Sliver]. The extra int gives passive mp5 and with 1 sec totems + riptide + TWed LHW you can stack it pretty high. It won't give you back 2000 mana over <8 sec (assuming sunwell haste), but you can use it 2.5 times more and continue to heal while getting the regen. As a side bonus you don't loose as much regen if you are a victim of pushback or worse interrupted.

And how do you feel going against priests and druids on raid. Do you feel getting behind?

I was talking to a guildie today and it seems i had a recount problem. I've updated my recount and I'll test it again tomorrow on the raid.
I'm also gonna try and boost up a bit on my INT. I'm going atm, 13.6k mana on raid buffs.
About the 2 pieces of elemental T6, i've got 5 pieces on the bank still untraded, waiting to trade by elemental or enchancment... still haven't decided wich one to pick. Both my elemental and ench can be full T6 with SWP gear.

I just don't feel if it's worth it. Changing T6 for elemental gear now and before expansion going ench. Since i've been to KJ and we're killing him really easy and quick on the first day of servers reset... i don't know if it worth with the expansion 3weeks ahead of today.

Yeh, getting a taste of the numbers really makes me feel small. I fell this alot for instance on the robots in SWP. I'm starting my CH and the raid is already topped. Frustrating hihi. Starting to feel like they felt pre-3.0.2

From what i've taken out of this numbers, that extra CH jump, the 4th one, isn't that good at all. The % the it gets from its inicial heal is really low.

Good point there to use [Pendant of the Violet Eye]. Sometime we neglect the importance of +INT on a shaman. I myself had a few problems a while back on BT.
I often try to time really well [Glimmering Naaru Sliver] for avoid pushback that could ruin the channeling and wait 5 mins of the cooldown for nothing. This shouldn't be a channeled item tbh.

See what a CoH priest can do, when he can go fullout

Wow Web Stats

I decided to look into your claims of mana efficiency for Riptide, as prior to 3.0.2 spamming LHW was the fastest possible way to run yourself OOM.

I have full Sunwell gear with 4pc T6, 1300 spell power, 21% crit and 290 haste unbuffed. Obviously things can change if you have different gearing!

As you can see, LHW provides the lowest healing per mana, at 200 healing per %, while a zero overheal CH is twice as efficient. Even single target CH is more efficient than a normal LHW or HW!

A Tidal Waved HW is the best HPS you can put out, but it is also more mana hungry than both Riptide and CH. Also note that due to the bug with chain casted heals not benefitting from Tidal Waves you'll need to wait a few 10ths of a second before casting, reducing the effect somewhat.

Also don't forget that you can CH off the Riptide effect after 3 ticks for no loss of healing, and after 4 ticks you've gain an extra 500 heal.

LHW/HW/Riptide share the same critrate and can all proc Improved Water Shield, so while Riptide is off cooldown it is the preferred spell to use in any situation where the target is likely to take more damage.

This backs up my anecdotal evidence on Kil'Jaeden where my spell selection of pure CH spam with Riptide on every available cooldown has proved far superior to the other shaman experimenting with LHW and HW with Tidal Waves.

Manawise, I have 14.5k mana buffed and so long as there are two sources of replenishment in the raid I can easily cope with spamming for 8 or 9 minutes of KJ.

As for how we do against priests and druids, I really don't think people need to be too concerned. Hasted CH spam still rules on Twins, and CoH was always king on Felmyst. On KJ the two top healers were me (CH+Riptide+Earthliving) and a priest (CoH + Renew). Both spells are good, neither is noticeably "better" than the other.

First off, no one should ever spam LHW unless you are glyphed for it, and MT healing during a high damage encounter. I also don't believe in a healing "rotation" as an effective style. You don't blindly CH then LHW and repeat.

Secondly, since riptide is instant, adding it into your healing style adds an extra mana drain that you wouldn't normally expect. Sure, you're casting a ton of heals, but the effectiveness vs the mana goes way down.

Thirdly, the HoT portion of riptide is not guaranteed, so your math should account for the totals for each succesful tick.

Fourth, the cooldown on Riptide means the HPS should be divided by the cooldown, and not the GCD.

Fifth, you are not including any crit values.

Koe, WoWWebStats is unreliable at the moment. I have tried it on live and the numbers were way off. It could have been a client side thing.

I would be shocked is WWS was off, it uses log files to compile the data that you view. So unless the log data produced by the game itself is flawed, then it is still 98% acurate. Most of the time when people think it is wrong it is because the in game meter they were using is returning bad data, and they are taking that bad data and comparing it to WWS, leading them to think WWS is off, when the opposite is true.

Its not the combatlog that is in question, but the current WWS parser. WWS can't parse 3.0.x combatlogs consistently yet. There is a tool (linked below) to downgrade a 3.0.2 combatlog to 2.4 version, but like all translations you can't guarantee 100% accuracy. So like Durnitol suggests its unreliable at the moment.

Link -Convert your combatlog from 3.0.x to 2.4.x

I am surprised to read that shaman in SWP guilds are having mana problems. After 3.0, I did not regem or change gear at all. All my gems are Spellpower or Haste (with a couple Spellpower/mp5 for sockets). I run about 12k mana bufffed and around 350ish haste. I am using riptide on average every 10 seconds, CH, and then using Tidal-waved LHW to spot, and I have yet to run out of mana on any fight and I am basically doing the same overall effective healing as I was pre-3.0. Also, I am not spec'ed into Imp Watershield.

Are the people reporting mana issues running fewer healers than in the past? I am not really sure what else could be causing the difference in experiences.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Yes Riptide is instant, but it still triggers the GCD. Conversely, Tidal Waves applies spell haste to your LHW, so the GCD is reduced. Using LHW instead of Riptide will use *more* mana due to being able to cast more CHs!

Saying the HPS of Riptide should be divided by the cooldown instead of the GCD is a strange argument (especially as the first part of your post is arguing that LHW won't be spammed). Realistically, a shaman's role in the raid will be raid healing, with CH our primary spell. The discussion is therefore: which heal performs best as an adhoc supplementary spell. In this context it is clear that Riptide wins (subject to the caveat of your third point).

I think the key to understanding why Riptide is so good is to look at how the removal of downranking has changed the way people heal. Most healers are having to actively consider their mana usage and with only large and expensive heals to choose from, the constant topping up and overwriting of HoTs that characterised TBC raiding is becoming less common. This means that HoTs are far more effective - especially if your healers have Grid set to show raid HoTs.

Now, couple the increased performance of HoTs with the widespread use of raidwide periodic damage (arcane blast on Kalecgos, Slash and Burn on Brutallus, Noxious Fumes on Felmyst, M'uru's lightning, KJ's fire bloom) and you can see why I favour Riptide. If a member of your raid is on 8000/10000 and has a DoT ticking which would you prefer: a LHW that does 1000 overheal immediately, leaving you having to heal that person again in 3 or 4 seconds time, or a Riptide that heals them almost to full immediately, and places a HoT on to counter the DoT effect?

The reason I'm not considering crit values is that mostly crit is irrelevant when we're considering longterm trends for healing (it's unusual for a raid to continuously have people on less than 50% health). If someone's health is low enough that I'm hoping for a crit I'm going to use a Tidal Waved HW or spam some LHWs until they are stable again. I'm not going to be worrying about mana efficiency for those 3 or 4 seconds and I'm certainly not going to care about breaking some non-existant "rotation".

Ultimately it's going to come down to the individual gear and fight as to whether you can afford the extra mana to boost your healing (whether that be via Tidal Waves or Riptide), but to write an entire spell off as "too mana intensive", especially one so powerful, seems unwise.

I daresay a lot of it is to do with the number of Replenishment batteries in the raid. The difference between one and two is like day and night on some fights. This could actually end up being a serious concern for some guilds, especially if survival remains a less desirable hunter spec and shadow priest damage doesn't get a buff.

I didn't say i was having crucial mana issues, if i lead everyone to understand that i'm sorry. That was not the idea.

I did say i was having a few more mana issues. But i've never went oom on a single fight. The diference is that i prolly had before 3.0.2 an average of 80% mana and now i'm alway arround 50% or a bit less. But nothing i can't handle =)

I just feel that i need a bit more time to get used to the new mechanics of "how to heal with a shaman"

...or WWS's parsing engine is flawed. I'm not saying priests, druids, and paladins AREN'T heal better than us, but that log parsing and in game parses show discrepancies. I was rash in claiming that WWS is wrong, but that it was vastly off from my own measurements.

In any case, meters don't show "good" or "bad" healing, they only show (or supposed to) what successfully landed, in what kind of quantities. Good healing is more about when and what targets are healed. Meters can show you who, but not when.

If we take Riptide, and heal only those who can get the full effect, we can't predict that chain heal or some other heal won't make the hot a massive overheal (though meters will show it). The point? LHW is much more likely to get the full effect off just because you can heal for the exact amount based on observation. If your fellow guildmates have an appropriate mod, you can tell if they are going to heal the target first. This is key, here..

If priests are faster at healing with CoH, then if the raid isn't taking a lot of consistent damage, then the shaman's numbers look horrid, even if they are choosing the targets and timing appropriately. There are lots of times when my numbers look godawful simply because there isn't enough damage to go around. If 25 people take 3-4k damage in one shot, suddenly my numbers spike WAY ahead of the priests/pallies/druids. This is even more apparent with nerfs to 70 content.

You can't be certain that the other classes are "better" unless you measure the total time spent casting a spell (just the GCD for instants), and then measure that against the return on the cast (effective healing). Once you get the effective heal/cast time, you've got your best decision maker. If their throughput is still low, just get them to do it more often!

Differences between ingame healing meters and WWS parses have been around a while, certainly before 3.0.2 hit the live servers. I'm quite confidant that WWS and other parsers like StasisCL are accurately reporting what is in the combat log, I believe the combat log doesn't quite represent ingame state on a moment by moment basis.

Consider addons like LibQuickHealth that exist to increase the frequency of player health updates based on incoming events. Take one damage meter that uses the LibQuickHealth updates and another that doesn't, they're going to show differences in effective healing and overhealing done because they're comparing these incoming healing events against different base health values.

Duration of combat also creates smaller issues. Ingame addons have the combat pulse to use to start and stop timing, the log parsers depend on combat events. Most fights will end with very similar durations but a handful of fights will show different durations and a different number of heals cast in/out of combat, which I've seen comparing Recount to WWS.

I finally got some time to test the Totem of Flowing Water, and at first glance (being naked, not having any hp deficit) it does absolutely nothing. Every single LHW netted me with 420 less mana than before i cast the heal.
Ok, so i figured id swap on some gear with stamina, then quickly heal myself before FSR kicked in, and i still am not getting any mana from this item

Not sure how to proceed now tbh

For sure?

All i can see on Beta, is that Tidal Waves only effects the casting-time of LHW/HW and NOT the GCD of those two spells!

Which confused me the whole day cause nobody, here or in Beta forums, is complaining. If it`s really not reducing the GCD, Tidal Waves is not worth a single point for a lvl 80-25man raiding build.

Here is a WWS report from Black Temple. I specced 0/10/51 (for some reason the talent link for WWS is incorrect). I have not had any mana issues with this build, but did make sure the other Shaman in the raid was in my group for mana spring stack.

Wow Web Stats

I have been doing some experimenting in using different spells more than others and hope this can provide some useful information. This time around it was CH spam with Riptides every 10 seconds or so. I use LHW when people get in trouble and TW is up. Gemmed this time around for crit and spellpower.

Regarding the Tidal Waves talent: all this does is reduce the casting time, it is not a haste buff.