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

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.

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.


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.

This was my breakdown from last week's 3 drake Sarth kill (10 man).

I use the LHW glyph obviously but don't go too heavy into the popular crit building. I'm still gearing myself around haste/mp5 and focusing on int. I have a few pieces that I swap in that are haste/crit/sp (crit over mp5) but don't have anything that's crit/mp5 without haste (except my bracers that I just haven't replaced yet).

I run around 23k mana unbuffed (1255 unbuffed int) - around 27k raid buffed I suppose.

I'm still not and never will be a MT healer. I obviously assist with MT healing in a situation like 3 drake sarth (10) where healing is critical on all tanks, and it's not a prime CH encounter. I personally feel using a shaman as solely an MT healer is a complete waste of resources. 25 man 3 drake my breakdown looks completely different as LHW is used to spot heal and CH becomes the primary cast.

With CoH and WG being nerfed CH with high haste and mp5 / replenishment will be king for raid healing.

Leave true MT healing to the pallies / priests while the druids roll their hot stacks.

(Holy Priest / Holy Pally / Resto Shaman used on the 3 drake sarth 10 kill. Actually used the priest to primarily DPS and spot heal. End breakdown was priest with 400k, pally with 900k and me at 1.16 million I believe).

Vis Maior • Home if you want to see a full breakdown of the raid comp.

Self buffed I generally run:

2315 SP
388 / 407 in combat mp5 (depends on which boots I wear)
1255 INT
22,941 Mana
539 / 544 Haste
22.52 / 21.45 Crit

I only see myself replacing ring/cloak/belt/bracers to optimize for Ulduar, but base stats won't change too much. A little more haste, a tad more crit, slightly lower mp5 and a little more SP + will swap over to BS for 32 more int over 37 SP from Inscrip shoulders.

Then there's fights like PW. I see everyone talking about LHW spam and keeping up the MT with HW/RT rotations. Yeah, they're fun tools to use but what's optimal and what's fun because it's new are just two different things in my opinion. Leave the true MT healing to pallies and do the job of keeping multiple targets up. Use LHW as a buffer, ES to boost those LHW buffers and let haste carry your CH (just imo).

This is our PW this week. Only 5600 hps, I have last week's WWS that's around 5900 HPS but it won't load atm.

WOW Meter Online - The Best World of Warcraft Combat Log Analyse System!Fully support Wrath of the Lich King!

There's the breakdown (plus shows every source and exact amounts of mana replenishment - pretty cool site). The rest of the parses are sketchy - but PW was pretty lag free. We battled with 5-10 second cast lag most of the night along with along problems (sigh, HAT rogues creating 29,000 CP's on the server).



End result: I just don't think we're MT healers!

I realize we can get the job done, especially in 5's / 10's, but I've seen too many shaman lately talking about MT healing in 25's - go back to the basics! CH the raid - spot with LHW - use RT in whatever fun manner you want.

You realise you actually have to support your argument with reasons why you think Shamans can't MT heal for your post to have any merit, right?

If I was trying to say Shamans can't MT heal, then I would have given thorough reason as to why they can't. I said it's a waste of resources to use Shaman as a primary MT healing force when our tools are made for multiple targets - and of course this is speaking solely for 25's. I gave a breakdown of the hardest 10 man fight in the game to show that I do indeed know how and am more than capable of switching into MT mode when it's necessary.

My post is in regards to Shaman taking the 5/10 man mindset into 25s, when in the end it's just far less efficient than the traditional raid healing role (which we're still the best at).

You're essentially saying it's O.K. to be mediocre. I tend to disagree. I'm simply stating the mechanics of a healing style. Ancestral Healing isn't hard to keep up on a tank. That's where I leave my ES anyways for better spot heals with LHW. If I want an armor buff on the tank, I'll get it there while maintaining raid healing via CH. Once again, in a 25 man setting, if you're MT healing you're ignoring the primary mechanic that sets us apart from other healers in the first place.

The difficulty with this standpoint is that you have to start considering what other tools are out there. Except for range, Chain Heal doesn't really stack up well against even 6s cooldown CoH/WG for efficiency and provides comparable throughput with the very generous assumption that you can avoid sniping on the initial 2.5s cast. For spot healing, the FoL/BoL Paladin or SoL/FH Priest beats out the use of LHW.

Keep in mind that "Resto Shaman as the universal raid healer" is a BC-era peculiarity. The entirety of a Resto Shaman's multi-target healing arsenal is Chain Heal and AA.

I'd like to see some evidence that shows chain heal doesnt match the efficiency of a 6s CoH/WG.

As i organise assignments for raids i need to know where best to use the classes i have and it sounds like you have some very interesting information i'd like to see.

Math means nothing when applied. Raid comps and healing assignments will be different depending on the guild and situation. If raid damage is high enough, there is no threat of being sniped. 1.9 second CH 3x per WG / CoH - And if Shamans suddenly take over MT healing, are you really putting pallies and priests solely on the raid? When I say spot with LHW, I mean spot heal the tank - top him off between the next breath, hateful, etc. Hell, bounce CH off the tank to top him while topping off DPS at the same time.

Everyone sits here writing out advanced math breakdowns on what's going to be efficient and what's not and what's going to work in x situation when they've only seen y.

Do the fights and heal the way your raid needs healing. If you're in a situation where your guild doesn't have a steady paladin, sure, you can take over MT healing. If you're in a balanced raid assuming 8 healers with 2/2/2/2 (pally, priest, druid, shaman) or 7 healers in which case I'd say 2/2/2/1 (shaman being 1) then the best role you could fill is raid healing with spots on the tank.

Basing healing on math and rotations is unbelievable. It's the most reactionary role in this game so play it that way.

Hell our last PW was 4 healered, and I casted an amazing 5 LHW's and maintained 5600 hps. The week before was 5900 with roughly the same breakdown. We'll probably go down to 3 healers this week to see what kind of raid dps we can push (25 man) and if I'm in, I still won't be casting LHW - My mana will sustain a 2 minute fight while casting CH at 1.9 seconds with 27k for replenishment - meaning more HPS and a successful kill. Could I pull it off with LHW? Obviously. Is is the most efficient - depends.

React to what's going on. Don't rely on 'napkin math' to figure out what's going to work best for you, and don't fall into a RT - HW - HW - CH - HW - HW habit. Treating healing like a DPS rotation is ridiculous.