vagaries or maw ?

[vindieu]

so..started healing ds properly with a fun bunch of guys tonight and was lucky enough to get my hands on the vagaries of time ,here is my question to you fellow shammys out there..obviously its a better stat stick than the raidfinder maw which I had previously but is there a better time to swap out on certain fights where the maw's proc would shine?

here is my shammy in question http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...C3%A1/advanced

also feel free to beat down my gear forges or spec its all good ^^

running 10 man normal

also I have 397 ele gloves and a spare 384 rf chest..have heard tales of ele gloves being bis ..does this only go for the heroic or would I be better using the 397 ele gloves and swapping to the 384 rf chest to keep the 4pc bonus?

[Hursey]

Well, this topic has been asked on these forums alone (not to mention any other) so many times I would realy of thought the answer would of been quite clear with a little effort, but anyway, here we go again.

General rule of thumb: Maw is BiS for ALL Healing classes. Even LFR Maw is better that H Vagaries in most situations.

Of course in fights where yo aren't stacked so much (Such as Hagara) the stat bonus vagaries is going to work out better

Re gear. Looks like you have done your reading here, Reforge seems ok. If anything You level of haste seems a little out of wack considering your trinkets, but that might work fine for you.

Spec wise, again looks fine. Only minor tweak I would suggest is maybe drop the 2 points from either Ansestral Swiftness or Blessing of the Eternals for the extra 2 points in Acruity or Totemic Reach.
At 20% Nerf people probably aren't going to be getting to 35% health that much And there aren't many fights where instant ghostwolf is going to be of much help

Glyphs, again pretty close to the mark. Only suggestion is drop healing wave glyph for stone claw totem. You probably shouldn't be using healing wave at all. Take it of you bars. 1xGHW + 2xLB with TC is probably more HPS & HPM than 3xHW (Not sure of the exact maths, but it's something like that)

[sonarc]

You probably shouldn't be using healing wave at all. Take it of you bars. 1xGHW + 2xLB with TC is probably more HPS & HPM than 3xHW (Not sure of the exact maths, but it's something like that)

This is so wrong. Healing wave is extremely useful spell in many many places. That "GHW+2xLB" math may look somewhat valid for someone who hasn't never healed in his life, but everyone who has will know that this doesnt apply to realistic raid situations.

Edit: on topic: Maw is generally much better but in the case of LFR maw vs heroic vagaries, I'd use vagaries on morchok and hagara at least.

[Hursey]

This is so wrong. Healing wave is extremely useful spell in many many places. That "GHW+2xLB" math may look somewhat valid for someone who hasn't never healed in his life, but everyone who has will know that this doesnt apply to realistic raid situations.

Where? Can you tell me where exactly it is better to cast 3 heals on a target is better than 1 heal and regen the mana cost with TC at a later on down the track?
If you are going to take the time to say I don't know what I'm talking about, at least back up you claims.

[Teslaspule]

I've completely stopped using HW in DS. On spread up fights its 50% GHW, 20% Riptide. Stacked its 50% Healing Rain + X. Never HW. Running with ~1800 Spirit + Heart.

[sonarc]

Where? Can you tell me where exactly it is better to cast 3 heals on a target is better than 1 heal and regen the mana cost with TC at a later on down the track?

Almost everywhere. If you are only healing the tank when he drops so low that GHW is your only option, you are doing it wrong and risking unnecessary deaths. Be reliable and keep people topped up, you can still find your LB moments in almost every fight if you need mana (and dont reforge out of spirit like the poster above). It is true that shaman healing differs a little from other classes due to TC mechanic, but to say that HW is completely useless is just sign of a bad healer.

[Teslaspule]

You seem to forget that I gain throughput by reforging out of spirit.

When we started on Zon'Ozz I was going from 90% to 20% mana in a black phase and I managed to get back to 80%+ afterwards with just TC. With more spirit and less mastery/crit I would not have been able to keep my group up in the black phase.

Same goes for Hagara lightning phase. Deathwing end of each platform... I could give you examples for every DS fight. I don't need more spirit and I don't need to ever cast healing wave. I even stopped using it to keep the HoU buff up, riptide works for that.

[mjolnrir]

I stopped using healing wave in firelands. it was such a low healing spell. The only reason why you would cast it is if someone is at a safe amount of hp right? Well why not regen your mana with lightning bolts instead and then ghw later? Its much more hps and you gain mana in the process.
Its not completely useless. There are times when it can be used. Just ghw is so much better even. This is spoken from a raid healer ofc so I dont know if its different tank healing but if you want to get someone topped off, riptide does roughly the same healing as a healing wave + a hot + its not like theres on going damage, just mostly short bursts so if the tank gets hit hes going to get hit hard and a good healer would have plenty of time to use a ghw to get him back up before hes hit again.
Oh and reforging your spirit is definitly a good idea for shamans. You can get so much more output and running out of mana is almost impossible as a resto shaman nyway so you shudnt need any more spirit. Basically the amount of times you can cast a lightning bolt through a fight takes out any need for spirit

In answer to your origional question, as people before have said, definitly go with the maw. It does like 10% of my healing each fight, its awsome. Only fight you might want to change to the vagarie of time is fights like hagara where every1 is more spread.

This is just my opinion but Id think that the lfr chest and ele gloves are indeed better than your current setup. Sure you lose a bit of int but I would say crit is your worst stat and you gain an insane amount of haste and mastery in its place. Ofc healers play differently and you may find the extra crit to your liking.

[Rustjive]

This is so wrong. Healing wave is extremely useful spell in many many places. That "GHW+2xLB" math may look somewhat valid for someone who hasn't never healed in his life, but everyone who has will know that this doesnt apply to realistic raid situations.

I would love to see you back this up with logs from top Shamans.

[Mavalynn]

To the original poster...

I'm with you...I'm not completely sold on the Maw just yet. But as people say...it's BiS. So, go with that...for most of the fights and switch it out when you know you're going to be stacked or within range of raid members.

On the topic of your spec, I agree with one of the other posters. I'd suggest taking points out of Blessing of the Eternals. In 10 mans, Earthliving does very little healing. And this talent just increases the chance that it gets applied to someone below 35% health. Doesn't seem worth it at all to me. I'd put those points in Acuity.

Also, the other shamans can chime in...but it seems your spirit/combat regen is high considering you're spec-ed Telluric Currents. Do you find that you have mana issues? Are you running out of mana? If so, then keep it as such. Otherwise, I'd change your reforge a bit...keep some of the crit and reforge spirit to mastery. There's really no point in being full on mana at the end of a fight. That's essentially wasted stats. Just my opinion...

[Hursey]

but to say that HW is completely useless is just sign of a bad healer.

Different styles of healing doesn't make anyone person good/bad or otherwise. Just Different.

And to tell the truth here. Right up to near the end of firelands I was pretty much exclusive HW, with GHW only in very rare emergancy situations. With the healing team I raided with this worked fine. Then the pally and disc preist that I ran with both decided to take a bit of a break, and we picked up a resto druid and a holy preist, I found what worked the week before didn't work any more. I had to change my spec, my reforge and my my healing style.

you can still find your LB moments in almost every fight if you need mana

This I don't understand so much though. Surely at DS gear levels HW would be near enough mana neutral that TC wouldn't be needed. The way I've always understood it is that TC with the HW style isn't required.

[sonarc]

This I don't understand so much though. Surely at DS gear levels HW would be near enough mana neutral that TC wouldn't be needed. The way I've always understood it is that TC with the HW style isn't required.

Using HW doesn't mean you ONLY use it and therefore dont need TC. That's not what I meant at all, in that case you might just as well replace yourself with a shadowpriest and end up with 40k dps AND the whopping 5k hps.. Of course you still use your stronger spells.

But what you said about raid composition is very true: healing with a holypala+disc is different from say rdruid+holypriest and your personal spell usage will differ when you swap classes. Pala+disc bring good direct heals, beacon, powerful absorbs and damage reduction cooldowns whereas rdruid+holypriest only bring HPS and great aoe healing cooldowns. This is why most raids prefer pala+disc+druid/shaman compositions. Synergy.

And to the guy who was asking for logs: Quickly checked some top guilds (paragon,method,security) latest logs and all their shamans find use for HW on bosses, not to mention trash. Of course it's not their most used spell nor it should be, but there is a time and place for everything .

[Alltat]

Healing Wave is basically useless in the current tier. It's a scaling issue. The more intellect you have, the better TC is and the worse HW is in comparison. Having more haste will also cost you TW uptime, which again makes HW worse in comparison to GHW.

Almost everywhere. If you are only healing the tank when he drops so low that GHW is your only option, you are doing it wrong and risking unnecessary deaths.

It's not about GHW being your "only" option. It's about GHW being your "best" option, which is true any time the tank actually needs healing. If the tank doesn't need a GHW, you don't need to heal them (keep in mind that GHW will only restore something like 25% of a tank's health). Regardless of your healer setup, there are going to be lots of different sources passively pumping in tank healing (Earth Shield, HoTs, AA procs, Healing Stream Totem, stray AoE healing, Beacon of Light, etc.), and casting a HW on a tank that's almost at full health will just result in those sources overhealing. You're just wasting mana (by not casting LB) and Tidal Waves stacks, which is going to get someone else killed.

The times when a tank absolutely needs to be at full health now are extremely rare (pretty much just Madness), and if that's the case then you should be casting GHW, just in case something hits between you starting the cast and it landing.

---------- Post added 2012-05-24 at 09:15 AM ----------

This I don't understand so much though. Surely at DS gear levels HW would be near enough mana neutral that TC wouldn't be needed. The way I've always understood it is that TC with the HW style isn't required.

The thing is that there is no reason to ever cast Healing Wave. It's less mana efficient than GHW if you can use the freed up time casting Lightning Bolt. So it heals for less and it costs more mana per point of healing done. There's no reason to ever use the spell. It's simply bad in every way. Any healing strategy you device that includes Healing Wave will be inferior to one that relies on GHW and TC instead. It's like Healing Surge, minus the fast cast time.

[sargis]

use maw i have a 390 or 396 healing set it probs for 6-20k healing very often but it may be bc im a shaman and it can proc off even hots and it may beenift from talents but i saw maw for that reason and when ur aoe healing it seems to proc off every few heals

[sonarc]

The thing is that there is no reason to ever cast Healing Wave. It's less mana efficient than GHW if you can use the freed up time casting Lightning Bolt. So it heals for less and it costs more mana per point of healing done. There's no reason to ever use the spell. It's simply bad in every way. Any healing strategy you device that includes Healing Wave will be inferior to one that relies on GHW and TC instead. It's like Healing Surge, minus the fast cast time.

You forget about the rest of your raid, or healers in particular, in your theorycrafting. You are not the only healer. You mentioned Madness (heroic) so I'm going to use it as an example here. Say someone gets crushed by a corruption: Using HW+riptide heals for a good amount, and then add the holylights/wogs/rejus/wg's/nourishes/pohs/renews whathaveyou by the other healers, and voilá: full or a nearly full player with hots on him to heal the little tick damage. And this costs you almost 50% less mana than a single GHW for the same cast time. Hell, you can STILL cast LB afterwards for mana and more healing rain. And this example is not even the best one seeing that the crushes do huge damage which might promote GHW usage in many cases.

But the thing is, you can't just think about your own heals and how fast you can top someone off: you must factor the others healers in and be as efficient as possible while keeping people alive. Healing is not dps'ing . Of course if your only goal is to top them farm raid meters, by all means spam away but when it comes to progressing you'd be a fool to just discard healing wave.

[Mavalynn]

I definitely disagree with the posts on HW and it being useless. I use it when it's right. For example, if the only one taking damage is the tank...I spam HW. Why? Because it's a filler. I'm at full mana, or near full and it's what I do to keep the tank topped off with all the other healers. If I waited for the tank to be low enough to efficiently use a greater heal, I'd be standing there doing nothing while the other healers kept him topped off. I'm of the belief to always be casting - and the cheapest heal to use for this method is HW.

[mjolnrir]

If I waited for the tank to be low enough to efficiently use a greater heal, I'd be standing there doing nothing while the other healers kept him topped off. I'm of the belief to always be casting - and the cheapest heal to use for this method is HW.

Not true. As a shaman you should always be casting, thats a general rule. My way of healing would be to keep a healing rain down below the tank and a riptide rolling. This is enough to keep him topped off itself aswell as all the melee who may get hit by a cleave or an aoe spell. Whilst you have nothing else to do you then start casting lightning bolts. This keeps the whole raid topped off pretty well aswell as gaining mana in the process.

Healing is not dps'ing

Ofc its not dpsing, but every little dps helps. Ive wiped on a boss plenty of times at 1 or 2% and regretted not dealing even a bit more dps. If theres no need to heal, as in heals which would result in overhealing then you should start dpsing even just a little bit. Im easily dealing 4k dps in a fight and that all helps. Its a bit like, you could place a flametongue totem but you already have a mage in a group for the sp bonus. So instead you could use your fire elemental totem or searing totem. It deals alot more dps than you might think and definitly helps the raid more than overhealing or a useless totem

Using HW+riptide heals for a good amount, and then add the holylights/wogs/rejus/wg's/nourishes/pohs/renews whathaveyou by the other healers

True that could probably get someone up and definitly on hc madness you can probably rely on that. But what if your healers were to slow in casting that heal? You cant rely on your other healers, if someone is going to die if he gets hit again, you need to get him up as fast as possible instead of hoping your other healers would catch him. Also in your example on madness if the tank did fall that quick, it would either be from an impale which you can precast to instantly get him back to full hp, or you would probably use a ns ghw and get him back up in a fraction of the time.

[Mavalynn]

Not true. As a shaman you should always be casting, thats a general rule. My way of healing would be to keep a healing rain down below the tank and a riptide rolling. This is enough to keep him topped off itself aswell as all the melee who may get hit by a cleave or an aoe spell. Whilst you have nothing else to do you then start casting lightning bolts. This keeps the whole raid topped off pretty well aswell as gaining mana in the process.

I don't really understand how what I said is "not true". I said that the cheapest heal to use with the method of "ABC" healing is to use HW. Yes, there are other things you can do if it makes sense - drop a healing rain, roll riptides, etc. My point is...HW is not useless. It serves a purpose. I just disagree with posters saying that it shouldn't even be on your castbar.

And when I'm in my raid group with one melee dropping a healing rain under the tank, when the melee isn't missing in hp...is inefficient. I'd rather just cast HW between rolling riptides.

[Rustjive]

And to the guy who was asking for logs: Quickly checked some top guilds (paragon,method,security) latest logs and all their shamans find use for HW on bosses, not to mention trash. Of course it's not their most used spell nor it should be, but there is a time and place for everything .

This is not what you were saying before.

That "GHW+2xLB" math may look somewhat valid for someone who hasn't never healed in his life, but everyone who has will know that this doesnt apply to realistic raid situations.

This is the important line. It is not 'somewhat valid' - it is used far more often than HW.

In addition, yeah, top players might still use Healing Wave, but the situation is so niche it is considered basically irrelevant. Their use of Healing Wave is either a signal of a) they don't care or b) they're not playing perfectly. Just look at the overheal on HW. Kahva from Paragon's latest log: 58.8% overheal (and it was cast 114 times in boss fights). Luumis from Vodka, 59.8% overheal on HW, cast 39 times. Zetti from Method, 5 casts, 67.5% overheal. Right off the bat you can eliminate a ton of casts as being useful. Look at ANY log from a top shaman with Healing Wave casts, look at the overheal, and try to justify the usefulness/GCD wasted. You cannot do it.

Finally, your other argument is that healing comps matter, and so sometimes it is on the Shaman to do the topping. False. Unless your comp is Disc + RSham every other spec will do topping automatically, whether it be via HoTs, AoE healing, or things like Beacon.

Edit: In addition, think about encounter design this tier, and how the damage comes in. Is Healing Wave the type of heal that has a proper usage during any of encounters? Certainly not for Morchok (stomps/crystals), Zon'ozz (black, disrupting shadows, ball), Yor'sahj (purple, stack for red, etc), Hagara (ice lances, coming out of Ice Tombs, shattered ice, standing in the middle during ice, or running), Ultraxion (all AoE), Spine (AoE healing, clear LB spam time during tendons) or Madness (where there are very clear times for burst healing and LB spam). For Blackhorn, it's possible. But the fact of the matter is that every situation where you would HW you would probably be better off LBing and then precasting a GHW in anticipation of damage.

[sonarc]

My goodness Rustjive you have some serious reading comprehension issues.

This is not what you were saying before.

That's exactly what I have been saying all the time. I have never said to REPLACE GHW with HW. I have simply urged not to ignore HW entirely: GHW and TC are most amazing abilities you of course should take advantage of.

Finally, your other argument is that healing comps matter, and so sometimes it is on the Shaman to do the topping. False. Unless your comp is Disc + RSham every other spec will do topping automatically, whether it be via HoTs, AoE healing, or things like Beacon.

Again, not what I said. I simply stated that healing comps vary, and depending which specs you heal with your own spell usage in different situations may vary as well, that's just common sense.

In addition, yeah, top players might still use Healing Wave, but the situation is so niche it is considered basically irrelevant. Their use of Healing Wave is either a signal of a) they don't care or b) they're not playing perfectly. Just look at the overheal on HW. Kahva from Paragon's latest log: 58.8% overheal (and it was cast 114 times in boss fights). Luumis from Vodka, 59.8% overheal on HW, cast 39 times. Zetti from Method, 5 casts, 67.5% overheal. Right off the bat you can eliminate a ton of casts as being useful. Look at ANY log from a top shaman with Healing Wave casts, look at the overheal, and try to justify the usefulness/GCD wasted. You cannot do it.

Yes, Kahva has 60% overheal on HW, but he also has 40% overheal on GHW. If you take a closer look at the logs, majority of his healing waves are on the tanks, which just suggests mindless HW spamming on full hp tanks. Now we all can imagine what paragon's main raids are like at the moment (boooring farm) so you can't really blame him for that though .

And then you can look at the other top shamans: Method's shaman 21% overheal on HW, 30% on GHW. Envy's shaman 28% overheal on HW, 35% on GHW. Now same thing, probably boring raids atm but imagine they were progressing and in the casts they overhealed with GHW, they would have chosen HW or HW+riptide: target still would go full or nearly full hp with a hot for significantly lower mana cost instead of overhealing with GHW and burning mana for no reason. Efficiency is everything when progressing through hard bosses with lower level gear. I simply can't understand how you can be so narrowminded when it comes to HW and would blindly follow math and theorycrafting like we are talking about DPS'ing.