Finally, as for LHW, I never cast it. My haste is set up so that it generally casts below the GCD at 0.8s. Now, granted, I could regear to bring that to hover around 1.0s, which I think is ideal, but with my HW casting at 1.4s, I can generally get similar speed with HW and heal a lot more when it lands.
As far as I know there is no way to get both a 1 sec GCD and a 1 sec LHW as you need quite a bit of haste to lower the GCD that much which drops LHW well below 1 second.
As far as I know there is no way to get both a 1 sec GCD and a 1 sec LHW as you need quite a bit of haste to lower the GCD that much which drops LHW well below 1 second.
It was always my understanding that Haste reduces the GCD at the same rate it reduces your spell casts. Since LHW is 1.5s cast unhasted, wouldn't it then equal your GCD outside of Tidal Waves? At any rate, the massive amount of haste to get to a 1s GCD (1640) isn't impossible as things currently stand, though it's not a consistent factor. I have performed casts with over 2000 haste, along with Heroism and Tidal Waves, which is intensely amusing, if not terribly efficient (or frequent, considering it requires you to have both an Embrace and Egg proc up.) A recent Sarth attempt had me flinging HW's at 0.7s for about 3 seconds, which made me giggle.
At any rate, my statement was more along the lines of finding that sweet spot at which point LHW and your GCD are more or less in sync. If your LHW is casting faster than your GCD (and with Tidal Waves, it usually is), then you're essentially not getting any speed bonus out of it. When I can fling Healing Waves at 1.1s with a GCD at a similar level, then I generally find that it's better to use HW.
Since I'm sure people will comment on my spec--particularly my choice of Improved Water Shield--I had taken that without thinking when I spec'd DW last week and keep forgetting to change it.
Yeah, before I switched my spec to the DW one, I would use LHW for my quick burst heals, and I had the problem of the GCD being considerably longer than the cast itself.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this thread supposed to be about the pro's / con's / proposed viability of DW CH spec? *roffles*
So, in the end, Chain Heal will end up costing you significantly more mana, heal for significantly less, and do it slower than Healing Wave does. Why would I give up three very vital portions of this particular strategy (Riptide, Tidal Waves, and Ancestral Awakening) for even a 10% increase in Chain Heal effectiveness? Or ELW procs of any variety? Especially when you consider that, by and large, you can run the exact same healing strategy with a pure Restoration spec, and generate similar (albeit weaker) effect, and keep the reflexive healing that comes from having Tidal Waves up.
It has already been established elsewhere in this forum that CH only has to bounce 1 time to be more mana efficient than the old LHW before the nerf (100% proc on IWS, significantly more mana efficient than the current HW IWS procs) and generate more HPS than HW Spam without 3/3 Healing Way.
It has already been established elsewhere in this forum that CH only has to bounce 1 time to be more mana efficient than the old LHW before the nerf (100% proc on IWS, significantly more mana efficient than the current HW IWS procs) and generate more HPS than HW Spam without 3/3 Healing Way.
What he was trying to say was, why would you want to be a one-trick pony for such a small "benefit" (I'm pretty sure you know where this is going).
It has already been established elsewhere in this forum that CH only has to bounce 1 time to be more mana efficient than the old LHW before the nerf (100% proc on IWS, significantly more mana efficient than the current HW IWS procs) and generate more HPS than HW Spam without 3/3 Healing Way.
I"m not sure who established this but chain heal has to bounce 2 times (hit 3 targets total) before it out heals HW (without HW) if you take into account AA. Of course this is assuming 0 overheal.
Here's some quick math to support Daidalos's point just in case anyone questions the math behind it:
1.) AA is calculated as 33% of the HW crit value because it is affected by purification.
2.) All heals are 100% effective.
3.) Chain Heal is modeled as a single spell that either crits on all targets or crits on none. This is to calculate the maximum possible value for a chain heal cast.
4.) Effects such as Healing Way and GoHW are ignored.
5.) The number after CH is the number of total CH targets.
Avg. HW at 30% crit: 11109
Avg. CH-2 at 30% crit: 10059
Avg. CH-3 at 30% crit: 11734
Avg. HW at 40% crit: 11961
Avg. CH-2 at 40% crit: 10496
Avg. CH-3 at 40% crit: 12244
I'm working on other data comparing the relative values of CH and HW, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.
** As noted in this thread previously, Healing Wave is staggeringly weak without Tidal Waves improving itscoefficient and AA boosting the value of crits.
Last edited by Philondra : 02/19/09 at 6:17 AM.
Reason: Edited to fix numbering
If one were to assume CH-1 is more efficient manawise than a single Healing Wave (and that's been disproven, but let's assume), it fails to take into account the play style that you're being forced into. I rarely, if ever, spam Healing Waves. I cast one or two and I'm done. In order to gain a measurable benefit from the dual wield spec, you're losing more mana over time than you are with Healing Wave. It's not because the MPS factor of Healing Wave is better, but because you're having to output casts which aren't tremendously effective.
As for the whole CH vs. HW argument that this devolved into, naturally, any discussion on this spec will devolve into that, because that's what it comes down to, the usefulness of Healing Wave. The real question becomes this: What percentage of your casts need to be Healing Wave in order for the dual wield spec's advantages become overshadowed by the improved single target efficiency of Healing Wave in a normal spec? For me, that number is very, very low, even as low as 10%, because that 10% of my casts will often be massive healing that is required quickly on a single target. When those situations happen, I have the tools to output the kind of healing that is needed at that point. The dual wield spec does not.
Notice a few things here. First off, the ratio between Chain Heal and Healing Wave is very high on the CH end, with only 12% of my healing coming from HW. Also note there's another 10% of my healing that is coming from sources that are invalidated by the dual wield spec (Healing Wave Glyph, AA, Earth Shield and Riptide.) Therefore, if one were to assume similar payoffs, the dual wield spec would have to give me 30% better returns from Chain Heal in order for it to be a better option, just based on pure healing numbers to make up for the loss of the Healing Wave and other impossible contributions. I have yet to see any evidence that it does so, especially since most of those Healing Waves are on targets where Chain Heal is an inefficient heal.
Note also the overhealing percentages. Healing Wave did overheal more, as most people assume it does, but the difference is almost inconsequential here. Overall, my overhealing is slightly higher than I would like there, but it's still in the 40% range, and still resulted in over 3K HPS, which is fine considering how little I care about my performance in Naxx.
I think there's a lot of Shamans out there who are doing well with the spec, but I think those same Shamans would do a lot better to utilize all of the tools they have available in a more "normal" spec. Those same Shamans should start thinking about how to apply their abilities and when, rather than just trying to bump Chain Heal even more. Like any other Shaman, I had to adjust to moving from my customary role of 90-95% Chain Heal and top of the meters by far to a more considerate approach which makes topping meters irrelevant and focuses instead on using the right heal at the right time.
And when you only have one effective healing option, that approach is moot, so unless it's overwhelmingly powerful (like TBC Chain Heal), then the utility option wins out.
Been a while since I revisited this spec, but I decided to try it out finally in a clearing of all WOTLK content on tuesday. The OS kill is just a 2-drake.
The other shaman in the raid, Dizey ran a standard healing spec (except for the first boss or two where he was elemental). Prior to this test, the difference on the meters between us is almost completely decided by earth shield. My shaman (Orgok) tends to have a higher overall HPS due to gear choices and style, while Dizey often has a much lower overheal with similar effective healing. This is generally because I aim at tanks more.
Here's a log for Thaddius, which is a pretty good barometer for chain heal spam. As you can see, the two specs are performing almost identically. My higher HPS and effective healing are mostly a byproduct of my 97% heal time rather than the spec outperforming. However, if you note, 21% of Dizey's effective healing came from Earth Shield.
In my opinion, for a progression fight with only one tank, this spec is the superior choice for the second shaman. It is probably a HPS loss for a single shaman setup, since earth shield is so incredibly effective.
As a side note, this spec now holds the #2 recorded OS25 shaman HPS on wow meter online, however my personal performance using this spec was worse overall. As a team, Dizey and I together performed better.
Thaddius is a terrible fight for determining healing because the healing requirements on it are so low. Heck, I rarely heal on Thaddius aside from Earth Shield. Sapphiron or Sartharion are better gauges, but even then, there are a wide variety of factors that make such comparisons very difficult from a numbers perspective.
Anyway, it's somewhat obvious that the other Shaman would perform "less well" than you would, because, for one, the fight doesn't generally require the strengths that he provides (being greater reactive single target healing) and for another, he doesn't cast a single Healing Wave and only one Lesser Healing Wave. In this sense, you've provided a log which proves that the dual-wield spec improves Chain Heal more than a baseline spec, which should be somewhat obvious.
The log "higher" than you on effective HPS over Sartharion (a much better fight for determining the differences) shows a complete turnaround compared to your log. EK outputs 200K more than you with almost a million less overhealing (30% compared to 68%). Those are not insignificant numbers. The log below you shows a Shaman overhealing at 46%, which is still high, though only slightly, and he still manages a cool 300K+ more effective healing.
If those logs are showing the effectiveness of dual wield Chain Heal, all I see is a spec that's overwhelmingly mana inefficient and not providing any significant boost over Shamans using a more typical spec. When you look at the actual numbers behind the ranking charts, you can see that topping the meters isn't an effective means of analyzing a healing parse.
For the purposes of this discussion, I see overheal as pretty much irrelevant. All content at this time is stupidly easy, and overheal numbers in the 70% range are common. Obviously with no Riptide, LHW, or Earth Shield, overheal is going to spike. In fact, about all my shaman did for the whole night was target the MT and cast chain heal.
Thaddius is actually a very good fight for judging chain heal effectiveness, as the regular AOE damage and tight bunching mean the chain heals are going to bounce more often, and the overheal is completely irrelevant for the purposes of testing the HPS abilities of the two specs.
It's important to understand that effective healing is affected by many more variables than spec or gear. Player skill and other healers play a large part. By looking only at HPS, we see a good comparison of how the two specs stack up against each other in a raw healing comparison. Comparing effective healing on trivial content as you are suggesting is sort of... well, dumb.
Anyways, my conclusion was that the "standard" shaman build was superior for the first shaman in the raid, but that the DW spec was viable on chain heal favoring fights for the second shaman. If Ulduar has a Felmyst-type encounter, you bet your boots one of us will be running DW chain heal... that is until the gear scaling issues render it obsolete.
As for the spec being mana-inefficient? I can spam chain heal for 5 minutes... why do I care about mana again?
As for the spec being mana-inefficient? I can spam chain heal for 5 minutes... why do I care about mana again?
I have to agree with you here. I've been running this spec for a couple of weeks now and while it is in fact incredibly boring at times, I have stopped worrying about mana management. Two reasons for that: 1) there is so much replenishment available in my raid group that 9 times out of 10 I finish a fight with a full mana bar and that is AFTER I have spent the entire fight spam casting chain heal. 2) While the only time my mana bar gets low is if I die and ankh, it's a matter of seconds really before it is back to full.
Since I have actually run this spec for a while now and I have looked at numbers and compared my performance not only against the other resto shaman in my raid group, but also my past performances, I have to say that despite overheal and the amount of boredom involved in this spec, my overall numbers are a noticeable improvement. Not as vast as I had once assumed, but not marginal either. I think the key to making this spec shine like a diamond is if (as everyone is saying) new content will have fights conducive for this spec.
Also, I have to mention that with my regular resto spec, I never take Cleanse Spirit. But with my DW spec I do. And in the few fights that require cleansing, instead of healing, I stand around and just decurse. This is mainly because I see little point in casting useless chain heals while other healers interrupt their USEFUL healing taking the time to decurse when I am very capable of doing it. This leads me to the idea that this spec is meant for more than just awesome chainhealing. I can throw dual-FT imbues on my "Kelthuzad's Reach" and "The Stray" and go do my dailies or farm for herbs and meats and get them done much quicker (and have way more fun gettin' to run around pretending to be enhancement). I can take the job of Decursing on fights that need it, freeing up other healers and mages to do their jobs. I have enhanced totems, which is good if/when my raid team is missing our enhanced shaman. There is far more to this spec than just improved chain heal.
I believe that all the numbers have been crunched on this spec that can possibly be crunched. Looking at hypotheticals is no longer a good idea when evaluating whether or not this spec is going to be useful. As I'm sure Orgok will probably agree with me, a shaman should Never take this spec if they are the only resto shaman in the raid group, and definitely not if there isn't ample replenishment available. Other factors have to be looked into before deciding to run this spec permanently as well. Having gear that is good enough, having the proper enchants, knowing how to take advantage of haste and using CD's..... The other resto shaman in my group is a Healing Wave fan. He casts it quite a bit. And while the two of us haven't exactly teamed up to make sure we're not overlapping talents, I know that he doesn't use CH nearly as much as I did as the normal spec. So what does this mean? It means that as a few people have stated before:
Yes it loses versatility in healing style
Yes it is incredibly boring
Yes it is a mana hog
BUT if you can handle those things, (and have replenishment in your group) then this spec does perfectly ok. Just b/c our Healing Waves aren't as good, doesn't mean we can't still cast them. And just because we lose earth shield, doesn't mean we aren't able to make up for that in other ways.
For the purposes of this discussion, I see overheal as pretty much irrelevant. All content at this time is stupidly easy, and overheal numbers in the 70% range are common. Obviously with no Riptide, LHW, or Earth Shield, overheal is going to spike. In fact, about all my shaman did for the whole night was target the MT and cast chain heal.
Thaddius is actually a very good fight for judging chain heal effectiveness, as the regular AOE damage and tight bunching mean the chain heals are going to bounce more often, and the overheal is completely irrelevant for the purposes of testing the HPS abilities of the two specs.
It's important to understand that effective healing is affected by many more variables than spec or gear. Player skill and other healers play a large part. By looking only at HPS, we see a good comparison of how the two specs stack up against each other in a raw healing comparison. Comparing effective healing on trivial content as you are suggesting is sort of... well, dumb.
Anyways, my conclusion was that the "standard" shaman build was superior for the first shaman in the raid, but that the DW spec was viable on chain heal favoring fights for the second shaman. If Ulduar has a Felmyst-type encounter, you bet your boots one of us will be running DW chain heal... that is until the gear scaling issues render it obsolete.
As for the spec being mana-inefficient? I can spam chain heal for 5 minutes... why do I care about mana again?
I think that your basis is somewhat flawed. Just because the content is easy is not a reason to play sub-optimally. On the off chance that they actually make good their threat of making mana conservation an issue, there is a problem. We are not simply sitting here and discussing which spec puts out more numbers because, much like you don't care about mana, I don't care about raw numbers.
Your statement that Thaddius is a good fight for Chain Heal is correct. That is exactly what makes it a terrible fight for comparing specs. If you are taking a fight which is, primarily, about raid healing, and using it as the basis for a comparison between a spec which is pure raid healing and one which is not, then your methodology is rather obviously flawed. By that same token, let's turn to a fight in which the tank takes 7K DPS, and no other damage happens in the raid. We'll see whose HPS is higher there.
I would like to point out that I am not the one who brought up the "trivial" content that you're referring to. But regardless of that particular point, you are readily admitting to the inefficiency of the dual wield spec. The question, again, becomes whether you would trade the efficiency of a normal spec for a slight boost in your ability to raid heal. I wouldn't, and I think that's obvious.
Your point, mostly, is that you have a Shaman who is normally specced, and a Shaman who's not. But where is the sense in that? Likely, your raid will have more than just Shamans healing, and because of that, the number of Shamans present in the raid is somewhat moot. Aside from having an Earth Shield available (which is hardly a requirement), there's no particular reason why one Shaman would be forced into a normal spec if the dual wield spec is superior.
But the fact is that it's not. Its inferiority comes in mana inefficiency and reduction in utility, two things which I can't ever agree are a good trade off for raw healing power. Again, this is not DPS. It's not about who outputs the most healing in the shortest period of time. It's about outputting the right kind of healing at the right time. No one can refute that. In gaining utilities like Earth Shield, Tidal Waves, Riptide, and AA, you increase your capacity to generate the right healing when your raid needs it without appreciably damaging your capacity to raid heal.
It's quite simple in my eyes. The dual wield spec does not do anything that a normal Shaman spec cannot do. The dual wield spec does not generate a significantly greater capacity to keep your raid alive. In the process you give up at least four defining abilities which have a definite impact on your raid's survivability. Regardless of the presence of Earth Shield elsewhere in the raid, I wouldn't give up the capacity to single target someone to full in one second for the insignificant increases of the dual wield spec because of the situations where a 1s HW means someone lives. That's a situation where I can save the raid due to my spec decision. Dual wield Chain Heal spamming doesn't have that.
I'm certain the dual wield spec more effectively pads meters when people aren't at risk of dying. I need no convincing of that. What I need convincing on is that the dual wield spec increases the raid's survivability. I have seen no evidence of that.
It's not about who outputs the most healing in the shortest period of time.
I don't care about raw numbers.
I ts inferiority comes in mana inefficiency and reduction in utility, two things which I can't ever agree are a good trade off for raw healing power.
You're completely missing the point, but I don't think I can explain it better.
I think you play a very different game than I do. This spec has a situational use for progression encounters with certain requirements. If you want an all-around spec that can approach things with a variety of heals depending on situations, this min/max build isn't going to work for you.
I wanted this spec to suck because I think it's silly to spec 31 points into enhancement for a single, sort of broken ability. I think it's boring to play. It is also the best spec for pure chain heal spam that I have tested. This thread is about min/maxxing chain heal, not silly arguments about healing utility and how raid testing raw healing power on trivial content is somehow bad.
Last edited by Orgok : 03/01/09 at 11:19 PM.
Reason: Attempting to not argue with the scrubs
I note the PTR has the following Ulduar loot - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?item=45078 - which I don't think has been discussed - a one-hand dagger with 408SP. Will this make the dual wield spec perform sufficiently better to make a DW CH spec perform better than a full resto spec?
I note the PTR has the following Ulduar loot - [Dagger of Lunar Purity] - which I don't think has been discussed - a one-hand dagger with 408SP. Will this make the dual wield spec perform sufficiently better to make a DW CH spec perform better than a full resto spec?
It will be made main hand before the patch goes live. They're not gonna make any offhand spelldmg weapons. The best we could hope for is a melee weapon with unusually high haste/crit.
The variation of the DWCH spec that I picked has, instead of 3/3 pushback reduction, I put 1/3 as a filler, and put two into Healing Way to give me that option on Patchwerk and other similar fights.
I tried this spec out on Sapph last night and came up with some nice results. Normally on this fight, our priests end up healing more than me and another resto shaman. This time, I ended up on top and the other resto shaman, who loves his lesser healing wave, wasn't near me in healing done.
ELW accounted for 22% of my healing, and I had 36% overheal. I had a total of 3070 spellpower buffed with a flask and ToW. Myself and the other shaman are in almost identical gear and heal pretty much equal while we are both the traditional resto spec. I had over 3k HPS of effective healing.
My mana situation was almost identical to the traditional resto spec. I ran short of mana right as the boss died.
We then went to KT; which is obviously a bad fight for chain heal spec. I ended up logging 2400 HPS at the end of the fight, higher than any other healer. The traditional spec only had 1800.
I am planning on more testing in the coming weeks before Ulduar including a 3D Sarth attempt this week.
I'm certain the dual wield spec more effectively pads meters when people aren't at risk of dying. I need no convincing of that. What I need convincing on is that the dual wield spec increases the raid's survivability. I have seen no evidence of that.
I had the exact same discussion with a restoration-druid recently. He tops every meter by just spreading Rejuvenation in the raid. I'm convinced however, that he is a lesser asset to survivability than a well-played healer that is using his skills to full extent and thus ranging below said druid in raw healing. Healing is not about putting out the biggest numbers, it's about keeping the raid alive as a team.
The problem we're facing is: how do you actually gauge the impact of a healer on raid-survivability? I think we all agree it can't be done by observing pure hps-numbers.
/Edit: It's an optimisation problem after all: incoming DPS is the limiting function for combined raid-hps. So the question is not how to maximise your personal hps - which leads to a reduction of healers' hps - but how to combine raid-healing so you can cover required healing with the minimum number of healers. And - without any numbers to backup my statement, as it is kind of conceptual - I believe a combination of Wild Growth, CoH, PoM and Beacon/glyphed Holy Light is more effective in countering steady raiddamage, where dual-wield chainheal would shine. Thus leaving the shaman with the tools to cover spiky damage as well.
I'm currently waiting until there is additional information on Ulduar hard modes and available loot before I update the original post; also, with the changes incoming with patch 3.1, the dual-wield spec may no longer advantage even the most stacked raid compositions.
Norgu, there are several issues with the gear you linked, including the spirit on the cape. Also, with the gear available to shamans at this raid level, the Skyshatter 2 pc combo may not be as beneficial as originally thought; but it is something I do need to double check.
Here is my character. When I checked the armory when I made this post, my DW spec was only 24 points into Enhancement.
I've decided to spec back into DW CH after going Traditional when 3.1 hit. After a night of wipes on XT-002, we took some time to see what could be done to get him down. The melee DPS stated that, because we didn't have an enhancement shaman, we didn't have 10% ap or 4% melee haste (Granted, I could get Unleashed Rage, but I wouldn't use it) As DW I also pick up Enhancing Totems, making up for the loss of ToW for when our Ele Shaman goes Resto. One of the problems was also the overall raid healing. We eventually decided that spreading out wasn't working and started clumping up. I didn't get a chance to respec last night, but this week I'll be running as DW to see the difference.
With my style of play--HW over LHW, the AW change was good. On fights where CH isn't cast too much, AW accounts of upwards of 9-10% of my total healing done. But, on fights like XT-002 or Hodir where there is a lot of raid damage, maybe it still is the better choice in terms of min/maxing. If the spec still proves worthwhile on fights like this, I might drop Elemental as a Dual Spec and pick up Traditional and DW resto.
After all the changes that we recently went through, I wanted to test out the DW-CH spec to see if it would be any more viable as a raid option, and made it my second spec. After some disappointing tests, I switched back to standard spec and found this...
Step 1:
Spec Standard Resto: 0-16-55
Spec DW Resto: 0-31-40
Create a set of gear for each spec, ensuring that you equip your dagger in your OH for DW.
Step 2:
Switch to DW-CH spec, and equip your appropriate gear set.
Step 3:
Switch to standard ES spec, but keep the gear set for the DW spec equipped.
Step 4:
Notice that even in standard Resto spec, your OH Dagger with ELW is still equipped. Additionally, I was able to re-apply my weapon imbue as often as I wanted, and as long as I was rezzed after combat and did not release or re-enter an instance, my OH dagger would stay equipped, despite being 0-16-55 spec.
I'd imagine that this is a bugged issue, and it does not actually apply more ELW to targets, but I don't have the numbers from the raid to confirm. It might be worth trying for a limited time IF it actually works, however, I've been told that on the PTR the same issue was happening to other classes, but the extra weapon would come up as broken and not actually apply, even though still equipped.
1. In full enhance gear, with [The Stray] as my off-hand, imbue both weapons with Earthliving. Healing spell power is 1721, mostly thanks to Mental Quickness.
2. Switch to my resto spec, still wearing dps gear. Healing spell power is now 550.
3. Remove my off hand weapon. Healing spell power is still 550.
4. Equip my shield. Spell power is now 637.
Blizzard doesn't intend for dual wield to be a viable resto talent. You lose Earth Shield, Ancestral Awakening, Tidal Waves, and Riptide by choosing it, and are forced to choose between Improved Chain Heal and Blessing of the Eternals. Even before the 3.1 change to AA, these losses were not worth the extra spell power and increased Earthliving proc rate. In the discussion of resto glyphs, testers found Earthliving overhealing to be from 50 to 75%, making improvements a poor payoff for a major glyph, much less 15 (!) talent points more than any standard resto spec.
It isn't even worth making a utility spec for your dual spec to incorporate dual wield. All off hand weapon bonuses and stats become inactive when the talent isn't taken, even though the weapon is still equipped. If you're trying to use your dual spec to min-max by switching specs right before a boss pull, use Elemental for your second spec to get the 84 spell power Glyph of Totem of Wrath bonus.
This was an interesting idea, and I won't be vendoring my [Librarian's Paper Cutter] taking up bank space, but until Blizzard reworks our talents in two years for tier 10 content we can safely put dual wield resto to rest.
02/15/09, 3:13 AM
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