I gave the methods discussed in this thread a try last night in heroic naxx. Regretfully, I had some logging issues that prevented a good WWS parse, but I will fix that with a follow up tonight. Here is a parse from a heroic halls of lightening I ran just prior to raid, however.
I'm sitting at 927 INT, 22k mana raid buffed, 1980 SP and 25% crit self buffed, 150 MP5 in 5SR, and about 15% haste.
Anecdotaly, I felt like this method was much more solid for reliable tank healing. I also felt my reaction time to party/raid healing was much faster. I didn't quite beat out our resto druid, but I was markedly closer. Additionally, I felt like my mana use was much more in control on patchwerk (healing our bear MT). It was much more reliable than spamming CH and hoping I don't run out of mana before dps can bring him down.
I'll have to make sure to get a good log sampling for this weeks raids and review the results to compare. I'm generally LHW spamming randomly damage targets and tanks in a raid, keeping up Earth Shield, and Chain Healing where appropriate (we run melee heavy so that helps me out on the meters a bit). If I'm casting Healing Wave, it's only when Tidal Waves is up and most of the time it's a Riptide->HW->HW combo for semi-emergency healing. Timing Riptide, Chain Heal, and Tidal Wave setups is a dynamic that I'm finding incredibly fun.
You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.
I'd suggest using Razuvious as a benchmark for HPS and so on. With such high HP pools that the MC'd tanks have your going to get very little over heal. Obviously for real world situations this is pretty useless but its still valuable.
Also are you guys throwing in chain heals at all or just using riptide to proc tidal waves?
Ill give this a crack tonight on Patchwerk and Razuvious and see if i can link some wws for the fights.
Not even close. I spammed LHW non-stop and snuck in a heal on a careless DPS and the main tank was never in danger.
I'll second this anecdotal evidence. We ran with a two healer setup for 10-man patchwerk (myself and a resto druid), and not only was neither tank in danger, I ended with 60% mana using glyphed LHW and the resto druid ended with 80% mana. Unless 25 man Patchwerk presents a greater challenge, I don't see any reason to spec Healing Way given the current content.
Int is the best all around stat for any shaman healer. You want to gem for int more or less regardless of your playstyle as long as you have any concerns about mana. 100 Int grants (assuming BoK):
1815 increase in your mana pool
20.4 mp5 from replenishment with a 90% uptime
7.25 mp5 from Mana Tide on cooldown (435 mana per tide)
36.3 SP to heals
.726% crit
It might be worth noting that if you use Glyph of Mana Tide, 100 int will actually provide 508 mana per tide, or ~8.47 mp5.
I use chain heal only when it'll jump 3 times. Otherwise, LHW/RT spam.
Is a Sartharion kill and a fairly typical breakdown for me.
I'm interested to know what sort of raid compositions you are running.
Do you have any issues with the other classes moaning about you "stealing" their role as MT healer? And who is doing the raid healing if you have shaman on the tanks?
Don't forget that when (if?) we see CoH and Wild Growth on 6 second cooldowns that shaman will be required as raid healers on heavy damage fights like Malygos 25.
Please forgive if these are obvious answers, I rerolled tank -> healer for WotLK and am still learning the class/role.
1. For spamming LHW single target on Patchwerk, are you also using Riptide in the rotation for hasted LHW?
2. For maximum tank healing using Riptide -> HW -> HW -> CH -> HW -> HW. The transition from HW -> Riptide to start the next rotation is what I'm curious about, if the tank were still in dire straights would it be worth using a GCD on Riptide to start the next rotation or toss some glyphed LHWs for more immediate healing?
3. Is there a recommended crit minimum for this build?
Are you talking about the 10 man or 25 man Patchwerk? (because it is a huge difference)
10 Man: You can cast/cancel healing waves and/or use a lot of chain heal to heal both tanks. LHW obviously works just as well here, but you can do just about whatever floats your boat.
25 Man: If you are healing the first HS tank, I'd say mixing in riptide will be somewhat difficult until your tanks have a good bit of gear, but if you see an opening for one it's certainly worth it for the TW procs. Your experiences may differ here based on your raid group.
@ Razuvious
My log file was somehow corrupted which was upsetting because it is indeed an extremely chain heal friendly fight. I was basically just casting chains through the current tanking MC'd add and was getting 4 jumps consistently with 12-14k effective totals.
Edit: Other than Raz, my healing distribution looks like the recount above, but with more chain heals and a little less Riptide.
You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.
1. For spamming LHW single target on Patchwerk, are you also using Riptide in the rotation for hasted LHW?
There is a bug/design issue with Tidal Waves not reducing the GCD. So while it does make LHW cast and land faster, you cannot start the next spell until after the GCD. Due to the longer cast time, HW doesn't have this issue (unless you stack lots of haste?). I don't see much benefit in having a RT/LHW rotation without HW.
2. For maximum tank healing using Riptide -> HW -> HW -> CH -> HW -> HW. The transition from HW -> Riptide to start the next rotation is what I'm curious about, if the tank were still in dire straights would it be worth using a GCD on Riptide to start the next rotation or toss some glyphed LHWs for more immediate healing?
I think this is one of those situations where "it depends". RT heals instantly plus the HoT. LHW heals bigger than the initial RT, but takes 1.5s to land. Is the player going to die in the next 1.5s? Is Riptide big enough to keep the player up enough until they can be healed again?
I'm interested to know what sort of raid compositions you are running.
Do you have any issues with the other classes moaning about you "stealing" their role as MT healer? And who is doing the raid healing if you have shaman on the tanks?
Don't forget that when (if?) we see CoH and Wild Growth on 6 second cooldowns that shaman will be required as raid healers on heavy damage fights like Malygos 25.
The paladins in my group are thrilled to raid heal. They put their beacon on the MT and help me that way while spamming FoL as raid. And they do it well.
Priests as far as I can tell are not viable for tank healing (they barely were in TBC), and druids should be raid healers these days.
As for the nerf to CoH/WG....druids and priests will still be the main raid healers I suspect, with one shaman chain healing. You won't need to stack shamans like the hyper paranoid masses believe on the main WoW forums. One CH shaman will do. And really, one LHW shaman is all you can probably do as well...remember the viability of the LHW spam only works for one shaman per tank, and you probably will have extra paladins to do the other tanks.
I'm interested to know what sort of raid compositions you are running.
Do you have any issues with the other classes moaning about you "stealing" their role as MT healer? And who is doing the raid healing if you have shaman on the tanks?
I normally heal with a Holy Priest or a Pally. When you're 2 healing, it's more "you watch X tank" than it is healing assignments. I normally take care of the MT when I'm with the preist and leave it to the pally otherwise. I actually think holy priests make better raid healers than Shaman with their CoH+SoL flash combo.
As far as the rest of the raid, 2 pally tanks (they hit 80 first so they're best geared), 1-2 warriors, and the rest usually casters. Composition is more determined by who's 80 and reasonably heroic geared than it is by being optimal.
Originally Posted by Jogre
3. Is there a recommended crit minimum for this build?
It depends on your other sources of mp5. I had to pot on a fairly regular basis (1 every other heroic run or so) up to about 23-24% crit on the character sheet. I was running with a moonkin the entire time and without replenishment so that might color my impression (healing is annoyingly imprecise for thresholds). I've never had a problem if I get replenishment.
Originally Posted by Vuldunobetra
Due to the longer cast time, HW doesn't have this issue (unless you stack lots of haste?). I don't see much benefit in having a RT/LHW rotation without HW.
As you stack haste, the GCD reduces along with the cast time. HW won't have an issue unless you have enough haste to get TW HW below the 1.0 second GCD cap.
I actually use RT quite a bit. When the tank is on an avoidance streak, I'll RT when he gets hit. This is fairly safe because an ES goes off at the same time and I have a fast LHW following. If the boss hits particularly hard and the tank is on an avoidance streak, I'll RT just for the buff+hot and be ready for the hit. I use it just before I refresh my water shield since it gives me a fast LHW to catch up from the missed GCD. Finally, it heals for more than a non-crit LHW does, so I use it on slightly more damaged raid members when I'm raid healing and let the hot+AA take care of them. For pure throughput it's not that useful and I normally won't hit it just for the haste when I'm tank healing.
I use chain heal only when it'll jump 3 times. Otherwise, LHW/RT spam.
Is a Sartharion kill and a fairly typical breakdown for me.
Qualifying note: I tend more towards a balanced int/mp5/crit build than you do, so my numnber looks very different. Ill try to get some tonight to post.
Some things I noticed in your numbers:
You avg 4449 per LHW, and 1250 per AA proc. Thats actually quite good from an AA overheal standpoint (about 7%). What do your LHW overheal % numbers looking? (obviously that is fight dependant but what kind of average do you get?
You use RT ALOT. More than LHW. That seems like a huge mana drain. Why do you do this? Sarth is not eactly a huge movement fight. The only fight I find myself using RT so much is Gluth when I am the kite healer and end up runnign around alot myself. Using RT so much would seem to hurt your HPS significantly.
I would love to see a balanced mp5 build doing the same job on that fight to see different numbers. Especially for HPS.
Mostly I think that the content is so easy that any reasonable build can do the job, and that unless Uldar is a huge bump in difficulty that no one NEEDS to min/max any more.
You avg 4449 per LHW, and 1250 per AA proc. Thats actually quite good from an AA overheal standpoint (about 7%). What do your LHW overheal % numbers looking? (obviously that is fight dependant but what kind of average do you get?
You use RT ALOT. More than LHW. That seems like a huge mana drain. Why do you do this? Sarth is not eactly a huge movement fight. The only fight I find myself using RT so much is Gluth when I am the kite healer and end up runnign around alot myself. Using RT so much would seem to hurt your HPS significantly.
Mostly I think that the content is so easy that any reasonable build can do the job, and that unless Uldar is a huge bump in difficulty that no one NEEDS to min/max any more.
I'm usually in the 12-18% range on LHW overheal. I heal entirely reactively (except for maxxena and faerlina's enrages) and normally focus frame the other healer so I don't snipe his heals and he doesn't snipe mine.
The number next to RT is not the number of times I cast it, it's the casts+ticks. I laid out the times where I use RT just above. It's actually pretty cheap since I've got a nice chance to crit on it.
I'd agree on the content comment. This thread is more about being a counterpoint to the TTT's CH lean. I actually do have a full haste/mp5 set that I wear when I know that CH is better for the fight.
This is just a comparative parse to the ones above using pretty much only chain heal and HW. I had 497 haste + egg of immortal essence. Unfortunately razuvious was a horrible mess with the mc's not going very well from the start so didnt have a chance to get into a steady rhythm and get a trouble free parse.
I ran out of mana with about 10 seconds to go is also worth noting. Will try to keep the same haste numbers for next week or if i do it 10 man this week.
I'm currently running around with this build. Done Malygos 10 tonight with me on MT healing and a priest on OT healing.
This is a recount for the fight, no WWS unfortunately. I'll have WWS for the Sarth we're doing right now, hopefully. My crit is hovering around tooltip which is strange.
So far my feelings are that it's worth further investigation, but it has severe limitations. I haven't been attempting to gear for haste particularly, and my gear has generally been replacing haste with crit and mana/5, and I've been hitting 1s GCD with just heroism and no WoA or whatnot.
I find the spec is kind of a mishmash in some ways. LHW loses a lot of HP/s because you're spending 1 GCD every 9-10 refreshing watershield and I'm not sure that it's really worth the bother once people start getting better gear.
[edit]
Looking at it now that recount is all kind of strange. I'll see what happens in Malygos 25.
I find the spec is kind of a mishmash in some ways. LHW loses a lot of HP/s because you're spending 1 GCD every 9-10 refreshing watershield and I'm not sure that it's really worth the bother once people start getting better gear.
Now that my gear is majority tier 7 with 4 piece, I'm noticing myself going back to Healing Wave more since I don't really worry about going OOM on anything (not to mention all the haste that's on T7.10/25). It's just easier to guarantee the tank is topped off with a riptide-hw-hw setup (very useful when landing after Vortex and prepping for a breath/melee hit combo).
That being said I still use LHW as my primary raid sniping heal, and I don't see that changing just because it's fast, is often free* and is enough to heal RSTS damage.
*Glyph, Meta Proc, and/or Trinket Proc
You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.
* Healing Way: Now only one application is required to reach full benefit. No longer stacks.
* Improved Water Shield: Lesser Healing Wave now has a reduced chance to trigger this talent.
This brings some change to the dependency on IWS + LHW combo. Obviously the mana feedback will be less compared to the games current state. I haven't been able to get any numbers yet.
The buff to healing way gives an indication that blizzard is promoting the use of HW which puts some drawbacks on the LHW spamming.
It is disheartening to finally have a second viable style of healing (that wasn't abusive or broken in any way, shape or form), only to see them specifically target it for a nerf.
Would be interested to know what the numbers are on the nerf, and if it ends up killing this playstyle. Seems like a bizarre change considering the whole point of the glyph system was to "promote different styles of play by altering spells and abilities."
They did exactly that very successfully with resto shamans and LHW... why make this change now?
I don't understand this change eighter. It seems they wants us to use HW more, and LHW less, but as already stated numerous times, HW is just a too big heal to be truely viable.
you can't spam it due to mana issues
you will have to time the land with the tank being roughly 10k hp below max hp and that is effectivly lowering his/hers EH because you aren't keep him/her topped off. Otherwise you will overheal alot and thus waste too much mana.
it's very slow for a semi reactive heal in a heavy dmg income raid enviroment.
But let us wait and see by how much the chance is lowered shall we
Last edited by hvidgaard : 12/12/08 at 2:05 PM.
Reason: spelling
Hopefully what we lose in mana back is made up by saving the global cooldown to reapply the shield. If that's what they've done then it's just one less GCD where we can't get off a heal and that will make the strategy better.
Hopefully what we lose in mana back is made up by saving the global cooldown to reapply the shield. If that's what they've done then it's just one less GCD where we can't get off a heal and that will make the strategy better.
If you needed the GCD before you would just not reapply water shield. But before, you'd have the extra mana. I don't see how this could make the strategy better.
This change isn't going to kill this healing style, it will simply make it cost more mana. Nothing other than the big mana return from IWS is taking a hit.
The reason I see for this change is that Blizzard would like mana to be a resource that needs to be managed throughout a boss fight. Currently, so much mana is returned from IWS that management is barely necessary for T7 geared shaman. It would only get easier spam LHW indefinitely as gear scales up with higher tiers.
I have no numbers on how much the mana return chance is being nerfed. So, I could be wrong if it gets hit too hard. My assumption is that they will reduce the chance to consume an orb with LWH to be a 60% chance on crit. This would make IWS benefit HW and LHW equally. LHW costs 60% of the mana of HW so allowing the two spells the same consumption rate per crit causes IWS to benefit LHW 66% more than HW.
If I am correct and they adjust IWS to proc on 60% of LHW crits, it will be a minor nerf for this healing style. I don't believe it would be entirely out of line, though.
This change isn't going to kill this healing style, it will simply make it cost more mana. Nothing other than the big mana return from IWS is taking a hit.
If I am correct and they adjust IWS to proc on 60% of LHW crits, it will be a minor nerf for this healing style. I don't believe it would be entirely out of line, though.
Updated the spreadsheet but haven't done the initial post yet. This nerf simply moves the efficiency from more than 4 target chain heal (at high crit rates) to closer than 2 targets. Alternatively, it moves it from an 85% illumination 60% down to an effective 47% or 51% with 2t7. Cost and HPM are similar to Riptide if you let all the ticks run.
I would have preferred a 70%, which would put it at 55% without 2t7 and 59.8% with, which would put it more or less dead even with illumination. I guess we're paying for those 195% crits.
Originally Posted by Bahamabrahma
a question ive been dumping aorund in my head lately that id love answered is this:
I hope I did not butcher this too badly but please you pro's out there, answer this one.
Don't read too much into the tooltips. Blizz is notoriously inconsistent (and occasionally incorrect) with their tooltips. A crit is a crit. I'm pretty sure you can double trigger the egg and embrace of the spider (for example) off the same crit, but procs off water shield procs would be unprecedented to my knowledge and I've played an arc mage since the launch of BC, so I've been watching procs for a while.
12/02/08, 5:12 PM
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