[Resto] Help My Guild's Resto Shaman

[Elixirs]

I posted a similar thing in the druid forums and had great success. I thought I'd try something similar here. I'm slowing trying to fix our guild's issues one member at a time. One area that I am woefully unprepared to fix is healing. Our resto shaman has looked at guides and really wants to do well, but her output is very low for her ilvl. Can anyone help me dissect her log to see what she could be doing differently? We're 7/10 normal and I feel that to progress any further we're going to have to fix these healing issues.

This log is a couple weeks old, but she has been mostly dpsing as of late. Her main spec is resto and we still use her as such on a fairly regular basis.

Thank you in advance and I apologize for the URL formatting. I can't yet post real links.

www [dot] warcraftlogs [dot] com/reports/FgfTBp1vKLnYyV7m#fight=9&type=healing&source=5

[16dots]

retracted. 10 chars

[ffraid]

I mean... You are 4 healing 12 man with 2 disc priests. I'd be more concerned about the disc priest that is doing almost literally nothing. Your shaman's numbers aren't likely to improve much until you drop a healer or two, and focusing on the meters when you are overhealing that much is probably not the best for your healer core.

Things your shaman could improve on (actually looking at Oregorger logs because there's almost no healing on Flameblender):
- 6 HST casts out of a possible 12. It really should be used on CD
- 25 riptide casts out of a possible 76, assuming no echo of the elements
- No Spirit Link casts. It's great for Acid Torrent phase!
- When there is more to heal, chain heal should make up most of their healing, and not healing wave.
- They frequently go 10+ seconds without casting anything at all. Free GCDs can be used to maintain HR, set down HST, cast riptide... really anything but nothing.
- Looks like they're taking Unleashed Fury, which generally isn't the ideal choice. However, they only cast Unleash Life once, so... it was pretty much completely useless.
- 33% Earth Shield uptime could definitely use some improvement. It's not the most important thing, but it improves our single target healing, and there's no reason really not to keep it up.

It looks like they could really just use some CD and buff trackers (Weakauras or what have you), and to start practicing the rule of Always Be Casting. They should not be having long periods of downtime. If their mana can sustain it, they should cast chain heal when it will heal 4 people or so. 4 chain heal casts on Kromog is kind of nutty.

I would caution against adding healers to solve problems, and focus on people following mechanics, avoiding damage, and pushing phases in a timely manner. I don't know that you are doing that, but 4 healers in situations that should be 2 healable tells me that it might be happening.

I hope this helps

[Elixirs]

Thank you for the insight. It's my fault for not noticing that the other priest went disc. He is usually holy so I'm not sure what possessed him to change to Disc.

Obviously, we have a number of issues (avoidable damage being one of them), but I wanted to start somewhere. Again, thank you for the input!

[Alltat]

Clickable link, since no one posted one yet.


Your biggest problem by far seems to be that you have way too many healers. Even with one less, healers still wouldn't have much to do. But considering she's been going DPS recently, I guess you already know that. Due to how shaman mastery works, we look disproportionately bad in groups with too many healers. I can vary from 34k to 72k HPS on the same farm fight depending on how many other healers are around that particular night. It's a really big factor.


As for that log, ffraid covered most of it:
- Riptide use is disastrously low. It should be #1 or #2 on your healing done by spell chart for every fight. Lose the glyph and use it on cooldown.
- Healing Stream uptime needs improvement. It should be ~40%, but is frequently ~20%.
- Earth Shield uptime needs improvement. The healing taken buff is too good to not utilize. It should be refreshed any time there's a spare GCD (like when moving).
- Not using potions. On several fights she was out of mana for several minutes but didn't drink a mana potion. This will cause wipes if you use a more sensible number of healers.
- Elemental Blast. Considering the above, I strongly recommend getting the Elemental Blast talent. It's a very powerful mana regen spell, and the best talent in that tier by far.
- Spirit Link Totem wasn't used much. It's great on fights like Oregorger, Hans & Franz, and Kromog.

[Elixirs]

Thank you! She is taking the input well and I think we'll see an improvement. I'm also taking notes so that I know what to look for in the future. Much appreciated.

[Nosori]

Thought I'd just ask here instead of making another thread. When and on what situations is the glyph of Riptide the most beneficial and why? Thanks in advance!

[oldnmean]

Thought I'd just ask here instead of making another thread. When and on what situations is the glyph of Riptide the most beneficial and why? Thanks in advance!

glyph of riptide may lose a lot of value in 6.2 with the current resto changes plus the 4 piece bonus. You will have a decent number of high tide targets just through rotating CH through different primary targets.

Of course, I have always thought you should roll a druid if you want to play like one and roll HoTs.

[Wengel]

the glyph makes you use riptide in a completely different way.
I.e. to setup 4 different targets for high-tide in rapid succession right before big damage is expected to come. If you use it just to have a hot you're doing it wrong. The only reason to use it is to get better high-tide setups going.
you lose out on the initial heal this way and you'd also have to use either EM or AS talent.

Output wise they are next to identical but the glyph playstyle is much different and in my opinion far more difficult to 'master'. If you mess it up you would just have nerfed your only instant-cast decent-sized heal for an easier high-tide setup that you perhaps aren't able to utilize properly.

It's different playstyles and both have equal level of output when played correctly, but the general consensus is that using the glyph is significantly more difficult and more for 'vets' that know what they're doing when they actively select this glyph.

I used to play with glyph for a long time and could pull very high numbers doing so, but with the 6.2 announcement i'd advise not using it and simply learn to use the double-charge talent which name i simply cannot remember at this point (am at work) since the glyph will be next to useless when 6.2 hits and the synergy between riptide and chain heal disappears.