Steamcaller affecting base is a smaller gain than 234 spellpower. 234 spellpower would be the equivalent of 314(234(2.5/3.5)*1.88) base healing for chain. Even if chain was 100% of your healing the Coliseum totem would only require 77%(.77*314=245) uptime to surpass Steamcaller.

Oops I was thinking base was the same as spell power but I think you are right. So further reason this relic is very good.

Now that we have all settled into the 3.2 changes, I am fairly content from a pve perspective. Although the slower cast on LHW has taken away from my ability to "steal" heals from others to look good on meters, i feel like the improved crit has been more of a benefit to my overall healing output than a loss. Obviously healing wave still isn't the best, but situationally, popping off a huge heal can help quite a bit. The chain heal changes are nice, although we still don't have the raid healing capabilities of a holy priest/resto druid of course. Overall, shaman are looking much better from a pve perspective.

With regard to healing rotations, I am a little put off by how many people try to craft up a perfect order of spells to use. Sixthy seems to see things the same way as myself; just cast what needs to be casted at the time. I have never paid much attention to timing up chain heals off riptides or making sure that i only cast LHW when tidal waves is up, etc., but i do make sure that i get my heals off at the right place at the right time. This is basically embracing what blizzard has given us- we have become very balanced healers between raid, tank, and snipe, and the way that you can get the most out of your shaman is by simply taking things as they come.

This is a video of my typical playstyle. In an OS 25 +1 pug, lots of retards needed healed through flame wall, there were plenty of chain heals to be tossed around, and just overall keeping as many people alive as possible. I was able to do 40% of the healing done not by spamming a specific rotation or anything like that, but by merely adjusting to the situation. I screwed up a few times by missing some LHW on low health people, but I did what a could to carry a poor group.

YouTube - Obsidian Sanctum 25 man Heroic +1 Drake

Yes, I found myself having extremely balanced healing output between HW / LHW / CH now, where before I was very heavily leaning to HW (I'm mostly tankhealing).

It all... works together now, for lack of a better way to describe it.

I should however add to the discussion about the rotations that I don't use anything like that. I got four spells (Riptide far small damage, LHW for medium damage or when forced to proc +Absorb, HW for the big hits or in conjunction with Tidal Force, Chain Heal for clumped damage), and I'll use them as the need comes up. The only "tricky" part is ofc - and I suspect that's why many try to think in rotations - is that I am quite forced to use RT or CH every 2~3 spells. But I found that that happens on it's own anyways. So there is virtually no need to even think about a rotation.

Yep, that is exactly what I mean Tidal Waves pretty much procs by itself. And even with the changes to chain heal (making it a better source of tidal waves than pre-3.2) i still find myself using riptide quite often. I still do 10 mans quite a bit, and the balanced aspect of shaman make us great for 10 mans. Specifically in 10 mans, riptide is a prominent source of tidal waves simply because there aren't as many people to chain heal. Obviously 10 mans aren't today's raiding priority, but i do think they are fun due to the smaller atmosphere where each individual has a more important role (people cannot be carried as easily).

So it appears that many of you think that casting a CH on a tank who's RT is about to expire is a wasted cast. I have to disagree with you on that.

I think of raid healing as being reactionary (the dps take damage, and you react to it by healing them), but tank healing to be anticipatory (you heal them in anticipation of them taking damage while you are casting the heal). Thus a CH on a tank would be an anticipatory heal, and would not be wasted so long as the tank has aggro on any hard hitting mob or boss.

Given the predictability that tanks will take damage and need to be kept topped off, along with the huge bonuses of a RT boosted CH or a TW boosted LHW/HW, I think that allows for the use of a rotation. I like to cast non-instant cast direct heals or instant cast HoTs on a tank who is at full health because I think chances are good that they will take damage while I am casting the heal on them. I'm just that pessimistic of a person.


I specifically said in my post that its the tanks that I keep RT up on, but that's a point that those who criticized my idea of a rotation have ignored completely. So instead of refuting my argument by claiming I'd be wasting a CH on someone who doesn't need it (and not specifying whether that person is a dps or a tank), let's go back to the assumption that I stated in my original post that the CH would be on the tank.

Obviously it isn't a "wasted" cast in that it will still proc effects and do healing. I think the issue is more that it requires you to purposefully not CH the tank, thereby either wasting healing by bouncing it to him off melee, wasting casts of it on people not taking raid damage, or doing without TW until RT ticks down.

Given the predictability that tanks will take damage, I see no reason to ever wait for RT to be low to CH them unless CH is simply not an appropriate spell to cast (no splash damage to melee, for instance) in which case, what is the purpose of casting CH at the end of RT instead of the spell you've been using to heal the tank in the first place?


Edit: The Think Tank table doesn't use breaks (</ br>), it simply has extra rows inserted with blank cells.

I will occasionally cast a CH on a tank who's RT still has most of its time left. I prefer to cast a RT or CH on someone else to reactivate TW rather than consume the RT on the tank. But there's a lot of flexibility in how I do things.

I do see a reason to wait before casting a CH on a tank - if there's a lot of time left on their RT, then I'd rather cast a LHW or HW than a CH, even a non-TW boosted LHW or HW. This is conditional on the availability of a second (or third) target that could use RT. If there are multiple targets that I am trying to keep RT ticking on, then I'll go for the non-TW boosted LHW or HW on the tank instead of a CH. But if that tank is the only one I'm really concerned with keeping RT ticking on, I will use the CH even when RT has a lot of time left.


My idea of the rotation is that I like to keep RT ticking on multiple tanks at once, so I'm rotating my RT's around.

I do pay special attention to my RT cooldown, and I try to use it whenever I can. I much prefer HoTs to DHs - a HoT keeps a target topped off, whereas a direct heal puts them at max health, and then does nothing more. I guess I'm kind of a druid healer at heart then.

If you like to prioritize RT above other spells, then that's one thing, but don't confuse it with a healing rotation. Healing is all about choosing the spell that you need. There is a lot to consider, and some of it is nontrivial and probably worthy of a Best Practices discussion.

When choosing the spell to cast, we need to consider its output, HpS, cost, HpM, speed/delivery time, cooldown (in the case of RT) and special factors such as Tidal Waves, Ancestral Healing, Earth Shield, Earthliving + other HoTs, etc. Parsing a log (preferably multiple) and creating a table is the easiest way to see these values, barring spreadsheet ninjutsu. Once you have these values, you'll be able to make informed decisions. E.g. when time is not an issue, what is the most efficient way to heal? For me, this is CH if I will get full use of 1 jump, LHW otherwise.

Here's an example of a decision-building table:

	Cast Time	Cost	Effective Heal	HpM	HpS
Healing Wave	1.51	833	6055	7.27	4023.03
Lesser Healing Wave	1.29	420	5018	11.96	3889.75
Lesser Healing Wave (w/ES)	1.29	420	5018	11.96	3889.75
Chain Heal (0 Jumps)	2.15	656	5157	7.86	2398.48
Chain Heal (1 Jump)	2.15	593	8124	13.71	3778.39
Chain Heal (2 Jumps)	2.15	530	9905	18.70	4606.34
Chain Heal (3 Jumps)	2.15	466	10973	23.53	5103.11
Earth Shield	1.29	626	19821	31.66	15363.51
Riptide	1.29	541	5377	9.94	4167.78

From this you can easily see some things like: ES should always be up, and CH is my bread & butter if I can get full use out of it.

Using a tool like this will help you go from "just make sure I hit RT when it's up and CH the tank to keep Tidal Waves going" to a more complete decision tree, with questions like "Is time a factor? How much healing do they need? Are they close enough to make use out of a CH bounce, is Tidal Waves Active?" The point is, there should be very little flexibility in the way you do things, but there should be enough depth to allow you to cover every situation. The first half of the (healing) fight is gearing properly, the second half is a robust decision tree, preferably backed up with math.

Edit: There is no difference in LHW rows because it represent my current build which does not include the Glyph.

With the new totem there is a bloody good reason to use CH fairly often, even if you don't really have to. I used to keep Tidal Waves up for most (L)HW I casted before 3.2, and that was not always possible without using CH - now I will make sure to use CH more timed outside the ICD to keep the 234SP more steady, but generally I think my healing style will remain mostly the same, just with more HWs.

One concern I have with Totem of Calming Tides is how much healing is going to be lost due to lost refreshing of hots. Riptide hot and Earthliving hots do not refresh if your spellpower went down and this new relic is going to cause spellpower to constantly go up and down. This could lead to a significant amount of lost Riptide hot and Earthliving hot healing. Has anyone determined how much healing is being lost when one uses short duration spell power effects? It is currently on my TODO list.

I found it ironic that on the 3.2 PTR they gave the premade shaman the Eye of the Broodmother when that trinket creates the hot refresh bug for shaman (druids do not have the issue with their hots). I forgot about the bug when I picked up Pandora's Plea, but it is present with that trinket too and the bug is still present in 3.2 (I filed a bug report on the 3.2 PTR on the issue).

Given that riptide can be consumed easily, I don't think this is actually that significant. I suppose the earthliving hot healing is a small loss, but as earthliving is less than 6% of my total heals, it's not going to make me lose any sleep over choosing the Calming Tides totem, especially as I have close to 90% uptime for that buff.

I believe some people were asking the breakdown of Algalon's healing "rotation" (for lack of a better word). The link below shows our Herald of the Titans kill tonight in our 10-man group.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Interesting. I assume you bounced your CHs off the tanks?
My log below shows me at a very similar hps number but I spammed LHW and the occasional riptide on the MT, leaving the raid healing to our druid and AA.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Well all three of us had something rolling on the current tank, so he seemingly took less damage. The healers were also somewhat near the melee to the point where the Cosmic Smashes weren't hitting both, but allowed for more use of Wild Growth and Chain Heal to reach more of the raid.

Also, 3.2 has done wonders on my mana stability. Pre-patch, I was struggling for mana on Algalon, but now I seem to end the fight at around 80% (+/- 10%). This is one of the fights where my efficiency has been noticed.

Ok I am new here and I been reading most of the topics on OS 3 Drakes, I am about to try it in my guild where we are doing it in 10 man with one tank, one healer, and the rest dps.

We have succeeded doing this with pallies healing but want to try with a shaman healing. So what I am asking is any good advice for me, right now I am in mostly crit 36% buffed, and intel gear but my haste is low 300. I do have my other healing set which is half crit 25% and 510 haste. I would definitely use my half crit, and haste set but all my gems are intellect should I re-gem some of them to haste and mp5 or haste and spell?

So please no flames, just if you think I should do something different I am open to any advice for OS 3 drakes 10 man with one tank and healer, or any advice or comments in general.

Why would haste be bad for LHW? It's not as good as for CH, but shaman_hep still shows it as far the best stat for me for LHW spam. Especially on that encounter where mana doesn't matter.

Assuming that you are zerging and that the melee are stacked w/n CH range of the tank, when I do this fight I stack haste. I primarily LHW/RT the tank but bounce a CH out there whenever there is a lull in tank dmg because it will help careless DPS from dying to add damage. Depending on the quality of the DPS in a 10 OS 3D zerg you may also be responsible for doing some dpsing. In this case you need the haste even more if you are gonna waste a couple gcds on fs/lb.

Haste is still good for LHW, its just how much. Since Heroism is up for the majority of this fight, you wouldn't benefit from having more than 20% from gear/other sources.

Oh right, heroism. That would get you below the gcd. My current level of haste would pretty much bring HW down on almost exactly the global cooldown though (during heroism, with TW) - which should be excellent there. I think I would go with a CH/HW/HW rotation during heroism, possibly switching to LHW after.
This is with full haste gemmage, ymmv.

I have a quick question which is geared more towards people like Vallkor - but have you or any other shaman that are at the edge of progression had any mana issues? I haven't had any - yet I keep seeing more mp5 itemization on the horizon. I'm not sure that, with all the mp5 itemized on tier gear that I'll actually need to even worry about it on accessories.

To give some context, I don't even spam CH or stack haste (although I have a haste set and my mana is still fine spamming CH since CH regen from crits is pretty crazy now) - but I mostly do tank healing - and as of yet, even on long fights with hw spam, there haven't been issues. I've tried to stay around ~450ish haste while upping my spellpower as much as I can and ~30-34% crit on my paperdoll.

The reason I'm asking this, is because it changes my gear preferences to sort of odd items - but ones of higher throughput such as [Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers] over [Bracers of Cloudy Omen]. Even when [Bracers of Cloudy Omen] move up to the 258 level, they only gain a handful of stats, a socket, and 2 spellpower over the 245 ones. This leads me to side with the 50 haste is greater throughput then a handful of spellpower/int that you'd gain going to the 258 ones (and you lose 25mp5, but that goes back to my question/point). There's so much mp5 itemization that so far I've found unnecessary that some items, namely [Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers], might be a better bis item. (They're sure better then my boe crap that I've had since I rerolled :P).

We're working on hard modes of Uld 10/25, and so far I haven't had any mana regen issues. I do stack haste/sp.

I've kept a couple of the int/mp5 trinkets in my bags but haven't had to use them so far - with the exception of the int for Vezax. Approx 90% of the time I keep healing stream down and don't even need to use mana tide or pots.