[PVE Guide] Restoration Shaman 6.0.3

[Deleted]

You're wrong because <my opinion>.

I have never healed in any of the 3 'styles' you mention - I always find myself using all of my spells on every fight this tier (I thought style #3 was a joke at first, AG? pls).

I didn't use totemic persistence all tier and have never found a situation where I needed both HTT and HST down at the same time, no I don't use CBT, because it's shit in raids and too much can go wrong with it. The shaman you linked is not using CBT on any of their kills (and neither are they using any of the 'styles' you suggest) - I guess they haven't discovered the true strength of CBT yet.

The guide is not perfect but it offers a solid set of guidelines with good reasoning for a beginner / intermediate player, they should be able to read the thread and see instant improvements in their healing if they aren't playing this way already. Your advice on the other hand has been horrid (like you're ever going to run to melee to SLT on Mar'gok, is that a joke?), stick to playing enhancement.

[Koor]

While high tide is usually the stronger choice, especially for mythic raids which have 20 raiders, I think that CBT can be useful in smaller heroic groups which have around 10 people. Single target heals are relatively stronger in smaller groups since they can cover a higher percentage of the raid, and CBT gives them a small boost, while high tide doesn't benefit them.

[Puupi]

I have never healed in any of the 3 'styles' you mention - I always find myself using all of my spells on every fight this tier (I thought style #3 was a joke at first, AG? pls).

Of course you use all your spells, but there is emphasis on some spells over others depending on your talent choices.

EM+AG is another 1 million healing cooldown. CBT during EM+AG or Ascendance pops free 300-500k smart healing. Your (and your raid's) loss if you can't take advantage of the power of these talents.

I didn't use totemic persistence all tier and have never found a situation where I needed both HTT and HST down at the same time, no I don't use CBT, because it's shit in raids and too much can go wrong with it.

CBT is not shit. It could be better, but its definitely not shit when you compare it to the other talents.

The shaman you linked is not using CBT on any of their kills (and neither are they using any of the 'styles' you suggest) - I guess they haven't discovered the true strength of CBT yet.

True, he didn't use CBT, but he should have. With that low healing on Chain Heal it's absolutely pointless to take High Tide. You are right, they haven't discovered the talent and blindlessly followed advice such as yours.

The guide is not perfect but it offers a solid set of guidelines with good reasoning for a beginner / intermediate player, they should be able to read the thread and see instant improvements in their healing if they aren't playing this way already.

Yeah it covers the very basics (which is important, of course) of resto shaman healing, but there is so much more into shaman healing than "take these default talents and hammer Chain Heal". The more advanced aspect should be in the guide, too.

Your advice on the other hand has been horrid (like you're ever going to run to melee to SLT on Mar'gok, is that a joke?), stick to playing enhancement.

Why would you ever even pop SLT to melee on Mar'gok, is that a joke? :P

[Caziel]

While high tide is usually the stronger choice, especially for mythic raids which have 20 raiders, I think that CBT can be useful in smaller heroic groups which have around 10 people. Single target heals are relatively stronger in smaller groups since they can cover a higher percentage of the raid, and CBT gives them a small boost, while high tide doesn't benefit them.

Exactly. If you look at mythic rankings from WCL, you don't see much Cloudburst, but these are 20 mans. And even at heroic rankings, you don't see it as often because most of the top rankings are 20+ man raids. In smaller raid sizes for heroic, Cloudburst can be a solid choice. A lot of people looking at the guide won't be mythic raiders, so it is worth mentioning in the guide that Cloudburst can be more useful in smaller raid sizes.

[Barrun]

You should run some numbers if you think Chain Heal is our bread and butter right now. It's tuned for T17 set bonuses, it's quite bad without the bonuses. Chain Heal is a situational tool, it's far from bread and butter.

While spec’d into High Tide, Chain Heal does 1.25[1.50(162.5% SP) + (5)(162.5% SP] = 1320.3125% spell power in healing with a 2.5 second cast and 28% base mana cost that comes out to 528.125% spell power per second for 11.2% base mana per second and 47.154% SP in healing per 1% base mana. By contrast Healing Wave does 412.5% spell power in healing, assuming Tidal Waves is up, that’s a 2.0 second cast with a mana cost of 10.35% base mana, resulting in 206.25% spell power per second for 5.175% mana per second and 39.855% SP in healing per 1% base mana.

TL;DR Chain Heal is more mana efficient and higher HPS than HW.

Please quit trolling.

[Deleted]

Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of my Chain Heal http://i.imgur.com/uj2NtUr.jpg

Jokes aside, Chain Heal is definitely strong, especially with HT and with multiple people being low.
As much as this is a guide, I think it's good to cover the normal/heroic raiding audience. The author even lists most of the talent choices with "This is my default choice because". This isn't someone telling you what to do, they're giving people a guideline. Surely you can read the tooltips of talents/glyphs yourself and consider what could be useful for a particular fight.

[Puupi]

While spec’d into High Tide, Chain Heal does 1.25[1.50(162.5% SP) + (5)(162.5% SP] = 1320.3125% spell power in healing with a 2.5 second cast and 28% base mana cost that comes out to 528.125% spell power per second for 11.2% base mana per second and 47.154% SP in healing per 1% base mana. By contrast Healing Wave does 412.5% spell power in healing, assuming Tidal Waves is up, that’s a 2.0 second cast with a mana cost of 10.35% base mana, resulting in 206.25% spell power per second for 5.175% mana per second and 39.855% SP in healing per 1% base mana.

TL;DR Chain Heal is more mana efficient and higher HPS than HW.

Please quit trolling.

Your calculations as a proof are almost laughable. First off, you are assuming that the primary target has Riptide on them (which is again one GCD and mana used, although it has to be there to make CH worth casting), secondly you are making the assumption that the heal is linking to 5 targets (that's two extra Riptide targets outside of those 3 first links). And then there is this reality check called overhealing. Oh boy.

[Barrun]

Your calculations as a proof are almost laughable. First off, you are assuming that the primary target has Riptide on them (which is again one GCD and mana used, although it has to be there to make CH worth casting), secondly you are making the assumption that the heal is linking to 5 targets (that's two extra Riptide targets outside of those 3 first links). And then there is this reality check called overhealing. Oh boy.

Show me your calculations then please. Everything you say is just wrong, Riptide isn't necessary to make CH worth casting, its optimal but even without it CH serves the purpose of being much higher HPS. Learning to use Riptide is part of learning how to get the most out of the spec; please quit spreading misinformation because you're unwilling to try and get the most out of the class.

[Pur1tas]

Your calculations as a proof are almost laughable. First off, you are assuming that the primary target has Riptide on them (which is again one GCD and mana used, although it has to be there to make CH worth casting), secondly you are making the assumption that the heal is linking to 5 targets (that's two extra Riptide targets outside of those 3 first links). And then there is this reality check called overhealing. Oh boy.

Riptide is always up on at least 3 targets so there is nothing to assume that riptide is going. Its shaman 101 to have riptides going all the time.

While there is such a thing as overhealing chainheal is still more mana efficent and higher HPS. The scenario is fictional and therefore both Healing Wave and Chainheal have the same conditions.

Of course there are situations where you would not cast chainheal, but especially in Mythic there are a lot of situations where chainheal kicks in really strong, especially as this this calculation did not even mention Mastery. Chainheal profits from our mastery by a lot more than Healing wave. So while healing wave is a great spell to cast if several targets (less than 5) dropp by a little, it is significantly less mana efficent than Chainheal in a group dmg scenario. So while I totally understand your point Chainheal is one of the strongest spells we have and just as every other spell is very situational. For example I think it is much weaker on Tectus than on Twins just because how the fights work.

So while Chainheal is more mana efficient in situations of raidwide dmg, healing wave will be for scenarios with little dmg on some players. This does mean though, especially in raids, that it is most likely not worth it to even cast a spell for the little incomming dmg as your other healers are usually faster with their spells and it would result in 100% overhealing and 100% wasted mana. There are some situations where casting a Healing wave is totally worth it but most likely not to heal anyone who is not a tank (again there are some exceptions like Brackenspore spore shooter catchers).

Last but not least: Healing 5 targets with a chainheal is not an assumption. It is a fact. There should usually be no scenario in which you would not hit 5 Targets with chainheal. There are a few exceptions but those are few and occur little, and even in these you will almost always hit 4 targets.

[Deleted]

the total throughput gained from the mana provided by EB more than makes up for it.

I find this very interesting and I'm willing to try EB more now.
I was wondering though, when you wrote the sentence I quoted, did you also consider a possible 75% mana return from Totemic Recall if used when Elementals are about to expire? Or 50% without glyph.
Especially if you time your healing stream totem right, you can return mana from both that and elementals, and it's quite a large amount of mana.

This "trick" used to work really fine in MoP, granted that the return was 100% back then.
Have to say I always hated this "trick" though, many times fights are so frantic I miss the chance to use Totemic Recall, it's also another thing binding your rotations, your cooldowns and honestly there's only so much I can keep my focus in my mind at the same time, I'd be more than willing to give this away for other stuff like the new and improved Elemental Blast.

[Pur1tas]

I find this very interesting and I'm willing to try EB more now.
I was wondering though, when you wrote the sentence I quoted, did you also consider a possible 75% mana return from Totemic Recall if used when Elementals are about to expire? Or 50% without glyph.
Especially if you time your healing stream totem right, you can return mana from both that and elementals, and it's quite a large amount of mana.

This "trick" used to work really fine in MoP, granted that the return was 100% back then.
Have to say I always hated this "trick" though, many times fights are so frantic I miss the chance to use Totemic Recall, it's also another thing binding your rotations, your cooldowns and honestly there's only so much I can keep my focus in my mind at the same time, I'd be more than willing to give this away for other stuff like the new and improved Elemental Blast.

I am using EB on all fights in Heroic (even though it is kinda pointless by now but it gets me used to using it on CD if possible) and on all fights in Mythic so far (Tectus probably not going to use it). It really helps you with mana and it is a little extra dmg that you put out. I got it with a focus macro (except for Brackenspore) so I do not have to actually care to much about targeting. It is also great on imperator as mana become a little low towards the end of the fight. In the beginning it almost doubled my spirit and was huge. Now it is more like a way to conserve mana, but it still helps and I prefer it over the other two talents in this tier. Back in MoP I used the Elemtal thingy but to be honest I usually only used to to increase my dmg output.

[Deleted]

I'm not an ace player. When there are similar options, or close enough to be compareable, where one is passive and the other one is active (i.e. requires to be used, mantained etc) I tend to prefer the passive one simply because it's one less thing I have to focus on.
Given how we already have plenty of more or less situational cooldowns, I'm not too fancy to make stuff even more complicated, given my low skills.

In this regard I always used Primal Elementalist because in the majority of fights it was just so much better that I couldn't afford to pick the option I liked most. But I always found it stressing to manage elementals, use the right empowerment, and then coordinate my other totem use and spell use so that I could get the max out of the Totemic Recall mana return.
It was stressing, and beyond my capabilities. As a matter of fact, it wasn't that rare that I missed my chance to Totemic Recall them, wasting the manareturn part.


Regardless, thanks for the additional insight, I'm definitely gonna swap to EB from tonite

[Koor]

Riptide is always up on at least 3 targets so there is nothing to assume that riptide is going. Its shaman 101 to have riptides going all the time.

If we have 3 riptides up, and chain heal on one, this leaves two. If the first 3 chain heal jumps happen to choose those, high tide won't pick them again and we won't get any extra jumps.

[Madeleine]

This. Axelond gives correct information in my opinion. It doesn't take much looking at WCL data/rankings to see that Riptide is hardly ever glyphed by top shamans.

I also agree with this and would appreciate if you would explain why you think Glyph of Riptide is so valuable, when the logs/rankings basically show that it isn't.

[Pur1tas]

If we have 3 riptides up, and chain heal on one, this leaves two. If the first 3 chain heal jumps happen to choose those, high tide won't pick them again and we won't get any extra jumps.

you have riptide on a minimum of 3 players. A minimum. I rarely ever have it up on less than 5 players at once. Even with only 3 Chainheal targets it is still stronger (and faster) than healing wave. Exception is if it is only those 3 players that took dmg but even in this case chainheal and Healing wave are pretty close depending on your Mastery, your Haste and the targets health.


To the riptide glyph:

The ranks and logs you guys are looking at are from very high level guilds that underheal almost every boss, resulting in very little downtime for every healer (especially shamans who usually have kind of a lot of downtime as it usually is not worth casting for a single target that dropped almost nothing). So while with glyph of riptide you have sort of a filler spell to set up for any incomming dmg you are actually willing to use a cast on, with underhealing those bosses the healers have no time to spam some riptides. They use unglyphed riptide as it is a good initial heal still setting up a beigger heal with tidal waves. So while for the cutting edge shaman healers riptide glyph might not be the best choice just because of how they heal a boss and how well they know fights and have adapted to the changes to healing, for your average guy it is still a very usefull tool, especially if not every healer in the group has made the full transition to WoD healing.

To the comparrisson between MoP and WoD healing. As most of you have realized there is usually no need for instant topping of the group in WoD raids, where as it was very important in MoP, especially in SoO. So while a lot of people are still transitioning into this new meta a lot of the top healers have made this transition very fast (the reason they are top healers) and therefore know when and where to spend their mana and in which paste they need to top the group back up to survive the next incomming group dmg.

As a conclusion we can say that while riptide glyph and EoE do similar things and are both viable choices to get more riptides out (if you even want to) top level players will need none of those in order to get out a great amount of healing. In a lot of cases they cannot even afford to do so. For your average shaman heal though raiding Mythic with 4-5 heals (3 for tectus probably) riptide glyph is a viable choice as it sets your heals up, grants you 100% uptime on tidal waves and makes using High Tide a lot easier. So the fact that top healers are not using riptide glyph is not because it is bad, but because they are not only underhealing the fight and have no time to spam it, but also due to the fact that they and their fellow healers have adapted WoD healing very well and communicate a lot better than your average healer.

I hope you guys get my point

[Puupi]

Show me your calculations then please. Everything you say is just wrong, Riptide isn't necessary to make CH worth casting, its optimal but even without it CH serves the purpose of being much higher HPS. Learning to use Riptide is part of learning how to get the most out of the spec; please quit spreading misinformation because you're unwilling to try and get the most out of the class.

Have you even looked at shaman logs lately? High Tide ends up being generally 4.5-5.0 CH hits per cast, not 6. On average, CH has overheal% of 20-25, HW 5-10%. If you overheal more than that with HW, it's either intended (spamhealing tank), or you are failing miserably at spot healing. I'm not spreading misinformation, you are just clueless and I don't need to be told how to get most out of the class by someone who started playing shaman like half a year ago and hasn't even done heroic/mythic raiding before this tier.

Riptide is always up on at least 3 targets so there is nothing to assume that riptide is going. Its shaman 101 to have riptides going all the time.

Of course there are riptides going on, the question is whether those targets require the CH heal or not. Usually they don't, because it's such a long setup.

While there is such a thing as overhealing chainheal is still more mana efficent and higher HPS. The scenario is fictional and therefore both Healing Wave and Chainheal have the same conditions.

No they don't have same conditions, CH needs prior setup and it's 0.5sec longer cast, it has a lot higher chance to overheal on its' primary target, overhealing secondary targets is completely random.

Of course there are situations where you would not cast chainheal, but especially in Mythic there are a lot of situations where chainheal kicks in really strong, especially as this this calculation did not even mention Mastery. Chainheal profits from our mastery by a lot more than Healing wave.

Excuse me? Chain Heal profits from mastery by a lot more? No it doesn't.

Last but not least: Healing 5 targets with a chainheal is not an assumption. It is a fact. There should usually be no scenario in which you would not hit 5 Targets with chainheal. There are a few exceptions but those are few and occur little, and even in these you will almost always hit 4 targets.

With High Tide you should hit 6 targets, not 5. Hitting 5 targets on average is possible and very common. It's still 1 short off the maximum.

[Koor]

you have riptide on a minimum of 3 players. A minimum. I rarely ever have it up on less than 5 players at once. Even with only 3 Chainheal targets it is still stronger (and faster) than healing wave. Exception is if it is only those 3 players that took dmg but even in this case chainheal and Healing wave are pretty close depending on your Mastery, your Haste and the targets health.

I see, you mean with the riptide glyph or EoE procs. Yes, in that case we'll have a higher chance of high tide making the extra jumps, and I think it's a viable approach, maybe even optimal, but requires a harder skill-cap to play well, since there is a danger of using too many GCDs for riptide on the expense of casting other spells.

[Pur1tas]

Have you even looked at shaman logs lately? High Tide ends up being generally 4.5-5.0 CH hits per cast, not 6. On average, CH has overheal% of 20-25, HW 5-10%. If you overheal more than that with HW, it's either intended (spamhealing tank), or you are failing miserably at spot healing. I'm not spreading misinformation, you are just clueless and I don't need to be told how to get most out of the class by someone who started playing shaman like half a year ago and hasn't even done heroic/mythic raiding before this tier.

Of course there are riptides going on, the question is whether those targets require the CH heal or not. Usually they don't, because it's such a long setup.


No they don't have same conditions, CH needs prior setup and it's 0.5sec longer cast, it has a lot higher chance to overheal on its' primary target, overhealing secondary targets is completely random.


Excuse me? Chain Heal profits from mastery by a lot more? No it doesn't.



With High Tide you should hit 6 targets, not 5. Hitting 5 targets on average is possible and very common. It's still 1 short off the maximum.

That is why I said 5 targets. Because 6 would be optimal but lets be honest the probability that we hit 6 targets that actually require the amount of healing CH gives is pretty low. I think talking about 5 targets per chainheal ist pretty acurate (as you said 4.5-5). While you are correct that chainheal requires a setup, it is still faster than healing 6 targets with healing wave. I am not even sure on which side you are, pro chainheal or pro healing wave?

To the chainheal profits from mastery more I think it is completely right.
Scenario: Mythic Twin ogers right after Shout and shortly before the big pulverize hits (I think it is the second pulverize).
Everyone is kinda low (around 50% or less I would say). As I am not sure weather mastery applies to every single target or it carries on from the first one I will talk about both cases.

Case 1, Every single target: Our first chainheal will most likely hit 6 targets (as we set up riptides, knowing what will happen next). If mastery applies to every single target it will heal every single target with a huge mastery effect (as everyone is still pretty low).

Case 2, Mastery gets carried on: Our chainheal heals the first target (which should be the lowest in this case) and 5 more with a high amount of mastery applied.

In both this cases healing wave would have profited much less from mastery as you had to cast 6 heals in order to hit 6 targets. By the time you were to cast the 6th heal the amount our mastery kicks in would have been reduces drastically. Even the second one and if not the third one the latest would be significantly lower than what chainheal would have done.

Please tell me which of the two cases I described are correct as I am not sure.


@Koor: Are we talking cutting edge or average Heroic clear / starting Mythic guy? because if we are talking about you average guy he should not go for high HPS numbers as a shaman and therefore in a lot of cases there is no need to cast any "other spells". It really depends on your other healers and your group tbh. If avoiding dmg is going well and you have a druid or disc in the group you will most likely have not that much to do in most fights. It depends on so many factors, but I do not think that glyphing riptide or EoE (which I think is harder to manage) are a hard skill cap thing. I can see what you are talking about though

[Volitar]

Hey I would just like to add my Ele Blast macro.

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,exists] Elemental Blast
/cast [@mouseovertarget,exists] Elemental Blast
/cast Elemental Blast

It will try and cast it on your focus
If you have no focus it will cast it on the target of whoever you are mousing over
If you are not mouseovered anyone it will try and cast it at your target.


Also I hate Cloudburst, I don't even use it in CMs.

[Puupi]

While you are correct that chainheal requires a setup, it is still faster than healing 6 targets with healing wave.

Well it's not about casting HW to 6 targets, but rather 3. Time and mana invested (and healing done) remains roughly the same, with the difference of having the power to choose which targets to heal with HW rather than hoping for good linking by CH.

I am not even sure on which side you are, pro chainheal or pro healing wave?

I'm not pro-anything. I'm just highlighting the fact that CH (in its' current state) is a situational tool and it's nowhere near "bread and butter" when you compare it to HW or HS. Shaman's "bread and butter" are his cooldowns, not Chain Heal. T17 setbonuses might buff CH to the level of being ultimately better than any other spell in our toolkit for any scenario.

To the chainheal profits from mastery more I think it is completely right.
Scenario: Mythic Twin ogers right after Shout and shortly before the big pulverize hits (I think it is the second pulverize).
Everyone is kinda low (around 50% or less I would say). As I am not sure weather mastery applies to every single target or it carries on from the first one I will talk about both cases.

Each target applies mastery effect to CH individually, it isn't cumulative. The +25% modifier applied by Riptide buffs all the jumps by that amount, but mastery doesn't carry over from target to another. Therefore there is zero difference between mastery affecting CH or HW (or any other spell for the matter).

In both this cases healing wave would have profited much less from mastery as you had to cast 6 heals in order to hit 6 targets.

You are comparing 6 HW's to a single CH. HW heals ~2x the amount of single hit of CH. The correct way is to compare 3 HW vs 1 CH.