Even if you cast HW as often as possible, haste will still increase healing output more than int will. Gemming for int when we don't have any mana issues seems like a huge waste. I assume most of us use Healing Wave whenever we can do so without overhealing as a Tidal Waved Healing Wave is the highest healing output we can get. The problem is, if the target has only lost 5-8k health, a LHW or a chain heal would have healed the same amount as the HW, and with additional benefits.
Thanks Stassart for adding [Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond] to your program. The results are indeed surprising but I agree with your conclusion:
It looks like RSD is inferior to the IED if you do not have a Solace trinket, it becomes comparable to the IED for people with one Solace trinket, and the RSD becomes superior to the IED for people with 2 Solace trinkets.
I might go a step farther: Numerous shaman claim to never run out of mana. They are probably healing guild runs with good tanks and excellent DPS that make the fights short and clean. Their fellow players don't stand in fires and they are working with other extremely good healers. The RSD might be a good choice for them.
However, the new content in Patch 3.3 might tax our mana far more. Also, running with any group that has sub-par DPS makes healing the encounter more mana intensive. If you like healing pugs or alt runs and don't have Solace, you may want to stick with IED.
Even if you cast HW as often as possible, haste will still increase healing output more than int will. Gemming for int when we don't have any mana issues seems like a huge waste. I assume most of us use Healing Wave whenever we can do so without overhealing as a Tidal Waved Healing Wave is the highest healing output we can get. The problem is, if the target has only lost 5-8k health, a LHW or a chain heal would have healed the same amount as the HW, and with additional benefits.
Using hw causes a lot of mana problems if you don't at least use some int gems. Hope this exert from the spread sheet will clear things up. Now that I know mana isn't a problem with all int gems, I'm going to use my lhw time till oom from the spread sheet as a benchmark and optimize my gear for better performance think I can pick up closer to 1k haste now. This should help increase the hps but the real problem is that toc tank dmg with the exception of anub is almost nothing so hence the insane over healing and poor hps. This week was weird for us on anub too, ended up using 2 holy pallies instead of 1 (gotta <3 holiday attendance) thus both tanks were topped for almost all the fight. However mostly doing this because I believe that hw will be a useful spec in icc where tank dmg should be more significant.
Not sure exactly how those "Time till oom" number are arrived at, but they're not relevant at all for a real fight. On algalon I was able to almost only use healing waves for the full 6 minute fight, only switching to LHW's when tanks had cooldowns like Shield Wall active. By using 2 mana tides, 2-3 innervates and a mana pot I can still sustain that with full haste gear. This obviously includes moving for Black Hole, but other than that just mindless spam on tank to avoid gibs.
For the TotGC fights, spamming HW is very impractical. You will probably have significantly lower healing output than other shamans and other classes. It's a go to-heal that is sometimes worth casting if you have a feeling a very large heal will be needed, but it can't really be spammed effectively.
As a sidenote, what HPS and time till oom would a full spellpower LHW user and a HW user get?
Not sure exactly how those "Time till oom" number are arrived at, but they're not relevant at all for a real fight.
The time till oom numbers were from Daidalos's resto spreadsheet (along with a custom formula for riptide hwx2 lhwx2 hps and time till oom) and yes they aren't relevant in terms of actual time till oom in a real fight. However I was using them as a reference point, using lhw time till oom as a benchmark for my hw regen.
The time till oom numbers were from Daidalos's resto spreadsheet (along with a custom formula for riptide hwx2 lhwx2 hps and time till oom) and yes they aren't relevant in terms of actual time till oom in a real fight. However I was using them as a reference point, using lhw time till oom as a benchmark for my hw regen.
Right my numbers do not account for environmental procs (which are actually pretty common) or other mana returning abilities (twins). My sheet will show worst case situations I could add in a average proc rate for water shield or something but it still wouldn't account for everything that can give you mana.
I'm wondering if anyone who is experienced in healing Heroic 25 Anub penetrating cold can help me, specifically healing two people each time the debuff is applied.
My guild was really gunning for insanity this week, since 3.3 is looming. Usually, the guild uses three healers on tanks, and three healers for the five debuffs, with two healers (disc priests) taking two and a druid will take the remaining one. I've usually been on tanks, but tonight I was asked to heal two debuffs. And failed miserably, losing people to the first tick.
I've always approached stuff analytically. In this instance, considering my ping was about 350, means I have about 2.65 seconds to heal both targets. I have about 900 haste, so raid buffed my LHW is about 1.1x seconds, meaning I have about 0.4 (ie 2.65-2.2x) seconds of reaction time, if I do LHW x 2 for both in order to heal before the debuff hits.
So I figured I should start with Plan A, which is LHW one + Riptide the other in the three second window, thinking that this will give the needed health at the beginning of the cast for debuff no. 2 instead of at the end, making it much safer. However this didn't work at all, riptide was healing only about 4k non crit, combined with initial 1k health that everyone is at, leaves that player at about 5k, and penetrating cold was ticking for 5.2k, not to mention the leeching swarm is ticking too, so I would lose people every time riptide didn't crit.
Next I changed to plan B, which is LHW both targets. Since this is a bit more tight, I changed to haste elixers and food buffs to give myself more time, and practised in P1 to see if I can heal both targets before they took any damage. It was about 50-50, I suspect due to different latency at different points in time since I spotted quartz showing 450ms red casting bars intermittently, but could probably also mean I'm a bad player and have bad reaction time so I never get the casts off in time. Going into P3 this method is unreliable as well and really isn't better then Plan A and I'm still letting people die.
Now, I've done Plan A before and was successful at it back when the guild got 25 attempts, however thinking about it now, that could have been just luck with my Riptides critting a lot, my assigned debuffs hitting people with Frost Pots or abilities to remove the debuff such as paladins, mages or rogues, or people had a bit more HP then usual (such as right after JoL+LotP heals/tanks/previous PC target and still had high health) and non crit riptides weren't fatal. Even letting 1-2 people die at the end still enables us to limp through the encounter. Obviously I can't rely on these sort of stuff in an insanity run.
Asking another shaman in the guild that sometimes heals the debuffs, he just LHW + Riptide two different people similarly to my plan A. He's got better gear then me, probably about 100-200 haste more as well as 100 SP. I'm not sure if that would make that much of a difference in terms of inital non-crit riptide heals being 100% reliable. He says just keep spamming heals as well after the inital combo (which I've been doing), but this didn't really help with my issue since my problem was the initial tick. So far I tried to maximize my performance by:
1) Correct addons and debuff displays - I'm using Xperl and added the custom debuffs in, it's very clear and I'm not wasting time looking for debuffs. I know which ones are assigned to me instantly
2) Maxing SP with SP flask/food/gear changes, so riptides can heal for more initally. Doesn't improve enough for 100% reliability on non crits, although I haven't tried changing my gems all to SP ones yet. I suspect the latter will work although I'd have to change gems every week.
3) Maxing Haste with food/elixir for 2 x LHW, works when they both land but unreliable at best
4) Not casting at all before debuffs so I'm not caught halfway in a GCD and losing precious time
5) Keeping Tidal Waves up before the debuffs hit. This helps with the size of LHW hits but doesn't really address the key issues in both Plan A and B.
6) Use crit elixir and food for Plan A to get riptide to crit more. Not very reliable.
I'm out of ideas and was pretty cut up when I was told to go back onto tanks and a disc priest will do the debuffs, and we proceeded to kill Anub the next attempt. Since my group relied on my totems for healing in P3 I wasn't benched, but I felt like a liablity and would have been so if not for totems. I have always been quick with things like dispels and debuff healing but I'm really starting to doubt myself. I would really appreciate it if someone could offer some advice. Please keep in mind that something like changing roles or increasing healers on the debuff isn't what I'm really looking for, since it's not improving my healing but offloading it to someone else and the guild could do it with three already. I'm looking for specifically healing the two debuffs in my current situation.
I hear your pain, P.C. Phase 3 of Heroic Anub is possibly the most stressful phase of any fight I've done yet.
You say you use Xperl to show your raid frames. How do you heal people? Do you use Clique? Do you select each target with your mouse and use a keystroke to heal them? Or, do you use mouseover macros?
My guild's other resto shaman had some issues losing people to PC when we first started working on Anub. After a few weeks of frustration, I asked him the same question I just asked you. He was selecting each target separately, and healing them (using the 2 X LHW method, and with over 1100 haste). His reaction times just weren't fast enough.
I gave him my mouseover macros, and since then he hasn't lost a single target to PC. They make you able to switch between targets fairly effortlessly.
So, if you're not using mouseover macros for this encounter, I'd suggest you switch to them. I can PM mine to you when I get home from work if you'd like.
As a side note though, the simplest way to increase your chances at survival is to bring in another healer. Your dps should be good enough with 245 and 258 gear to work with 2 healers on the tanks and a healer for every PC target (so seven in total). Unless, of course, you don't have two healers that are capable of healing all three tanks effectively. We use our main raiding paladin and an enhance shaman's alt paladin (who is in amazing gear and has Grand Crusader) to heal the two tanks, and then have 2 priests (one disc, one holy), 2 shamans and a druid on the 5 PC debuffs.
EDIT: I would also suggest that you refrain from casting before PC comes out at all. I wait till the debuffs have come out and people are stabilized to refresh ES or do any other casts. You need to be able to react instantly when PC comes, and can't be GCD locked.
Last edited by kaellia : 12/02/09 at 12:00 PM.
Reason: Clarity
I also heal two P.C. targets...I've about 3600spellpower and 1080haste.
First i always refresh Tidal Waves before Anub'arak cast P.C.
Then i heal both targets with LHW...if one of these two people doesnt receive a critical LHW i will cast riptide on him.
For sure, I use Grid and Clique.
Extra addons for Grid are GridStatus_RaidDebuff and GridStatus_RaidTargets.
Every healer heals one or two raid targets...in example, i always heal square and triangle (the second shaman always casts riptide on triangle).
We use 2 paladins für the two tanks (a druid is tanking Anub'arak and a warrior for burrower),
2 shamans, one priest and a druid on the P.C. debuffs.
1) Correct addons and debuff displays - I'm using Xperl and added the custom debuffs in, it's very clear and I'm not wasting time looking for debuffs. I know which ones are assigned to me instantly.
I do not know if it is still the case, but in Burning Crusade I used to use Xperl until I heard and noticed myself that Xperl raid frames have a slight delay between when a person actually takes damage and when it shows up on the frames. I switched to Grid and have been using it ever since with higher performance on my part. I highly recommend switching Xperl raid frames for Grid, and see if you find a difference. This could account for you not healing people in time--especially if you are already at > 300 ms. Grid may not be as user-friendly, but it is very customizable and you can add the debuffs you want displayed into it with little trouble. I am sure another person in your guild could help you customize it to your preferences (I help guildies all the time, but it is easier to do over vent).
I really hope that helps--or if xperl has been improved to eliminate the lag, someone please let me know. Thanks.
You're making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Don't know what setup your guild uses for tanks but we use the two tank strategy. One on the boss, one in full block/avoidance gear on the adds. We bring 7 healers. Two paladins on both tanks with beacon. Everybody else on raid healing. This means everybody has their own mark to cover, no healing multiple marks. Easy as pie, could do it in our sleep.
You're making it unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Don't know what setup your guild uses for tanks but we use the two tank strategy. One on the boss, one in full block/avoidance gear on the adds. We bring 7 healers. Two paladins on both tanks with beacon. Everybody else on raid healing. This means everybody has their own mark to cover, no healing multiple marks. Easy as pie, could do it in our sleep.
Also
No you don't. Nobody does.
Actually 3600 with 1k haste seems about right fulled buffed with relic. I'd expect most resto shaman to be somewhere in that range.
Thanks everyone for their input so far. It looks like 2x LHW method is generally the method people use as I suspected, since it is more reliable with faster reactions/lower latency, whilst there's not much to be done about Riptides not hitting enough initially. Hopefully a few more people could give their inputs too.
@kaellia: I don't use mouseover macros for Anub healing, I am definitely interested since I have never thought of this. I assume its something like /cast [target=mouseover,exists] LHW; LHW?
@Gathic: Thanks for your input using 2 x LHW method, I'm interested to know what happens if both LHWs don't crit? Would you lose people if another shaman wasn't helping you?
@Altsobadol: I have wondered about whether Xperl is slower showing debuffs than grid but I'm not sure. As far as I can tell, when I hear the sound of debuffs being applied (similar to icy touch sound) I see the debuffs. The only way is to run Grid and Xperl side by side and check, I think i'll do that next time.
@Chanek: Thanks for your suggestion. My guild uses 2 block tanks and 1 main tank, and we've tried 7 healers before. However I would really like for tips with dealing with 2 debuff targets, as a)increases dps, b)from a guild's perspective 3 healers have successfully done it so they're stick with that, and most importantly c) I wish to improve myself in these type of senarios in case of similar needs in the future.
P.C., do you raid with Shadow priests? We generally have our shadow priests shield to help out with slow and/or new healers. A non-crit riptide and a spriest shield is enough for the initial tick. After the initial tick it is trivial to keep both up.
Last raid we did not have our usual healing setup, and actually where a healer short. I made our shadow priests spec into Improved Power Word: Shield and have them help out with PC healing. This turned out very well, I don't know how much shadow priest have to give up to get the talent, but our shadow priests told me that it did not decrease their dps. I think they gave up meditation, but I'll ask them if you want to know.
You might want to change exists to help, otherwise the macro might attempt to cast it on hostile targets when you try to heal yourself (if you got autoselfcast enabled).
So that would be
Oh also P.C, are your paladins chain casting Aura Mastery with FrR Aura for each Pen Cold? We have 3 paladins in the raid with it and it lessens the damage taken considerably.
It heals friendly units on mouseover, when no unit is present @ the cursor it heal my current target or when I have the boss targeted it heals the current tank, all with 1 keybind. The rest of the code hides the annoying "Spell not ready" visual and audio warnings, when you're really hammering your keys.
@Gathic: Thanks for your input using 2 x LHW method, I'm interested to know what happens if both LHWs don't crit? Would you lose people if another shaman wasn't helping you?
I think at least one LHW will be a crit.
You have about 70% crit with LHW (25% crit Tidal Waves, 5% crit Elemental Oath, 5% crit Tidal Mastery and ~35% crit unbuffed).
Even if neither LHW crits, you shouldn't run into a problem. Personally, I switch to [Relentless Gladiator's Totem of the Third Wind] for this fight, which puts my non-crit LHW at about ~5800. With the raid at ~1k hp, the non-crit heal should be more than sufficient to prevent death on the first tick. After the first tick, its a joke.
You might want to change exists to help, otherwise the macro might attempt to cast it on hostile targets when you try to heal yourself (if you got autoselfcast enabled).
So that would be
Not sure if this is what people are using, I've found that it's really really hard to fit in LHW->LHW before the first tick including reaction times, lag, etc. I've always been going for LHW->Riptide. On one occasion so far we had a person die due to the noncrit Riptide combined with only a 10% resist on the tick. In general, the times I've been assigned to 2 people it has been the melee groups that includes the tanks, so I might have been helped by the fact that melee are usually at a higher hp and have more tricks.
That being said, using a shaman for this is really an inferior solution to disc priests. Having 2 priests cover 4 persons, you should be able to handle 1. After the first ticks, everyone should have 2 rejuvs or 1 rejuv+1 renew which is enough, and everyone can go back to tanks.
That simulator is actually incredibly helpful if you are struggling to find/heal your target in time. Not bad for facebook. The other thing I'd advise is to put your spell cast time +your average spell lag during 25M encounters into the "cast time" input.
So for instance, my LHW is 1.06s (raid buffed) and my average spell lag is about 175ms, so I put in 1.24 seconds into the "cast time" input.
In the TTT, the Tidal Waves bit isn't updated for 3.2 yet. Should read something like:
Tidal Waves
* When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you gain a buff that increases the critical chance of your next two Lesser Healing Wave spells by 25% and reduces the casting time of your next two Healing Wave spells by 30%, until two of either spell have been cast.
What happened to the Wowhead item rankings link? I still use it a bunch.
And on a broader note, now that Blizzard has indicated a shift towards higher health pools/softer, but more frequent, hits, which already seems to be the case with Icecrown (via Chill of the Throne), how will this affect our healing style?
I think it means that we have to keep a closer eye on our buffs on the tank - namely Earth Shield, which would presumably deplete quicker, if the tank has less overall avoidance. Also, if lacking a Priest (as my guild often is at the moment), Ancestral Fortitude might be slightly less crucial if insta-gibbing is less of a risk. But of course it's still pretty good to have.
Incidentally, are we allowed to talk about (normal mode, at least?) Icecrown fights from the PTR in this thread? Can anyone share experiences on healing, particularly the front four bosses? I'd imagine those will be the fights we care about over the next few weeks, especially if 3.3 does indeed come out this next Tuesday.
11/30/09, 1:22 PM
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