I'm personally more inclined to use [Legwraps of the Awakening].

The normal mode is roughly equal to hard mode [Leggings of Concealed Hatred] at least in my opinion.
I'll probably go with whichever drops first, Hard mode Concealed Hatred or Hard mode Awakening, probably Concealed Hatred to leave our first few hardmode [Legwraps of the Awakening] to the Moonkin and Elemental Shaman, then grab a set of those eventually as the optimal off piece.

I find myself agreeing with Sixthy though, I tend to wear 2 pieces of t9 and rotate the remaining 3 pieces around between various offsets at least for now.
I'm wearing the 10 man Algalon Shoulders for everyday use for now, but will likely switch to 10 man Heroic Beasts + Awakening Legs or Concealed Hatred Legs, and a helm that is yet to be determined(t8 for now, probably Anub 10 hard when it drops).

I didn't get Firefighter until recently, and with pretty good gear. Perhaps someone like Sixthy who got the achievement months earlier in tier 7 gear would have different insights.

Your spec is fine, but you could improve quite a bit by changing glyphs. Earth Shield is our best glyph, and with 3.2 mana regen improvements your Water Mastery glyph isn't helping you.

Use Chain Heal in phase 2. The rest of the fight, just use riptide and LHW for fast healing and mobility.

While it is a healing intensive fight, it's even more of a damage avoiding fight. Everyone in the raid needs to avoid everything avoidable, including tanks and healers. There is a lot of damage that isn't avoidable, but fires, grenades, bombs, bots, frost splash, shocks, rockets, and lasers can all be avoided by moving to the right place at the right time. If you avoid the stuff you can avoid, it will make it easier to heal the stuff you can't avoid.

In what phase do you struggle?

If its phase 2: have your raid spread out properly around the boss to minimize the damage (that at least worked for our guild perfectly). I’d probably still go with a combination of Riptide and LHW to heal people up instead of Chain Heal but we didn’t go for that encounter since the range increase of Chain Heal so it might work as well - after all it depends what you prefer and how your raid positions.
Call out the Frost Bomb via vent/team speak if needed so people are ready to move away.

As Jessamy stated already it is more about avoiding raid damage then try to outheal everything in “beserk mode”.

Setup wise we had pretty much the same, so that’s more then fine. I remember me using the Riptide Glyph back then together with LHW and ES one.

If you could give some more hints about the problems you guys have it might be easier to help out though.

I completely missed those leather legs, I checked all the cloth gear but just kind of assumed all the leather would have spirit. Those are very nice. I think I'll try and use 4PC + legs for fights where I want the bonus and Chest/Gloves/Shoulders with the Ele T9 helm when I don't want the bonus.

I still like the 4PC bonus OK as long as you have a lot of haste on your other gear. Having to use a crit/mp5 pieces kind of sucks but depending on how much you cast CH and how high you can keep your haste with it it could be pretty strong.

On a side not I love 2pc T8 and TPc T9 for HM Anub. Its just sad because pre-3.2 tidal waves RT/LHW would have been so amazing for it.

For Firefighter I would strongly suggest a heavier raid healing build with more mobile healers. I have only done Firefighter-10 3 times successfully, but all 3 times were with no more than 1 holy paladin/resto shaman. One kill I had was holy paladin/holy priest/resto druid (I was enh), another was disc priest, holy priest, resto druid (I was enh again), and the third was resto shaman (me), resto druid, holy priest. The fight is very mobile which does not favor holy paladins and resto shaman and there is a lot of raid damage. Holy priests and resto druids excel at the fight and I would encourage you to bring 2 of either.

If those are the healers you are stuck with, I would encourage the priest to spec holy for the fight. I did get very close to some kills with holy paladin/holy priest/resto shaman, but switching to the other healer set-ups really helped. I did quite a few attempts while learning the fight with an identical set-up to you holy paladin, resto shaman, disc priest and healing was a major issue. Having the priest switch to holy helped a ton and we got close.

If that is your healer set-up I would also encourage you to assign 2 dps to macro and kill the Emergency Fire Bots in phase 3. I have completed the kill both with and without killing Emergency Fire Bots, but I felt it was a cleaner kill when we did kill them. If you kill them quickly after spawning the fire maxes out and the raid can stay stationary until frost bombs destroy some of the fire. Being able to stay stationary greatly increases healer and dps output and makes up for the lost dps on Emergency Fire Bots imo.

The more practice you get on Firefighter the less healing you need, for your first few kills I 100% agree with Stassart, you want 2 mobile healers/1stationary healer. However, as people learn the fight and learn how to avoid damage using any combination of healers will work just fine(Within reason of course).
I recommend at the very least that you respec the Priest to Holy and work from there, that will definitely be enough healing output for a first kill, but you/your strategy may find otherwise.
Good luck!

It is usually p2 that I have the hardest time healing firefighter in.

I'll take all of your suggestions and put them to my raid leaders. Thanks... If there's anything else that may also help, please let me know =D

Hello. This is my first post here, although I have been following this forum for about a year since I started playing my resto shaman. I have spent some time recently on the issue of how much haste we should stack post Patch 3.2, particularly as to whether the T8 bonuses to the Riptide cooldown and Chain Heal cast time are worth keeping as I accumulate T9 pieces.

First, I calculated the Hasted cast time for Chain Heal (with and without the T8 bonus, and with and without Heroism), Healing Wave (with and without Tidal Waves,and with and without Heroism), and Lesser Healing Wave (with and without Heroism) (equivalent to the Global Cooldown as well).

The results are shown in this chart.



PDF available here.

Next, I thought about what limiting factors would create plateaus in our spell casting rotations, such as they may be. The only such plateau I can think of (and hopefully the only one you can think of as well) is the cooldown on Riptide, which is 6 seconds, and 5 seconds with the T8 bonus. Casting Riptide has two important bonuses for me: (1) a Riptide rolling on a Chain Heal primary target (not a bounce target) will increase the healing done by that Chain Heal by 25% and (2) Casting Riptide procs Tidal Waves, allowing for both a 25% crit bonus to Lesser Healing Waves and a 30% haste bonus to Healing Wave. Thus, I try to cast Riptide whenever it is off cooldown.

So, I set out to determine how many casts of each spell could fit within a given Riptide cooldown, and how much haste rating was required to fit one additional spell in that cooldown. Note: the cast time differences can be measured in thousandths of seconds, so these are theoretical numbers - it is unlikely in practice that I could actually hit the target. Anyway, here are the results (Note: These numbers assume Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution Aura and Wrath of Air, for a total of 8% haste from raid buffs):

Chain Heal

Base Cast Time (2.5s): CHx2 - 0 haste, CHx3 - 1378, CHx4 - over 2000 haste
With t8 Bonus to Riptide (2.5s): CHx2 - 722 haste, CHx3 - over 2000 haste, CHx4 - over 2000 haste

Chain Heal (with T8 Bonus)

With t8 Bonus to Riptide (2.3s): CHx2 - 483 haste, CHx3 - 1968 haste, CHx4 - over 2000 haste

Healing Wave (first two are TW hasted)

Base Cast Time (2.0s): HWx3 - 92 haste, HWx4 - over 2000, HWx5 - over 2000 haste
With t8 Bonus to Riptide (2.0s): HWx3 - 902 haste, HWx4 - 1259 haste, HWx5 - over 2000 haste

Lesser Healing Wave/Global Cooldown

Base Cast Time (1.5s): LHWx3 - 0 haste, LHWx4 - 558 haste, LHWx5 - 1378 haste, LHWx6 - impossible due to GCD
With t8 Bonus to Riptide (1.5s): LHWx3 - 394 haste, LHWx4 - 1378 haste, LHWx5 - impossible due to GCD

The spreadsheet for these calculations can be found here. (Note - 13.17mb in size).

To me, it appears as if the plateau for haste without any T8 bonuses is 558 haste rating. This would allow 4 LHW casts within the 6 second Riptide cooldown; to attain a 5th is impossible. It would allow 3 Healing Wave casts, to attain a fourth would require over 2000 haste. It would allow 2 chain heal casts, to attain a 3rd would require 1378 haste rating. Additionally, 558 haste rating will lower Chain Heal cast time to 2.0 seconds.

If the t8 two piece bonus is retained (5 sec cooldown on Riptide), attaining higher haste rating becomes more difficult. Further, the reduction of 1 second makes it more difficult to squeeze in additional casts. The only advantage of adding haste using this bonus would be to reach 772 haste, which would allow 2 chain heals within the 5 second cooldown, or 902 haste, which would allow 3 healing waves within the 5 second cooldown. Note that fitting in a 4th LHW requires 1378 haste - the amount needed to hit the global cooldown, and is therefore likely not possible to actually cast.

Finally, if both t8 bonuses are retained (5 second cooldown on Riptide and 2.3 second cast on Chain Heal), only 483 haste is required to attain a second chain heal, but 1968 haste is required to attain a third chain heal. Thus, there is no benefit to retaining this bonus in order to fit more casts within the Riptide cooldown.

As such, it appears as if stacking haste above 558 is a matter of personal preference - there is no cooldown limited basis for doing so. Retaining the 4 piece t8 bonus is also a matter of personal preference, but makes it more difficult to fit additional casts within the shorter Riptide cooldown.

The chart posted above shows the various cast times along with thresholds - the general consensus I have seen is that Chain Heal should be under 2.00 seconds - which requires 558 haste. I have put circles around some of the key intersection points on that graph.

This analysis assumes that the goal is to cast Riptide when it is off cooldown to attain the bonuses it grants to Chain Heal, Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave. Of course, Chain Heal grants 2 of those bonuses through a proc of Tidal Waves, so Riptide is not the end all and be all. While the Riptide DOT is probably negligible in this analysis, certainly, have Riptide available 1 second sooner each time means the upfront portion can be cast more often. I tend not to rely on this instant cast to heal, but rather to proc Tidal Waves, so the 5 sec vs. 6 second difference does not affect me there.

I think that my calcuations are correct - but I welcome any input into errors I have made, or assumptions I have made that are incorrect. Healing is, of course, not susceptible to a rotation based system like dps classes are - the appropriate spell must be cast at the appropriate time. However, I feel more comfortable when I can have a goto rotation for cranking the throughput when it is needed. I would be happy to expand this analysis to include other rotations that people think would maximize throughput.

TLDR: Stack Haste Rating to 558 in T9 gear, don't stay with T8. Additional Haste Rating is a matter of personal preference.

You show 1392 Haste on your graph as the point where GCD/LHW becomes 0, but in your description you say 1378 (which was also my calculation.)

Aside from that, calculating a plateau point is interesting. If that's your style of healing, I can understand treating it like a cap. Across the Shaman spectrum, however, Haste is still king as the stat that gives us better reaction time and throughput, regardless of the tool we are using. More of us are tank healing now, and Haste makes cast/canceling comfortable. More of us are spamming CH because of it's ridiculously buffed efficiency, and Haste cranks the throughput well there, too. I would not endorse capping Haste at 558 as being a best practice for the general resto community.

Overall, the graph would be nice as a reference for seeing where spells hit with Haste if you don't use a spreadsheet, but the numbers look slightly off.

I think you are right about the point on the graph - should be 1378 - i will correct that.

And yes, I agree - I am currently at about 760 haste. I wanted to run this calculation to make sure that there was not a higher number that would be providing some benefit that I should be targeting. I suppose there is, they are just way too high.

Chain heal is ridiculously good right now, so I think that once you hit 558, you can stack haste to whatever point you are comfortable with. I would like to be under 1.9s on that heal, but it is probably too much haste.

I would say that the single most important point in the graph is @1378 haste when LHW hits the GCD cap.

The cumulative benefit of haste will tank at that point if you cast LHW as part of your "rotation".

I would definitely consider 1378 as haste "softcap" if you will. Any additional haste will have limited additional benefit as it will no longer affect RT or LHW or any GCD's (shields etc.).