Tier bonus effects on resto talents

[Deleted]

Hi guys and girls.

Just been thinking about the resto set bonuses:

(2) Set (Restoration): Tidal Waves also increases the healing done by Healing Wave and Healing Surge by 15%
(4) Set (Restoration): Each time you trigger Tidal Waves, the cooldown of Healing Stream Totem is reduced by 3 sec.

...and wondering what the concensus is on what raiding talent builds will be like in nighthold.

On the surface it looks like the set bonuses synergise together and significantly increase the value of a few talents. (and stat priorities too?)

I'm thinking that undulation will become the clear winner in row 1 for nearly all situations.

As much as I love Ancestral Guidance I'm expecting crashing waves to be best for overall throughput too - though im sure Ancestral Guidance will still have its place as a strong cooldown.

Echo of the elements seems to be indirectly buffed too because of more riptides leading to more stacks of tidal waves and more healing streams, which makes the shorter cooldown from the 4 set easier to manage.

Not sure if going crashing waves & echo is overkill though and give you more tidal waves than you can use. Havent experimented with it much since legion launched. Might require more haste on gear to make full use, and get more benefit from undulation.

What's everyone elses thoughts on the matter?
Am I right or wrong or somewhere in between?!
Are you going to mix up your talent build as you start gearing?


P.S. How is wellspring doing now as a talent choice post patch? Worth taking over high tide or ascendance?

Very optimistic for the coming raid. Lucking forward to sticking a totem somewhere Gul'Dan doesn't want one

[Nyel]

In raids I'd always pair Torrent + Echo of the Elements. Undulation is something pretty good for 5 man dungeons but I don't see it being that useful in raids. How often do you need those huge Healing Surge casts? Overall I think a stronger Riptide is better overall in a raid environment where we rather heal the entire group than need very strong spot healing.

And I can't think of any situation where Wellspring would be better than High Tide. High Tide is just too good in comparison.

[Deleted]

Undulation is something pretty good for 5 man dungeons but I don't see it being that useful in raids. How often do you need those huge Healing Surge casts? Overall I think a stronger Riptide is better overall in a raid environment where we rather heal the entire group than need very strong spot healing.

And I can't think of any situation where Wellspring would be better than High Tide. High Tide is just too good in comparison.

Nothing forcing you to use healing surge on undulation. A 50% stronger healing wave buffed by an additional 15% every 3 casts is pretty strong consistent throughput. Dont forget content isnt going to be on farm and spot healing much more useful whilst people are learning mechanics.

With regards to high tide, chain heal was nerfed and wellspring buffed so i assume theyre more equal now particularly in more spread out fights unless youre running a jonat's focus build. Havent had chance to experiment myself yet so was wondering if anyone had.

[ItsTiddles]

I'll probably stick to what I use now: 1 1 1 2 3 3 3

I might consider switching a couple for different fights, like EST for Skorpyron or Wellspring for Krosus and picking up Ascendance wherever an extra CD feels needed.

[Nyel]

Nothing forcing you to use healing surge on undulation. A 50% stronger healing wave buffed by an additional 15% every 3 casts is pretty strong consistent throughput. Dont forget content isnt going to be on farm and spot healing much more useful whilst people are learning mechanics.

With regards to high tide, chain heal was nerfed and wellspring buffed so i assume theyre more equal now particularly in more spread out fights unless youre running a jonat's focus build. Havent had chance to experiment myself yet so was wondering if anyone had.

Even with the small Chain Heal nerf High Tide should be superior in every way. Wellspring is just too bad in comparison (imho).

Why should I use a 50% stronger Healing Wave when I can have permanent stronger Riptides? Riptide is very cheap, heals for a good amount and is instant. It's our best and most reliable heal for raiding when there is low damage. I'd rather spread Riptides than using Healing Wave unless I really need some bigger spot heals.

[Guran]

I used to be a giant fan of Torrent as well ... until I actually tried Undulation.

The problem is that the talent only works on the instant portion of Riptide. If it worked on the HoT as well, it would actually be interesting. But right now, I am using Undulation in raids (Heroic 10-15man) and in the end, see a lot of benefit from it, even without focusing on using it, because ...
a) You rarely top anyone off with your heals, simply because of how Mastery works
b) We run with a Resto Druid and Holy Paladin, which means I basicly fill in where needed, healing raid members up to 80% and let those juicy Druid HoTs do the rest. If I crit or get Undulation, it just means 5-10% more of the target's HP filled, not a waste of healing.

PS: I run the full Riptide M+ build, as we usually don't have enough people stacked to make CH that viable. So even with that, Undulation is actually better.

[Deleted]

Guran, you are kind of contradicting yourself. You say you just fill in and doesnt focus on topping people of. Then why would you use undulation?

And i seriously doubt undulation is better than torrent if you run echo of elements. My riptides crit for about 700k atm with torrent.

and holy paladins are insane at topping people of. Thats what they do as you kind of hinted yourself. And shamans don't fill in. We need to be the first to heal a target and let the others top people of or your mastery is basically wasted. I rarely focus on topping people of. 1,max 2 spells in a row on a target if they are not doing something special that demands special treatment. Sniping as a shaman is very underrated. Focus on what shamans is strong at, keeping people alive, not being full Health.

I have tried undulation in both raids and m+. Sure we raid in different Environments since you raid small hc raids and i mainly do mythic raiding. Sure, undulation might fit your group better than mine but i still think torrent is better with your healer setup.


As for wellspring I have not tested it yet but i doubt the 5% nerf to CH is enough to make us pick WS instead of hightide. Chain heal is just to strong, atleast in a mythic raiding environment. Will give it a try on my next EN raid and more importantly and relevant in NH. It's so frikking expensive aswell and mana has been a bigger concern then it's been in a long time. Don't forget that we have 2 traits that buff our resurgence on chain heal.

[ItsTiddles]

And i seriously doubt undulation is better than torrent if you run echo of elements. My riptides crit for about 700k atm with torrent.

I have tried undulation in both raids and m+. Sure we raid in different Environments since you raid small hc raids and i mainly do mythic raiding. Sure, undulation might fit your group better than mine but i still think torrent is better with your healer setup.

I've tested Undulation vs Torrent in mythic raiding and at least in my play style, Undulation won out the majority of the time. That was before the torrent nerf in 7.1 so I can't imagine really using torrent now.

As for wellspring I have not tested it yet but i doubt the 5% nerf to CH is enough to make us pick WS instead of hightide.

Not only was CH nerfed, but Wellspring was buffed a fair bit.

Wellspring healing increased to 450% (was 375%).

[Nyel]

Not only was CH nerfed, but Wellspring was buffed a fair bit.

The issue with Wellspring wasn't the healing amount, was it? It's the nature of the skill, the very high mana cost, the cooldown etc. Even with the buff those issues are still there and High Tide still has the major benefit of giving us one additional target for Chain Heal and the higher output of every Chain Heal cast. I mean, the Wellspring buff was something like 20% but I don't see it being better just because of the increased healing.

Regarding Torrent... I'm not using Healing Wave or Healing Surge that often in raids. I'm sticking to Riptide (spam) and when it's not enough and you need to group heal, I use Chain Heal. Riptide is my most important heal in raid content due to it's various benefits and making it even stronger is amazing. If you're using Healing Wave / Surge pretty often, I can see Undulation being better but for my playstyle it's not. Still it's great that we have those choices in talents for raids. Some other healers don't.

[ItsTiddles]

Regarding Torrent... I'm not using Healing Wave or Healing Surge that often in raids. I'm sticking to Riptide (spam) and when it's not enough and you need to group heal, I use Chain Heal. Riptide is my most important heal in raid content due to it's various benefits and making it even stronger is amazing. If you're using Healing Wave / Surge pretty often, I can see Undulation being better but for my playstyle it's not. Still it's great that we have those choices in talents for raids. Some other healers don't.

I agree! I learned shaman while doing PvP, so I think that's how I got use to doing a more HW/HS playstyle and just managed to translate it into mythic raiding successfully. I enjoy having the variety that we do.

[Deleted]

Im pretty curious to see how big of an boost the set pieces will be. I will probably not focus to hard on getting them asap. I'm like Nyel and don't cast HW/HS a whole lot but that might have to change when i get the set bonuses . Even if I still think chain heal will be to good to not use alot, atleast for me and it has proven successful for me with 95+ percentile on almost all bosses in ToV and EN. And i have the set from arcway and CoS that gives 3k crit + the drape of shame. Will have to wait for mythic set pieces most likely until i swap that out

[Nythiz]

Undulation definitely has the potential to be stronger; but a lot of it is going to depend on your playstyle.

HW/HS heals for 475% spellpower. So undulation gives you +50% every 3rd heal, which averages out to 16.67% more every heal.
475 * 0.1667 = +79% spellpower per HW/HS

Torrent gives you +30% on the initial heal of riptide, which is 250% spellpower.
250 * 0.3 = +75% spellpower per Riptide

You could look at logs and see which you cast more of (in amount of casts), and that could be a good base to chose which talent fits you better.

There are a few caveats, namely:
- Undulation has a slightly bigger chance to overheal in general. Since the heal comes in a bigger burst. On top of that you very often don't really "game" undulation so that you might not expect the heal to be as big as it is.
Torrent's chance of overhealing tends to be lower since the increase in healing per cast isn't as big.

- Undulation is less reliable with it only affecting 1 out of 3 heals; Torrent's advantage is that you know what you get.
- Vice versa Undulation is really noticeable when it does come at a time you need it.

Again it mostly depends on playstyle; there are fights where 90% of your casts consist of Riptide and Chain Heal. But there are also a lot of fights where you can't sustain doing just that (or the bursty damage isn't high enough) in which case you end up casting a lot of Tidal Wave HW in between.
In M+ undulation is superior by miles as you cast a lot more HS compared to riptides (especially if you use Crashing Waves); but for raids it can go either way, mostly depending on the situation.

I'm not really sure how the Nighthold fights are going to turn out. But on the somewhat longer fights where full chain heal healing is unsustainable (often the case on progression as well) I can see how weaving in Tidal Wave Healing Waves is going to be really strong and in that case undulation might be best.

[Deleted]

Great post, Nythiz. It summarizes my thoughts exactly. Undulation is great for higher M+ dungeons, since an extra burst amount of healing might just do the trick. In raid progression, I prefer a flat increase to a quick, reactive spell like Riptide, which can easily be a lifesaver. To use Nythiz' words: You know what you get. Someone suddenly dropping to ~10% life and instantly receiving an empowered Riptide gets enough healing to survive aoe/dot ticks until the next direct heal lands. Undulation is much more situational - in the example, the two major disadvantages would be the cast time of HW/HS and the additional requirement of your cast coincidentally being the third to trigger Undulation. In emergency situations, you won't have Undulation set up properly to be ready when needed the most, since you would need to limit your spellcasting after two HW/HS. So in actual raiding situations, the times in which Undulation triggers are rather random and might simply overheal your target.

Guran - what you said strongly depends on the strength of your group and the progress of your raid/guild. We have EN/ToV (with the sole exception of Helya) on farm status, and let me tell you: more often than not, topping people is all I can do. With life pools between 2.5-3.X million HP, full boss experience and very high DPS/HPS overall, our Mastery becomes a burden. In progress situations, that's different of course. So looking at Nighthold, I'd say that Torrent is much more reliable and consistent for raiding, whereas Undulation is a strong bonus for keeping tanks/DPS alive in M+15 dungeons and above.

As for Wellspring, I absolutely agree with Nyel. Back when we progressed mythic Il'gynoth, taking 4-6 stacks of Nightmare Ichor debuffs at once, I tried using Wellspring. It hit most of the raid and the cast time wasn't that much of a disadvantage, since I knew when the spell should be cast, but apart from the rather low amount of healing per target hit, the high mana cost really became an issue. I returned to High Tide, since it offers consistent, reliable bonus healing without additional mana cost. Even with that slight 5% nerf of Chain Heal and the buff of Wellspring, I'll stick to High Tide.

b2t - I honestly don't know if I'll like the 4p bonus enough to change my talents. I don't like a concept surrounding HST, even if the 4p basically allows spamming it. I'm surprised nobody actually mentioned low expectations on that 4p.

[Guran]

Guran, you are kind of contradicting yourself. You say you just fill in and doesnt focus on topping people of. Then why would you use undulation?

And i seriously doubt undulation is better than torrent if you run echo of elements. My riptides crit for about 700k atm with torrent.

and holy paladins are insane at topping people of. Thats what they do as you kind of hinted yourself. And shamans don't fill in. We need to be the first to heal a target and let the others top people of or your mastery is basically wasted. I rarely focus on topping people of. 1,max 2 spells in a row on a target if they are not doing something special that demands special treatment. Sniping as a shaman is very underrated. Focus on what shamans is strong at, keeping people alive, not being full Health.

I have tried undulation in both raids and m+. Sure we raid in different Environments since you raid small hc raids and i mainly do mythic raiding. Sure, undulation might fit your group better than mine but i still think torrent is better with your healer setup.


As for wellspring I have not tested it yet but i doubt the 5% nerf to CH is enough to make us pick WS instead of hightide. Chain heal is just to strong, atleast in a mythic raiding environment. Will give it a try on my next EN raid and more importantly and relevant in NH. It's so frikking expensive aswell and mana has been a bigger concern then it's been in a long time. Don't forget that we have 2 traits that buff our resurgence on chain heal.

Because when I mean fill in, I mean I'm the one focusing tanks or raid more, depending on the fight. Our Druid quite often just blankets the raid & only pops a Lifebloom & Ironbark on tanks, while the paladin is nearly always in healing range of the tanks, usually with beacon running as well. I'm the one healing people that get a couple of hits in a row from random stuff, or are getting targeted by more than hots can handle. Perhaps 'filling in' wasn't the right choice of words for what I meant, but 'triage' is better suited to my job in our group. I'm the guy single target healing whoever I can to get the most out of my mastery on. That means Undulation is almost never wasted, because they'll always be low enough to benefit from it, at worst it'll potentially snipe a bit of Druid HoT, or means the Paladin won't be needing to top them off and can top off someone else. I started out with Torrent and actually liked the strong Riptides, but Undulation just does more over time, even if it isn't always noticable.

To explain my specific scenario:
We run rather low amounts of melee in raids (quite often I swap to Enh for Guarm so we can get the jump there & push DPS harder) so CH in my group tend to hit only 2-3 people. So for me, the later Riptide talents end up being the best choices anyway.
With CW & Echo, I can pretty much rotate Riptide + 2 HW/HS constantly (except during lust, because Haste & Riptide CD are not friends).
As Nythiz said, SP gain per spell is roughly equal, which means I get up to double the gain from Undulation as Torrent.

That said, I have a very specific playstyle, where I tend to Riptide mostly on people above 80% HP and cast-heal others (unless someone would otherwise die) to make most of the Mastery gains. This is mostly because Riptide loses a LOT of Mastery gain from being a partial HoT (each tick gets a new Mastery calculation, so you lose part of Torrent in the HoT) and I cast more than enough direct heals to get value out of Undulation, even if I don't game it. (Tested it over 2 weeks time, without major gear upgrades, up to 10% increase depending on fight/M+) But I would think that it is only really better for my style of play.
I think Torrent & Undulation really are too similar to be on that row though, as they both focus on single target spells and frankly, they are comparable even if you don't look at Undulation 'procs'. Perhaps one of em SHOULD be a proc (free cast of something on Riptide tick procs maybe?)

As for Wellspring, for the few raids I tested it on, the long CD + its slower cast time annoyed me enough to go back to Ascendance. It just seems to be so similar to HR/CH that it doesn't fill enough of a niche for me to ever think about using it in fights. If only it was instant, it would be worth the mana and fit in one of the 2 gaps I'm missing (the other one being a tank CD/tool like Earth Shield used to be)

[Nythiz]

b2t - I honestly don't know if I'll like the 4p bonus enough to change my talents. I don't like a concept surrounding HST, even if the 4p basically allows spamming it. I'm surprised nobody actually mentioned low expectations on that 4p.

The 4p might be pretty good actually. HST (assuming you use it properly /on cooldown) does quite a lot of healing. It might not be a real smart heal like it used to be, but it's still nearly 100% effective healing per cast. It's not uncommon to be 10% of your healing done.

Since the 4p bonus mentions that you get cast time reduction on Tidal Wave triggers and not when you consume it; it could be really good in raid environments too, where basically every riptide and chain heal will reduce the cooldown by 3 seconds.
I think you can get quite a lot more HST off this way, so you could very well end up seeing a 50% uptime increase, which is +5% healing done. Maybe even more on progression.

I think Torrent & Undulation really are too similar to be on that row though, as they both focus on single target spells and frankly, they are comparable even if you don't look at Undulation 'procs'. Perhaps one of em SHOULD be a proc (free cast of something on Riptide tick procs maybe?)

Depends a bit on how you prefer design to be.
I don't think the current set up is very bad at all; the first tier is quite competitive where every talent kind of does the same, but it's effectiveness depends on your playstyle. UL is a bit undertuned for how unpractical it is to execute (as in requiring an extra GCD), i hope they come up with something better than just increasing the initial heal.

[Yoda11]

Since the 4p bonus mentions that you get cast time reduction on Tidal Wave triggers and not when you consume it; it could be really good in raid environments too, where basically every riptide and chain heal will reduce the cooldown by 3 seconds.
.

yea anyone done testing on ptr with our 4 piece. does trigger mean we have to consume a TW proc or only when we receive one from riptide/chainheal?

[fabuloso]

Wellspring is actually a very mana effctive spell for the healing it does. It has a higher HPM vs chain heal. Further more, due to its range it is much easier to reach its potential vs chain heal chaining 5 targets which is very much depends on how spread out the raid is.

Spell. Healing. Mana. Cast time. HPM. HPCT
Wellspring 2700%. 77k. 1.5 Sec. 0.035%. 1800%
Chain heal 1550%. 55k. 2.5 sec. 0.028%. 730%

Wellspring effective heal = 450x6 = 2700
Chain heal effective heal (inclusive of the artifact talent of 10% more crit chance)= (380+380x0.85+380x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85x0.85)X1.1= 1550

[Errete]

yea anyone done testing on ptr with our 4 piece. does trigger mean we have to consume a TW proc or only when we receive one from riptide/chainheal?

I tested it when they opened the lower part of Nighthold, and it was reducing the cooldown on HST when you trigger TW procs (casting Riptide/CH) and not when you consume them.

[Vraull]

Wellspring is actually a very mana effctive spell for the healing it does. It has a higher HPM vs chain heal. Further more, due to its range it is much easier to reach its potential vs chain heal chaining 5 targets which is very much depends on how spread out the raid is.

Spell. Healing. Mana. Cast time. HPM. HPCT
Wellspring 2700%. 77k. 1.5 Sec. 0.035%. 1800%
Chain heal 1550%. 55k. 2.5 sec. 0.028%. 730%

Wellspring effective heal = 450x6 = 2700
Chain heal effective heal (inclusive of the artifact talent of 10% more crit chance)= (380+380x0.85+380x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85x0.85)X1.1= 1550

if you're going factor hpm, you have to account for the fact CH procs resurgence and WS cannot.
QA affects CH but does not affect WS.

also the bigger problem is you are gimping your main aoe heal that you can target and game mastery with, neither of which you can do with WS. AND if you're not hitting 5 people you're targeting the wrong people or your raid's positioning is wrong.

WS sounds nice on paper, but in practice HT CH just wins because of how the game works.

[Nythiz]

Wellspring is actually a very mana effctive spell for the healing it does. It has a higher HPM vs chain heal. Further more, due to its range it is much easier to reach its potential vs chain heal chaining 5 targets which is very much depends on how spread out the raid is.

Spell. Healing. Mana. Cast time. HPM. HPCT
Wellspring 2700%. 77k. 1.5 Sec. 0.035%. 1800%
Chain heal 1550%. 55k. 2.5 sec. 0.028%. 730%

Wellspring effective heal = 450x6 = 2700
Chain heal effective heal (inclusive of the artifact talent of 10% more crit chance)= (380+380x0.85+380x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85+380x0.85x0.85x0.85x0.85)X1.1= 1550

I don't think anyone is disputing the efficiency and healing potential of wellspring.
The problem is that it is a talent and not a basic spell, so you have to give up something in order to get it. That something in this case being High Tide.
You can't just compare 1 chain heal to 1 wellspring, you'd have to compare how much High Tide increases your chain heal healing and then see what the tipping point is where Wellspring becomes interesting.

So normally CH heals 4 people for 380%+266%+186.2%+130.34% = 962.54% spellpower per chain heal.
With HT it heals 5 people for 380%+323%+274.55%+233.37%+198.36% = 1409.28% spellpower per chain heal
So if you can make use of all 5 jumps, and they're all effective healing, HT gives you 446.74% spellpower per chain heal extra. Which is a 46% healing increase for chain heal.
If you include the crit talent, the spellpower values become 1059% and 1550% respectively, which is an increase of 491% spellpower. (Relative increase obviously staying the same)

So assuming you heal for 2700% spellpower with wellspring each time you use it.
You'd only need to cast 2700 / 491 = 5.5; so 6 chain heals to outheal what wellspring does.
6 Chain heals in 20 seconds isn't a hard feat to pull off.

I guess Wellspring would make for a good case in situations where mana is a concern. Because as you showed, Wellspring gives nearly 2 chain heals worth of healing for the cost of 1.5 CH.
There are also some situations where CH can't hit enough people (e.g. spread out raid or small melee group); plus Wellspring does synergize well with certain other talents such as Cloudburst and AG, because as I showed above you'd need 6 Chain Heals to do similar healing with High Tide, which is pretty hard to pull off in the given window of said talents.