• Philondra

EDIT: Too slow.

 

Orgok

Every so often an attempt is made to make dual wield healing viable. I generally dismiss these, but yours comes with some good theorycraft work so allow me to play the devil's advocate.

1) One variable missing from your HPS calculations is Earth Shield. While multiple earth shields in a raid have diminishing returns, and you will only see optimal results on a tank, Earth Shield can still represent 10-15% of a shamans' healing on a particular fight. For this reason I believe it is worth mentioning that this spec, if viable, would be unsuitable if a traditionally geared resto shaman were not in the raid.

2) I must take exception to your dismissal of Riptide as a 5-10 man ability and a mere toy in a 25man setting. Even if you ignore the utility of proccing Tidal Waves and the Chainheal bonus, Riptide fills a critical role in the 25-man raiding shaman's toolbox. The ability to finally heal on the move, even in this limited capacity cannot be ignored, to say nothing of the se as an emergency heal.

With that said, your numbers have some interesting situational possibilities. I will try and provide you with a 25man WWS with your theoretical build.

 

MatsT

At the very least, he should include the healing from 8 charge ES every 30-35 seconds in the traditional builds.

 

• locriani

Thanks for the thoughts. I did intend to originally include ES in the HPS calculations, but could not find enough information about the ability's ICD. If anyone can point me in the right direction for this information, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've found that in a 25 man setting, I am mostly using CH anyways, and mainly using RT for an increase of the CH hit on the main tank / really hurting melee for the 25% increase. I would agree that RT is a primary emergency heal for shamans; however, I believe this role is filled better by Guardian Spirit / Penance / Pain Suppression / Lay on Hands / NS + HW / NS + HT / the other multitudes of abilities that are generally present in a 25 man raid environment. I guess I'm trying to say that i find RT to be a great heal, but far too situational for my tastes in a 25 man setting.

Any parses would be extremely helpful and much appreciated.

 

MatsT

The internal cooldown on ES is 3 seconds, but it will obviously not always procc instantly after that.

Using RT for increasing chain heals is very situational. From the time you cast RT until the chain heal lands there is a 4 second period where your target is sure to be healed up anyway. Waiting 1.5 sec longer to decide target for the chain heal probably nets you more healing than that 25% increase. There are some places where it works though, like malygos and sapphiron, where everyone takes constant damage.

What you are missing is that riptide including the HoT is a quite efficient heal all by itself, both HPS and HPM. Not counting the HoT, for example in trivial content, it's at least a good snipe heal.

Even when i go into a raid with the intention of only spamming chain heal, i get about 65-70% healing from it. The rest is made up of earth shield, riptides while moving and the odd HW when it seems appropriate. By using the DW specc, you are giving up every spell in your spellbook but Chain Heal.

 

• Binkenstein

This is probably the biggest flaw of the spec.
While it would possibly be sufficient for raid healing, if you need to do single target heals due to encounter mechanics or other healers dying, then you're effectively screwed.

 

sovelis41

If you are only using RT for an emergency heal (by your definition every 3+mins) then you are healing inefficiently/incorrectly. I may be misunderstanding you, but that is really flawed logic for a spell you can cast every 6s. On fights like KTz you can go the entire fight using only RT and LHW and do much better than trying to chain heal people spread out all over the place (obviously chain heal for melee).

 

• locriani

Right, that's what makes this spec primarily useful for AoE heavy damage fights only, if it does turn out to be useful at all. I just find my RT HoTs are sniped off by other healers, which relegates it to a rather mana-inefficient instant heal, or a instant heal + 25% boost, depending on the situation. Obviously, chain healing on a fight like KTz where your primary responsibility is casters pushes the limits of common sense, and as such, I believe it's beyond the scope of this thread.

 

• Binkenstein

So for a spec that excels at raid healing, it falls over as soon as people need to spread out, or when you need to heal single targets.
I think this spec is going to come down to the "special snowflake" niche with a one-use-only clause, and as such will be impractical. I'm not saying that there may be some slight advantage to such a build, but the practical implications will mean that it's not viable.

Remember: DPS is a science, healing is an art. We can't use math to justify new healing builds without also considering the practical application of said build.

 

MatsT

Even if we consider the non-existent fight where you could cast only chain heal the entire fight effectively, the tradeoff just isn't good enough. Looking at the stats:
[Librarian's Paper Cutter]
184 Spellpower
15 Haste
Extra Earthliving procs
[Voice of Reason]
24 Stamina
74 Intellect
20 Crit rating
7890 Armor
Looking at this, the [Librarian's Paper Cutter] probably gives about 5-7% more healing on chain heals, at the cost of a lot of intellect.

Sorry, but it's just not gonna happen, it's a total crap specc. Maybe if we could reach Mental Quickness like the Elemental "hybrids" without losing Improved Chain Heal, it could be possible, but the way the talent trees looks right now 0/1x/5x is the only viable resto build.

 

sovelis41

If you really want to show the viability of such a spec you need to prove that it works on fights like Razuvious or Sapphiron (which chain heal, arguably, isn't very good for) AND doesn't make you completely worthless on the very next encounter. I've used Riptide more for it's cast time than for it's HoT. ES + Riptide is a great setup buffer for just about every fight in the game, and I just can't see giving that up.

That being said, such a spec could stand out to help with the learning process if your job is incredibly focused (something like Twin Eredars), but Bink's assertion still holds: whether or not a fight is AOE Heavy or PW, you will find a time to use pretty much all of your heals if you're creative enough. Also this spec basically requires you have another resto shaman around for earth shield, and it's usually better from a raid min/max standpoint that can bring less healers that are capable of handling several tasks throughout the course of the encounter.

 

• locriani

Very much agreed. As it stands currently, I don't feel this is a build I would take for the majority of raiding situations unless I was perfectly comfortable that my only role in the raid would be constant chain heal. However, I think this bears enough application to the situational niche shamans often find themselves in to justify time spent researching this spec.

Specifically, I'm interested in the scalability of this spec; if it turns out that the only real advantage is the spellpower bonus (as some evidence is pointing towards), it may well only be 'useful' at a T7 raiding level. If a large portion of the benefit instead can be shown to come from EL procs, then this spec may become viable as a offspec (dual specs, when that feature is completed) for Ulduar raiding and beyond.

[edit]: I just looked at the Patchwerk 10man parse from last night, with a standard 2 tank setup.

Chain Heal hit 53 times with a 48% overheal; EL procs accounted for 5% of my healing done with 40 ticks (~700 / tick.) HPS was approximately 2352 (not including overheal).

Perhaps EL should instead be looked at as a (perhaps unreliable) direct bonus to chain heal? With the numbers from patchwerk, it looks to be around ~525 extra healing per CH hit with my stats, if we choose to examine it this way.

 

Protico

EL as you are using it here is just bad, it is a low-powered proc-based hot which will be made moot as often as not by the chain heals you are spamming anyway. Relying on the healing coming from EL to make the spec useful is like...I can't even think of a less reliable source of healing.

 

• Binkenstein

The catch here is that while Chain Heal is good, it's not the only practical raid heal available. If I had to choose between any healer that could do all healing roles well, or a specialised healer that could only do single target heals or raid heals with any effectiveness, I'd go for the former every time.

 

MatsT

Respecc costs these days is low enough that a specc doesn't really need to be useful in more than 1 fight to get used there. The fights i can think of where earthliving is more useful than in other fights is Sapphiron and M'uru. Constant, slow raid damage making sure your EL never overheals. This is what could possibly make this specc even remotely useful.

 

Ranyon

another good weapon for DW [Blade of the Unrequited]

 

Ninarz

I really did not like a DW EL spec for 25 man, or heroics. I wasn't able to try it out in a 10 man since I only specced this way last night and had such a boring/awful time with it that I immediately specced back into my RT spec.

Here are the issues:

• Percentage of ELW healing done while glyphed was 10%, while it's normally about 5-6% of my healing done without the DW spec and glyph.
  
• You will need to stack a lot of haste for quick CHs. I had about 625ish haste and it still didn't feel like I was casting fast enough to keep up sometimes.
  
• You'll still have to LHW sometimes. Sorry, sometimes that bounce just doesn't hit, or someone is going down fast.
  
• No versatility. It's an extremely boring spec to play and makes you look like a chain casting robot from BC. Spamming mostly one spell for a 10% proc doesn't seem like an effective route to go for a healer.

I'm glad I tried it out and I had hoped that perhaps something had changed with a DWing spec but I came to realize after using it in various instances, it's just not interesting or fun what so ever. Even if it was the best AOE healing spec out there, it feels comparable to spamming COH.

 

• locriani

I'd be really interested in seeing your WWS parses, especially as all the existing data points to a 43.75% proc rate, and the EL weapon effect itself is listed at a 20% proc rate without the glyph. Earthliving Weapon - Spell - World of Warcraft

 

Ninarz

In this parse:
Wow Web Stats

are you DW spec with the glyph? I think I'm speaking more about actual healing done by ELW not the proc-rate. I'm sorry about that. I'll edit my comment to make that clearer. From what I saw on my recount while instancing, it did 9-10% of my healing (glyphed). Normally it's just a perk to a CH but nothing I actively try to use on people. Usually RT and ES are better because you can control their application to your healing target.

Here is last week's Patchwork for me:
WWS Loading...

Just seems to me that when someone specs for applying a wimpy hot that gets healed over rather quickly in a spam aoe healing encounter, you are gimping yourself for other opportunities to heal with the other variety of spells.

 

Kindralas

Really, until a decent caster weapon that's wieldable in the offhand comes out, there's no point to running dual wield. I doubt we'll ever really see a big spellpower offhand, which would get them in trouble with Elemental Shamans, but a high MP5/Haste/Crit weapon with some modest Spellpower isn't out of the question. More or less an epic form of the Paper Cutter.

As it stands, you're blowing too many talent points and giving up two Shaman staples in order to use two Earthlivings, when really, the only reason we use Earthliving is because we have no better option. I would like to see dual wield become a truly viable option as much as anyone, but as long as Blizzard lives in deathly fear of dual-wielding Elemental Shamans, I don't think we'll see it happen.

 

glowacks

And the reason you won't ever see one is precisely because they're afraid of caster builds taking the DW talent instead of actual healing tools. Quite a lot of weapons that used to be 1h were changed to main hand in BC, and it took them a while to find all of them.

--

There are at least two reasons why improving Chain Heal and ELW at the expense of all your tools might be justified:

First, CoH and WG are currently continually sniping any attempts to raid-heal with hots, and even to some extent Chain heal itself. This will be changed in 3.0.8, so there will be less CH overheal and more use out of EL ticks which is probably about half of the reason to go this route.

Second, when the dual-spec feature comes out there will also be more encounters available; it may be that in one or more of these encounters Chain Heal will be an exceedingly good spell even if it is true for none today. This spec might prove itself viable as an alternate spec for such fights.

However, I can't imagine trying this on a normal fight where you'll want to make use of your direct heals' haste through TW, nor if you were the only resto shaman in the raid due to the loss of Earth Shield. Even if math-wise you wouldn't need to have Chain heal be overwhelmingly large percentage of your healing to make this worthwhile, the issue is that when you need to be casting LHW and HW you will definitely want the haste benefit from TW. Even when spamming CH now I will quite often throw two LHWs when it seems necessary, if not every CH due to how the damage is being spread and potential non-jumping chains.

You would need a fight where your ES would not be missed and there was a massive amount of raid healing such that you could get the largest possible benefit out of Chain Heal and ELW. If such an encounter made it in to WotLK content, I'd say this would be a suitable second spec - but I can't imagine that those sorts of fights would actually get made given the current attitude of the Blizzard developers towards AoE heals. The prevalence of Haste talents specfically for direct heals and the nerfing of CoH and WG suggest more things like Frost Blast instead of Frost Aura.

 

Orgok

I am confused by this statement. On instructor I literally stand in place and assist heal the boss' target with chain heal. On saphiron, while I do use some LHW for isolated raid members and riptide while moving, again this is a high-chainheal-usage fight for me.

 

sovelis41

It depends on your raid-healing setup. Priests and druids can take care of the entire raid's periodic damage much better than a shaman can, and the raid is often spread out enough that chain heal might only get 1 bounce (except melee, obviously). Regardless, it's a heavy AOE fight and you do use chain heal a lot compared to most encounters.

That statement was more to illustrate that a spec that tries to take DW and heal effectively will fall flat on it's face the second it enters a situation where chain heal isn't efficient. This could be during the course of a fight (i.e. Sarth+3: when Shadron and Vesperon are up vs. the beggining/end of the fight) or a fight where you might cast chain heal very little/not at all (i.e. KTz).

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

fukz

here we go:
Wow Web Stats

raidbuffed 2,7k addheal

later, i've tested saph und kel' to use MH EL6 und OH EL5 if i get 2HoTs on same target.

Unfortunately no :/

 

Retherok

Are you taking into account the incoming CoH / WG cooldowns? When the next patch comes out I would say that this is not true. With the CD's I can see a druid / priest easily healing through certain fights (tank lunge in vault being the one easy example that comes to mind.) But sustained damage I don't see CoH and WG being able to push a shaman away from CH.

Raid setup as you say making this spec not viable is completely true, but also raid setup would make this spec completely useful. With the right / wrong raid composition you could easily say that the spec would shine / "fall flat on it's face"

From running 25 raids, unless a person is standing completely by himself, I rarely see my chain heal NOT getting the full 3 jumps, even when healing casters (I can see 10 being totally different). Chain heal saves the lives of melee on KT. My guild sometimes runs heavy melee and while i need to pop some sort of cooldown to make chain heal castable (ie. my primary target dies before the cast goes off so everyone gets screwed.) it still saves lives.

I believe the data and theories that have been provided show that it is possible to be successful in this spec if you have the synergy with your other healers to be able to do it. In my opinion, personal preference is a much larger factor taking into account how your other healers operate rather than the min/max of this spec. If you think your raid would benefit the little extra output this spec affords you then go for it. I understand the drawbacks this spec would create but don't create theories just to shoot it down because your statements are based on how your raid healing works "in the moment." While healing assignments are good to give people an idea of who they should look at 1st or keep an eye on, healing is an art. Every artist has a different way of thinking when it comes to healing.