I agree with the point about MP5 and INT being dead once you cannot go oom no matter how hard you try, however, we are not at that point yet. The only time you can safely say we are is at the end instance of an expansion when difficulty will be at its supposed peak.

Even with endless manapool int isn't dead stat.

You're right. We might need more mana pool and regen later in Ulduar and so on, but if we have most of the best in slot items at the moment, we can't never oom anyway at current contents.

I know this problem is still unsolved, but through my current experience while raiding ALL content in all modes from heroics to 3 drakes I created the following rough guestimates.

Note: These values do NOT rely on a lot of math, but my personal experience in doing the wotlk pve content. Especially if you still got some little mana issues (which is however unlikely) and asuming you have replenishment up all the time.

Note also that haste's factor is very low, because I think it is not a that important stat if you are fully epic equipped. Totem + haste included on current available epics is more than enough. If you need a CH faster than 2.0 there is definitely something wrong with the way you heal

Armor - Items - World of Warcraft

Such high value to MP5, such low value to Haste. And your argumentation against Haste doesn't hold much truth, either.

MP5 is not useful. I have tried my best to ignore as much as possible and I have not ever ran out of mana. That is partially because Haste enables me to get in heals when they are needed - I spend less time casting, and more time actually healing. Or in other words: I'm in control of the situation a lot more than those with a lot less Haste.

Purely from a 25-man point of view with good raid replenishment, MP5 is absolutely worthless beyond belief. There is nothing that it contributes to when a tank needs a heal, or the raid is slowly dying.

But I guess the definition of "healing" is a bit skewed here. Theorycrafting tells us that, if we spam Chain Heal forever on a raid that always needs the full effect of the heal, then yes.. MP5 grants you a few (5 to 10?) more casts in a few minutes time.

But in reality there are 5 to 7 (or even more in Ulduar) healers besides us, HoT's ticking away, people using instant-cast spells, Paladins throw FOL around, other Shamans putting Riptide on that one person you just thought needed a heal. I prefer not casting a spell when I see the guy being targeted by 3 others, so I move on.

Are all of you having massive mana problems or something?

Shaman Scaling Situation

I started looking at how Shaman will scale in Uldar and beyond. I did some comparisons at how our spells scale as our stats go up. We lose ground on all the other healers. Shaman are at the bottom at all the scaling talents. Does anyone else think this might be a problem in the future?

For 25 man chainheal based gear i'm using hps values based on my current gear:

2500 sp
525 haste
25% crit (including talents)

+1 sp = +1.69 hps
+1 haste = +1.48 hps
+1 crit = +0.52 hps (no AA or IWS)
+1 int = +2.02 hps (balanced with sp, using gems as a start)
+1 mp5 = +1.2 hps (int * 0.6)
4pcT7.5 = +271 hps

Loot Rank for WotLK

delete

Vuldonebtra, forgive me, but I believe after 3.0.8 we'll be using Chain Heal a lot more than Healing/Lesser Healing Waves unless we're doing the odd Patchwerk, Kel'Thuzad, Sartharion (when all 3 drakes are down, atleast) fight. Chain Heal will gain so much potential over 1 'minor' patch. You've also including Empowered Touch which to my knowledge, no Druids take. I personally thought the Glyph of Healing Touch had practically zero use in practice due to FoL, LHW, FH existing: which would all heal for more, for the same cast. Also, in your calculations (again, forgive me) haven't you missed out Purification and Improved Chain Heal? Those 2 talents (7 points) give CH an extra 30% effectiveness, if we add in our set bonus that's a 35% increased effect on CH. This is without Riptide as well. I think we'll be - with that single spell - heads over the rest with regards to spell scaling.

This made me wonder, is it worth gearing for Crit > Haste considering Haste benefits CH far more than Crit does, with regards to effective healing and effective HPS?

Of course, this is speculation. I do not know whether or not Ulduar will be have heavy AoE damage. If the AoE damage is on a timer (Morogrim, Archavon) then CoH and Wild Growth may out-perform CH due to instantaneous casting.

Personally, my 3.0.8 spec is looking like this: 0/17/54. I do believe the new Healing Way looks nice!

Taking risk to depreciate previous discussion, I should tell that HEPs greatly depend on your raid build and your role in it.

For example, we farm 10ppl Naxx with 3 healers and 25ppl with 7 healers, with me being raid healer. So mana is not an issue for the most fights. In that case, mp5 worths about nothing for me. And the stat I need the most is haste - it allows to compensate other players mistakes. But for somebody who heals MT mana can be the most required stat.

So, any "spherical HEP in vacuum" like we created will not describe real stuations. And I guess we can only speak about at least two kind of HEP: Throuthput Equivalence Points and Longevity Equivalence Points. There player should rely on these points according to his situation. The are no general HEP at all, imho.

What about the change to Healing Way makes it interesting? I am just not seeing it. HW is too slow and too big for everything except Patchwerk, and LHW+ES+Glyph is faster (thus keeping the target more stable), just as big, and has x2 the casts, thus helping the uptime on AF significantly. Not taking Healing Way for a spell I never use frees up 3 talent points that are far more useful.

I find no reason to ever cast HW except in an NS macro...no change made in 3.0.8 approaches something that would change my mind. My second choice will remain CH after LHW for single targets.

As for becoming the raid healers, I am not convinced we are going to get force slotted to that role. The priests will stop CoH spamming, but that means they will just start using their other tools. They are still superior at raid healing in all fights except a heavy AoE fight (renew, PoM, PoH, CoH every 6 seconds, flashes, shields) and we are still superior at spooling extremely fast single target heals that hit hard due to high crit.

I can LHW for 10k and 10k in less time than I can spool one CH, doing slightly less healing to the first target, alot more healing to the second target, only losing the marginally useful healing from a theoretical 3rd and unlikely 4th target.

You can be very successful not spammnig chain heal, and you can be very successful spamming LHW on a tank, even with the IWS changes.

This is only true if you pass the haste rating that drops LHW under 1 second.

Using this spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

At 105 haste rating with TW active and no WoA totem (Results in a 1s LHW), with ES active on the target (also not counting crits/AA):

@2000 SP:
LHW: 1.0s - 4610 heal
HW: 1.67s - 7497 heal

Result: LHW heals 201.7 more in the same time period as HW.


@4000 SP:
LHW: 1.0s - 6950
HW: 1.67s - 11420

Result: LHW heals 186.5 more in the same time period as HW.



Overall result: LHW provides the opportunity of less overhealing, more cast/crit-based procs, can be spread to multiple targets, and provides more healing on a single target than HW does, assuming ES is up. This is only effective if you focus on stats other than haste and do not pass the 105 haste rating "cap" for LHW.

It also *currently* costs an overall lower amount of mana than HW with IWS and some crit rating. However, this will change after 3.0.8.

In other words, he is correct. However, only in certain scenarios. You have to gear for it to work properly.

100~ haste rating for a level 80 is not a good amount to go by, if we're properly raiding 25 mans. I have about 480~ unbuffed haste rating (17%~ or something, I believe) pushing, with WoA, HW to a 1.1~ sec cast while TW is active. Yes, currently nothing spikes the tanks nearly enough (Sarth 3 Drakes is an exception, I guess) for HW to be useful - over LHW, but Ulduar might be something more to the table.

I believe though, honestly, we'll be seeing a lot more availability to CH if any fights like Sapphiron evolve into Ulduar. Riptide > CH > HW/LHW > Riptide > CH > HW/LHW I think would be reliable rotation, of course though, different encounters may favour pure HW/LHW spam, Riptide/CH spam.

When I'm raid healing on Sartharion (3 Drakes) I tend to use LHW at around the same rates as I use CH after a Riptide, but that's generally a result of the high (10-12k~) spike raid damage LHW is a better spell to overcome the raid damage. From a WWS parse of the fight, it looks like the raid generally takes 2-3k DPS and during Twilight Torment this jumps to 5-6k and ultimately falls to 500~ dps when just Satharion is alive.

So yes. I believe HW will have a place in Ulduar especially if GC's comments on "hard modes" are reliable. Though we shouldn't rule out LHW completely, it is still a perfectly good spell when Glyphed.

He said: "[LHW is]...just as big, and has x2 the casts". Your own numbers show that he is wrong.


We can all disagree on just how useful Healing Way is. But the numbers should be accurate.

You should read the several other threads about LHW tank healing in this forum that refute your claims.

I stack a lot of crit (40%+) and very little haste (only enough to get LHW down to around 1.2 sec) when asked to heal over my preferred enh spec and I can solo heal the Sartharion tank with only a Beacon and a few druid hots assisting me. With Tidal Waves up almost all the time with a RT->LHW->LHW rotation every LHW cast is 0.98 seconds at this haste level, and the overhealing is very low.

There is no way I would switch to Healing Wave in this scenario as its cast time is still too long, leaving the opportunity for a double hit to kill the tank, which just isn't going to happen with me putting a typical 20k healing on him every 3 seconds (1 RT, 2 LHW with at least one LHW crit of 10k+).

The changes to IWS impact this strat somewhat, but not much. I'm of the opinion it probably makes it easier to do since I won't have to refresh Water Shield every 6th heal. The mana efficiency isn't as good, but honestly, the fights in Ulduar will have to be significantly longer for my mana to drain out more than it currently does...and I am not even close to best in slot ear for this strategy yet.

You claimed that "[LHW is]...just as big, and has x2 the casts". Are you suggesting that with your gear, LHW is 1.0s and HW is 2.0s? Are you suggesting that LHW+G+ES is just as big as HW?

Let's just not throw words back and forth. I posted numbers showing my position. Post numbers showing your position.

This is exactly what I mean. ES+LHW+Glyph with high enough crit will, in 3 seconds land three times at a minimum of 16k (all non crits) and a maximum of 30k+ (all crits). Without Healing Way, HW will output more than that by a small amount and costs a lot more mana. You cannot spam HW, even with IWS, for more than 2-3 minutes, it simply costs too much. You can spam LHW, get almost the same throughput, have higher percentage uptime of AF (due to more casts), have higher percentage AA procs (more casts), and have better health stability of the tank due to the healing landing every second. If you toss Healing Way into the numbers, you can defeat LHW spam with theory...but in reality, after you have spent 2+ minutes trying to keep the proc up burning mana when you don't need HW to do the healing, you'll be OOM, and the shamans doing CH or LHW will still have 1/2 their mana. Naturally, this only applies to single target tank healing, but then again, why would you ever choose HW over CH or LHW raid healing?

That is the fundamental issue with Healing Way. Healing Wave is rarely the right heal choice during a fight, let alone for an entire fight. It has to be the right choice over long periods of time for the talent to be useful, and only one fight (Razuvious) fits that description. For me, it is nowhere near worth 3 talent points for one fight that can be coped with easy enough without Healing Way. If LHW had a chance to proc Healing Way, it would be alot different.

And the numbers are already posted in the other threads BTW.

Jaredh, to get the values you're talking about you need ES to be active on the target - which means a maximum of 1 target will recieve the healing values you state. HW doesn't require this, this is why I say it has some potential in 25 man raids.

Still, what other talents are there? Maybe if Elemental had some mana cost reduction to *nature* spells specifically, it would be a good idea - or if Ele Focus could proc from heals. As it stands we need just 17 points in Enhancement (or 31 for DW) and then we can stick 54 in Restoration.

For some number comparisons of HW to Glyphed LHW, please read this post.

I have retreated somewhat from my original premise that LHW is the best possible Tidal Waves-activated spell. I believe my current spec (see profile) is the best possible pure heal spec for any PvE situation. Notice I have 3/3 Healing Way, 3/3 IWS, Riptide, etc etc. I don't count on healing way at all, but if I need to MT heal almost exclusively, HW is the best way to go. If I am keeping a focus on the MT but raid/spot healing otherwise, it's generally LHW with ES. Other than that, if you have time to breathe, I let Riptide HoT and ES keep the tank's HP up while keeping the raid alive with CH, and determining the best heal to use based on the target's HP deficit.

To sum up, the math says HW and LHW+glyph are both fine spells to use, and if you are successful using one or the other, be happy!

I think healing way would be good if:

1) They simply built it in the coef in so you didn't need to land the first HW
or
2) they made riptide and/or lhw proc healing way as well.

Just seems rare that I never have the need to spam HW on any target even MTs.

P.S. Thinking about casting HW really makes me miss downranking

Correct. The math is only close on a target with ES. Otherwise, you are probably best using CH with a hope of a bounce unless the extra 0.5 seconds will kill the person (people unable to get away from the Lava Wall, I'm looking at you).

I go 0/16/55 with only one extra talent point to spare, which I put into Improved Reincarnation over Healing Way as I am frequently requested to save Reinc for wipe recovery, and the less running the better IMHO. I question the need for Healing Focus entirely as I get sufficient push back protection from the Paladins and it is yet another talent that sucks 3 points up that is just too situational for my liking, when I can gain throughput from those points elsewhere (in the case of your spec vs mine, from Ancestral Awakening, which can be upwards of 5% more healing when LHW spamming, which I do a lot of).

But as Durnitol has said, if you are successful using any of these techniques (CH spam, LHW spam, HW spam, etc), then by all means don't change without good reason. Blizzard has done a great job breaking the healing molds (at least for shaman) allowing us to continue to CH spam or do other roles if so inclined by providing talents and gear to make it possible. You might have to convince your raid/heal leader that paladins are better raid healing and healing the tanks with their beacon (which, in my opinion, they are at this point in the game) to get a shot at that tank healing role though. Just know that if you do break into that tank healing role, your HEP changes dramatically towards crit and away from haste.

Why not make the buff a self-buff, instead of a target buff.
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Healing Way Rank 3
Gives your Healing Wave spell a 100% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells by 18%. This effect lasts 15 sec.