Tier bonus effects on resto talents

[Guran]

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.

Does this include TW gains when you're already at 2 stacks? e.g. will pure Riptide with CW always give 6s off, or will it only work if we actually gain a buff?

[Nythiz]

The biggest problem with Wellspring, which I didn't mention. Is that it suffers from a weird kind of AoE capping.

I just tested this in Dalaran/Org again to be sure it's still in; and if I hit 6 people I heal them all for ~200-220k non-crit. If I hit 7+ people, I heal them all for 50-55k non crit.

Weird thing is that I always thought AoE capping limited the maximum damage/healing and then scaled based on amount of mobs/players hit. E.g. AoE ability can only do a max of 500k dmg, so if you hit 20 players it does 500/20k dmg.

- - - Updated - - -

Does this include TW gains when you're already at 2 stacks? e.g. will pure Riptide with CW always give 6s off, or will it only work if we actually gain a buff?

I also wonder if Crashing Waves gives you 6 second off. That would make the set bonuses really good for Mythic+.

[fabuloso]

The biggest problem with Wellspring, which I didn't mention. Is that it suffers from a weird kind of AoE capping.

I just tested this in Dalaran/Org again to be sure it's still in; and if I hit 6 people I heal them all for ~200-220k non-crit. If I hit 7+ people, I heal them all for 50-55k non crit.

Weird thing is that I always thought AoE capping limited the maximum damage/healing and then scaled based on amount of mobs/players hit. E.g. AoE ability can only do a max of 500k dmg, so if you hit 20 players it does 500/20k dmg.

Actually that might be a good thing. If it heals only 6 people like healing rain does, the chance of over heal is higher. Say for example it heal 6 people for 100k each, the raid takes 50k AOE damage, the 6 people healed will be 50% over heal whereas if the heal is capped and shared, it will get the 100% effective heal to the raid.

Well I am not comparing wellspring vs high tide as a competition, but rather an alternative and effective play style for spread out boss encounter with periodic raid wide damage (mythic Il'gynoth for e.g.) the 2pc and 4pc effect favors undulation and EotE talent with actually makes shaman a strong spread out spot healer with wellspring. This kind of setup is probably the most mana efficient setup across all healer class. The only issue is undulation + 2pc effect has a high chance of overhealing.

The general shaman opinion on wellspring is poor, it is actually not that bad...

[Deleted]

Actually that might be a good thing. If it heals only 6 people like healing rain does, the chance of over heal is higher.

Well, remember that Wellspring doesn't replace Chain Heal. Also keep in mind that it has a cooldown and can't be used/spammed like a stronger version of Chain Heal. So why would you use it in a situation in which it'd overheal?
And that's the point: you'd use it when it'd hit many low targets. And what Nythiz mentioned also explains why the healing was so low during my testing in specific raid encounters.
Let's just look at Ursoc, for example. The raid should be stacked and low on health after his charge, so that'd seem like a perfect moment for Wellspring. But what's the point in hitting 20 Raid members with 50-100k each every 20 seconds? I mean, the sum of the healing done per cast may be quite high - but keep in mind that after using Wellspring you'll still need to use Chain Heals to top the group - and during his cacophony casts, Wellspring will be on cooldown, and you'll be back to mainly casting Chain Heal. And as Nythiz pointed out - picking Wellspring means to give up on High Tide, reducing the number of targets hit and the healing done of each and every single Chain Heal cast you do when Wellspring is on cooldown. The healing done by Wellspring doesn't make up for what you lose in-between Wellspring casts.

[Nythiz]

Actually that might be a good thing. If it heals only 6 people like healing rain does, the chance of over heal is higher. Say for example it heal 6 people for 100k each, the raid takes 50k AOE damage, the 6 people healed will be 50% over heal whereas if the heal is capped and shared, it will get the 100% effective heal to the raid.

The problem there is that you get a massive drop in effectiveness. It wouldn't be so bad it it scaled properly but it doesn't.

It heals for roughly 200k per person, but then when you hit the 7th one it drops down to 50k healing done, totally shattering the spell's effectiveness; regardless of overhealing.
I mean it goes like this:
1 player: 200k healing done
2 players: 400k healing done (2x 200k)
etc
5 players: 1000k healing done (5x 200k)
6 players: 1200k healing done (6x 200k)
7 players: 350k healing done (7x 50k)
8 players: 400k healing done (8x 50k)
etc

So there is this HUUUGE drop in throughput when you hit 7 players, that seems really messed up. If they want to introduce an AoE cap, it should be like it is for damage where the total healing done stays the same after 6 players and the amount per person gets divided.
That would mean that at 6+ players, you always heal for 1200k healing done, the amount per player just differs based on how many you hit, so in the case of 8 players hit, you'd heal for 150k per player.

Well I am not comparing wellspring vs high tide as a competition, but rather an alternative and effective play style for spread out boss encounter with periodic raid wide damage (mythic Il'gynoth for e.g.) the 2pc and 4pc effect favors undulation and EotE talent with actually makes shaman a strong spread out spot healer with wellspring. This kind of setup is probably the most mana efficient setup across all healer class. The only issue is undulation + 2pc effect has a high chance of overhealing.

The general shaman opinion on wellspring is poor, it is actually not that bad...

The opinion of wellspring is probably poor, because it doesn't really have a defined place. A talent like this should either be:
a) Fill a niche we miss
b) Be a really good supplement to a strength we already possess.
or
c) Be really really friggin strong

But if you break it down:

A) I don't think it fills a niche that is broad enough or strong enough for it to properly define itself. It has some specific uses, but it doesn't really contain a strength that can't be substituted with spot healing or chain healing.

B) For AoE throughput It's not a supplement to our strength; as it competes directly with High Tide in the same tier, which simply allows for more throughput. Had it been in the T90 tier for example, it could have filled this role as you could pick up both Wellspring and High Tide for a high AoE throughput. But they put these two talents together (which is a design decision I can respect, chose based on playstyle) and most seem to favor High Tide, with good reason.

C) It's would be really friggin strong if it didn't have the AoE cap attached to it. But it's not. You could argue that 600-750k non-crit healing done with a 1.5 second spell is really strong; but I don't think its enough.

Don't get me wrong though; I quite like the design of wellspring. I just think its not quite there yet.

[fabuloso]

I just done a comparison between a undulation-crashing waves-wellspring vs straight up high tide chain heal spam in a scenario whereby the raid takes heavy damage and the healers need to heal for 10 secs.

Effective heal for healing wave with undulation(average at 50/3=16.66%), artifact talent and 2pcs bonus = 475x1.15x1.15x1.1666 = 733% @ 19.8k mana
Effective heal for riptide with artifact talent = 575% @ 17.6k mana
Effective heal for wellspring = 2700% @ 77k mana
Effective heal for chainheal = 1550% @ 55k mana
Calculation done with assumption of 0 haste.

In a 10 sec time frame you can WS+RT+HW+HW+RT+HW+HW with a combined healing of 7028% using 191.4k mana (or 36.7%/k mana). With an assumption that only one of the spell crit to trigger ascendant, potentially more output if more crits happens. This rotation has no positional requirement. Downside is the weak average healing of WS due to AoE cap (but remember you are not the only healer) and the potentially over heal of the massive single target HW.

In the same 10 sec, assuming your first cast of chain heal @ 2.5sec and every subsequent cast trigger queen ascendant to reduce it to 2.125sec, you can get off 4.5 chain heals at a total healing of 6975% using 275k mana (or 28.2%/k mana). This is assuming every single one of your chain heal hits 5 targets which only realistically happens in stack fights. The advantage here is more average healing across targets.

In the above scenario, 2pc HW/RT rotation with WS actually output the same total healing compared to a high tide CH spam in a time frame of 10 sec at 44% less mana. Again, I am not advocating WS is the go to but just trying to demonstrate that it is at least a competitive alternative post buff to consider in encounter whereby stack healing is not possible.

[Rafal]

Two changes that would make Wellspring viable are

1) less or equal mana cost to chain heal

2) Healing cap did not interfere with its max healing amount

Personally, I would really love for Wellspring to fill the old Chain Heal Glyph playstyle. I loved Glyph of Chain Heal

[Koor]

The biggest problem with Wellspring, which I didn't mention. Is that it suffers from a weird kind of AoE capping.

I just tested this in Dalaran/Org again to be sure it's still in; and if I hit 6 people I heal them all for ~200-220k non-crit. If I hit 7+ people, I heal them all for 50-55k non crit.

Weird thing is that I always thought AoE capping limited the maximum damage/healing and then scaled based on amount of mobs/players hit. E.g. AoE ability can only do a max of 500k dmg, so if you hit 20 players it does 500/20k dmg.

- - - Updated - - -



I also wonder if Crashing Waves gives you 6 second off. That would make the set bonuses really good for Mythic+.

That weird AOE capping was added late in the beta due to some interaction with cloudburst totem. I don't remember all the details of that interaction, but I think the essence of it was that it was more effective to cast wellspring on full health targets just to charge cloudburst, compared to using it when the raid HP was low. The actual words of the hotfix were:


"Wellspring heals for 25% of normal value on full-health targets, if it has more than 6 targets."
Developers’ notes: This does not reduce Wellspring's effective (non-overheal) healing. In the future we plan to find a different solution, but we felt it was it was better to address the interaction between Wellspring overhealing and Cloudburst Totem now, rather than wait to change it after it got more use.

So I think it'll work differently on 6+ non full HP targets -- the testing in Dalaran was probably on full health targets, and triggered that 25% hotfix.

[Guran]

Two changes that would make Wellspring viable are

1) less or equal mana cost to chain heal

2) Instant cast

And ofcourse, healing cap should not interfere with its max healing amount

Personally, I would really love for Wellspring to fill the old Chain Heal Glyph playstyle. I loved Glyph of Chain Heal

Fixed that for ya.
Healing caps should, on all true AoE spells, simply cap on a max equal to 6 targets anyway, this shouldn't even be an issue.

[Koor]

C) It's would be really friggin strong if it didn't have the AoE cap attached to it. But it's not. You could argue that 600-750k non-crit healing done with a 1.5 second spell is really strong; but I don't think its enough.

Don't get me wrong though; I quite like the design of wellspring. I just think its not quite there yet.

I think it should have been left uncapped, that's the way it was introduced so it was the original intent of that spell, and it was like that during most of the beta. It wasn't too OP since it had a long CD and it was difficult to hit the entire raid anyway. Then near the end of the beta it got nerfed with the cap.

[Errete]

Does this include TW gains when you're already at 2 stacks? e.g. will pure Riptide with CW always give 6s off, or will it only work if we actually gain a buff?

Yes, as casting Riptide/CH actually refreshes the duration on your TW buff, its counted as if you were gaining that buff again. You could CH spam not using a single proc of TW and you would still reduce 3s your CD on HST every cast.

I also wonder if Crashing Waves gives you 6 second off. That would make the set bonuses really good for Mythic+.

Nope, I was specced into Crashing Waves and it doesnt take 6s off the CD. It just seems to proc every time you gain/refresh TW buff, ignoring how many charges you get from it. Otherwise it would be kinda OP when taking CW.

[Deleted]

I wasn't expecting such an in depth discussion of wellspring. Really interesting read above thanks guys!

I've been noticing the weird capping whilst trying wellspring too. It really kinda ruins the spell.
I can only see it being good on fights which are very spread and even then, I have Jonat's Focus so will probably end up taking high tide anyway. Curiosity sated at least. its a fun spell but just doesn't seem to work in the majority of encounters.

I'm pretty sold on undulation however. I've always enjoyed it more as a talent as its simply more interesting and flexible than torrent. It's predictable, useful and makes shamans far more viable for quick bursts of healing e.g on a dying tank. Plus I have a pretty weak aura for it that I like popping up which is probably the real reason :P

It will probably be my go-to for progression, split between that and unleash life (which has a nice synergy with jonat's) but I'm still getting my head round how to make that work optimally. Will probably lead to more experimentation with cloudburst and a build that focuses on little explosions of burst healing rather than the more consistent current build. Now is probably not the time for that experiment though!

[fabuloso]

I just tried a Heroic Star Augur Etraeus with 4 piece and below is the warcraft log. I attempted it with a talent build that maximize the effect of the tier piece with crashing wave and EotE.

4 piece tier performing at 96 percentile of all shaman parses
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...5&type=healing

Breakdown of spells (in Chinese as I play in Chinese server but you can identify the spell icons)
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...aling&source=3

Rough effect of the 2 piece
HW account for about 15% of my overall healing, this means that the 2 piece accounts for about 2.2% of my overall healing. undulation would probably bring this up to about 2.5%

Rough effect of the 4 piece
It will take 10 riptide cast to get a free cast of HST (I didn't have a single cast of chain heal as I was using wellspring talent instead). I have 61 casts which means I am getting 6 out of the 22 HST cast from the 4 piece effect. 6/22=27% out of my HST healing is from the 4 piece. My HST account for 12.5% of overall healing, this makes the 4 piece effect at 27% x 12.5% = 3.3% of overall healing.

So there you have it, combined total of about 5.5% from the 4 piece. Its not an awful lot and I think you would probably be better off with just taking the 2 piece while filling up others slots with mast/crit and a Drape of Shame.

P.S. I hope my math is correct especially on the HST part

[Deleted]

*Offtopic* Do you enjoy the current state of the RShaman ? Didnt played one since Wotlk and healing as a MW is pretty...sad. I miss usefull CD's

[Jynus]

Rough effect of the 4 piece
It will take 10 riptide cast to get a free cast of HST (I didn't have a single cast of chain heal as I was using wellspring talent instead). I have 61 casts which means I am getting 6 out of the 22 HST cast from the 4 piece effect. 6/22=27% out of my HST healing is from the 4 piece. My HST account for 12.5% of overall healing, this makes the 4 piece effect at 27% x 12.5% = 3.3% of overall healing.

Those 6 GCD could mean 3-4 CH casts too (or whatever you put in it's place). Which would put it far below 3.3%. Prob closer to 0%. If the 4piece read you have a 15% chance to spawn a second totem then it would be closer to 3.3%.

Unless i'm off in my theory way of looking at the situation, actively aiming for the 4piece is an hps loss from it's crap poor stats. I'll just use the 2piece, get better stats for the other item slots, and instead use GCD on spells that take advantage of those stats in the extra GCD space.

I seriously think this is the worst 4piece in the history of wow tier. It is a nerf to performance actively seek it out.

[fabuloso]

Those 6 GCD could mean 3-4 CH casts too (or whatever you put in it's place). Which would put it far below 3.3%. Prob closer to 0%. If the 4piece read you have a 15% chance to spawn a second totem then it would be closer to 3.3%.

Unless i'm off in my theory way of looking at the situation, actively aiming for the 4piece is an hps loss from it's crap poor stats. I'll just use the 2piece, get better stats for the other item slots, and instead use GCD on spells that take advantage of those stats in the extra GCD space.

I seriously think this is the worst 4piece in the history of wow tier. It is a nerf to performance actively seek it out.

This is not 100% true as HST has a higher healing per cast time @ 50% of mana cost. You would want to cast a HST first over CH if the situation allows. But you are right in a way the effective healing should be the difference in healing per cast between the two spell which is much smaller than 3.3%....

2 piece + drape of shame should yield a much better thruput over the 4 piece unfortunately.

Edit: I guess another way to look at it is it gives you more option on the move and spread healing which HST excel.

[Jynus]

On my logs CH and hst heal about the same per cast. CH heals more on the more progression type fight. Less on easier. I haven't bothered to figure the cast time difference and how that maths out as that does give hst the edge. But on the other side CH proccing Tidal waves impacting HW casts not factored in as well as poor stat alotment to get 4piece. Overall it does seem to be the case where close to 0 benefit is indeed the reality.

4piece gives minor mana improvement on basically the same hps. gg blizz. I'll stick to directed chains when needed rather than tiny heal procs.

[ItsTiddles]

Those 6 GCD could mean 3-4 CH casts too (or whatever you put in it's place). Which would put it far below 3.3%. Prob closer to 0%. If the 4piece read you have a 15% chance to spawn a second totem then it would be closer to 3.3%.

So 3-4 casts of CH/HW/HS is better than 6 HST? The only thing that beats my HST in average healing per cast is Gift of the Queen and Healing Rain (exluding CDs). So not only are you suggesting to cast less abilities, but less abilities with less average output and a higher mana cost? HST has a low average over healing due to it's smart healing (preferring lower hp targets) and gives you damage reduction. I don't think it's a contest.

Unless i'm off in my theory way of looking at the situation, actively aiming for the 4piece is an hps loss from it's crap poor stats. I'll just use the 2piece, get better stats for the other item slots, and instead use GCD on spells that take advantage of those stats in the extra GCD space.

At least in my opinion, 3 of the tier pieces beat out their non-tier option. Chest, legs, and gloves. All three alternate pieces are both 5 ilvls down as a base. Chest loses some mastery, but in return gives a lot of crit in instead of haste. Legs don't need to be explained. Tier gloves replace haste with versi and mastery with crit. Versi > haste (based on my current gear) and versi doesn't contribute to higher mana usage. Crit = mastery (based on my current gear) and the tier gloves have a little over 100 more crit than non-tier does mastery. If you add the cloak for 4set, you only lose about 40 mastery for 40 haste. Hardly noticeable.

TL;DR - For my current stat weight priority, the 4p gives me better stats than the 2p with non-tier pieces. The set bonus is an added bonus to that.
Disclaimer: this does not take into account wf/tf gear and non-NH loot

[Nythiz]

Those 6 GCD could mean 3-4 CH casts too (or whatever you put in it's place). Which would put it far below 3.3%. Prob closer to 0%. If the 4piece read you have a 15% chance to spawn a second totem then it would be closer to 3.3%.

Unless i'm off in my theory way of looking at the situation, actively aiming for the 4piece is an hps loss from it's crap poor stats. I'll just use the 2piece, get better stats for the other item slots, and instead use GCD on spells that take advantage of those stats in the extra GCD space.

I seriously think this is the worst 4piece in the history of wow tier. It is a nerf to performance actively seek it out.

It's definitely not the worst in history, we've had way worse.

I also don't quite see how the 4p is a bad thing when HST is easily one of our most efficient HPCT and HPM spells.

You could argue that for HPS dropping it would somewhat compete with CH spamming for higher HPS ; but then the question becomes whether this is relevant. On progression fights that last long enough you can't sustain CH spam indefinitely anyway. In which case pure HPS numbers become largely irrelevant over HPCT, outside of certain cooldown usage (AG / CBT)

You could claim that the 2p and/or 4p doesn't have a very large impact on our healing output. In which case I might agree, but saying they're flat out worthless is simply not true.

Also this set will be great in Mythic+

- - - Updated - - -

I just tried a Heroic Star Augur Etraeus with 4 piece and below is the warcraft log. I attempted it with a talent build that maximize the effect of the tier piece with crashing wave and EotE.

Thanks for showing the logs, it definitely gives some insight.

I personally think you don't really have to adjust your playstyle that much to incorporate the tier bonus though.

Chain heal also gives TW, so you can just use the normal CH gameplay and get nearly as many stacks. Crashing Waves doesn't give twice the HST CD reduction (I was told), so picking that doesn't really make the set bonus any stronger.
If you use a normal chain heal rotation and spend your TW triggered charges on Healing Waves (assuming a mana straining long fight) and you use HST on cooldown, you would pretty much get full benefit from the set bonus without really altering your playstyle.

People hate on this set bonus, because it doesn't mention the words "CHAIN HEAL" anywhere in there; but on some of the longer fights in NH (especially with mythic coming up) I'm not really sure how those people foresee those kind of fights going. Mana isn't infinite, you can't sustain chain heal spam for 10+ minutes. Are you just sitting on your hands during free GCDs, you might as well cast a very efficient HW in between CH casts.
And HST is hands down one of the most mana efficient and highest healing per cast time skills we have; there is no reason NOT to use that on CD every time it's up.

So I think no matter the playstyle people should get good use out of the set bonus. The question just is whether the benefit of the set bonus is enough to have impact over getting higher ilvl gear. (Still not sure why blizz is sticking to this stupid difference in ilvl throughout a raid).

The way I see it this set bonus falls a bit into the same category as our mastery. It can be really good on progression fights where you can get a lot of use out of the extra throughput on HW and extra HSTs; but on farm fights it quickly falls off as those spells become less important with shorter kill times (thus reduced reliance on high HPM spells)

[Jynus]

So 3-4 casts of CH/HW/HS is better than 6 HST? The only thing that beats my HST in average healing per cast is Gift of the Queen and Healing Rain (exluding CDs). So not only are you suggesting to cast less abilities, but less abilities with less average output and a higher mana cost? HST has a low average over healing due to it's smart healing (preferring lower hp targets) and gives you damage reduction. I don't think it's a contest.

imo it's less output for less mana. at best equal hps for less mana. i'll take the stats and GCD's any day. so you're correct in your first sentance. and if your HST is doing more than chain per cast, you're doing chain wrong.