[Resto] Using Unleash to buff Chain Heal

[Deleted]

The more guides I read the more confused I am about this. Some say UL = sprint, some say UL on CD, some say UL = hpm and hps loss.

I recently leveled my shaman to try resto and ele again, and I always used it for the sprint and sometimes to buff chain heals BEFORE a mechanic was going to happen.
Napkin math says it adds 30% to CH healing (plus whatever minimal heal UL does), but only adds around 25% to CH mana cost. So HPM gain, eh? Plus the benefit of increased burst healing to instantly stabilize the raid.
It obviously also adds 60% cast time, for only ~30% added healing so you wouldn't rebuff UL before CH after the damage has happened. It's an obvious HPS loss.

Any input? Anything I'm missing?


/edit:
Unrelated question:
With riptide's healing before more frontloaded, with the riptide perk and the optional +1 riptide charge system the value of riptide glyph has waaay dropped, no?

[Alca]

The more guides I read the more confused I am about this. Some say UL = sprint, some say UL on CD, some say UL = hpm and hps loss.

I recently leveled my shaman to try resto and ele again, and I always used it for the sprint and sometimes to buff chain heals BEFORE a mechanic was going to happen.
Napkin math says it adds 30% to CH healing (plus whatever minimal heal UL does), but only adds around 25% to CH mana cost. So HPM gain, eh? Plus the benefit of increased burst healing to instantly stabilize the raid.
It obviously also adds 60% cast time, for only ~30% added healing so you wouldn't rebuff UL before CH after the damage has happened. It's an obvious HPS loss.

Any input? Anything I'm missing?


/edit:
Unrelated question:
With riptide's healing before more frontloaded, with the riptide perk and the optional +1 riptide charge system the value of riptide glyph has waaay dropped, no?

UL is situational. If you feel you can spend the GCD then use it.

If you use the CH glyph, it's used more frequently.

[Deleted]

UL is situational. If you feel you can spend the GCD then use it.

If you use the CH glyph, it's used more frequently.

Yeah, forgot to mention that. Starting in 600 gear and not being used to EB I did that all the time. But shaman seem to grow out of mana problems really fast. It's still a somewhat fun playstyle. Is it viable even when geared? Possibly better target options for CH and so on. Hmm

[Alltat]

I recently leveled my shaman to try resto and ele again, and I always used it for the sprint and sometimes to buff chain heals BEFORE a mechanic was going to happen.

That does seem to be the best way. Check any top log, and none of them use UL on cooldown. I have yet to see a log of someone using CL on cooldown who performed well (consistent >80% on WarcraftLogs). If someone has such a log, it would be interesting to see it. Also worth noting is that there's a lot of other useful stuff to spend GCDs on right before predictable damage hits: refreshing Earth Shield, getting more Riptides up, dropping Healing Rain, precasting Chain Heal to land just after the damage. While it's certainly possible to also get UL into that sequence at times, it's pretty rare. Most times you won't have everyone at full health >10 seconds before the AoE. I think the main time UL is useful to prepare is on phase on Blackhand.

Napkin math says it adds 30% to CH healing (plus whatever minimal heal UL does), but only adds around 25% to CH mana cost. So HPM gain, eh? Plus the benefit of increased burst healing to instantly stabilize the raid.
It obviously also adds 60% cast time, for only ~30% added healing so you wouldn't rebuff UL before CH after the damage has happened. It's an obvious HPS loss.

Pretty much. The catch is the HPS loss and that if you're willing to sacrifice a lot of HPS to gain some HPM, Healing Wave is better. And used with HW, UL is both a HPS and a HPM loss (as UL costs 66% of what Healing Wave does to add 30% and a direct heal that amounts to ~25%). And of course if you use Unleash Life to save a tiny bit of mana, you won't have it available for the sprint.

With riptide's healing before more frontloaded, with the riptide perk and the optional +1 riptide charge system the value of riptide glyph has waaay dropped, no?

Yes. Echo of the Elements also works as a Glyph of Riptide Light that lets you cast it three times in five seconds, without having to give up the direct heal. The glyph isn't bad, but it's not good either. Using GoR well, you'll do the same healing as without it. Using GoR poorly, you'll do less healing due to losing the direct heal (which does ~4k HPS unglyphed).

[Deleted]

Thanks guys

Also worth noting is that there's a lot of other useful stuff to spend GCDs on right before predictable damage hits: refreshing Earth Shield, getting more Riptides up, dropping Healing Rain, precasting Chain Heal to land just after the damage. While it's certainly possible to also get UL into that sequence at times, it's pretty rare. [...]
The catch is the HPS loss and that if you're willing to sacrifice a lot of HPS to gain some HPM, Healing Wave is better.

Yeah now that you mention it, that makes a lot of sense. Guess I will try to drop that fancy UL CH and work on my Healing Rain uptime/precasting. I got no numbers atm, but it feels god awful.

Echo of the Elements also works as a Glyph of Riptide Light that lets you cast it three times in five seconds,

<- Big fan of the charge system

The resto shaman mindset seems to revolve around keeping ES up (on a tank) all of the time, HSt on CD, 'never' not having Rt recharge, and then filling the GCDs in between. When damage starts to build up you drop HR if possible and start to replace HW with CH. Then once damage slows down you go back to using the built up Tidal Waves on HW. Using Healing Surge only as an emergency heal, but liberally at that. Sound about right?
During situations with constant high damage you keep on using Rt, correct? Just making sure

[Wengel]

situations with constant high damage usually means you've already got your RT's rolling to setup high-tide synergi already. That's part of the playstyle to have the RT's rolling on the correct targets before the high damage phases begins so you can just spam Chain heal (especially with 4 set bonus proc).
If you use EotE, you can 'skip' a cast and just spam CH during the high damage phase and then refresh without any real loss after those 10 seconds or so if you're running EotE. Just make sure to drop HST on CD still as it's a massive amount of free healing.
Running with the Riptide Glyph means you do not recast RT during high damage phases, you're pretty much required to have the RT's rolling in advance as you no longer have the direct heal component of RT.
Works well when used correctly, but it's a significant loss if you mess it up.
Use EotE without the glyph if in doubt - both works equally well when you know what you're doing, but it's easier to mess up with the glyph.
And the additional charge of Spirit Link Totem can be extremely valueable when you ramp up the difficulty.

And for UL.. use it for the speedboost and nothing else really. 2 charges here is also very nice. You'll be GCD starved later on most of the time with all the other things you need to maintain which means UL is a waste for anything else than movement.

[Alltat]

The resto shaman mindset seems to revolve around keeping ES up (on a tank) all of the time, HSt on CD, 'never' not having Rt recharge, and then filling the GCDs in between. When damage starts to build up you drop HR if possible and start to replace HW with CH. Then once damage slows down you go back to using the built up Tidal Waves on HW. Using Healing Surge only as an emergency heal, but liberally at that. Sound about right?
During situations with constant high damage you keep on using Rt, correct? Just making sure

Throw in Elemental Blast and aggressive use of major cooldowns (Tide, Link, Ascendance) and that's pretty much it. And yes, keep using Riptide. Try to spend your charges before predictable damage, though. Also try to spend your charges before using Ascendance (and drop a Healing Rain immediately before). How well you do as a restoration shaman will largely come down to how well you can maintain good uptimes of RT/ES/HST/HR and how well you can use your major cooldowns. Used well, Ascendance can heal for ~1M per cast.