This thread is intended to serve as one-stop shop for restoration theorycrafting discussion on anything that does not require a more specific topic. For basic theorycrafting data, forumlae, sample talent builds, BiS gear lists, and other frequently asked questions, please refer to the excellent Theorycrafting Think Tank (TTT) article maintained by Skyhoof. The TTT article contains concrete, proven information that is widely accepted as fact by the community; this thread complements the TTT by providing both a space for discussion thereof and a place to present new data/theories for community feedback.

Topics outside the scope of this thread include:

* Specific topics that have their own threads (Dual Wield/Chain Heal, Spreadsheets, 3.1/PTR discussion, etc.)
* Extremely simple questions (refer to the sticky at the top of the forum)
* "Rate my spec/decide my gear" questions

Topics within the scope of this thread include:

* Healing strategies for specific encounters
* Data and calculations regarding ability effectiveness, bugs, anomalies, etc.
* Merits and demerits of certain talents/glyphs at the margins (backed up by data/calculations, not speculation)
* Other discussion related to playing a resto shaman not covered above
* "What am I doing wrong?/What could I be doing better?" questions that include WWS reports

I'd recommend against giving any kind of advice to help one "climb meters." Healing is not DPS. Your goal should be healing the right person at the right time for the right amount. (Then do this as much as needed.) It's more important to use your GCD to throw up a flame shock than to snipe a heal that someone else already has covered.

Edit: Clarified Position.

It's almost never correct to use Flame Shock or any kind of dmg spell as a healer in a min/max scenario. The time and mana effectiveness is terrible, you will always get a better result using your time and mana to keep a dps/tank alive a bit longer than trying to do damage yourself. There are some exceptions in fights where the healing requirements changes a lot in different phases, but damage requirements only have one "phase". For example on Sarth3D it is reasonable to have some healers dpsing on Tenebrom in the start. This is niot the general case though, since in most encounters where there are parts with low healing requirements, such as thaddius or kel'thuzad phase 1, the dps requirements also have different phases, so doing more damage in the easy phase will not help in the hard phase.

I posted some numbers here, that show a small loss in overall healing, due to the HOT being consumed. Even if the healing is a net-zero, I'd rather keep RT off cooldown.

Another way to look at it is that mana you're left with at the end of the fight is just as bad as overhealing. In most Naxx fights, you can afford to DPS, which will help a lot with the quick-kill achievements, but in higher end fights, you won't often be able to waste GCD's, but you can improve your throughput with haste and spell power.

I run a phenominally overweighted haste build just because mana is very much not an issue. I have an MP5 set that I almost never wear for when Ulduar comes out, but the only fight I ever have mana issues on is Sapphiron, and usually only when doing Hundred Club. And even then, usually it just means I pot, and still never run out. Therefore I can frequently afford to DPS, and while it's not a huge benefit, it's still something, and it can make achievements easier, and let you get through Naxx runs faster.

On 3 drake it is infinitely more useful to help dps than to spam heals on people at full health. The fight is basically all about dps, if you have enough and can kill shadron before vesp lands then it is a pretty trivial fight. Even if you can't when you help dps it helps you get closer to that point which just makes the fight easier. Just don't use CL because it is much more inefficient.

The fact that a fight is all about dps does very rarely make it correct for healers to be dpsing. In 90% of the cases it would be even better to have a healer respecc dps, or invite more dps in the first place. Only if you absolutely need a certain amount of healers for one part of the fight but not for the entire fight can you afford to have healers dpsing. On top of that, in most of those encounters, the phase where you have healers dpsing is not linked to the "hard" phase, and dpsing in that easy part isn't going to help with the fight.

I actually find that chain heal works wonderfully for 3d sarth, so it could just be raid composition and individual awareness of where 'not' to stand that makes the difference between which healing spells are more effective to use. For our group we have a warrior tank on sarth, a bear tank on the drakes, and a pally tank on the adds. If my memory serves me correct, our other resto shaman will ES the adds tank and spot heal throughout; whereas I will throw chain heals off the bear tank, which in turn takes care of the melee. The only time I have had trouble personally with chain heal not being the smartest heal to cast is right before the flame wall and then shortly after it, because people are more spread out and are still running so the chances of it being able to bounce properly are considerably lower. If your casters are also mindful enough to at least stay somewhat near each other and not be spread out all over creation, then chain heal is also more effective at that.

Seems to me however that most caster classes (or lets just say ranged classes to be general) don't understand how difficult they make it for us to heal them when they keep themselves so far away. Even in heroics there's always that ONE ranged that likes to stand waaaaay off to the side, so where a single chain heal could top everyone off, we have to cast a chain heal, and then a lhw (even tho its not a big deal to do so) to top them off.

So if one had this problem of ranged being too far apart for chain heal to work as intended, maybe enlightening them about how chain heal actually works would do the trick. Then they would be more aware (or at least we could hope they would be) of where 'not' to stand.

I just find it rather annoying to have to cast multiple heals when one chain heal would be more than enough.




On another note....

On the gluth fight... I am never really sure how I should direct my heals. So to start off... I don't run a regular resto spec atm, I am DWResto, more for testing purposes than anything else right now. So what ends up happening is that CH off the MT is foolish since it will never bounce to anyone else. And melee takes little to no damage for most of the fight so CH is mosty OH if I cast it on them. If absolutely necessary I LHW to top off whoever, and even that ends up being mostly OH as well. Our trees generally will take care of our kiters, and they are almost always out of range of me anyways. The only time during the entire fight that I am able to do effective healing is after decimate. So, I guess my question boils down to this: Any recommendation from anyone (preferrably someone who has tested the DWResto spec and is aware of its pros/cons but any advice is well accepted) about how to make the best of my time before or between decimates. Would this be a situation where I could stand to do a little dps to help out, or should I just sit back and be prepared for any "oh crap" moments?

Thanks in advance!

I suppose it depends on your healing setup, but priests do noticeably more dps than any of the other healers due to having the cast time reduction on smite in most of their healing builds. If I'm bored, I'll toss out the occasional flame shock/LvB combo since I've gotten lazy about glyphing between specs and tend to run LHW/LB/FS as my glyphs but the tree really does hinge on Lightning Mastery. I tried for most of BC** to make a dps/healer work and nothing without LM works.

** Incidentally, if you're interested in a dual role dps/healing build, your best options are Ret with 8 in holy (for between fight switching) and Disc+Searing Light (for switching in one fight). Alas, these aren't really useful now that dual specs are coming.

I'm curious how useful everybody finds the Riptide HoT. There are a lot of people saying it's useless, but I generally find that riptide is roughly 20-25% of my total healing and the HoT is the majority of that. This surprised me at first, because I mostly use Riptide for the TW buff, so the hot healing is more or less pure bonus. The hot doesn't save anybody, but it does do a fairly effective job at topping people off. Is anybody else seeing numbers like this, or is it just my healing mix?

Debating what to do with your time when neither healing nor dps is "needed" is rather pointless. If you like to see yourself on top of the healing meters, spam chain heal on people with full hp (main tank). If you like to speed things up marginally and see some damage numbers, throw some lightning bolts. If you like to watch a movie, tab out...

At the same time, I think there's something more important to consider. Maybe I'm preaching to the wrong crowd here, but with the changes away from spam-style healing and the changes to a single spellpower stat for both DPS and healers.... it's a way to keep us entertained. Obviously, if you're just learning the content and getting geared up, your focus should be 100% on healing. For many people, though, this is the n'th time we've done this content in as many weeks, we're used to the encounters and have plenty of GCDs to spare. I realize it's a bad fight to use as an example due to its low healing requirements, but I find it a bit of a bright spot in an otherwise boring Naxx25 run to see those 9-10k Lava Burst crits on Thaddius.

Again, the old 'healing is an art, dps is a science' adage (or is it a cliché by now?) comes to mind. If you can squeeze a Flame Shock between GCDs here, drop a Magma Totem there, and throw out a Lava Burst now and then without anyone dying, I don't think anyone can really tell you that you're wrong. As a healer, I don't personally aspire to top the meters. I try - and typically succeed - in being within a few percentage points of the other healers which I see as pulling my own weight, but to purposefully try and top healing meters usually means you're sniping other healers and causing them to overheal.

As a side note, tonight's gonna be the first time I've done Sarth+drakes in a while since midterms have been kicking my ass. Are the debuff auras from the drakes still proccing Water Shield every few seconds and providing shamans with nearly unlimited mana?