Considering the change to TW, is casting LHW under the effect a viable option for PvE?

LHW - 25% higher chance to crit, cheaper to cast, better chance to proc AH.
HW - 100% chance to increase haste by 30%, heals and crits for more. I think the mana per heal value might actually be better.

I would scrap the chance to proc AH, since overall, shamans pretty much stand above 40% crit raid buffed, so we don't really have problems with keeping it up without the change. And as long as we are not really tight on mana, HW will be the clear option, and then the change just makes it undesirable to use LHW under the effect.

I think with the regen buff for CH and the removal of TW hasred LHW haste is going to be worth gemming for. I was already getting really high values for haste from shaman_hep with RT/LHW even though I already run with ~550 haste. Imp WS change is pretty damned nice for RT/LHW since you had to spend so many globals refreshing WS (especially with lots of crit).

This is assuming the replenishment nerf doesn't require me to gem for regen.

You have to consider about LHW vs HW that LHW is going to be doing a ton of AA healing now. I'm already at ~50% crit on my LHW in a full raid setting so with 75% there is going to be whole lot of AA procs. Of course HW will be bigger AA procs but I find it hard to believe we will have the mana to support actually spamming HW.

With the increased chance to crit, LHW on a Earth Shielded target (w. LHW glyph) and tidal waves is now the most mana efficient single target spell we have. Even without earth shield on target with tidal waves up LHW rivals (but just barely loses to) healing wave even with the buff to healing way. Taking in account overhealing I don't see much reason to use HW for mana efficiency however HW's HPS is pretty amazing with tidal waves now. Of course wihtout tidal waves up HW is more mana efficient.

That is right. But we have to take the additional 25% Crit for LHW (and the 25% higher chance for AH) into account. This equals the nerf i think.

This might answer the question if to spec for Healing Way or not. For me this means i wont reduce the 16 points in enhancement.

That is what I meant. I don't se me in the role of pure Tank healing. The changes make it easier to keep the buff 100% up to the tank during raid healing just with sniping a RT/LHW at him. This is the reason why I said before, that i like these changes. They are making us more flexible. Because if I am forced to Tank heal I am stuck to this role a bit. This always made me feel a litte uncomfortable. This is my personal point of view, because I understand Shaman as Healers with good Tankheal opportunities but focus on the Raid.

With IWS now working with CH, all of our crits will return mana, similar to Illumination. The obvious question is, Can I replace mp5 with crit and retain my same mana regen. The answer is NO. MP5 provides more regen per itemization point in all cases. If we can't get enough regen via Int and Crit, we will have to add MP5. Looking at the current itemization, 1 MP5 = 2.28-2.66 Crit (based on rare gems). Call it 2.5 with rounding. With the increase of MP5 by 25% in the next patch, the itemization will be around 2.0 crit for every point of mp5.

There are difficulties in calculating crit regen vs MP5. MP5 is always on. Crit can only happen when you cast. The faster you cast, the more crits you will get. And the Cast Rate <> Cast Time. While you might be able to cast CH in 2.0s, you'll never cast 30x CH in 60 seconds in a raid. The chart below is for Cast Rate, which is Cast Time plus some time for movement, lag, etc.

The numbers for LHW/RT/HW have not changed with the next patch, but I have included them for comparison. I'm using 440 mana return from IWS. I'm also making assumptions on how CH works with IWS. I am assuming that if multiple jumps crit, each can proc IWS.

Cast Rate	1.0s -	1.5s -	2.0s -	2.5s -	3.0s
CH 1T	6.96	10.43	13.91	17.39	20.87
CH 2T	3.48	5.22	6.96	8.70	10.43
CH 3T	2.32	3.48	4.64	5.80	6.96
CH 4T	1.74	2.61	3.48	4.35	5.22
LHW	3.48	5.22	6.96	8.7	10.43
HW/RT	2.09	3.13	4.17	5.22	6.22

From here, we can see that casting CH every 2.5s, hitting all 4 targets, each point of MP5 equals 4.35 points of crit. If I drop 10 MP5, I'd need to pick up 43 points of crit to keep the same regen.

Just to confirm your numbers, according to WoWWiki, 1 point in mp5 costs 2.5 item level budget points. Crit, like all base attributes, costs 1 point.

With the PTR not even out, and things likely to change, I avoided trying to determine what your total regen would be. Everyone's stats and raid buffs are different. Instead, I was focusing just on the equivalence of a point of Crit vs a point of MP5. I wanted to know if we got better regen via stacking Crit instead of MP5. I good example is the head enchant, where we can choose 8 mp5 or 20 crit. If 20 crit provides the same regen as 8 mp5, then we choose crit for obvious reasons.

To read the chart, if I am spam-casting CH every 2.0s, and it hits 3 targets on average, the number is 4.64. That means I can replace each point of MP5 with 4.64 Crit and retain the same mana regen. Or, thinking of the head enchant, the 20 crit provides 4.31 MP5 (20/4.64).

Thats true if all we look at is regen, but you also have to look at HPS increases based upon crit as well.




Numbers:

Assume 40% raid buffed crit (easily attainable).
Assume 1.25s GCD
Assume 1.4s HW w/TW
Assume 1.8s CH with T8-4 piece
Assume your spam casting. (not sure how to calculate the value of IWS when not casting since its basically zero)
Assume you never run out of mana
Assumw 2 hits per chain heal on average

RT/LHW/LHW
((0.4*100%)*440)+(2*((0.65*66%)*440))=553.52 mana *(5/3.75)=737.33 mp5 (repeating of course)

RT/HW/HW
((0.4*100%)*440)+(2*((0.4*100%)*440))=528 mana * (5/4.05s)=651.85 mp5

CH spam
(0.4*30%*2)*440=105 mana *(5/1.8s)= 293 MP5


I dont have the cost to cast each spell in front of me at work, but if someone could post them, I could do a HPM and HPS comparrison for each of those combos (as well as RT-LHW-LHW-CH-LHW-LHW and maybe even RT- CH where you RT off the tank and assume you hit 1 melee per cast)

The thing is when you look at HPM crit is going to doubler dip. You get 50% more healing from crit AND the cost is less. Of course HPS is just as important right now, especially considering our burst problems in Ulduar in hard modes. The thing I would like to verify is my assumption that RT/HW/HW will be uber with HPS and RT/LHW/LHW will be our bestoption for HPM. And also where CH spam sits there.


Does anyone have an old HPS/HPM spreadsheet we could adapt to look at these numbers?

Consider these numbers a quick back-of-envelope calculations, not double checked.
Assumptions 3000 SP, 40% crit rate, TW always up, all relevant talents, 1.25s GCD, 1.4s HW (the numbers Sprout gave)

LHW	4880
LHW/crit	7321
LHW/AA	2196
LHW Average	7894
LHW+ES	5856
LHW/crit	8785
LHW/AA	2636
LHW Average	9473
HW	11940
HW/crit	17911
HW/AA	5373
HW Average	16478
LHW HPM	18.65
LHW+ES HPM	22.38
HW HPM	17.93
LHW HPS	6315
LHW+ES HPS	7578
HW HPS	11770

LHW is our quicker, more efficient spell. HW is our big throughput spell.

Apparently lots of people are believing this. It is untrue. CH jumps 10 yards on live. I tested two ways:

1) Using /ranged set to 10 yards, standing just outside 10 yards = no jump, just inside 10 yards = jump;
2) Using GOHL pally: Just outside 10 yards neither GOHL nor CH works. Just inside 10 yards, CH jumps but no GOHL heal. Move even closer and I get both CH jumps and GOHL jumps.

Chain heal is 10 yards on live.