I'm currently sitting at 21k mana, 32.23% chance to crit, about 408 Mp5, and 2596 spell power, all unbuffed. Due to the recent changes to Lesser Healing Wave, my cast time has gone from about .626, to 1.3. Would it be worth it for me to regem for haste to get my cast time alittle lower for LHW or am I just wasting my time? As it sits now I hardly ever use LHW due to the fact that LHW cast speed is 1.3 and Healing Wave is right about 1.5, and heals at least twice as much. Please let me know what you think.

You use the same gear/glyphs/spec on every pull? That is why i asked.

Also, would love to see a WOL so I can see how your raid heals that.

I've re-gemmed almost full haste (~750 unbuffed) and have sacrificed very little crit. I'm still looking at 34% unbuffed.

The haste isn't just for CH spam. It keeps your LHW fast enough to reactively heal the spike damage on the hard modes. Its not going to be as fast as pre-3.2 but it is noticable to me.

Yes, but what is your regen at? What is your healing role (raid, I assume)?

We are very good tank healers now too, and it sounds like you are gearing for non-hard mode raid healing - which is fine. But what I'm driving at is that I don't think there is an "ideal" gear/glyph/totem/spec that will work for every encounter. In SWP, we could map CH to every key on the keyboard and rollface on it to keep people up. Certainly for some fights (many?) in Ulduar you can. But I do not think so on tank healing fights like Algalon. And with this mind, I'm curious if Blizzard is going to push us more and more into a tank healing roll where LHW spam doesn't work and where regen from IWS crits would be better.

Grats on the Val mace, Sixthy. I'm currently at 16fragments.

I agree with your stance on haste+crit for tank healing.

However, spellpower scales incredibly well with the Chain Heal mechanics (not to mention ES and it's the best stat for RT too, but if you're getting more than 18% of your total healing from those two spells... you probably don't need to heal at all). SP is much better than haste according to the CH section of shaman_hep.

So for shaman that find themselves spamming chain heal, I'd say mix up a lot of spellpower and some haste. I personally can't run out of mana on fights where I'm just using CH.


On Algalon (i've only succeeded in 10man, not 25 yet). My gear uses a bit more crit and a lot more haste. I heal it about the same way as what Sixthy said.

Watch for red circles or listen on vent if your guild announces them. You need to know if the other tank healers are being forced to move. If they are... I tend to just overheal the tank until I see the movements of the other healers coming to an end.

We used a bear and a paladin tank. I found that I could CH the bear unless the other tank healer had to run, then HWs on the bear. Tank-healing shaman+paladin, raid healing holy priest.
I found that I could choose either LHW or HW on the paladin, but a CH was risky. (I didn't have LHW glyphed, otherwise for 10man, i could probably have skipped using HW).

This coming week; I plan on the following additional technique.
RT - always keep it rolling on the tank (this is a concern in 10man with fewer other healers)
If RT is already on the tank, cast it on someone else in the raid... anyone else will take damage sometime.

I think my point about haste is the diminishing return quality of it. So for example, running 750 haste - assuming raid buffs and 4pT8 - you're chain heal will take 1.681 seconds to cast. Running 650 haste under the same conditions will result in a CH in 1.729 seconds - a difference of 0.048 seconds or rough 1/20th of a second.

Let's say that gear for 750 haste was done with 5 epic haste gems. Should you replace those with 5 epic crit gems, you'd gain 2.178% crit.

Now I'm willing to accept that I'm looking at this the wrong way, but if I had a piece of gear that said "reduces your CH cast time by 1/20 of a second" and one that said "increases your crit by 2.178%", all other things being equal I know which one I'd choose.

My point is that if you look across these forums, Plus heal, WoW forums, and other places, there is no consensus at all on gearing right now. I choose to start looking at haste first (and perhaps this this a mistake) because it is the most easily calculable of the variable stats.


Edit: Also, Show of Faith and Sif's Remembrance do not share a CD?! I know I've tested Sif's and Spark of Life and they don't share a CD, so that's interesting.

Haste does not have diminishing returns, at least as a throughput stat. (I consider its value as a gib-prevention stat unquantifiable.) 1% haste means 1% more of a given spell cast in a given time period.

To put this in real terms, Healing Wave is a 2.5s cast. In 1000s of cast time, a shaman with zero haste can cast 400 Healing Waves. 1% of haste will increase that by 1%, to 404. In 1000s of cast time, a shaman with 50% haste can cast 600 Healing Waves, 50% more than the shaman with zero haste. 1% of haste will increase that to 51%, allowing 604 Healing Waves to be cast in that time period. Whether you have 0% or 50% haste (or any other amount), increasing your haste by 1% will give you the ability to cast 4 more Healing Waves in a 1000s time period.

1% of haste gain at 0% haste reduces Healing Wave cast time by 0.025s. At 50% haste, 1% haste reduces its cast time by 0.011s. This does not mean it is giving less value, it means cast time is the wrong way to measure throughput.

Adding haste does have reduced value once the 1.0s gcd is reached, but this isn't a real concern with reasonable gearing.

Crit is a poor choice. First off, it is more expensive than Haste in terms of ilvl -> % calculations. Secondly, 1% crit is less than 1% extra throughput. If you grab a spreadsheet and crank some numbers around, you will always see Haste giving you more throughput value because it continues to scale all the way until you hit the GCD, which is something like 2000 Haste.

I'd expect that the setup of your tanks (whether they are geared for stamina or avoidance) affects whether quicker spells or more powerful spells are more efficient. An avoidance tank would be more suited to quick hasted LHW, whereas a stamina tank would be better served by the slower HW spells. Is there enough difference between the ways tanks arrange their gear to make altering your healing style useful?

Estimates need to be made in order for calculations to be done. Estimates are needed in terms of how many spells you are casting per minute, how much haste & crit you already have, how long a fight lasts, etc. Some aspects of the calculations are set in stone, but others have a range of possible values, requiring estimates to be made.

A good estimate for the mp5 from Crit is 10 crit = 3.57 mp5. The calculations are too lengthy to post here.

A good estimate for 10 intellect is 3.1 mp5, and we can calculate it at 2.76 crit rating, and 1.5 spellpower.

Spellpower only gives spellpower - no bonuses towards mana regen, crit, haste, or intellect.
Mp5 only gives mana regen - no bonuses towards spellpower, crit, haste, or intellect.

A good estimate for spellpower is that 72 spellpower = 2% increase in healing done.

A good estimate for haste is that 60 haste = 2% increased cast speed = 2% increased healing from channeled spells.
A good estimate on the mp5 cost of haste is that 30 haste = 15 mp5 more used.
A good estimate on crit's healing value is that 60 crit does about half the extra healing of 60 haste or 72 spellpower.

To sum it up, here are some options that could be attained through gemming, divided into just spellpower and mp5 components. 6 split gems worth of bonuses are assumed (12 spellpower, 10 crit, 10 haste, 10 int, or 5 mp5). I then divide the stats into their spellpower & mp5 equivalents since we can reduce Intellect, Crit, and Haste into what they contribute in terms of extra healing, and extra mana use & extra mana regen.

72 spellpower = 72 spellpower, 0 mp5
60 haste = 72 spellpower, -15 mp5
30 haste + 15 mp5 = 36 spellpower, 0mp5
48 spellpower + 10 mp5 = 48 spellpower + 10 mp5
60 crit = 36 spellpower + 10 mp5
60 intellect = 18 spellpower + 21 mp5
24 spellpower + 20 mp5 = 24 spellpower + 20 mp5
40 crit + 24 spellpower = 48 spellpower + 6.7 mp5
30 intellect + 36 spellpower = 45 spellpower + 10.5 mp5

If mana regeneration is not an issue, haste is excellent. If mana regen is an issue, haste will screw you over majorly. It's that simple. All the math shows what seemed to be logical all along.


EDIT: removed all the math to make the post more readable.

gabrielrockman - Just to reiterate what Sixty said, Haste =/= OOM. Haste is a burst stat, it allows you to have a greater troughput when it's needed, SP will only do that to a certain extent and certainly not as good as Haste, Crit is far too random to rely on. Just because you can cast 10% more spells, you don't need to - and that is why Haste will not screw you over majorly. If Haste have a negative Mp5 then you're undergeared SP-wise for that particular encounter.

In short, if you're going OOM, and assuming your OH is not stupid, then it's time to get some more Int, Crit, Mp5 - if you're not going OOM, then you want SP or Haste, and Haste just happen to favor some people that like a more reactive healing style, and as long as we have to care about mana then that's what I prefer.