Krim

Just to clarify, AA does indeed heal for 30% of the entire heal for Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave. Now, do we spend 3 points on Healing Way? I personally think not, the Glyphed Lesser Healing Wave will still heal for roughly the same amount as Healing Wave before Healing Wave thus I think spending 3 talent points for a larger heal that takes longer to cast is redundant.

From my interpretations of Ulduar I believe there will be a lot of 'healer stressing' fights as Blizzard wants healers to be casting 100% of the time (well, that's what I gathered from their FSR nerf). With this in mind I think the best 3 glyphs in Ulduar will be: Glyph of Earth Shield, Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, Glyph of Chain Heal. For me, at least, mana is no longer a problem - granted this is speaking from current content; 6 min Maly's, Sarth 3 drakes, Naxx... Not the most challenging of encounters.

I guess though it's too early to make speculations as none of the PTR EU testers (not entirely sure about the NA testers) have been granted access to Ulduar. Hmm, a few thoughts on the patch I guess.

Sorry if AA has already been clarified, when casual skimming the thread I couldn't see any 'screenshot proof' so decided to do it myself.

 

Gun

To give you some AA numbers:

patchwerk 3.1 fight

lesser healing wave
Wow Web Stats

healing wave
Wow Web Stats

1 point in healing way
We used bloodlust right after exposed armor was on patchwerk.

 

grayrest

The only one that caught my eye was the ES one, which will become standard issue. For me, ES is currently 2585/3877 healing per charge at a 41% crit rate* and the glyph bumps it to 3102/4653. That'd be a 210 hps increase if the charges are used on cooldown but more importantly, that bumps it up to ~55% of a glyphed LHW, which is a pretty nice reactive heal for any class. It'll be a guaranteed glyph for me since I currently only really use the LHW glyph and keep my other two glyphs FS/LB for the regular ele swapping I do.

* Every time I've checked the crit rate on ES, it seems to be 5% below the crit rate on my other heals. Not sure if this is just selective observation or what.

The Riptide glyph is worthless. IF you could Riptide every cooldown AND your RTs ticked all the way out, the maximum possible benefit would be an extra 833 healing (one tick for me) every 6 seconds. So an extremely situational extra 200 healing half as often when compared to the ES glyph and normally nothing. Meh. I really wanted it to apply Healing Way.

If you're tank healing and nobody else is taking damage, the recipient of AA is almost always the tank. With a normal boss swing timer, hitting a LHW as soon as you see the tank take damage will causes the heal to land before the next swing and the AA to land after. I don't do CH because I run with a druid that basically rejuvs every GCD, so it's much more efficient for me to keep people from dying and let him do the bulk healing. Haven't done a fight so far (up to 5 healing Sarth+2, we're fairly casual) that I feel his mass rejuvs haven't been keeping up with the incoming damage.

 

PDXMarcos

I disagree, the change to the FSR would indicate that blizzard wants healers to be able to stop casting and not benefit from ridiculous amounts of mana regen by not casting. This implies two things to me: We are going to face fights with movement or fights that have negative reprecussions for spam casting (IE Zul'Jin). It really just comes down to providing more boss fight mechanics for healers than just spamming heals non-stop.

 

Daidalos

Are you just guessing how the glyph works or did you test this in game? It might work like that but my conservative estimate would be it bumping it from 2500ish to 2900ish if it added to the other talent modifiers. You might be right since I haven't been able to get the gylph yet I just wanted to make sure before we start throwing around numbers.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

• Philondra

My understanding is that Glyphs stack multiplicatively with talents, not additively. This is easy to test on live with the LHW glyph. Until the glyphs are actually available on the PTR (I didn't learn anything new when I did Northrend research, so they are either NYI or available some other way), we won't know for sure, but I have no reason to believe that the calculation is anything other than

[Base + .284 * spell power] * 1.35 * 1.2,

where .284 is the spellpower coefficient per orb, 1.35 is the talent modifier (5/5 Purifcation, 3/3 Improved Shields, 2/2 Improved Earth Shield) and 1.2 is the glyph modifier.

Either way, I agree that it is definitely superior to the riptide glyph, which is utter trash in virtually all situations.

 

doogless

I had said earlier in this thread that the Riptide glyph wasn't *complete* garbage, but on further reflection I've realized that it truly is crap.

Generally, healing glyphs do one of two things: improve HPS or HPM (which makes sense, since those are the two things healers worry about in their stats). Something like the LHW and CH glyphs fall into the former category, while something like the Flash Heal or Lifebloom glyphs fall into the latter category. The problem with the Riptide glyph is that it does neither of these because of how the spell gets used in practice. It's supposed to improve healing per mana by allowing the HoT to tick longer, but will never actually be able to give that benefit.

For single-target healing, I primarily use Riptide to proc Tidal Waves. For this usage, I'm almost always overwriting the HoT before it runs out with its current duration, so any extra duration on the HoT goes completely to waste. For raid healing, Riptide gets used as an oh crap button, and in this case the person who gets healed by it is almost always healed to full and then doesn't take any more damage before the HoT wears off with its current duration, so again any extra duration on the HoT goes to waste.

So what would actually make the glyph useful - reduced cooldown, improved crit chance, something like that?

 

BroodStalker

Hello, I'm just curious about a couple things. Last night in nax25 i chain healed spam the whole thing, beat 2nd place by 900k and he was a full val, resto druid with all best in slot gear except 1 piece, bracers.

But putting that aside myover heals for the whole night where at 50.6%, Was just curious is this normal for chain heal spam, the current glyphs i am using at the moment are

Glyph of Chain heal
Glyph Of water mastery
Glyph of Mana tide
Glyph of water shield

Are these any good aswell for this healing?

Also would like to know is there anyone else who is having mana issues on fights, eg; Sarth(25man) 3 drakes.

Please any help would be greatful, thanks.

 

Mengus

I'd suspect the biggest factor here would be the number of replenishments in the raid, and your heal target. If you're tank healing vs. raid healing for example.

 

IsaacSirene

Im one of those old fashioned types who still don't want to believe in LHW. Im currently one of our top 4 healers in guild, normally sitting at #1 or 2 on the healing charts with Chain Heal spam. However I also have 10% less overhealing done than you, but that is because I am used to the slow cast time of Chain heal, and have adjusted my healing so that it is less of a problem.

Your glyphs are fine for a CH spam setup. As for Mana Issues, really I haven't seen a single mana issue yet besides the times where I end up dying to something random, and have to reincarnate and end up with little mana, and have to pop a mana pot, mana tide, and quickly recharge my totems/watershield. Of course I havent attempted Sarth+3 drakes yet, done Sarth+2 with 6 healers, although I never got to complete it due to learning the fight process... then having to leave in the middle of the raid for something much more entertaining than World of Warcraft.

 

czokalapik

Ineffective healing (as implied by the patch notes) is effective healing + overhealing, not only overhealing, it's common statement, even used in damage meters mods. So there is no mistake in patch notes.

 

Daidalos

Good point I wasn't thinking of how lhw glyph worked. Assuming it does work the same way its going to be a good glyph for pve and awesome for pvp.

As far as a glyph of riptide goes I'd rather have 10% more to the initial heal component or some such perhaps instead of adding an extra tick to the hot give the main heal an additional hot tick amount of upfront healing. I wouldn't really be all that exited about additional crit unless it was like 10% or so since you really need alot of additional crit to really help it much. Reducing the cooldown by 1s would also be good

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Krim

I believe the Earth Shield glyph will eventually be put in place for the Water Mastery Glyph when we are able to sustain mana without the need for the Glyph. Especially regarding PvP I believe the 3 contenders will be: Glyph of Hex, Glyph of Earth Shield, Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave.

I've read on the Oceanic PTR forum that Hex is no longer trinketable; is this a bug or is it intended? If it's intended it makes Shaman increasingly more deadly as a 10 second silence is very dangerous, this coupled with the glyph means the target can recieve damage without the effect being removed - assuming no Druids or Mages are present... I'd Hex the Shaman in Shaman/Hunter, Shaman/DK, Shaman/Warrior teams so that the other classes can be nuked, or the Shaman can be nuked while the other class stays peeled from his team mate.

Can someone confirm for me, I can't access the EU PTR at the moment, if Hex is not trinketable or if it was a bug and has been fixed?

 

AlphaJew

What I'd love to see on the Riptide glyph is a boost to the Chain Heal interaction, a mechanic that I think some people overlook way too much. Even if it's lost due to overhealing, it's particularly helpful on the first and second bounces, getting those people a bit more healing.

With the changes to AA and with the look we had at Hodir earlier tonight, I'm honestly thinking I'm gonna replace my LHW glyph with the new Earth Shield one. (Water Mastery and Chain Heal being my other two majors) The extra speed of LHW is nice, but HW gets the job done on the tank just fine, your speed's more consistent because you're not eating through TW charges as fast, LHW not scaling with haste in terms of HPS due to hitting the GCD cap, not playing the RNG-on-top-of-another-RNG game with Imp. WS with and now AA still getting the benefits of overheals...... HW is starting to look more attractive. I'm almost frightened that it's making me start to consider putting points into Healing Way.

At the same time though, all of this feels like it's falling in line with Blizz's statement that they want to push healers towards more thoughtful, intelligent healing rather than the spamfest we've become used to. We're going to have to put smart, big heals where and when they're needed.

 

• Juice

Offtopic PVP:

I wouldn't think they would make Hex untrinketable without significantly reducing its duration. 10 seconds of disarm/silence is a long time. It would really stengthen shaman, though I'm not sure the ability would be very fair. I think Hex should be tweaked, but I think the appropriate tweaks are things like instant cast, removing control of character while hexed, etc.

 

Daidalos

I was thinking of this after I posted as well. Something like the flameshock glyph for riptide. If you made it so CH didn't consume RT but you still gained the additional healing it would make it appealing for those fights where you can CH a tank or off tank. The changes to AA do make HW more appealing and I'll most likely use it a little more than I do now but I just don't feel Healing way is worth 3 points considering the fact that pallys can spam like crazy on a tank the entire fight and with beacon they have some amazing throughput. LHW isn't going to be hitting gcd cap unless you really have extreme amounts of haste or are lusted, obviously TW casts will be below cap but additional haste will lower the gcd so I don't think you can complain about scaling..

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

AlphaJew

Yeah, for me, it's a combination of mechanics and guild composition. We just recruited another holy paladin, but it's a regular occurrence for us to only have one holy paladin in a 25-man, sometimes we have none. I often end up focusing on healing tanks.

With the haste thing (good catch, I worded it poorly), I could be wrong on my math, but this is at least how I understand it. Any haste from gear affects all three: LHW, HW, and your GCD. However, the Tidal Waves haste only affects LHW and HW, not the GCD. Any haste from TW that takes LHW/HW under your GCD is effectively lost in terms of HPM. It still has value in making your heals land faster and keeping people alive, but not looking at that right now.
Using myself as an example, I have 528 (16.1%) haste. This lowers LHW and the GCD down to 1.29 sec and HW to 2.15 sec. With a TW proc, My LHW goes to .904 sec and HW to 1.51 sec..... but my GCD remains at 1.29. The haste from TW improves my response times with LHW but leaves my max HPS with it unaffected. My HW sees an improvement in both response time and HPS.

The Flame Shock style for Riptide glyph would be phenomenal. I could think of a lot of situations where that would see considerable amount of use.

 

Daidalos

I don't consider TW "haste" which is why I worded it the way I did. We are saying the same thing just worded differently.

My raid always has at least 1 holy pally and sometimes up to 3 holy pallys so its far more often that I am chain healing the off tank and getting bounces to the melee. The more I think about this the more I like the idea of keeping RT up on the tank for better a CH plus the hot since in many fights (in 25 man) I've found that I"m getting back to spamming CH like I did in sunwell. Granted RT, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch isn't alot better, but the way it is now I frequently don't use riptide due to it removing the hot instantly. Managing RT so that I only put it on people I won't be CHing is mildly annoying so I like this idea.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

Kindralas

I generally only use Riptide as a means of maintaining Tidal Waves procs, or a means of getting some amount of healing in situations where I have to move, nothing more. That glyph isn't going to change that in the slightest, and as such, I have no reason to use it whatsoever.

The problem with the Flame Shock idea of using Riptide is that it's not like DPS. Flame Shock, you want to hit, let the duration tick down, then Lava Burst after it's done most of its damage. With Riptide, you have to be very effective at determining who's taking damage and when in order to get the most out of this strategy, and you have to have your other healers in on the gag, as it were. Chances are, you Riptide, let the HoT tick, and now suddenly your target is full by other healing. So now you're wasting half of the healing from Chain Heal (the initial hit) in order to get a 25% buff to the remainder of the bounces, which isn't efficient.

The Earth Shield glyph seems promising, but I have no clue why people would be giving up Water Mastery for it. The Chain Heal glyph is largely worthless as it is, that fourth bounce amounting to another random Riptide. Generally speaking, you're better off with having Earth Shield, Water Mastery, and Mana Tide if you're a Chain Heal spammer, perhaps dropping Mana Tide for LHW if you're on tanks, or HW if you mix up your heals a little more on raid healing.

As for Shamans and their place in the raid, the game is becoming massively homogenized. They don't particularly want any healer outshining any other healer on any given fight. As such, every healer is getting a lot of AOE healing buffs so as to make them more effective at raid healing, whereas before only Shamans were effective at it. But you have to look at healing not as a meter padding effort, but at what kind of healing your raid needs and when. The reason you see Druids topping meters all over the place is because they have a massive stream of healing that almost never overheals and rarely impacts the raid in a great fashion. They're still most effective as damage mitigation on tanks, they just get a meter padder in their AOE functionality. I see Priests becoming more of the utility healer that Shamans are now, and I can't necessarily disagree with that idea.

Healing is not DPS. Meters are effective for gauging DPS because there are very few situations which call for anything but maximum DPS throughput. Therefore, you want to see them topping meters. Healing doesn't work like that. As an oversimplified example, if the raid takes mass AOE damage, and one person is close to death, then your AOE heal might generate the most metered healing, but it is not the most effective heal in that situation. Shamans have a great toolset in these situations, and as such, I don't fear for our raid slots much.

 

Skyhoof

One of the best changes in Wrath has been freeing shaman from a narrowly defined healing role -- raid healing via spamming Chain Heal. We can now fill multiple healing rolls, including main tank healer depending on the group composition. I'm going todate the talent section of the Theorycrafting Think Tank to show some builds that have 0/3 Healing Way. Many shaman don't need to spend talent points here, especially those guilds overloaded with holy paladins. In my own guild, we have few holy paladins but several excellent holy priests (a class that at often rivals our own ability to AOE heal). As a result, the priests are often raid healing and I may be assigned to heal a single target, making 3/3 Healing Way a required talent.

 

grayrest

Making it a flameshock glyph for riptide is a very obvious bonus since the "doesn't consume" is on the glyph of pretty much every other spell that consumes a dot/hot. The problem with it in this case is that it buffs chain heal too much. On my spreadsheet, 25% on the first heal of CH puts it at exactly the same healing as a non healing way HW (8807 non crit) but for 200 less mana AND with the opportunity to jump. This would completely undermine Blizz's work at making HW attractive.

As mentioned before, I wanted the glyph to apply Healing Way if you have the talent since it works very well with how RT is used in practice. I also think that Healing Way should also affect ELW, Healing Stream Totem, and the hot portion of RT. Together it's enough to shift the two options from being meh to being a good choice if you're primarily focused on single target healing. I know I would certainly glyph LHW+RT+ES if both changes were in. CH just doesn't work with our healing corps.

 

AlphaJew

This. It's the main reason I made the switch from my paladin to my shaman as my healer. Paladins are phenomenal tank healers, and Beacon gave them more options when they have to heal people other than just the tank, but when compared to other healers they're still locked into the tank healing role just as shamans were locked into raid healing in BC. With the changes to our single-target heals in 3.0, we really have become the most flexible of any single spec of healer. I love being able to fill that "swing" role and being able to do almost anything that the situation may call for. It's the reason I played Red Mage in FFXI, and it's the reason I'm playing shaman now.

I think I already posted this previously in the thread, but I find myself in pretty much an identical situation. I haven't gotten to actually get into any of the testing on the PTR and my opinion might be biased due to the difficulty of the current content and my guild's tendency towards pally and warrior tanks, but how mandatory do you really find Healing Way? I've been leaning towards starting to take it, but when I'm tank healing I swap to a haste/crit heavy gear set and all too often I find that my Healing Waves are overhealing 95% of the time anyways.

What's your raid composition look like in Naxx 25? Try fighting KT with more than 6 melee, you'll find that 4th bounce is a little more important than you'd think. Mana Tide glyph is pretty meh, in my opinion. It's only what, an extra 5% of max mana per use? Also with your comment on druids and Wild Growth, WG in my mind is an indispensable tool for handling any encounter that has slow and steady AoE damage like Sapphiron. It allows Druids to keep people topped off while leaving classes like Shamans and Paladins free to focus attention on the people who are actively taking damage without having to worry about the raid's constantly slipping health bars. It lets them pad meters during trash, sure, but trash is called that for a reason.

Oh, and I kind of agree about the glyph only causing RT to not be consumed being overpowered like that. All other glyphs that work like that (Flame Shock, Swiftmend) all have some type of cooldown on the ability that consumes it. Chain Heal doesn't have any cooldown, so it could constantly be spammed for that 25% bonus. Perhaps have the glyph cause Chain Heal not to consume the Riptide, but reduces the bonus to 10/15%? I wouldn't say that it would replace HW even at 25% bonus due to the considerably longer cast time of Chain Heal, but those numbers you gave are worth considering.

 

KnThrak

That sounds rather strong though, at +25%.
I'd be perfectly with with a "Your Chain Heal no longer consumes Riptide, but only gains a 10% bonus", however.

An interesting glyph, because it'd mean as long as you are focusing on a specific subset of the raid (location wise), you can reap a near-passive 10% benefit to CH, but you lose the spike of +25% possibe by a cleverly pre-placed Riptide in turn.

(Yes, I like glyphs which have a downside, i.e. change the spell instead of just buffing it - wish there were more :x )

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Kindralas

In order, somewhat. I can't speak for every raid I've been in, but that fourth Chain Heal bounce is still worthless, because you'll still have to cast another heal to account for its healing. Your only non-overhealing "option" is that person will simply take another third or fourth bounce. And if I don't care about Riptide's 3-4K healing, then I don't know why I'd care about two Chain Heal fourth bounces amounting to around 2K. There's a difference between what WWS calls effective healing, and what I call effective healing.

While it is definitely true that the Mana Tide glyph isn't terribly thrilling either, it's still better than a fourth bounce on your Chain Heal comparatively. That extra 5% is another cast of a random heal. It'd take 8 fourth bounces to equal the healing output you'd gain from that extra heal, and that doesn't count the additional mana to the other four members of your group. Neither of those are terribly thrilling options, but I'll take the mana, assuming I'm somewhat constrained by mana. Right now I run the Chain Heal glyph for lack of better options, really, because I don't run out of mana.

As for Wild Growth, like every heal in the game, there are situations where it's exceptionally useful. The question wasn't about whether or not WG is useful, but why Druids are leading healing meters, and it's a very good example why. The same could be said for Beacon of Light as well. No doubting it's powerful and useful, but in a lot of situations, it's just meter fluff.

As for the proposed Riptide glyph, you Riptide your initial target, then Chain Heal once, generating what amounts to around 10-15K healing on that target, depending on a variety of factors. That should fill that first target, or close to it (or other healers fill it, as Chain Heal's a pretty comparatively slow cast). Are you then going to continue spamming Chain Heals on that target for the 25% bonus? Remember that you're more than halving the healing from Chain Heal by making the first bounce completely overhealing. So you're gaining a 25% bonus on around, what, 46% of your Chain Heal's total healing? You end up with around a 60% effective Chain Heal.

Those numbers are very rough, hopefully someone will be a bit more exact than I have, but I'm pretty sure a Riptided Chain Heal with an overhealing first bounce is going to amount to a weaker option than a normal Chain Heal on another target, which means that having the Riptide bonus remain is somewhat superfluous. That isn't to say there aren't situations where it'd be useful, just that those situations are limited, and we're getting better Glyph options anyway.

 

Daidalos

I think arguing about my glyph that doesn't exist is somewhat silly at this point. I certainly agree it would only really good for those situations where you can chain heal an off tank and heal the melee and pets around him. Limited? Yes. Situationally useful? I think so. Its why I didn't think it needed to be reduced from the 25% bonus.

Also since the 4th bounce of CH has a chance to proc ELW and will always proc if the target is below 35% I really think you are doing the raid a disservice if you are a raid healer and don't get the glyph. I don't need regen so manatide glyph isn't attractive to me at all. Really it comes down to hps vs regen and there isn't going to be a "absolute right" way to do everything. I think we can stop the regen vs hps debate since its been around as along as I can remember.

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg