Kaytikat

I just tested this on live with zero haste and you're right - the GCD remained at 1.5 secs.

Somebody really needs to raise this on the US beta boards because I really can't see the point of having 2 hasted LHWs if the GCD means that you have to wait around between casts anyway.

 

Aanzeijar

Unfortunately all the fights present in the WWS aren't very helpful for analyzing longer fights. Najentus is under 2'30", which you should be able to keep up regardless of how you heal. Supremus has never been a healer fight, and RoS refills your mana every 100 seconds.

After the last weeks I've got to admit, there aren't many bosses left to check mana issues. Temple bosses are down far too fast. The only 3 bosses that last longer than 3 minutes are Ros (see above), Council (barely above 3 minutes in our case) and Illidan, which has never been a healer fight. The longest fight I've healed since 3.0 was a 16 manned Archimonde, where 3 dps forgot to use their tear at the start of the fight (WWS). Unfortunately, with reduced tank damage one has plenty of time to regen there, so I had no mana issues at all. The only other fight I know I'll have to watch my mana is Kil'jaeden, and that fight is far too gimmicky to be representive.

I'd really like to know if others still have mana issues on a boss that does not have any fancy mana-related features.

 

Crooked

Agreed. The feeling I'm getting is not that we aren't capable, but that when it comes to FFA/raid healing (our typical assignment) on existing content we are getting outdone by instant AoE heals.

Even prior to 3.0, 2 CoH priests could reactively heal a lot of raid damage before your chain could land. We made up for this through spamming hasted chains, but that is no longer as sustainable. With the addition of 'Smart' raid wide CoH and Wild Growth, which seems perfect for topping off small amounts of damage and has been accounting for 50%+ of our druids healing output (possibly down to novelty factor), the difference instants make is emphasized and our effective healing is reduced.

This is why there currently isn't much value in Riptide'd chain heals. Sure it feels great to pull off such big numbers especially with the higher % crit, but in almost all circumstances most of it is overheal.

If it is unpredictable damage, you can't reactively RT+CH, it is too slow.

If it is predictable damage, you can drop a RT on someone in preparation for a big heal. This works well for massive raid wide damage EG Magtheridon collapse or Najentus shield, but on a smaller scale you usually end up healing the first target for roughly the same and the difference is negligible.

That says nothing for what RT adds to our capability. Being able to heal on the move is signficant. And if someone takes a big hit I am finding it as effective to 1st) riptide instantly as a survival buffer 2nd) TW hasted LHW, rather than just spamming chain on different raid members as they take damage and copping mostly overheal as I'm beaten to the punch.

That said, CH is still 80-85% of my output. I think that the changes yet to go live (increased RT heal and TW proccing, 2 TW charges) will strengthen the other aspects of our healing further.

A couple of other things I've noted:

I'm not experiencing mana issues without regemming and sometimes even without replenishment, but that is simply due to the lack of healing required as noted above. Shorter fights, more standing around not casting, and more cancelling; none of the fights we have access to (up to Felmyst) tests our longevity properly.

ES, RT and Earthliving seem to be giving me roughly similar numbers (~4% effective).

I have deprioritised Improved Earthshield over Improved shields and Improved ghost wolf whereas others in my guild haven't. I have not yet determined the rules of overriding shields, whether there is a priority to spellpower and/or number of charges ?

I love instant ghost wolf and that I can now justify it in a PVE resto build. It has previously been downrated because you needed junk points to get it; now subspec Enhance is very strong, and being able to get where you need to be quicker and start healing again should not be underestimated (comparable to minor run speed enchants being strongest for melee).

Also, I've been told groups can no longer be shuffled in combat (?) but cannot find documentation of it, if this is correct Mana tide has lost a little bit more of its effectiveness. Still refined to the group, we wont be able to use it where it is needed.

 

Maldi

Pardon me if i missed this some where, but can some one explain exactly why people are saying its in your best interests to gem int? We haven't raided since about a month before 3.0 having kj down for weeks so i might be missing something new here.

10 int is giving me 1.5 MP5 while not casting, and no mp5 benefit while casting. Of course you're getting crit out of the int gem which is nice with ancestral awakening, i cannot understand why some of you are suggesting people get int gems over 6 spell power 2 mp5 or 4 mp5 gems with regards to mana problems? The fact the int ones don't seem to give me mp5 while casting is why this suggestion is really strange to me. Is it just because of the crit bonus on top of it?

 

Tainter

Let me draw your attention to Replenishment and Mana Tide. Both return mana as a function of maximum mana and are therefore only affected by Intellect.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

BlacKcuD

Has anyone found a formula/mathfriend to check if (considering replenishment is up all the time) gemin +10 int instead of mp5 is worth the effort in terms of inscreasing your in-combat mana regeneration?

(ofcourse healing output will change: additional crit from int .VS. +spellpower, but that is another question)

*edit* Someone else (in another thread) mentioned that there already are calcultations (@thinktank?), but i couldn't find them.

 

Aanzeijar

The calculations are about 5 pages back now.

Nutshell:
In a 5min fight, 6mp5 equal 10 int in terms of mana. Spell power and crit from int not included.

Edit: My bad Durnitol. fixed.

 

Durnitol

5min fight*

We base the 5 minutes on Mana tide cooldown. 10 INT = 6 mp5, if you include 100% uptime Replenishment and Mana tide once every 5 min. That's about as short as you can say it. The math is there. Just search for my user name in this thread, the math is like 2 weeks back.

Kaytikat, the point I made about Riptide draining mana is that it's too easy to throw it in while not changing the rest of the healing style. If you just use CH and Riptide, then yes, it's fine. I am saying that if you are NOT used to using Riptide and you mix in HW and LHW even before the new talents, then it is very easy to throw Riptide in there without changing that pattern. Since it's instant, it's easy to think you can just squeeze into your previous method. This means you are adding a spell with 18% mana cost into your previously "balanced" mana usage.

If you reformulate your playstyle to include Riptide, either avoiding LHW or HW except when necessary or having the "ad hoc" heal be any one of these three, depending on the situation, then Riptide is most efficient assuming that 100% of the HoT ticks are not overheal.


For WWS
This is different now. Overheals are a base part of the combat log now. There is no more comparison to current HP values, the log shows it all.

 

Maldi

Ah ok yeah i had no idea about replenishment since we have really raided since 3.0, thanks for the replies.

 

Krim

I cannot think of any reason why I'd spec into Tidal Waves, or for that matter Riptide. Both of these spells are poor in comparison to pure spamming of Chain Heal. I'm struggling to see a 'good' spec for level 80, currently have a 0/16/45 build but with the extra 10 talent points... I'm stumped, I have actually no clue where they would be best suited in...

Am I missing something with Tidal Waves (I've not been on the beta to test Naxx 10/25) that would cause it to be better than pure CH spam?

 

optalmo

I guess it depends on whether you enjoy being a one-trick pony. It's already been substantiated heavily in this thread that riptide is very useful, whether in direct conjunction with chain heal or by itself depending on the situation. I'm going to be very obvious here, tidal waves creates further uses for HW and LHW in between chain heal spam. I can think of a large number of different fights in the current raiding environment where blindly spamming chain heal is counterproductive --- KJ being one example. Why assume that this will be the case throughout the WOTLK raiding content?

 

Noscha

I´ve done 10/25 Naxx several times in beta. I would say, that about 80% of the encounters prefer CH-Spam.(or should I say if there are no priests and druids ) 25-man even more. The only usage in 25 for TidalWaves is in combination with LHW and thats currently stupid while you have to wait for the GCD.

All in All i would prefer Tidal Waves with all the other Watershield-Ding Dong for 5 or 10-man.
For 25-man i would skip Tidal Waves and maybe also IWS. You don`t need it. But there are enough points left, so....

I´m really hoping content`s changing after Naxx. With some OK- Performing Priests and Druids you feel a bit useless in Naxx.

Riptide is pretty nice in some fights like maybe Heigan but only for your personal feelings cause other classes out-perform you. As a panic-heal it`s ok.

 

Torsha

For 25s : (I don't really want to think about 10s without the 3.0.3 Riptide tbh)

Points are fairly easy to allocate if you are going to skip Tidal Waves and/or Riptide. From going back to the old 8 in elemental for Elemental Warding to investing heavily into improving totems in enhancement. Its up to you which road to take.

From my perspective Riptide is handy to have though Tidal Waves is proving to be lackluster due to the GDC issue making 5 talent points for a 1 second LHW which still makes you wait 1.5 seconds for your next cast is somewhat painful. If the healing bonus was 20% LHW and 10% HW instead of the other way aroudn then yes, we can talk about it but at 10% this prestty much a filler talent. My current build has 2/5 Tidal Waves though those 2 points could have gone to Imp Reinc/Nature's Guard/AA/etc. I figured that if we're spamming CH then a 40% proc is very likely to keep TW up nearly all the time so a fast HW is available in a crunnch situation if NS is on CD.

Anyway if you do want to skip Riptide (which is not a bad idea unless it ends up getting buffed to a level that warrants a 6 second CD ) then look at the following samples:

Elemental Warding (Imp GW can go to Enh totems if you don't care much for this talent )
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Enhanced Totems 0/26/45 (enh shaman seem to now have problems picking up these talents these days except maybe imp WF)
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I would prefer the 26/45 because it increases totem strength to be ahead of other class' buffs and therefore improves raid performance (and ofc my raid spot ).

I suspect that there are going to be a variety of raid-worthy builds and with CH still being our main healing spell we will need to determine what philosophy our builds are going to take, for example
1. Survival (i.e. the pre 3.0 cookie cutter build)
2. Enhanced totems
3. Emergency reactions (less usefull if you have a couple of CoH priests)
4. Tank healing (yes it not our niche but some people will be different .. or if you only have resto shaman as healers Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)

Also bear in mind that its still possible for changes to happen to radically alter our perceptions. For exmaple lets say that for some reason the devs push Riptide's CD to 10 seconds but make the initial heal the size of LHW and the HoT portion match the amount healed by the initial heal. Even CH spammers would have to think long and hard before turnign this down ...

I do however think that our talents are pretty settled in terms of where Blizz wants us to be so I highly doubt there will be anything new that will cause us to have to completely rethink our builds. Its up to the individual (or raid leaders ofc) to decide what the underlying philosophy of their builds is going be.

 

Tyrunur

About Tidal Waves... I must admit its no talent that provides a flat boost to your heal output, but I rather like it anyway. On KJ I find myself throwing in a HW on the WL tank on occassion and being able to do that in about 1.6 seconds is rather nice. Its even an option to top off random raid members that have dropped dangerously low, since its faster than just spamming the next CH, or am I missing something here? You could argue that the other healers like paladins should cover these situations, but in general I dont see why that shouldnt fit in our healing.

 

panny

It may be true that the GCD locks means you dont get the HPS you should from a Tidal Wave'd LHW, but that LHW still does *land* faster, meaning it's not entirely useless.

 

Pouf

And afaik you don't have a 1.5sec GCD with Tidal Waves, you keep your actual GCD (if it's 1.2 sec due to your haste it's still 1.2sec)

TW only lower the cast time, it's not a haste buff (even if it's not a really good pve talent like that it's still usefull when we can't use our regular ch spam.)

 

Gun

About Tidal Waves: with the new Patch we have two hasted LHW or HW. Even a 1,6sec HW, as the example was given before, is slow. Try to figure out a 1,2 hasted HW under the permition of a good raid support and our new items at 80.
A good Priest wont be able to spam CoH all the time in the new 25-instances. He would be running oom before he can say Circle of Healing.
You cant compare those short fights at this moment with the fights wich will come. Actually everything is hasted and overpowered in the damage and raid-heal.
Of course we are not competive against instant AE heals now, because we need 2,0 sec for a good hasted chainheal, but i absolutly disagree in the idea, tidal waves + riptide is useless.
It was said so many times and i cant believe you didnt made the same experiences.
Healing is not a number like DPS, Healing is something flexible and different in each situation.
How many people have Dmg-In? Where is the Dmg-In? Raid-wide or just some people? Is it one-time-dmg or is it dmg-over-time? on and on....
So many questions in such a short amount of time.
Riptide and Tidal Waves is giving the shaman flexibility. Riptide will cause Tidal Waves and this is a really nice buff.
It is not necessary to spam chain heal to gain tidal waves. No, Riptide+HW will give an huge output on a single target, in a short amount of time.
Just spamming Chainheal doesnt mean you are a good Shaman. More over it doesnt mean you healed effective.
If you compare the new skills of a paladin and priests with all the granted haste, it will become much more important to skill our LHW/HW-haste by tidal waves. This is the first time a shaman is able to choose how to heal by fast/instant situational heals.
I want to cite Bruce Lee: "be water my friend" always flexible, always able to react on different situations with different skills.
In the end i can only agree with optalmo.

 

Darian_TruBlade

Question: Is Healing Wave 1.6 Seconds under Tidal Waves (without haste) or is it 1.75 seconds? For Warlocks and Backdraft the cast time reduction appears to come after talents which reduce cast time, rather than before.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Pouf

It's 1.75 sec

 

healmuth

perhaps it becomes more and more viable to specc totally away from imp. LHW/HW due to the GC?

Example Specc 8-5-58

 

• Philondra

I'm confused as to why any spec would spend the points to go down to riptide, skip tidal waves, and yet still place points in Healing Way. In addition to the limitations of the talent pre-3.0, the removal of downranking has made keeping up a 3-stack even more mana intensive.

Grimtaash made a post a few pages back in which he gives a formula for calculating healing per spell power. Since I don't think anyone has refuted his numbers, I'll use that formula in my calculations:

Restoration WotLK Talents and Discussion

Specifically, the healing per spell power (HSP) for HW is:

5/5 Purification, No HWay, 0/0 TW: (3/3.5 * 1.88) * 1.1 = 1.77 HSP
5/5 Purification, 3 stack HWay, 0/0 TW: [3/3.5 * 1.88) * 1.1 * 1.18 = 2.09 HSP
5/5 Purification, No Hway, 3/5 TW*: [(3/3.5 * 1.88) +.12] *1.1 = 1.90 HSP
5/5 Purifcation, No HWay, 5/5 TW: [(3/3.5 * 1.88) +.2] * 1.1 = 1.99 HSP

* This value is calculated to determine a point-for-point comparison of HWay and TW.

For raids with a single resto shaman, a 3 stack Healing Way is only possible for the fourth and subsequent healing waves. Using the same forumla and only changing the number of healing way stacks gives the following results:

First HW (0 HWay stacks): 1.77 HSP
Second HW (1 HWay stacks): 1.87 HSP
Third HW (2 HWay stacks): 1.98 HSP
Fourth and subsequent HWs (3 HWay stacks): 2.09 HSP

Conclusions:

* 3/5 TW gives a greater scaling bonus to HW than Healing Way does until the third HW.
* 5/5 TW gives a greater scaling bonus to HW than Healing Way does until the fourth HW.
* Healing Way's only benefit is that it improves the base value of the heal as well as the scaling, so it will be marginally stronger with lower spellpower.
* These calculations ignore the coefficient boost to LHW and the cast time reduction to HW/LHW granted by tidal waves. Adding these into the picture only boosts the value of Tidal Waves.
* If you are going down to riptide anyway, the only reason to take Healing Way instead of Tidal Waves is because you spam healing wave on a single target. For any other duty, it is inferior.

 

Anaram

With base healing of 3034 to 3466 with level 80 rank I'd hardly call it a marginal benefit unless I'm missing something here. About half of the heal can easily come from base values instead of spell power.

 

Kilted Raven

I've been messing around with a few different builds and 2 points in Tidal Waves seems to be (for me) the optimum setup at the moment. With the haste buff being flat and only the proc rate varying, 40% from 2 points has meant that the cast speed buff is up when I need it on all but a very few occasions.

It's not common to find a talent where you want more than zero but less than the full amount of points invested in it, but I'd say Tidal Waves is one of those few.

And while it doesn't reduce the GCD, If I'm casting a LHW on a target it's because I need that healing value to land now, rather than in 2+ seconds. So the haste buff is worthwhile for those odd occasions when you need to catch someone who has taken a spike.
I tried dropping it completely and found that I actually missed the buff. It certainly does change my playstyle (in a positive way) knowing that I have a very fast heal in my back pocket at all times.

 

puupi

I've regemmed my gear with full intellect, got like 800 UB int, 14.7k mana pool or something liek that. Raidbuffed my manapool is 19+k. UB spellcrit around 32%. LHW and water mastery glyphs. Specced 0/10/51 (all crit, intellect etc talents included) and I use LHW and riptide for 90% of the time (using chain heal is very very situational). I never get below 10k mana in SWP and on KJ for example my effective healing output was 2 times more than our other shamans (who spams chain heal with 350 haste). The only fight where CH > LHW is Eredar Twins, all others work better with pure lhw spam and riptide on every CD.
Shaman is an awesome MT healer now, too. LHW/riptide spam on the MT with earth shield on him; thats basically 3 HoTs, armor buff on all the time, instant heal every 6 secs and 6-8k heals every 1.5sec.

To all of you who still spam CH: Respec, Regem and l2p your newly tuned class.

 

healmuth

Given that you don't really know what kind of encounters you will face in the expansion (besides Naxx, which I will not really consider as a hard raid), I think you're a bit fast with your conclusion and recommendation here.

It will pretty much depend on the kind of encounters that we will face at 80. And who on earth would now spend gold on regemming their entire gear? I just think it's bad advice.