KnThrak

To be fair, it might be the "twitch factor" but after 3.0.3 I don't find myself spamming CH as much anymore.
Granted the effect is irrelevant due to the existant raids being powerrushable, but with 2 charges on TW and Riptide proccing it, I find myself reflexively using especially a hasted HW very very often.

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Ribs

This is exactly my question at this time. By placing a cooldown on CoH and WG, they've effectively made the resto shaman the only raidhealer that can effectively spam through heavy aoe. This steers away from the theory that no raid should need any class, just roles. Right now, I already put all the resto shamans we have in one group to make sure the mana springs stack. With these changes, one could be back at wanting 3+ resto shamans in a heavy aoe fight (again), assuming there will still be such fights. So I find myself back at making mana management groups and stacking resto shamans? Isn't this what Blizzard was trying to avoid or at least reduce?

 

Nitz

Let's hope Blizzard doesn't design encounters with Sunwell level raidwide damage anymore then.

 

Kyuki

Even so you wont be as effective in most encounters in TBC than if you were spamming CH, with ocasional Riptides going on.

Now TBC is about to end, and yet the developers think we should use CH 90% of the time. If you want to spam LHW and HW with riptides in end-game raiding, go ahead, but you'll most likely drop effectiveness in comparacy to CH spam in most fights.

It still boils down to how inefficiant LHW and HW is, and how bad our regen mechanics are, and how badly we scale in comparacy with other healers.
Why on earth would you bring a resto shaman to a raid for Riptides/ES and LHWs? Any of the other healers will outperform you on duties that requires those spells.

Prepare to be CH bots again, and hardly even that if they revert the CoH and WG plans one more time to no CD.

 

healmuth

Pitbuller, putting a CD on Chainheal that already has a cast time of 2.5sec is the wierdest thing to ask for. Especially because the entire shaman resto tree is "designed" around chain heal in comparison with the priest where CoH is just "another" spell but the priests holy tree has never ever been focused around CoH or what so ever.

LHW glyphed is in my opinion quite a valid alternative in certain situations. HW, in my opinion is a good "rescue" spell together with Tidal Force and Nature's swiftness - you can pretty much rescue any tank in any situation with that combo. I don't really understand why you'd think that we will spam CH at 80. I do not believe that will happen when you look at Blizzards comments on AoE damage etc..

 

Ribs

Healmuth, check the links posted on page 49. Here's a small quote from Ghostcrawler about the situation:

 

Vuldunobetra

Here are the average numbers at 80 for a Shaman.
Chain Heal * 2
Total Time = 5.0 seconds
Mana = 793 * 2 = 1,586
Total Healed = 18,750
Targets Healed = 8
5000 + 2500 + 1250 + 625 = 9375
5000 + 2500 + 1250 + 625 = 9375

Here are the average numbers at 80 for a Priest.
Circle of Heal & Flash Heal *2
Total Time = 4.5 seconds
Mana = 730 + 626 = 1,356 {*}
Total Healed = 20,000
Targets Healed = 8
2000 * 6 = 12,000
4000 + 4000 = 8,000

So still, a Priest can heal the raid more for less mana in a quicker timeframe than a Shaman.

{*} With Surge of Light, Holy Concentration, and Serendipity, I am estimating the mana usage by assuming one free FH.

 

Vuldunobetra

Can you point out what in the resto tree is designed around CH (don't just quote GC)? We have 2/2 Improved CH. Meanwhile there are 15 talent points dedicated to HW, LHW and/or RT. I understand that Blizz wants shaman to be Iconic Chain Healers, thats fine with me. But the roles between Priests and Shaman could easily be changed just by rebalancing spell efficiencies.

 

Titanx

Tidal Waves needs chain heal to proc, that's one. I don't think there are any others, most have to do with our other spells, which according to blizzard we should be using 10% of the time. It just doesn't make sense. I'm certainly not saying it's a bad thing that our talents buff spells other than chain heal. I think it's a good thing. It's just not good when according to them we'll be using CH 90% of the time. I think most can agree that while CH is a fun spell, we don't want to spam it 90% of the time.

 

Vuldunobetra

Tidal Waves needs chain heal to proc,

Riptide now procs Tidal Waves too.

 

Titanx

True, but if you don't have all 5 points in it, chain heal will still give Tidal Waves more uptime, as Riptide has a cd.

 

Gadoh

Well, with Improved Water shield proccing off of HW and LHW, but not Chain heal, wouldnt it be best if we find our regen lacking, to try and weave in LHW and HW? Isnt our mana efficiency going to go down since we cant chain pot?

I havent done much 80 raiding, so I cant be sure about this, but it seems Blizzard is going back and forth with what they want us to do.

 

Ribs

More information from GC:

[Source: MMO blue]

 

Torsha

A 3 second CD would bring down it within range of CH but consider this:

Lets say, for example, that Chain Heal was an instant with 3 second CD. If you spammed it then it would do the same healing as before but is it not much, much more powerful?
1. Your GDCs (WS, Totems, ES, Riptide) and TW boosted LHW+ HW could be cast between CHs, thats huge
2. Your first target would almost always be very effective since it will land on the player needing the biggest heal

Now I am not saying the CH should be an instant but rather that a 3 second CD CoH does not truly deal with the situation. We will have to see how the soon to be implemented 6 second CD works out but my guess is that if a CD is the way Blizzard is looking to fix this situation then either a 4 or 5 second CD is more workable.

I also saw the argument about a 10 yard radius perhaps causing raids to bring more priests and that definitely has merit. The point is this: if the radius is 15 yards than the outperform the so-called AoE healing superstars (as Blizzard wants shaman to be) and if it was zero it would be useless (/doh ) so somewhere between 0 and 15 are numbers that have significant impact. What if the radius was 8 yards, or 12 yards, or ... ? Of course it could also be unworkable ...

The thing is that a priest has to be a viable AoE healer in the absence of a shaman as well as a viable single target healer in the absence of a paladin, this is the niche that Blizzard are carving for them. I suspect that we will end up just seeing lower heals or bigger costs on CoH and WG.

 

• Philondra

I correct my earlier statement, as the functionality has changed in 3.0.3. I tested this tonight again by grouping with a guild mate and both of us taking near-fatal falling damage in Shattrath. I cast Chain Heal on myself, and when it jumped to my guildmate ELW procced on both of us. ELW can therefore proc off any jump of CH and can proc multiple times from the same CH.

 

Titanx

Maybe it's just me, but I'm having trouble verifying your numbers in math and in game. In game while testing I have 1447 Spell Power. My tooltip in game says rank 7 LHW does 1055-1202 (~1.5% increase, not sure where it comes from), although wowhead shows 1039-1185, so I'll use wowhead's. So Base Heal will = (1039+1185)/2 = 1112. I don't know where you got 1738 from, maybe rank 9? I also have 3/5 into Tidal Waves in game, which would give me an extra 6% spell power to LHW, which = 1533.82 spell power as far as this calculation is concerned.

Anyway, using your formula:

Healing =( Base Heal + SpellPower * ( 1.881 * Cast Time / 3.5 + SP Mod )) * Healing Mod

for LHW+G and the values you have listed, I'm getting

Healing = (1112 + 1533.82 * (1.881 * (1.5/3.5) + .1))*1.3 = 3252.42
In game my heals are doing ~2700 on average.

Am I doing the calculation wrong or is your formula off?

 

Vuldunobetra

My numbers are usually wrong, so don't take then as facts. But I am seeing Chain Heal with no jumps approaching the efficiency of LHW+IWS+Glyph once spellpower gets above 1800.

At 2000 spellpower:
---------------
3,905 heal - 2,604 HPS - 6.23 HPM - LHW
3,905 heal - 2,604 HPS - 6.96 HPM - LHW + IWS/3
4,615 heal - 3,077 HPS - 7.37 HPM - LHW + Glyph
4,615 heal - 3,077 HPS - 8,74 HPM - LHW + Glyph + IWS/3

6,808 heal - 2,723 HPS - 8.58 HPM - Chain Heal no jumps

IWS/3 is assuming IWS procs once every three casts
---------------

If there is even a slight chance that CH will jump, the situations for other spells very limited.

 

Talaus-Mok'Nathal

Oh yes, CH would be more powerful if it was a 3 second CD, but similarly CoH would be weaker because you're not getting 2 of them off within 1.5 seconds every time the raid takes AoE damage. The problem to me is that both WG and CoH are instant cast with no cd, meaning you can get 2 of them off before the first CH even hits, while moving, and not even worrying about who you're targetting for it. I can't imagine that they'll end up with a 4 or 5 second cd, as most short term cds are 6 seconds (assumingly to fit the 1.5 GCD).

As far as being needing AoE healers when a shaman isn't around, I still don't see a problem. In 10-man content, if you're stacking 2 paladins and a priest as your healers and really need all 10 members healed up you still have PoH available at only a .5 second slower than CH. And unless you're seriously stacking holy paladins as your only healer in 25-mans, you'll have enough WGs and CoHs to heal the entire raid every 6 seconds.

 

Vuldunobetra

My numbers were for level 80. That said, my numbers could easily be wrong.

 

Titanx

It has already been stated here that with all the gcd's we have to use, our HPS suffers tremendously. If healers at 70 are doing 3k HPS, which was certainly possible pre 3.0, we're losing 4500 healing done by refreshing water shield one time. With Imp WS, we'll have to constantly refresh WS about every 12 casts (assuming glyphed WS -- every 9 casts w/o this). A top level healer will be constantly healing with very little inactivity. I'll use LHW as a baseline since it's kind of the middle point between Healing wave (being 2.5s) and Riptide (being instant, w/ 6s cd).

1.5 (cast time) * 12 (casts) = 18 seconds

I'm going to assume LHW at 2.5k HPS. This value is actually lower (probably much lower with naxx gear and glyphed LHW) than the real value, I'm just going to assume a lower value for the sake of arguement. I'll assume a 33% crit rate, although this will probably increase as gear level increases, and hence more globals will be wasted. If we recast WS every 18s in a 6 minute fight (slightly arbitrary, but I think not far from truth, if not even shorter than LK fights), we waste 18+1.5=19.5s, 60/19.5 = 3.077, 3.077*6= 18.46 gcds. 18.46*2.5k = ~46k healing. So we're losing 46K healing to keep WS on in a 6 minute fight. Assuming 2.5k HPS, which is extremely low for a level 80 healer in a raid setting, the output would be 900k healing (if your overheal were 0%, which certainly won't be the case) in this 6 minute fight. Take away 46k and you lost ~5.4% of your healing just from wasting gcd's to keep water shield up. Now let's assume that you had 25% overheal, a reasonable, if not forgiving, number. Your output is now 675k. Take away 46k and those gcd's now cause you to lose over 7.33% of your healing. These numbers are of course what would happen in a perfect world, the truth is this won't happen. You will actually wind up losing more globals if you cast it more often than every 4 ticks or if your ticks get consumed more often, i.e. by getting hit. If you happen to let WS fall off for any amount of time you also lose the passive effect, which is 100mp5 (130 glyphed).

Maybe Naxx isn't so tightly tuned, I'm not sure since I haven't raided it at 80, but when the encounters start to get tight, gcd's can make or break a fight. It has been stated that we should sacrifice something to get more mana in return, but the other healers don't have this problem. Innervate costs druids 1 global, and they have hots that can keep going, along with omen of clarity. Priests also have a bunch of passive mana regen talents.

So while we're losing over 7.34% or more of our healing just trying to keep our regen up, priests and druids are healing over 7.34% more than us while not having to waste globals and having better mana regen. Add to that the fact that they're healing is currently more powerful than us and that number certainly increases. The more crit we get, the higher percentage of healing we lose from having to refresh WS. Also, the more HPS you do, while you still lose the same percentage of healing done from globals, the more raw healing you actually lose. This doesn't seem intuitive.

Using a 35% overheal instead of 25% this number turns out to be a 8.57% healing lost, and obviously increases and overheal increases.

 

Anaram

I doubt they'll go through with the 6-second cooldown on CoH/WG as that would have too big of an impact on how the spells feel. That said, some sort of balancing will probably take place. I'm hoping they'll find a way to keep these spells off cooldown and to just figure other ways to prevent excess spamming (though I've never really seen anyone actually "spamming" WG to anywhere near the alleged 70% of casts).

 

Vuldunobetra

With Imp WS, we'll have to constantly refresh WS about every 4 casts (assuming glyphed WS -- every 3 casts w/o this).

Actually, we have to refresh WS every 4 crits. That's 12 casts with a 33% crit rate

 

Anaram

Wouldn't you recast WS every 4 crits instead of every 4 casts? Say 33% crit rate this means refreshing water shield on average once per 12 casts. Also, haste does lower the global cooldown of water shield - a big part of how healers are pushing 3k HPS is due to about 25% haste from gear & raid buffs. With, say, 25% haste your GCD will only last about 1.2 seconds.

The amount of regeneration to heal without any breaks is quite high, I'm not sure if it's reachable. The burn for druid is about 2000 MP/5 (assuming rejuvenation spam with 1.0 sec GCD with idol and T7 set bonus). Mixing in lifeblooms will lower this (to about 1750 with only lifeblooms) while wild growths will increase it (to about 3000 with WG only). For sake of comparison the typical burn for druids in Sunwell was about 700 MP/5 (Lifebloom spam with 20% haste) to 800 MP/5 (random rejuvenations/regrowths counted in)*. No other spec could really chaincast without downranking through entire fights (and even druids really couldn't go indefinitely without some sort of breaks).

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that there isn't a single spec in game in wotlk that can chainheal through an entire raid encounter.

* I'm not counting in small delays between each cast which cut probably about 10% off the HPS (as well as mana drain) of any cast not longer than global cooldown.

 

Titanx

Yeah, sorry for the error there. I caught it just before you guys posted and edited my post, but it does verify that we lose more healing from globals with the more crit that we get.

 

Anaram

If you want to be rigorous you should also remove overhealing from the casting time lost to keeping up water shield. I'm also not sure how you got from 900k to 775k with 25% overhealing also.