Chain Heal is still very powerful simply due to the smart targeting. If I need more than a split second to choose my spell because of something (moving raid, calling out timers/effects, etc) my finger hits Chain Heal. I could possibly be more efficient, but I'd rather rely on the smart jump to heal the right target(s) than hesitate an extra second.

In most cases, CH is the spell I want to use because of the math, but it just doesn't fit about half the time (for me.)

The 3.1 Changes to Gift of the naaru have made it instant and off the GCD. Draenei shaman can now easily add it to their NS macro for a little extra boost. It shares the same CD as NS and Tidal Force which makes it very compatible with a huge Nuke heal as well as helping to mitigate future incoming damage.

I think Blizzard has done an excellent job of making both viable raid healing options. Chain heal will always be better, but only if you are getting enough bounces. If you can't bounce it effectively, LHW + Riptide will be superior.

We could try to come up with some mathematical equation to decide how much healing you need to get from a chain heal to make it better than LHW + Riptide, but I don't know many healers who do math and raid heal at the same time. The Math behind it may provide a baseline rule to live by, like "chain heal is better if you hit at least one target on your bounce and have overheal under 25%", but that's about it.

In my personal experience, I'm finding Chain Heal to be a much smaller portion of my total healing in comparison to previous raid content. However, I am finding LHW + Riptide to be an extremely effective replacement for Chain Heal.

The calculations have already been done, here.

But aside from the math, everyone agrees -- be smart about things. Use Chain Heal when you need to heal multiple targets. Use Riptide, Healing Wave, or Lesser Healing Wave when you need to heal a single target.

I've found Chain Heal to be as valuable as a single Riptide+LHW if it hits a second target.

You don't really need complicated math, but the above poster is correct that it's been checked out.


My Chain Heal will crit on the primary target for 7-10k with the Riptide HoT active.
The second jump will be about 2-4k, sometimes as much as 5-6k on a crit after Riptide.
Chain Heal with about 500-600 haste is an average 2.1s (may have to correct my math on that).

My LHW will crit for about 4-6k (without EarthShield), along with Riptide.
My LHW cast-time will be below the gcd after Tidal Waves, I often pull off haste in favor of crit when I know I'll be using Riptide+LHW more, so leave the cast-time at 1s flat.

I have on average 25% crit from gear/buffs, with 14% from talents.

If Chain Heal will only hit a single target, it is far more effective and efficient to use LHW.
If Chain Heal will hit a second target, it's about the same effectiveness as 2 hasted LHW's, but more mana efficient.


I think it's poignant to say that 2 Tidal Wave hasted Healing Waves is more effective and about as mana efficient as 2 LHW's.
This is only considering if the healing is 100% effective with minimal overheal.



I've found that as a Resto Shaman, I have to not only pay attention to my raid frames interface but have to be far more aware of my surroundings more than a priest or paladin or druid. I have to be aware of the exact 10yd distance visually so that Chain Heal will be effective to use.

I've also learned that I can measure danger areas (like to avoid Frost Blasts on Kel'Thuzad) if I see a Chain Heal jump...
While I don't use Chain Heal to heal ranged on Kel, I do use it on our melee and if I see the beam jump around the boss, I can tell the melee to adjust.
(hunter/warlock pets mess this up)



I've found in Ulduar10 that it requires a Resto Shaman to be absolutely the most aware and the most hesitant about using abilities due to possibility of lost casts or overheal or even just a single hit Chain Heal.
Also it's hard to be careful with your heals when a paladin, druid, or priest can be a lot more reactive to incoming damage.
Our raid leader often gives healing assignments specifically to our priest just to keep him from out-healing me and causing me to overheal a bunch. Our priest is very quick with Prayer and Circle, along with keeping Shield and ProM bouncing.

But the one thing that Resto Shaman do have is the ability to be both a viable tank healer while still maintaining a strong raid healing capacity.
On Iron Council I can keep up our offtank while the rest of the raid burns the first guy. Our Holy Priest is strong enough to cover the raid while our Paladin bombs the MT.
Then after the switch, I can generally just maintain Riptide and EarthShield on the offtank (he's taking next to zero damage at this point) and help heal the raid.

Then after the third boss becomes primary, I'm left to a Riptide+LHW role to keep up the raid as we spread out and to heal the tank if our Paladin is out of range.

I just want to clarify my post some. I am NOT saying that CH is a bad heal. Far from it - it is still probably a shamans strongest heal and in certain situations it is absolutely amazing. I am not complaining about shamans as a class or anything like that.

The point that I was making is that the traditional SW style shaman role was stack haste and spam CH. Right now holy priests are just better pure raid healers than shamans for most situations. CoH, PoM, and the new PoH are all amazing spells especially considering two of them are instant and can be done on the move. If you are a shaman in a high end raiding guild that runs with 2 very good holy priests then trying to stick yourself in a haste-heavy CH spamming role is not doing you or your guild any favors.

That doesn't mean shamans are bad - far from it. Earth Shield is an amazing spell right now with all of the scaling talents + glyph. Riptide lets us be at least not completely useless on the move. Our 25% armor buff is very very valuable (even moreso if you're raid doesn't run a disc priest) especially since crit levels in a raid setting are higher than ever and you can have a decent uptime on it just spothealing the tank.

And lastly, the best one of all - Tidal Waves. It is absolutely amazing for dealing with single target spike damage. A Riptide -> HW -> HW is a TON of HPS on a tank for those spiky times (Mimirons Plasma Cannon, Thorims Unbalancing Strike when no taunt is available or resists, the P3 adds on Yogg when they first come, ECT). Riptide -> LHW -> LHW is great for the single target spike raid damage (The swarm single target thing on Auriya, Napalm Shell damage on Mimiron, ECT).

If you are not having mana issues on a fight, and tidal waves is proced would you ever cast LHW over HW? I almost exclusively use RT -> HW -> HW for single target healing (with all three usually going to different targets), and only use LHW if I need a fast spot heal and TW is down and RT is on cooldown.

With TW proced my HW casts in 1.5s. My GCD is around 1.3s, so I only gain around .2s of cast time by using LHW instead of HW. I feel that the increased AA healing from a HW crit, and the 100% chance to proc IWS on crit makes HW more valuable.

Am I missing anything?

Edit:
I also use glyph of healing wave which I think in my situation should favor it even more. Would using the glyph factor into your decision for LHW vs HW?

I think the general consensus is that there are times where getting that heal out .3 or .4 seconds earlier (as in a LHW vs a HW) after a riptide means someone lives instead of someone dies. It does kinda feel clunky to run into the GCD after that first LHW but its all situational.

I've been running with Glyphs of ES, LHW, and MTT.
I'm contemplating dropping LHW and MTT to test other glyphs, but so far these seem to work the best in my raids.

I only really use HW when I'm healing a tank, who has the health to take a non-crit 10k HW.
LHW is far more responsive to save a 20k hp dps rather than a 40k hp tank.

I have also been pre-casting Healing Wave since I decided to pick up Healing Way before certain pulls (like Auriaya)... getting Healing Way up before the tank starts taking the big damage is good.

Which class(es) should heal the burst damage like Slag Pot and Stone Grip? As the Shaman on raid heals, Tidal Waves is almost always up. I can fire off HW-HW-RT as needed. Holy Priests can do GH. Are those the best two specs for the job?

I think Shaman and Druids are decently strong at healing the slag pot... the only drawback to Druids is that their "burst" healing takes a couple gcd's to line up before they can bring people up.

A shaman will/should always have Tidal Waves active as often as possible, making HW/LHW very effective.

A paladin isn't bad, but is better suited to bomb the MT.

A priest is pretty decent, but is much more effective at watching the entire raid with aoe while the shaman sticks to OT and slagpot.

In recent Ulduar-Runs I found myself unable to efficiently employ HW. The recipients would not have died before it arrived, but in the time it took to cast even a hasted HW the target was topped off 90% of the time, turning the complete HW into overheal. I "downranked" to LHW, and in general it was pretty much the amount needed to bring the target to full health on time, combined with the other incoming heals.
I am running with two Holy-Paladins at the moment and I expect the situation to differ strongly based on the healing-setup. The time to heal might not be such a strong factor with mainly Druids and Holy-Priests present.

On the topic of Burst-Healing (e.g. Slag Pot, Stonegrip): the added effect of using a Resto-Shaman on burst-healing-duty are the significant AA-proccs in the raid (19k HW with HWay up, resulting in almost 6k AA-heals), which might save some lives in the process.

Concerning AA: has anyone done research on the AA-mechanics? I know that AA-heals occur 1-1.5 seconds after the crit. What I wonder is, if the target of the heal is determined at the time of the crit or of the heal itself. Taking into account the effective healing done by AA I presume it is determined at the time of the AA-heal, but I cannot imagine a situation where reliable tests could be done.

A little addition: it is possible for Holy-Priests to cast two hasted PoHs in a row, as the Serendipity-buff is consumed when the first PoH is finished. Lag allows the initiation of a second PoH before Serendipity is consumed. At least I think that is the reason.

Serendipity is now consumed after one cast of PoH.

Whilst doing YS 10 man last night, I decided to try Elemental and offhealing as a 3rd healer as we lacked ranged on p2. Speccing in between resto and elemental I noticed something interesting: The Glyph of Totem of Wrath seems to stick with you as a buff when dualspeccing back to Resto. We're basically talking about a 84 sp buff, which is quite nice to have as an extra.

Has anyone experienced the same? Is it only an interface buff (the character sheet shows it, but its not really there) or is it intended as a buff (like the EaS sticking to targets if you spec into non-resto)?

Haven't had the time yet to test this myself properly and to be perfectly honest, wouldnt know the best way to go about it either.

Earth shield does the same thing, you can go resto, cast it on someone (but not yourself) then hop back to elemental and it'll still be there. I assume the totem of wrath buff isn't just some display bug, but it hardly seems worth the trouble for a 5 minute buff considering it takes around 40 seconds just to drink back up to full mana.

This is a bug of the dual-specs-mechanic. The persistence of specc-specific buffs after a specc-change is generally not intended by Blizz. It was also said that they will take counter-measures if they see the bug employed consequently (as they did with Focus Magic, if I'm not mistaken) and try to eliminate the persistence of all specc-specific buffs in the long term (source). And yes, it really affects your healing. On a side-note, ES cast on yourself will disappear as soon as you change to Elemental.
Due to the mass of hotfixes applied at the moment, these claims may be quite short-lived.

AFAIK for most fights, well geared resto shaman are actually wearing a number of "elemental" pieces (sp/crit/haste) instead of "resto" pieces (sp/mp5/crit or haste). Really, there is no reason to think of those as elemental just because they don't have mp5. Mp5 is a useless stat if you are not in danger of running out of mana - load up on as much crit/haste/spell mail as you can I guess.

Question:

Why not choose the elemental version [Conqueror's Worldbreaker Shoulderpads] in the non-mp5 setup, & use the rest of the resto set for the 4 piece set bonus?

This might be a little late to the party, but I've found Resto Shaman to be the best at healing Slag Pot and Stone Grip in particular. Don't forget that Tidal Waves gives us the advantage on single target RSTS damage and Chain Heal gives us the advantage on multi-target RSTS damage, while PoH in general and Serendipity in particular give priests the advantage on raid-wide damage. Tidal Waves guarantees us a fast rescue heal for Slag Pot (RSTS single target) while the holy priests are mopping up Flame Jets (raid-wide).

For Stone Grip it's not even a question, given that there are three targets who are by definition right on top of each other and more often than not in different groups (multi-target RSTS that conveniently groups up the targets for us and negates the ability of priests to mop it up with PoH.) Your CH will always find three valid targets. Just set Grid to show Stone Grip and, unless one of the targets got gripped at painfully low health, you should be able to keep all of them up by yourself just by casting Chain Heal on each target in sequence while getting some stray Prayer of Mending bounces. Just like above, we are better at healing Stone Grip and the priests are better at healing Shockwave.

If you, like me, use Pitbull instead of Grid, do this:

/pitbull
+Global Settings
+Auras

Type Stone Grip in the "Add Extra Friend Debuff" and "Add Extra Friend Highlight" fields.

Or if you're lazy like me: download GridStatusRaidDebuff and set it to show on the center icon. It includes all important raid debuffs.

I completly agree on shamans being excellent choice for slag pit and stone grip victims. I usually heal slag pot victims with RT LHW LHW and save my RT for when I'm mid-air during flame jets. Every shaman should make use of his ability to land LHW extremly fast and putting out very high HPS with RT HW HW. Even if I'm not assigned to tank heal I always support other healers if there's a lot of damage on a single target. Fusion Punch on council or plasma beam on Mimiron are excellent examples where a quick RT HW HW combo can do wonders.

We don't assign a specific healer to slag pot. The people with the fastest reflexes do it.

It'd be nice to just have the disc priest shield them and everyone just raid heals as needed and slag pot person gets the same random raid heals as the others. If your disc priest is slow or just not as situation aware as your druid, then have the druid do it... either way is more than adequate for the slag pot.