I'm not really sure what you mean by feeling useless on Firefighter. My experience with that fight has been overwhelmingly positive this past week without even gemming for haste. I found that outside of Phase 1, the new and improved Chain Heal is an incredibly useful spell for the entire fight.
Sorry, I should really learn to be more specific on these forums. My guild is incapable of 25 man hard modes, so my comment was within the realm of 10 man firefighter, and our set group has unfortunately been without a druid for the past two weeks so all the attempts have been me + a priest who's alternated between disc or holy in attempts to get it working.
Phase 1 is the main issue, since the priest primarily looks after the tank I slowly fall further and further behind the group as I heal ranged through Napalm Shells, which has led to a few situations where if the priest does need any help I'm incapable of providing it in a timely manner. Could that simply be the speed the tank is kiting at?
The phase 2 difficulties are entirely because our ranged have burgers for brains and will often start moving counter-clockwise away from the group rather than just run through, or into melee, to get around a small patch of fire.
gabrielrockman, you ignore replenishment in your calculations as far as I can see, which greatly improves the value of int. I'm unsure as to whether you added the increased amount of WS procs from casting faster to your haste calculations.
It is obvious that haste leaves the amount of healing you can put out until you are oom untouched, unlike all other stats which increase it. This gives us the (obvious and often stated) conclusion that haste is only good if you don't go oom.
I find the "just because you can cast 10% more spells, you don't need to" argument a bit lacklustre. It is true, of course, but if you don't use your haste you don't gain any benefit from it. If you use haste purely as an emergency stat (so to speak) you will get far more value out of a steady stat. You are pretty much ignoring the additional throughput offered by haste and just counting its (unquantifiable) gib-prevention effect.
That said, so far I have no issues with going oom on hard modes while spamming heals with haste gemmage. (Unless I don't have replenishment ) Therefore I gain the full throughput benefit from haste without any of the disadvantages. ymmv, obv.
Since crit spells do 50% more, and then 45% more of the uncritted heal after that from AA, plus the 10% decreased damage from physical attacks, we'll use double effectiveness as an easy estimate for math (the 10% reduction in physical damage is worth more than just 5% of the initial heal, but we'll call it that for ease of math). That would put 1% crit as 1% increased healing done (if the starting crit rate was zero %), since the heal is twice as powerful. But if you already have 30% crit rating, then you are already at 130%, so that just bumps it up to 131% - just a 0.77% increase in healing done. If your crit rating is all the way up at 50%, you still get a 0.67% increase in healing done from 1% more crit chance, and thats about as high as crit chances will go.
But crit also diminishes in value, whereas haste gives a flat rate of return all the way to its soft-cap (where it stops affecting throughput for LHW and TW'd HWs). This isn't really an issue for healers who prefer HW, but is a large issue for those who prefer LHW.
Also, in a straight-spam situation, AA procs benefit just as much from haste as crit.
My guild is incapable of 25 man hard modes, so my comment was within the realm of 10 man firefighter, and our set group has unfortunately been without a druid for the past two weeks so all the attempts have been me + a priest who's alternated between disc or holy in attempts to get it working.
Phase 1 is the main issue, since the priest primarily looks after the tank I slowly fall further and further behind the group as I heal ranged through Napalm Shells, which has led to a few situations where if the priest does need any help I'm incapable of providing it in a timely manner. Could that simply be the speed the tank is kiting at?
FWIW, my guild has been in a similar position a month or two ago. The difference was we always used 3 healers on Firefighter-10 and used cooldowns on every Plasma Blast. With that, there were always enough breaks so that I could easily keep up with the pack, even if multiple people got hit by Napalm Shell. Another thing to try is to position yourself in front of the tank (as much as possible while still having whole raid in range), not behind.
Sorry, I should really learn to be more specific on these forums. My guild is incapable of 25 man hard modes, so my comment was within the realm of 10 man firefighter, and our set group has unfortunately been without a druid for the past two weeks so all the attempts have been me + a priest who's alternated between disc or holy in attempts to get it working.
Phase 1 is the main issue, since the priest primarily looks after the tank I slowly fall further and further behind the group as I heal ranged through Napalm Shells, which has led to a few situations where if the priest does need any help I'm incapable of providing it in a timely manner. Could that simply be the speed the tank is kiting at?
The phase 2 difficulties are entirely because our ranged have burgers for brains and will often start moving counter-clockwise away from the group rather than just run through, or into melee, to get around a small patch of fire.
As a preamble to this: healing isn't dps. Although "topping the meters" feels nice, it is more important to keep the raid alive than it is to beat all of the others in your guild. That said, if you feel that you need to make some changes to your play style and cast rotation, then we can address that.
Mushin, what spells are you using (primarily) in each phase? Even with the changes to tidal waves, you should be able to keep the napalmed target up pretty easily with LHW/RT/LHW/LHW (I use RT second here because of the GCD lockout we all get from casting RT. I find it is more reliable to get a LHW off on the target first to stabilize them, and then toss a RT to keep the hot ticking throughout the napalm. Then you can LHW them as necessary to top them off). Even while healing the napalmed targets, I am able to help heal the tank during plasma blast (unless, of course, more than one person has taken a napalm). Try to keep RT rolling on the tank whenever you can, and cast use your tidal-waves enhanced LHWs during plasma blast.
Also, this might be useless to state, but keep ES on the tank! If don't use a ES tracking mod, sometimes it can fall off without you noticing. I'd suggest "shieldsup" if you don't already have one you like.
And if positioning is an issue: our MT usually kites Mimiron right after the first shockblast. After it has gone off, I will move into the centre of the room (into the position that Mimiron starts in), which allows me to reach the entire raid while also having the tank in range at all times. Of course, fires can get in the way, but you should be able to position yourself so that wherever he moves, you can heal him.
I find the "just because you can cast 10% more spells, you don't need to" argument a bit lacklustre. It is true, of course, but if you don't use your haste you don't gain any benefit from it. If you use haste purely as an emergency stat (so to speak) you will get far more value out of a steady stat. You are pretty much ignoring the additional throughput offered by haste and just counting its (unquantifiable) gib-prevention effect.
I wasn't being entirely clear, but what I mean with that statement is that over the course of a fight, haste allows you to cast the spells needed to heal faster - but you don't nessesarily have to cast more spells. Sometimes it's just plain impossible to do the job without haste and you will need another healer - in that case haste is hardly an emergency stat, it allows you to burst more.
I agree that in reality haste will probably make you use more mana, but that's okay if you don't have mana problems. I just can't see why it's a bad thing. Other players making mistakes eat my mana far far more than haste ever will, ironicly haste helps me save them.
What about crit as a substitite for mp5 or intellect for keeping your mana up? If you cast 20 HW spells per minute (rough estimate), then 1% crit =98.4 mana per minute (20% chance to consume a 492 watershield Orb from the extra 1% crit), or 8.2 mp5. If you have 0% crit chance or 50% crit chance, that extra 1% chance to crit gives the same mana regen bonus either way.
So 46 crit rating = 8.2 mp5 without including the spell damage bonus if you assume 20 HW spells per minute. If you're casting LHW instead, you need to cast 33.3 per minute. A few riptides and earthshields will be cast, but I think 20 HW or 33 LHW is reasonable if you're using a RT & HW or RT & LHW based rotation.
If you are casting chain heal, it takes 66 spells per minute (not possible) to get that 8.2 mp5. A more realistic expectation would be about 3 mp5 from 46 crit rating if you are a chain heal spammer.
I think you're argument of crit --> MP5 is diminished by that fact that in a raid situation we tend to have many options for regen:
• Mana Tide (sometimes twice)
• Trinkets (some which don't share CDs like Spark of Life & Sif's Remembrance)
• Pots
• Innervates
• Our standing MP5 rating
• Water Mastery glyph, perhaps
• IWS procs
• Mana Spring/BoW
And thus, I think what others are pointing out is that throughput of haste - assuming you don't go oom - is more viable than more IWS procs.
Originally Posted by Falcon213
But crit also diminishes in value, whereas haste gives a flat rate of return all the way to its soft-cap (where it stops affecting throughput for LHW and TW'd HWs). This isn't really an issue for healers who prefer HW, but is a large issue for those who prefer LHW.
The soft-cap for LHW is 1269 haste with 8% raid buffs (1.5 sec --> 1 sec). I don't think current gearing will hit that yet.
Originally Posted by Falcon213
Also, in a straight-spam situation, AA procs benefit just as much from haste as crit.
Really? How are you calculating that? Without doing any math, I'm fairly certain those are non-parallel equations.
Really? How are you calculating that? Without doing any math, I'm fairly certain those are non-parallel equations.
They must be.
The additional crits gained from 1% extra crit (dcrit) for a certain amount of casts (#casts) are:
dcrit = 0.01 * #casts (for %crit <=0.99)
With haste the gain depends on your crit rate(%crit):
dcrit = 0.01 * #casts * %crit (for %crit <=0.99)
You can see that, within the (reasonable) definition of crit being below a hundred percent, one percent of crit always gives you more critical strikes than one percent of haste. The amount of crits you get from haste increases with your crit percentage.
I can go into more detailed math to show you were those formulas come from if need be.
Originally Posted by Hvidgaard
I agree that in reality haste will probably make you use more mana, but that's okay if you don't have mana problems. I just can't see why it's a bad thing. Other players making mistakes eat my mana far far more than haste ever will, ironicly haste helps me save them.
Oh I agree. I'm pretty much on your side. I just say that haste, when used properly, will reduce your longevity and that trying not to use it to save mana is counter-productive. If you do that, other stats will be better for you.
I'm sorry if I was inarticulate. I was merely confirming your point that the functions describing the amount of crits you gain from haste and crit (and thereby AA procs) aren't parallel. That you will, in fact, always gain more crits from 1% crit rating than you would from 1% haste.
This is ignoring the fact that you need more crit rating for a percent of crit than haste rating for haste.
Edit: here's the math
The average number of crits is easily detemined through the crit rate and the amount of spells cast in a time frame.
The amount of crits gained from an increased crit chance is the difference between old and the new amount of crits.
The amount of extra casts you gain from haste is a percentage of the original amount of casts.
The amount of crits gained from additional haste is the amount of crits you gain on the extra casts.
You can now clearly see that, when the percentage increase of both stats is equal, the average gain in crits from haste is depends on the crit rate, while that from crit does not.
Going further I will calculate the gain per point of haste and crit rating respectively and calculate at which point haste gives you equal crits to crit.
Taking the point conversions from wowwiki we get:
point of equality:
Meaning that at a critical strike chance above 71.4% you will get more crits from a point of haste rating than from crit. Below, a point of crit will gice you more crit for your buck.
I find the "just because you can cast 10% more spells, you don't need to" argument a bit lacklustre. It is true, of course, but if you don't use your haste you don't gain any benefit from it. If you use haste purely as an emergency stat (so to speak) you will get far more value out of a steady stat. You are pretty much ignoring the additional throughput offered by haste and just counting its (unquantifiable) gib-prevention effect.
This goes for mana regen as well, or even crit. A lot of the time healers end fights with excess mana, or cast spells that overheal significantly when they crit. Just because you have these stats doesn't mean you always gain a full benefit from them.
There are points in fights and raids where all our stats are doing is restoring mana we don't need, adding overheal, or widening gaps between one spell and the next, but those aren't the points that we gear for. We gear for when the encounter tests our throughput and/or mana reserves.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
I understand the arguments for and against haste. I've actually completely regemmed 3 times now just trying to get a feel for exactly what I want to do in 3.2. It's hard to tell at the moment because with Ulduar on farm, you can't really get a good benchmark for what's absolutely optimal in current raid environments. I know that haste gemming in Ulduar has been a blast. I've had fun raid healing with CH and still keeping up with tank damage on say Algalon, Steelbreaker, etc. I actually finished Algalon with more mana then I ever have before and did about 400 more HPS than our previous kills (and I was still tank healing), so just from my experience so far I haven't felt that losing 2% crit (which is all I lost) and 200 SP has had any real adverse affect on my healing.
With that being said, the itemization in Coliseum seems very bland. There aren't that many choices for different slots. I've thrown together different sets focusing on one being SP heavy, one haste heavy and one trying to be crit heavy. Without gemming pure crit (which I just don't like) the crit between the sets only fluctuated by 2%-3% at most. So as far as I can tell, gear alone will put you at respectable crit levels (most being around 33% sheet / 38% actual - unbuffed). So for me the choice will come down to gemming towards SP or gemming towards haste.
SP has its advantages for sure: higher AA procs, higher ES procs, more top end on LHW / HW and obviously it scales best with CH. The problem with increasing SP for CH is that you ultimately lose the faster cast time which in reality is the most important aspect of the spell. I don't intend on keeping 4 piece t8 for very long - as soon as I can replace it with 245 / 258 pieces I plan to. So from a CH standpoint I'm going to want to keep haste high. With my current haste setup my LHW is 1.14 in raids. That feels pretty good for when I need to start tossing them around. HW is down to 1.28 with TW active - also feels good.
So all the complicated math in these posts aside (which serve their purpose), you have to look at the actual attainable gear in Coliseum and how many options there actually are. There's a nice balance of items as far as haste/mp5, crit/mp5 and haste/crit, but there aren't actually a lot of choices for different slots. So like I said, most of these Coliseum 'gearing decisions' will really just come down to how you want to gem and what your ultimate goal will be. While gemming pure haste with 258 itemization you will still hit nearly 3000 SP unbuffed - I'm not sure if it's worth gemming for a couple hundred more spell power (which you'll be around 3200 - 3300 in raids) when you can pick up a couple hundred more haste.
That's really all the decision boils down to. Crit will remain relatively the same. For me, I'm leaning towards haste. Coliseum aside, it's working great in Ulduar. Mana is a complete non issue and my healing has improved in every aspect from an HPS standpoint - so I'm pretty content for the next 3 weeks.
But crit also diminishes in value, whereas haste gives a flat rate of return all the way to its soft-cap (where it stops affecting throughput for LHW and TW'd HWs). This isn't really an issue for healers who prefer HW, but is a large issue for those who prefer LHW.
Also, in a straight-spam situation, AA procs benefit just as much from haste as crit.
Sorry if my poor wording confused anyone.
First, I'm not saying the haste soft-cap is a current issue for LHW, but rather the diminishing value of crit with TW up.
Second, my mistake at saying "just as much", because that just isn't true (as scrusi pointed out). However, more casts does mean more chances for a crit, so when comparing haste to crit, one cannot value AA at full value for crit but then merely discount it for haste.
Mushin, what spells are you using (primarily) in each phase? Even with the changes to tidal waves, you should be able to keep the napalmed target up pretty easily with LHW/RT/LHW/LHW (I use RT second here because of the GCD lockout we all get from casting RT. I find it is more reliable to get a LHW off on the target first to stabilize them, and then toss a RT to keep the hot ticking throughout the napalm. Then you can LHW them as necessary to top them off). Even while healing the napalmed targets, I am able to help heal the tank during plasma blast (unless, of course, more than one person has taken a napalm).
On Napalms I've tended to RT/LHW/(L)HW. To be honest, I had it in my mind to get that RT down ASAP so that the hot was stabilizing the player - we'll be up again tonight so I'll try the change in priority because obviously leaning on RT's middling hot could be precisely my issue.
If you dont have enuf crit you will not get AA Procs that often so you need to get to a point where you have around 35%+5% crit self buffed if you are MT healing to also push out the randomness of IWS in LHW. Remember that only your single target spells benefict from the AA.
For me i found so far is that:
MT healing(LHW style) Crit/SP>Haste>MP5
I need strong heals and good regen i dont think that Haste will be better then Crit for this task because the value of AA when Tank healing its sometimes near 18% of my heal and the power and crit from earth shield its a big plus also. The regen mainly comes from crit here and too litle from MP5
Raid healing Haste/SP>Crit>Mp5
Haste here its the best choice because you only hit 4 targets and that is the problem if you not use haste based gear. Other classes have ways to hit 5/6 targets at time and for us to compete we need to get CH out fast but still we need to have strong jumps so thats why we need SP also, remember that our last jump its not like the 1st one. The regen still comes from crit but you dont need as mutch like the MT role because we have more chance to crit per cast because CH is a multi target spell and normaly will crit 1/2 average per cast.
If you dont have enuf crit you will not get AA Procs that often so you need to get to a point where you have around 35%+5% crit self buffed if you are MT healing to also push out the randomness of IWS in LHW. Remember that only your single target spells benefict from the AA.
For me i found so far is that:
MT healing(LHW style) Crit/SP>Haste>MP5
I need strong heals and good regen i dont think that Haste will be better then Crit for this task because the value of AA when Tank healing its sometimes near 18% of my heal and the power and crit from earth shield its a big plus also. The regen mainly comes from crit here and too litle from MP5
If you look at the most recent shaman_hep reports, haste is actually the best stat (for most people, in most reports) to increase the healing throughput of LHW. It doesn't affect riptide, but if you're using a RT/LHW/LHW or a CH/LHW/LHW cast rotation, haste is a fantastic stat at the moment. Yes, AA procs are very nice, and the mana restored from crits through IWS procs is also nice, but if you're raiding Ulduar or the new Trial of the Crusader, then you're probably going to have a high enough passive crit (just through stats on gear, not gems) to proc these abilities very frequently (especially if you're keeping tidal waves up).
If you look at the most recent shaman_hep reports, haste is actually the best stat (for most people, in most reports) to increase the healing throughput of LHW. It doesn't affect riptide, but if you're using a RT/LHW/LHW or a CH/LHW/LHW cast rotation, haste is a fantastic stat at the moment. Yes, AA procs are very nice, and the mana restored from crits through IWS procs is also nice, but if you're raiding Ulduar or the new Trial of the Crusader, then you're probably going to have a high enough passive crit (just through stats on gear, not gems) to proc these abilities very frequently (especially if you're keeping tidal waves up).
So how Haste will benefict Riptide and earth shield on MT healing task?
Its not a one spell use task u know...
In the global of Earth Shield + Riptide + LHW i think that even SP/Crit>Haste
Haste only afects 1 spell (LHW) and Crit/SP afects the 3 spells
I can be wrong ofc but can you explain for this task (MT healing) how haste will be a overall increase over crit/SP?
I completely agree that haste doesn't affect Riptide and Earthshield, but if you're using a RT/LHW/LHW combination (or, as I said before a CH/LHW/LHW rotation, which is helpful on some fights), then LHW is likely going to be your top heal for that encounter. By increasing your haste, you are able to significantly decrease the cast time of LHW, which will do two things:
1. It will increase the throughput of your LHW.
2. It will allow you to heal the tank and any raid members faster (cause we all know that if you see someone going low and the tank is stable, it's probably a good idea to toss a heal on them), thereby reducing the likelihood of the tank or one of the raid members dying.
With the changes to tidal waves, we don't need as much crit as before to proc AA and IWS from LHW, and we need more haste to bring the cast time down to acceptable levels.
I'm not saying that crit and spellpower are bad stats to have, I'm simply saying that given the potential for haste to increase your healing throughput on LHW (and CH, and HW) and for it to help save the lives of your raid team, it is an extremely valuable stat to stack now.
EDIT: Haste doesn't affect the raw throughput of ES and RT, though of course it lowers the GCD, which allows you to cast successive spells more quickly. Haste is only marginally less valuable for this approach than a CH heavy one. It's still a really valuable stat.
Last edited by kaellia : 08/13/09 at 4:02 PM.
Reason: to clarify in response to the post below
what do you mean it doesnt affect riptide and earth shield? you get off the GCD faster and thus can start your next spell earlier, not to mention also being able to riptide sooner after a hasted spell before that.
but obv haste is much less valuable for this approach than for a very chain heal heavy one.
Any thoughts on [Totem of Calming Tides]? I know the Ret Paladin version is currently bugged and has no internal cooldown, has anyone tested Calming Tides out?
I have and in a CH spam healing scenario, it has 100% uptime (refreshed for me once every 5th cast without fail at 785 haste and a cast time of 1.77seconds, non raid buffed, spamming on myself). Granted this is non extensive testing at all.
Wowhead shows the proc rate at 70% and doesn't feel like it has an internal CD atm. It's a solid totem for sure.
I can also confirm this. Chain heal spam would refresh the buff at about the ~6 second remaining mark. This was tested over the entire night of raiding.
And a 70% proc rate feels right. It would more often than not proc when a single chain heal cast was placed on myself, in order to place an ES on the main tank before pulling.
Any thoughts on [Totem of Calming Tides]? I know the Ret Paladin version is currently bugged and has no internal cooldown, has anyone tested Calming Tides out?
I used it on Yogg tonight and didn't really notice anything as far as an internal cooldown but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one.
But it has pretty much 100% up time when just spamming chain heal.
This is my first time posting here. But I have been looking around her for a while, so if you could kindly forgive me if I ask a repeat question or just a flat out dumb one. I've been playing for a little more then a year now and till only recently I've been a very casual player till now. Thus bringing me to my question. I have been looking around on the shaman forums on current gem suggestions. The reason for the question is, 3.1 patch pushed shamans to be Chain Healing Shamans, which I did fairly well at, but in 3.2, the change of Tidal Waves, and Ancestral Healing. These changes makes us more viable tank healers. So from that I gather, I socked my gear with a lot of haste. I believe I was at 430 haste. Then I found a shady website suggesting for sp/crit gems, and another saying intel gems. After that I asked another Shaman He said gem for Intel/MP5. Currently I'm socked for the Intel/MP5. If you can help me out or point me a direction I would really appreciate it.
Actually, 3.1 wasn't all that good towards chainheal spamming, which is why a lot of resto shamans went MT/snipe healing during that time with int/crit gems. Now in 3.2 the CH is buffed, and provides mana regen too, which makes haste once again an excellent stat to gem for. I'm currently at around 800-900 haste depending on which trinkets I use, and I've about 660 mp5 with raid buffs. Obviously, this kind of setup is for raid healers, and it works really well.
08/12/09, 5:42 AM
) Therefore I gain the full throughput benefit from haste without any of the disadvantages. ymmv, obv.
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