Legion Restoration Shaman Alpha Discussion

[Gardiff]

Decree actually does scale with mastery. They fixed this at some point. It scales with haste in the sense that HST scales with haste so it wouldn't make sense for it to scale a secondary time. I don't think it scales with crit but it has been a long time since I checked. It doesn't really change the fact that it still.... is lame like tidal totems.

But anyhow, in the near future, I am going to be posting a mathy version of stat weights here. It is all basic common sense, and everyone already has their own idea of what the best stat priority is for max HPS at each different health threshold. But I wanted to do it a bit more detailed than that.

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So, here are a couple of posts for stat priorities in Legion at different average health percentages for maximizing HPS (not HPM). Long mathy post incoming.

Background info: Haste is 325 / 1%. Mastery is 350 / 3%. Crit is 350 / 1%. Versatility is 400 / 1%.

Keep in mind that all secondaries scale multiplicatively off of each other and so once you ‘normalize’ the secondary stat value of one secondary relative to another secondary, the optimal way is to then continue in a 1:1 stat point allocation between those two secondaries

Regardless of what is optimal, the exception to this is mastery, and people stack it very high (me included at times) because people use it as an insurance policy to prepare for the one time the raid might dip incredibly low. It doesn’t maximize HPS in the long run, but it serves another (and probably more vital) role. This post, however, is strictly going to address maximizing HPS at various average health thresholds, and not spikes.

Assumptions:

1) This does not include the secondary value of haste in that in addition to lowering the cast time / GCD for spells, it also increases the amount of HoT ticks you get from Riptide/HR/HST. I will incorporate this in a later post.

2) This also does not take into account passive traits that exist on a lot of spells and artifacts. I did not incorporate passive crit from TW, Passive 10% crit to CH from floodwaters, Passive 6% crit to HR from Empowered Droplets. Also, this does not take into account resurgence as this is not an HPM calculation. However, I plan on incorporating this in a later post.

3) The end result is that there are so many negatives to take into account that affect crit and this is because all of the examples I mentioned in 2) are additive which makes crit severely de-valued. On the other hand, everything that affects haste (whether that is TW, QA, Wavecrash) All scale multiplicative and thus independently of the value of haste you have on your character. This means that TW, QA, Wavecrash in fact do NOT de-value haste in the slightest. This makes haste actually so much stronger. Still, QA is very strong in itself. In a future post, I will give an estimate of these passives / artifacts based on at least my current spell usage on beta raid logs.


The mastery graph / chart:

What this graph indicates is the values of mastery you will want to stack at various average health thresholds BEFORE you begin to stack any other secondary stats. As mentioned before, everyone has their own interpretation of what ‘average’ health threshold is ‘optimal’. However, this isn’t the point of my post.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...at=interactive

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...2n3_JmQ9Tc/pub

- - - Updated - - -

Some notes:

1) Because mastery scales at 350 / 3% and haste scales at 325 / 1%, the actual point at which haste and mastery become ‘equivalent’ occurs right at 60.72% health (Remember, that we have 24% baseline mastery which MUST be accounted for). This is why at 60.72%, the graph / table indicates you should stop stacking mastery independently if you truly want to maximize output for targets at this level of health.

2) Continuing on with this example at 60.72% health, the next question to ask is when should you start to stack crit. Remember, haste scales at 325 / 1% and crit scales at 350 / 1%. In this scenario at 60.72%, we have already made haste and mastery ‘equivalent’ meaning they can be stacked 1:1 now. Also, at 60.72% hp, haste (and mastery) scales 350/325 better than crit. This is equivalent to 2500 additional stats needed in haste/mastery before crit starts becomes on a 1:1 level with both mastery/haste.

However, we also happen to have 5% baseline crit. Like the baseline mastery, this MUST be taken into account. As a result, crit stacking is delayed for an additional 1750 points of haste/mastery. In other words, after you ‘normalize’ haste and mastery as per the graph, you will have to stack 4250 haste/mastery before crit is finally ‘normalized’. After this, you can stack mastery:haste:crit in a 1:1:1 fashion.

3) That is… until versatility. If you do the exact same exercise in 2, you must reach 18250 total points before versatility gains ‘equal’ footing. This would come out to be in total (remember this is for the 60.72% health threshold) haste: 7500, mastery: 7500, crit: 3250. At this point, you theoretically would be stacking all secondaries at 1:1:1:1.

But still, remember none of this takes into account HPM which is important since haste destroys mana early on in an expansion. Crit also helps partially in the HPM department through resurgence, but in general, resurgence restores a very low amount of mana. Not to mention, you must remove the baseline 5% crit (as well as passives) when determining just how much mana it actually returns. Additionally, if you don't OoM, you don't need the mana. Still, it gives a rough idea of things. Remember, this is for average health thresholds and not spikes.

Additionally, this first post does not take into account the additional stat weights haste/crit actually deserve because of haste double-dipping and crit through QA. This is what the next two posts will address, this is just the foundation. In the next post, I am going to account for the value of haste and it's secondary effects. Then the third post will be about accounting for crit and all the passives. By the end of this, I hope I can create something which lets you input a health threshold as well as your total secondary stats (that you aim for) and it gives you a rough idea of how much of each stat to use. I don't know if this last part will come into fruition, but we will see as beta comes to a close.

[Imnick]

Just wondering because I am likely to pick this up as an offspec for dungeons at some point... The Enhancement guide on Icy Veins seems to be pretty poorly written and not well researched. Is the Restoration one at all reliable or will I have to do my own legwork combing through this thread?

[tallulah]

Been trying out with weakaura ( im so bad with this ) to make a ''icon '' that is reminding me to pop AG when cloudburst totem have 9 second remaining of stucking healing , but it wont work, i had my friend trying to help with it, but it didint worked out as plan haha. It might be the addon bugging ! IF any of you have been working out on some weakaura for legion i would really like if you could throw them out here i have found 1 very good for CB Time+healing store if any of you want it

[Zirhark]

Just wondering because I am likely to pick this up as an offspec for dungeons at some point... The Enhancement guide on Icy Veins seems to be pretty poorly written and not well researched. Is the Restoration one at all reliable or will I have to do my own legwork combing through this thread?

Just skimming it over it seems to make a TON of assumptions and stating them as fact. Their talent selections are questionable at best, I would recommend playing around with everything and seeing what feels good to you. CH is very expensive now and unless you are stacking crit you will not be able to sit and spam CH like before in raids, so things like Deluge and High Tide lose some power because of that. Most of my testing as been in Mythic+ 5 mans so the talents I found most useful will likely be different than someone would find useful in a 30 man raid. Just do some legwork yourself and I'm sure the icy veins guide will be updated as we go along but for now I wouldn't take it as gospel.

On another note, I hope they change the way WS and CBT work. I love WS as a short CD meant for large group healing, but I hate to see it reduced to gaming the system to get as much overhealing as possible just to make CBT a mega aoe punch of a heal.

[Imnick]

Just skimming it over it seems to make a TON of assumptions and stating them as fact. Their talent selections are questionable at best, I would recommend playing around with everything and seeing what feels good to you. CH is very expensive now and unless you are stacking crit you will not be able to sit and spam CH like before in raids, so things like Deluge and High Tide lose some power because of that. Most of my testing as been in Mythic+ 5 mans so the talents I found most useful will likely be different than someone would find useful in a 30 man raid. Just do some legwork yourself and I'm sure the icy veins guide will be updated as we go along but for now I wouldn't take it as gospel.

I thought that was likely, thanks for the help.

[Gardiff]

So this is going to be Part 2 (of 4) of the mathy posts. The point of this post is to give an estimate of the secondary value of haste.

I did not realize previously, but QA, TW, Wavecrash all scale multiplicatively and thus independently of haste. This means that having any of these 3 abilities does NOT alter the stat weight of haste. It is a false notion that having these 3 abilities makes haste weaker. Just because these spells may give you fast casts, doesn't mean haste is all of a sudden a weaker stat because none of these abilities affect the GCD. If you cast a HS with 20% QA on beta (and 0 haste), your HS cast time is 1.2 seconds. However, the GCD remains at 1.5 seconds. In essence, this would mean QA/TW can at times result in no actual output gain (CH is the obvious exception since it will basically never go below the GCD) because if you are casting faster than the GCD, you are going to be waiting around for a while until you can cast again. Thus, haste does not magically become a weak stat with QA, TW, or with them combined.

What this means is that haste is actually so much stronger because of the fact that it double dips on riptide (HoT)/HR/HST and actually has no negatives from our talents (unlike crit).

In my initial post, I was throwing around the number 60.72% as to when haste and mastery are equivalent. I originally said giving an exact value of the secondary effects of haste would be beyond me to incorporate. But, from looking through my personal logs, the riptide HoT component, HR, HST all comprise at minimum 20% of my output in raids. I think it is safe to say that haste deserves (at minimum) a 20% stronger weight, but in actuality it could be higher

Thus, re-doing the graphs/tables with a 20% stronger weight to haste:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...at=interactive

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...J1Q0PBwgaQ/pub

The end result is that we find mastery and haste to be equivalent at 51.95%

I will end this here because it is pointless to discuss what to stack next until we actually find the proper stat weight of crit.

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In the next post, I am going to give an estimate for the value of crit. Unlike haste in which everything scales multiplicatively, all the passives / spells for crit (TW, floodwaters, Empowered Droplets) all scale additively with crit and this is why crit is a much poorer stat . Again, there are resurgence considerations, but remember that resurgence restores a very poor amount of mana at the moment, and the fact that whatever you are checking on current beta logs has to be adjusted for the fact that baseline you start at 5% crit. Of course, crit has one great thing to it and that is QA.

Please don't be tempted to think stacking a massive amount of crit will suddenly cure you of your mana problems (on live or in Legion). This has been discussed ad nauseum on the main forums and here really, but the gist of it is that the resurgence mana gains for basically anything except HW (and potentially riptide but you can't spam it) are less than ideal and stacking a massive amount of crit won't suddenly sustain an expensive playstyle (i.e. CH spam, HS spam).

In a standard 4-5 minute encounter in legion raid tests (without abusing WoD trinkets (DP and some others were overpowered on alpha/beta) or gear), I typically would roll with about 20% additional crit (you cannot include the baseline 5% crit or floodwaters additional crit). In these encounters, resurgence would return in the ballpark of 15-20% mana in the BEST cases (from the 20% crit contribution, again not including the baseline 5% or floodwaters since these two would be present in either scenario) which you might argue doesn't sound too bad. But in this same time span, you regen approximately 200% of your mana simply from base regen. A dreamless sleep potion in Legion returns 20% mana. And remember, this is an exorbitant amount of crit to have and it can easily be contended that if you instead geared for higher output, you would probably be able to compensate the ~10% overall less regen with substantially higher output. Of course, you don't always get the luxury of choosing the secondary stats on your gear, but it will be easier in Legion given all the methods to gear out.

Anyhow, after the crit post, the last thing I would like to do is put it all together and ideally have a program or method of inputting a health threshold target (which you choose) as well as your total secondary stats and have it give a rough idea of what you should stack (again from an average HPS perspective). I don’t know if I will get this last part actually done, but we will see how it comes in the coming weeks.

[Deleted]

Quick question :

As a returning dedicated healer- player, I am looking
for a class which brings the strongest single target heals ( huge
numbers, making health bars jump up ) and am wondering which class is
going to fit this best. I have all the healers at 100 currently and am
thinking either shaman, holy priest or possibly paladin will be that ?

Can you give any advice here ? On paper, shaman should end up with the
largest heals due to deep healing and 475% spellpower on surge and wave.
Most people point towards Holy paladin but I am not certain why.

Flash of Light and Holy light both sit at 425% Spellpower scaling. Light of Martyr is at 500% and instant but the self damage seems unsustainable ?

This is mostly for mythic 5 mans and pvp and the occasional raid.

I just want to be able to bring people back from low health rapidly, preferably in big bursts.

Thanks for reading.

[Zirhark]

Quick question :

As a returning dedicated healer- player, I am looking
for a class which brings the strongest single target heals ( huge
numbers, making health bars jump up ) and am wondering which class is
going to fit this best. I have all the healers at 100 currently and am
thinking either shaman, holy priest or possibly paladin will be that ?

Can you give any advice here ? On paper, shaman should end up with the
largest heals due to deep healing and 475% spellpower on surge and wave.
Most people point towards Holy paladin but I am not certain why.

Flash of Light and Holy light both sit at 425% Spellpower scaling. Light of Martyr is at 500% and instant but the self damage seems unsustainable ?

This is mostly for mythic 5 mans and pvp and the occasional raid.

I just want to be able to bring people back from low health rapidly, preferably in big bursts.

Thanks for reading.

So healing as a whole has changed and keeping people topped off with big heals is not how the game works anymore. But that said, hitting a crit healing surge on someone at <10% HP and having undulation up at the same time can result in a HUGE heal.

Holy priest does have a spell that heals the target for 2000% SP, but it's on a CD that is shortened for every flash heal or heal cast.

Can't really comment on holy pal, but from what i've heard they are still the dedicated tank type healer.

[Ham on Rye]

If you want a class with one huge ass burst heal on a cooldown, then Holy Priest for sure. That thing heals for a monstrous amount. The fact that you can lower the cooldown as you heal other people with other spells is icing.

[Deleted]

Unless their numbers get obliterated or their utility gutted Druids will be the best 5 man healer by a long shot so if that's your primary concern you at least wanna take a look at that.

[Gardiff]

Post 3/4 here, this one will be looking at crit. So I am actually almost done the process of making my sim for secondary stat weights as they scale with average health. I thought it would take longer, but I had quite a bit of free time. The basic gist of it will involve you inputting your current secondary stats as well as average health threshold you are targeting for, and it will output the optimized amount for crit/haste/mastery as well as gains you potentially could get. I am still in the process of including versatility, but I may or may not get this done since... it will only play a very minor role. But, I want to try to include it nonetheless.

Also the point of these posts is just to give an exact description of how I am basing some of these estimates and stat weights. I apologize if these posts seem longwinded and obtuse, but a few people may want to know exactly how the sim works and I figure it is better to just be open about it if they want to actually use it. Not to mention, it can always be improved I feel with more input.

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Anyhow, back to looking at crit and the passives that hurt it. These include:

1) Empowered Droplets: Adds 6% crit to a heal that is routinely ~12-13% of our overall raid healing. This can be approximated as having an overall extra 0.75% baseline crit.

2) Floodwaters: I am going to be conservative here, but others who spam CH harder on beta raids may disagree with me. But I am trying to put crit in its best possible scenario and so if you spam it harder than the estimate I am putting, the value of crit will actually be even less for you. Anyhow, estimated as adding 10% crit to a heal that is 15% (in a real duration encounter with good usage, but not insanity like it is in a 2 minute live encounter) of our overall output. This can be approximated as having an overall extra 1.5% baseline crit.

3) TW: In a legion raid setting, I have not seen anyone use healing surge too often in any true duration raid encounter (especially with HW + TW). As a result, this never breaks ~1-2% of my overall output (in 5 mans, it is obviously almost ~20x higher, but my focus is on raids). YMMV, but this is what I am going to use to estimate it. Assuming 3/3 Tidal Chains and assuming every HS is affected by TW, this comes out to 52% additional crit for each HS. This can be approximated as having an overall extra 0.75% baseline crit if we assume HS comprises ~1.5% of overall output.

So as a result, with all 3 'negative' passives for crit and the baseline 5% we have at 110, we actually, on average, have 8% baseline crit.

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Now for the positives of crit - It is time to figure out QA. This is probably the most complicated thing to estimate.

First, I will only be assessing 3/3 QA. Finding and spending 3 additional relics for QA is not reasonable for mythic raids. It might be for normal / heroic, when you start off the expansion given that EoA is farmable for 825 relics, but if you continue to use 825 relics (or an 840 mythic version) into a mythic raid, then I seriously question what you are doing. The ilvl of even a normal mode 850 relic will trump keeping an 825 QA relic. Not to mention, we have other efficacious traits and just automatically picking up an additional 3/3 QA without considering those other traits makes little sense. Finally, remember that QA can only affect HW/HS/CH and nothing else.

Here is what QA actually buffs and doesn’t buff:

1) Using QA in conjunction with HS ALWAYS results in a net 0 gain of HPS . This is true regardless of the amount of haste you stack and it is simply because QA is not real haste, does not lower the GCD, and so having a 1.2 second HS does not mean anything when you cannot cast for an additional 0.3 seconds

2) Using QA in conjunction with HW + TW ALMOST ALWAYS results in a net 0 gain of HPS . With 3/3 TC, we get 39% faster HW casts under TW. This puts our HW cast time at just a bit above 1.5 seconds. Once QA procs, you get the same problem as above in that you cannot cast faster than the GCD.

3) Using QA alone (no TW) with HW DOES result in an HPS gain. . This should make sense. But remember that the only spells that can proc QA are Riptide, CH, HW, HS (and UL, but... just no). However, both riptide/CH already proc TW and so they cannot be used to proc QA alone. The only way to get a ‘solo’ QA proc is through HW spam or HS spam. To estimate these both, I have been using an average of casts and healing through various logs. In these logs, 1/4 of the total casts (in a long, typical fight) come from HW. The resultant QA proc can be used to benefit either a HW or CH which together make up ~30% combined output on a given fight. As for the HS contribution, it makes up 2% of my overall casts on a given fight. Same assumptions as above.

4) Proc'ing QA with CH and using the subsequent QA on CH, DOES result in an HPS gain . This is the obviously a big draw towards QA. Remember, QA does not increase the HPS of HS and because you are using CH to proc QA (which spawns TW), it will never increase the HPS of HW (see 2). The assumptions I am making here are that you have High-Tide and Floodwaters. I am assuming CH is about 1/8 of my casts in a given fight (This is honestly excessive, but I am trying to put QA in the strongest light here). I am again assuming CH's output to be approximately 15%.

In the above 3) and 4), I made the assumption that EVERY single QA proc was used effectively meaning none were used on HS and none were used on a HW that also was under the effects of TW. I also assumed you USED every single QA proc, but remember this is only a 5 second buff. The point of doing all of this was to make QA appear in its strongest form. This isn't realistic and is probably over exaggerating the value of QA for me personally, but I did it this way nonetheless.

The end result of combining everything in 3+4 (and when you give QA a lot of assumptions and put it in it's basically strongest possible form) is that each point value of crit is actually about 20% stronger . In other words, crit is getting a 1.2x stronger weight in my sim.

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So putting it altogether: Previous to this post, the assumption of all those above calculations was that you had 5% baseline crit. However, as it turns out, because we have a lot of passives that give us crit, it is apparent that on average, we sit at about 8% baseline crit when taking into account Empowered Droplets, Floodwaters, TW (3/3 TC). But, QA makes crit about 20% more valuable. These are the estimates I have made in the sim.

One last note about crit: Again, while resurgence considerations are true, the mana returns from stacking an exceedingly high amount of crit don't just suddenly give you a ton more longevity. Better spell selection and gearing for higher output can easily be argued to be superior to just stacking a boatload of crit to try and have ~10% additional mana regen in an intensive fight.

[Deleted]

Sorry if the question was asked before but what do you think about leveling as a Rsham in Legion? (And a little question off topic, but do we get artefact for the second specialisation or do we have to put every artefacts we get in the primary one?)

[Gravechylde]

Sorry if the question was asked before but what do you think about leveling as a Rsham in Legion? (And a little question off topic, but do we get artefact for the second specialisation or do we have to put every artefacts we get in the primary one?)

There are a couple quests that give power to your currently equipped artifact, but most of it comes from consumable items that you can use on any artifact. And most people are saying you can put up to 13 points into one without too much hinderance on another.

[Gardiff]

so what i am understanding here is Crit is better later then haste because of QA and we should use relicts to boost it to to 30% ? And maybe its on paar with Mastery not only because of the mana back Resurgance mechanic and because it boost the healing from 1,0 to 1,2 per point`?

So to answer this is a little bit complex. First of all, I did not take resurgence into consideration, but I went into that as to why. Essentially, resurgence is a pretty crappy mana regen mechanic in Legion.

Regardless of that, through QA alone, I valued crit at 1.2x its actual value. This is only with a 3/3 relic. The reason why I did not consider 6/3 (or 30% as you noted) is that it isn't feasible on beta right now to farm 3 880+ relics. And if you are really going to use 3 825-840 EoA QA relics (which are farmable), your ilvl of your weapon will be so incredibly far behind that the spellpower loss won't outweigh the extra output 3 relics of QA gives you. It isn't that 6/3 QA is bad - it just is that in my sim, I am saying it isn't realistic to actually have 3 880+ QA relics. Not to mention, if you are using 3 extra relics to beef up QA, you are potentially missing out on output from just other basic artifacts which are also really good like Buffeting Waves, or the riptide one. The point is that most people, once they get past the initial normal raids, are going to be using relics solely on the basis of iLVL (and not the trait they buff) because the spellpower boost from going up on a 15 ilvl relic is pretty massive. A 15 ilvl boost on beta currently for 1 relic, raises your overall output by about ~1.5%. One level of QA is only worth about ~1.3-1.4%. Thus, if you get even just a 15 ilvl relic (i.e. one difficulty mode higher), it is better to give up the QA trait, REGARDLESS of what the new relic's effect is (even if it is like ghost in the mists or something equally useless).

Crit is still weaker than haste, and it isn't just a little bit. Haste like crit also gets an additional stat weight of 1.2 (in my estimate) because of its double-dip effects on HR, riptide (HoT), HST.

Additionally, haste scales at 325/1%, while crit scales at 350/1%. There are no negatives to haste - none of our talents or artifact traits negatively impact haste (not TW, not Wavecrash, not QA) because they don't modify haste, they scale independently. On the other hand, we sit at 5% base crit, and have a lot of additive bonuses to crit which makes crit less valuable to begin.

Thus, both of these things combined make crit much less valuable than haste and this is what the sim incorporates into it.

But remember, there is almost no point where you want to stack 1 stat indefinetly. This is probably the most important thing to understand about secondary stats. Simply following a pattern of Mastery > crit > etc, makes little sense when you consider the fact that all secondary stats scale off of each other and so stacking 1 stat or just 2 stats usually won't result in the optimal approach.

This is what the sim addresses.

If this concept of secondary stats is confusing, try thinking of this. Let's say you had 35000 secondary stats to spend. Note this isn't a real amount of stats, but I am using it as an example.

Let's assume you wanted to maximize your output on targets who sit on average at 20% health. Your instinct might kick in to say 'put all 35000 points into mastery' because you are healing targets that are at 20% health and so mastery 'must be the answer'. This is false however.

If you stacked 35000 points into mastery, your overall output would be 3.88x output (using the sim). However, if instead you normalized the secondary stats and balanced them equally after taking into account all the stuff mentioned above (such as haste double-dipping, QA, etc), your overall output would actually be 4.39x. The sim spits out how to stack the secondary stats to reach this 4.39x number. This example is one where optimal stacking would result in a 13% stronger output. The gains are much more prominent if you assume an average health threshold that is much more reasonable in raids (i.e. 50%)

[Puupi]

So to answer this is a little bit complex. First of all, I did not take resurgence into consideration, but I went into that as to why. Essentially, resurgence is a pretty crappy mana regen mechanic in Legion.

It's still the only regen mechanic outside of base regen.

[Gardiff]

It's still the only regen mechanic outside of base regen.

It is, but it is garbage.

In a 6 minute fight, your base regen is about ~300% mana. This does not change and cannot be altered by the shaman class.

A dreamless sleep Legion potion refunds ~22% mana.

When you discount the bonus of TW on HS, 10% crit from Floodwaters, Refreshing Currents, and 5% baseline crit (since all 4 of these would be present whether or not you stacked crit), the gains are somewhere between pointless, and borderline useless. My shaman on beta sits at 20% bonus crit (before the 5% baseline, so 25% total). Between my LFR, normal mode, heroic mode, and mythic mode beta logs, my resurgence gains attributed to this 20% crit is about 250000-300000 mana in an 6-7 minute fight. Remember, you have to remove the gains from floodwaters, tidal currents, 5% baseline crit, and TW on HS since these 4 things would be present whether or not you stacked a massive amount of crit. This is about 25% mana.

This is an exorbitant amount of crit to stack for a very mediocre gain in mana. Remember, a dreamless sleep potion gives you about 22% mana. And your baseline regen gives you about 300% mana in this same timeframe.

Not to mention, if you don't OoM, you didn't need the mana in the first place.

And lastly, if you simply optimized your output (and chose better spells) to do more healing with the correct secondary stats (as opposed to my example on beta where I am stacking a boatload of crit), you would actually have a higher gain in the long run, compensating for the fact that you might be casting 4 or 5 fewer chain heals (i.e. stacking a massive amount of crit) over a 6-8 minute fight

It isn't always about regen, even when you are OoMing. That's the point. Even on beta today, I still see shaman who do nothing but CH spam for absurd levels on actual duration normal mode (since heroic / mythic testing is done) fights. The end result is they OoM themselves within 3 or 4 minutes. Then they are stuck wondering what to cast. Meanwhile, I almost have no mana problems and it isn't even about optimizing output. You just get used to using more efficient spells and casting when you need to. Having 10% mana or whatever from a boatload of crit isn't going to change this. And this is with me using high-tide and still having CH be around 10-15% of my output. I can do the same thing with wellspring - its just about how you use your whole toolkit and not reacting to every single thing.

[mcbubble]

Hi Gardiff
I noticed that you've taken EST and High Tide. Is that the go to for aoe heals?

[Gardiff]

I actually swap around high tide / wellspring in raids a lot (I don't use Ascendance really at all). Just depends on how big the group is and how effective I think wellspring will be based on positioning of the raid. Both can be used effectively if you know what they are doing.

As for EST, I have been picking it more or less in these raids (almost never in 5 mans), but on live I may be more inclined to take vigor since on a lot of the more recent stuff I have been doing, it has only been normal mode as the mythic/heroic testing has concluded. I don't find myself needing the 10% health in these easier raid tests and so I usually try to see how effective I can make EST be on certain fights. On live, I am going to be swapping around on this tier as well, but the 10% health (or the CD APT) may be required on certain fights. It doesn't mean EST is bad, but in the end it is just healing. Sometimes you just need an extra raid CD or the 10% health on tanks and EST is not a tank CD in any sense. It is more effectively used for constant damage raid healing (like a constant aura tick) or a quick set of mini-bursts on a group of people (not one big burst).

[mcbubble]

I actually swap around high tide / wellspring in raids a lot (I don't use Ascendance really at all). Just depends on how big the group is and how effective I think wellspring will be based on positioning of the raid. Both can be used effectively if you know what they are doing.

As for EST, I have been picking it more or less in these raids (almost never in 5 mans), but on live I may be more inclined to take vigor since on a lot of the more recent stuff I have been doing, it has only been normal mode as the mythic/heroic testing has concluded. I don't find myself needing the 10% health in these easier raid tests and so I usually try to see how effective I can make EST be on certain fights. On live, I am going to be swapping around on this tier as well, but the 10% health (or the CD APT) may be required on certain fights. It doesn't mean EST is bad, but in the end it is just healing. Sometimes you just need an extra raid CD or the 10% health on tanks and EST is not a tank CD in any sense. It is more effectively used for constant damage raid healing (like a constant aura tick) or a quick set of mini-bursts on a group of people (not one big burst).

<3 u
10char

[heelflip]

Arent you guys having any trouble to heal timewalking or dungeons in general?

I have a full hfc heroic shaman and leveld a shaman in another realm to play with my old guildmates, and ffs i was lvl 60 when the pre patch was on live, and jesus what they ve done with the tank healing, didnt you guys had any trouble to heal tanks without mastery earth shield and unleash life?

Jesus, even after lvl 100 with all talents undulation and everything on my shaman that doesnt have a huge mastery stack i am having trouble to heal any tank in any encounter.

I really think they should give us earth shield back or implemented the healing surge /wave HST PvP buff for pve too.