[Resto] Best Practices: PvE Healing Discussion - Page 60

Daidalos · 10/15/09, 10:03 AM

The reason many people are gemming haste is that people see that lets say 30% of their healing output is overhealing. So you can assume that 30% of your heals get no benefit from additional spell power thus favoring haste over spellpower. As far the amount of haste, I personally gemmed haste to try to make up for the loss of the 4 pc t8 bonus. I'm a little under 800 haste and so far think it feels about right. Personally I think that the haste amount you shoot for is more of an improve reaction time (or reduce time between heals) thing than a TC thing.

Spell power is still the best stat from a TC point of view assuming no overhealing. While its true that overhealing gains no benefit from additional spell power I'd also argue that this is the least important part of your healing to look at. The healing assignment where you are struggling to keep everyone up is where you should pay the most attention to gearing up for (or make multiple sets).

As for the haste to gloves, I cannot say from personal experience but I assume if used properly it would better than anything else you can put on gloves

msty · 10/15/09, 10:57 AM

You can't think only about HPS while choosing what stat to gem and what gear to need.
Lets think about the fights you prepare for and what stats are more suitable for them. Our current content is ToGC25:
1. NRB: On p1 Impaler's damage on tanks is predictable and with adequate cooldowns rotation healing isn't a problem here. P1 is very mana pressing, but even if you end up with 20% mana at the end, that's not a problem, since p2 and p3 don't need that much healing with proper execution and u will regenerate more then you spend. Mana potion and mana tide management (you can easily use it twice in a fight since you expect a lot of mana spent in p1) SP is best for this fight, but any I don't see how any stat build wouldn't fit this fight.
2. Jaraxxus: A lot of damage on different people, sometimes spiky and needs to be healed fast, so best stat here is haste. You will most likely be on backup healing tank, Mistress targets, CH on Infernals and assisting with purge.
3. FC: If your enha is assigned to purging, then best stat here is haste, since NPC focus random players and you need to heal fast to save them.
4. Valkyr: You will most likely (and most effective) spam CH through all the fight, so its SP or haste. Nothing that much depends on your stat build here, much more on soakers.
5. Anub: My opinion is haste. With LHW capped on 1 second cast time (I have ~1000 haste and its ~1.07 second cast) I can heal two targets from PC and assist on tanks. On the other hand, having more SP means your healing stream totem will heal >500 and will outheal the swarm damage in p3. My choice here is HS totem glyph and haste.

I think the less haste you have, the more overhealing you get in 25mans, since much faster heals from other classes will land faster, making your healing less effective. Not only that, when something goes wrong, you need to react fast as a shaman, so haste is pretty much the best stat until u reached the soft cap with LHW on 1 second cast time. The cap is reachable with proper gear selection (say no to useless sp+crit+mp5 and haste cap is there for you), after that SP is the only stat to gem for.

Edit for engineering enchant. Your are not a dps, so any proc trinkets (except ones that give mana and so procs can and should be converted to mp5) or enchants like that hand haste enchant are pretty much useless. If you think of the facts:
1. It can proc wrong time when you don't need to heal any1 or when you need to move or just before combat etc etc etc making proc useless in that situations
2. If you have fair amount of haste, you will get LHW under 1 second cast, which is also pretty useless
3. You cant rely on proc, since it's random. If you are a dps, enchant could possibly work, since spike damage during proc can be divided by uptime to see the overall dps increase, but for healer everything is situational so that kind of proc things are not that good. They can be good, when you know they won't go waste. For example, if you spam CH all fight on Twins, that enchant can make sense, since you need to move only on opposite color vortex (depends on strategy).

Jessie · 10/15/09, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by msty

Edit for engineering enchant. Your are not a dps, so any proc trinkets (except ones that give mana and so procs can and should be converted to mp5) or enchants like that hand haste enchant are pretty much useless. If you think of the facts:
1. It can proc wrong time when you don't need to heal any1 or when you need to move or just before combat etc etc etc making proc useless in that situations
2. If you have fair amount of haste, you will get LHW under 1 second cast, which is also pretty useless
3. You cant rely on proc, since it's random. If you are a dps, enchant could possibly work, since spike damage during proc can be divided by uptime to see the overall dps increase, but for healer everything is situational so that kind of proc things are not that good. They can be good, when you know they won't go waste. For example, if you spam CH all fight on Twins, that enchant can make sense, since you need to move only on opposite color vortex (depends on strategy).

Hyperspeed Accelerators is on-use, not a proc, so points 1 and 3 don't apply. Also, even if you have enough haste for the effect to bring your LHW under 1.0sec (929 haste from gear), there's a good chance that LHW won't be your spell of choice.

Nowaa · 10/15/09, 7:20 PM

Originally Posted by Deeyz

So after doing all this reading I still havent been able to decide what the best stat is overall. I see a lot of people gemming for haste in 3.2 and then there are others gemming for SP. Do we have new HEP out?

It appears that mana is no longer an issue with mana we get from spell crits (my heals crit for around 50% of the time with 33% base crit) I can pretty much spam heals and never go oom

How much haste is to much?

Haste is definitely the way to go at the moment for me.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

From looking at this log, you'll notice I happen to be in the rather unique position of regularly raiding with 2 other resto shaman. We are all similarly geared, except while they gem for int+sp, i gem purely for haste. Being Valkyr Twins, the fight was almost pure CH spam from our perspective (you'll notice that we all share a very close % of total CH casts, and our 'active time' is very close as well)) so this makes it a very good test model to compare the relative throughput of each approach to gemming/gearing, where spell output and activity distribution are all evenly weighted. As you can see from the log, i manage to edge out my guildmates by a not insignificant margin.

From looking at the available data i can only really attribute this to the effect of additional haste. I definitely wouldn't claim to be a subjectivley 'better' player (though i might disagree with their choice of gemming), since CH spam is hardly a high skill activity. Of course, an encounter with a similar spell distribution ratio but with LHW used in place of CH might look quite a bit different, so this shouldn't be read as a definitive 'haste is better' type post.

Personally and subjectively though, i just couldn't heal with anything less than an 1.8 second CH, so i'm sitting at around ~1000 haste at the moment - and i'll probably take that higher once gear allows, possibly all the way upto the GCD cap. Of course, the added bonus of all this haste is that it also makes for extremely attractive LHW castimes which can be excellent for tank/raid spotting as well. Because of all this, i would definitely say that haste is our best stat, with the fewest potential drawbacks (for now).

msty · 10/15/09, 8:19 PM

Originally Posted by Jessie

Hyperspeed Accelerators is on-use, not a proc, so points 1 and 3 don't apply. Also, even if you have enough haste for the effect to bring your LHW under 1.0sec (929 haste from gear), there's a good chance that LHW won't be your spell of choice.

I just don't see the fight/situation where it can be needed or will give a good benefit in the current content. Simply because if everything goes right as planned in tactics, you won't need it. And if something goes wrong, extra haste is not something that can save the raid.

msty · 10/15/09, 8:34 PM

Originally Posted by Nowaa

From looking at the available data i can only really attribute this to the effect of additional haste. I definitely wouldn't claim to be a subjectivley 'better' player (though i might disagree with their choice of gemming), since CH spam is hardly a high skill activity. Of course, an encounter with a similar spell distribution ratio but with LHW used in place of CH might look quite a bit different, so this shouldn't be read as a definitive 'haste is better' type post.

On this data is pretty much seen this things:
1. More haste lessens your overhealing(?). This is what is in data and I've noticed that also analyzing my guild's logs - the more haste I get, the less overhealing I have compared to our other shaman. This need confirmation, because it may not be connected.
2. More haste means more Earthliving applications, which means more HPS and overall fight goes more safe when more people have HoTs on them.
3. More haste means less Earth Shield healing. Obviously.

Blacka · 10/16/09, 6:13 AM

Originally Posted by msty

3. More haste means less Earth Shield healing. Obviously.

I like this but Earth Shield is not a main healing spell. Keep Earth Shield on tank only for increasing effect for Lesser Healing Wave if there is a Glyph involved and also if Shaman is assigned on tank.

MrWilson · 10/16/09, 8:23 AM

Originally Posted by Blacka

Keep Earth Shield on tank only for increasing effect for Lesser Healing Wave if there is a Glyph involved and also if Shaman is assigned on tank.

Why not keeping it up all the time, even without the Glyph? Heals pretty much and running oom is over since General HM in Ulduar...

btw: Does anyone know the "correct" haste cap? I found very different information on this ...

msty · 10/16/09, 9:42 AM

Originally Posted by Blacka

I like this but Earth Shield is not a main healing spell. Keep Earth Shield on tank only for increasing effect for Lesser Healing Wave if there is a Glyph involved and also if Shaman is assigned on tank.

Not really. Any on-hit effect must be on tank, because without it bad luck on avoidance (let's say 3 hits in a row, on some bosses even 2 hits) will kill the tank. Also, keep in mind that Paladins gem for SP for Anub'Arak in ToGC25 also to increase Sacred Shield effect, so we could also think about buffing ES as much as possible, since surviving Swarm + Anub hit + Freezing slash requires all possible buffs/absorbs/etc

Originally Posted by MrWilson

btw: Does anyone know the "correct" haste cap? I found very different information on this ...

If you talk about capping LHW/GCD to 1 second, then in raid with boomkin (+3% haste) and totem (+5% haste) you need ~38.7% haste, which roughly equals 1267 haste. With full ilvl 245-258 gear and 20Haste/12SP+10Haste gems it's achieveable. But keep in mind, that you well need to get haste on most (if not on all) pieces of gear and it will most likely take you to refuse to equip set items with crit+mp5+sp stats and get haste+crit+sp or haste+mp5+sp non-set items.

• Jessamy · 10/16/09, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Blacka

I like this but Earth Shield is not a main healing spell. Keep Earth Shield on tank only for increasing effect for Lesser Healing Wave if there is a Glyph involved and also if Shaman is assigned on tank.

I don't just cast Earth Shield for the Glyph of LHW effect. I cast it because it's a good spell. In fact, it's our best spell as measured by healing per cast time. According to my current shaman_hep report (a month's worth of data), ES is about 13% of my effective healing.

Rhaegal · 10/16/09, 12:18 PM

Originally Posted by msty

I just don't see the fight/situation where it can be needed or will give a good benefit in the current content. Simply because if everything goes right as planned in tactics, you won't need it. And if something goes wrong, extra haste is not something that can save the raid.

To play Devil's Advocate for a moment, I can see the engineering enchant being useful in some fights, given that it's on use and not a random proc. In TotGC there aren't a lot of shining examples of crunch times where a big Haste Use would be huge, other than Twin Val'kyr during a Dark Pact with a more-than-normal amount of orbs exploding on the raid. However, any boss that has a regular cooldown raid damage ability will make an enchant like this useful--think back to learning Heartbreaker. Having a big haste ability on a CD that matched perfectly with Tympanic Tantrum would have been pretty damn nice to have.

Anyway, to the original question about whether or not it's worth using, if you have two pairs of gloves at your disposal, I'd probably slap the standard spell power enchant on your main one, and switch a pair with the haste Use for fights with really bursty and relatively infrequent raid damage, since for many fights you won't really want or need it. People switch out trinkets all the time for fights with different healing requirements; there's no reason not to apply the same logic to a special glove enchant.

Xunwael · 10/16/09, 1:35 PM

Originally Posted by Jessamy

I don't just cast Earth Shield for the Glyph of LHW effect. I cast it because it's a good spell. In fact, it's our best spell as measured by healing per cast time. According to my current shaman_hep report (a month's worth of data), ES is about 13% of my effective healing.

Yeah, Earth shield is one of the best spells out there. Depending on the mechanics of the fight and the number of healers, it can be anywhere between 10-20% of my healing done with almost no cast time or mana cost investment at all, I suspect largely because it almost never overheals. On gimmicky fights like General Vezax, I could see funny numbers like 50% of my healing done with the kiting strategy.

It would be totally insane to only keep it up if you're tank healing with the LHW glyph.

Koe · 10/16/09, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by msty

If you talk about capping LHW/GCD to 1 second, then in raid with boomkin (+3% haste) and totem (+5% haste) you need ~38.7% haste, which roughly equals 1267 haste. With full ilvl 245-258 gear and 20Haste/12SP+10Haste gems it's achieveable. But keep in mind, that you well need to get haste on most (if not on all) pieces of gear and it will most likely take you to refuse to equip set items with crit+mp5+sp stats and get haste+crit+sp or haste+mp5+sp non-set items.

You're confusing me now, dont you need 50% haste to get the gcd from 1.5s down to 1 sec?
With moonkin and totem giving 8%, that's 50 - 8 = 42%, which equals 42*32.79 = 1378 haste rating to reach the gcd cap.

Jessie · 10/16/09, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Koe

You're confusing me now, dont you need 50% haste to get the gcd from 1.5s down to 1 sec?
With moonkin and totem giving 8%, that's 50 - 8 = 42%, which equals 42*32.79 = 1378 haste rating to reach the gcd cap.

Haste is multiplicative, not additive. You need 1.05*1.03*haste=1.5, so 38.696% haste from gear, or 1268.8 haste rating.

msty · 10/18/09, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Rhaegal

To play Devil's Advocate for a moment, I can see the engineering enchant being useful in some fights, given that it's on use and not a random proc. In TotGC there aren't a lot of shining examples of crunch times where a big Haste Use would be huge, other than Twin Val'kyr during a Dark Pact with a more-than-normal amount of orbs exploding on the raid. However, any boss that has a regular cooldown raid damage ability will make an enchant like this useful--think back to learning Heartbreaker. Having a big haste ability on a CD that matched perfectly with Tympanic Tantrum would have been pretty damn nice to have.

Anyway, to the original question about whether or not it's worth using, if you have two pairs of gloves at your disposal, I'd probably slap the standard spell power enchant on your main one, and switch a pair with the haste Use for fights with really bursty and relatively infrequent raid damage, since for many fights you won't really want or need it. People switch out trinkets all the time for fights with different healing requirements; there's no reason not to apply the same logic to a special glove enchant.

This is a very good point. Having a gloves to spare (even a set ones) is a good idea. It doesn't only go for trinkets, our rogues have spare weapons to apply different types of poisons and swap then in fight to apply it with and switch back to better weapons with usual poisons.

Also, XT is an example to use it, yes. Hodir with his Frozen Blows also, Thorium if things go rough etc. But not as a permanent enchant, only as one on a spare gloves.