Chain Heal usease in 10 men and AOE healing

[Deleted]

Hello all.

I've recently re-rolled resto shaman mainly due to fatigue of being a dpser all the time. I spent a lot of time trying to decide wich healer to go and after trying them all up to level 80 i've decided that resto shaman is more "fun" at least for now.

My main problem is AOE healing. Chain heal seems like its designed as the "go-to spell" when AOE is coming to the party but i find it not very efective at all since its very very hard to check realy quickly wich targets will be affected by it due to its low jump range.

I've also tried the glyph but the 4second cooldown makes it that when burst AOE damage comes i cannot rely (again) in chain heal due to its low HPS on secondary targets (Even with riptide 25% buff) meaning i would have to cast it twice in sucession but due to the glyph that doesnt work since it has a 4s CD.


Puzzled by my problems with this spell i was checking videos of 10 men kills and to my amazement not a single video i checked the resto shaman was using chain heal more a couple times PER FIGHT! (!!!).


Is this spell realy this bad in 5 men/10 men to the point that nobody uses it more than a couple times per fight? is this a 25 men-only spell that is realy terrible in everything else?


Resto shaman seems an amazingly fun spec to play besides chain heal :\ if chain heal would work in 5/10 men this spec would be perfect. Any hint? am i wrong and chain heal does have its purpose in 5/10 ?

Thkx.

[Rykkuu]

To clarify, healing rain is your go to AOE heal.

For chain heal, it's uses are very limited. Aside from ascendance. While not in ascendance you should only use chain heal in certain situations, and rarely spam it. Chain heal is a niche spell that carries it's uses well, but those uses are few and far between. Any fight where you are considerably stacked with decent AOE damage but not worthy of major cooldowns, chain heal is superior to most others for burst AOE healing.

During ascendance, chain heal's use is drastically superior. Any fight where you stack you can easily use it but chain heal's range issue has it's downfall. Generally on a standard boss you can expect both tanks and 2 melee to be in range for an effecient heal. However do not expect to use it very often.

[Puupi]

It is unfortunately true that Chain Heal is quite crap at the moment, especially in low ilvl gear. CH scales rather well with spellpower, but I think Blizzard should really buff it. At one point in our progression, I was comparing Chain Heal and Disc Priests PoH: the mana cost is about the same, but PoH heals for about 500k per cast, CH 130k... and it even needs a target with riptide on him.

A rather easy "fix" for Chain Heal would be letting Ancestral Awakening proc from Chain Heal, too. Other solutions could be lowering cast time, making the 100% increased glyph radius baseline or increasing the healing by 100% and mana cost by 50%.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: And yes, its' use is very situational. Just a spot filler heal here and there, or spam for a while when you need static AoE healing in a tight group, or spam it while Ascendance (where it actually works just fine).

[Deleted]

since its very very hard to check realy quickly wich targets will be affected by it due to its low jump range.

This is easy to fix with vuhdo or grid.

[Deleted]

I find it's quite useful for the first first boss on Spirit Kings. But other from that I find it more or less useless. I use it here and there to get some tidal waves procs, when my RT is on CD, but apart from that. Healing rain is where it's at!

[Deleted]

I find it's quite useful for the first first boss on Spirit Kings. But other from that I find it more or less useless. I use it here and there to get some tidal waves procs, when my RT is on CD, but apart from that. Healing rain is where it's at!

An easy fix would be to make synergy between healing rain and chain heal, perhaps buff chain heal by a large percentage to the targets already afflicted by healing rain... would kinda make a "rotation" of AOE healing between healing rain + riptide + chain heal as filler for a juicy chain heal. Perhaps even lower chain heal base healing so that its only worth casting if riptide for the 25% and healing rain are up on the targets, and increase its jump range to the glyph counterpart. I guess it would balance it out somewhat.


oh well it's just disapointing that my favourite spell of a class that i wanted to try for so many years it's at the end situational at best and crap at most times.
I play dps classes for 8 years now and chain heal was always an iconic spell for me seeing other shamans use and that realy MAKES the shaman diferent. Always wanted to try it out and now that i'm trying it out i can't help but feel disapointed lol.

[Tiberria]

Chain Heal isn't even particularly good in 25 mans either. The mana that you burn relative to how much healing you get from it makes it more something to use when you have excess mana to burn. Healing Wave spam is only slightly less HPS and significantly more HPM, so you often are better off just doing that as a filler rather than Chain Heal.

If they want to buff Shaman output at any point, Chain Heal would be the obvious place to put it.

[Deleted]

It confuses me when players say they use Chain Heal to generate Tidal Waves when Riptide is on cooldown. If you're out of TW, and cast CH, by the time you finish casting it Riptide will invariably be back up, no? And as riptide should be cast on CD in almost every situation, CH-generated TWs are almost always instantly overwritten by Riptide-generated TWs. What am I missing?

[Dunkman]

It confuses me when players say they use Chain Heal to generate Tidal Waves when Riptide is on cooldown. If you're out of TW, and cast CH, by the time you finish casting it Riptide will invariably be back up, no? And as riptide should be cast on CD in almost every situation, CH-generated TWs are almost always instantly overwritten by Riptide-generated TWs. What am I missing?

Short answer is sometimes there isn't always a good target for RT after the tanks and unless everyone is really topped off a CH with the glyph does pretty well. I rarely run without the glyph in 10m these days.

[Deleted]

How often does that happen though; to have 4 suitable CH targets but 0 suitable riptide targets? It seems so contrived...

[Rorschachs]

It is unfortunately true that Chain Heal is quite crap at the moment, especially in low ilvl gear. CH scales rather well with spellpower, but I think Blizzard should really buff it. At one point in our progression, I was comparing Chain Heal and Disc Priests PoH: the mana cost is about the same, but PoH heals for about 500k per cast, CH 130k... and it even needs a target with riptide on him.

A rather easy "fix" for Chain Heal would be letting Ancestral Awakening proc from Chain Heal, too. Other solutions could be lowering cast time, making the 100% increased glyph radius baseline or increasing the healing by 100% and mana cost by 50%.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: And yes, its' use is very situational. Just a spot filler heal here and there, or spam for a while when you need static AoE healing in a tight group, or spam it while Ascendance (where it actually works just fine).

If you count the absorbs poh heals for about 250k not 500k and I think chain heal heals for less than 130k too.

I think the role of shamans is single target healing most of the time in 10man. But still always take as much as advantage as you can from healing rain. Chain heal only if the raid is stacked and there is constant aoe damage. Don't always cast chain heal on targets with riptide even if they are topped because its less hps that way.

Be a quick tank healer so the other healers in your group can focus on aoe healing because obviously other than casting healing rain you can't really help with aoe heal that much.(and being a quick tank healer means you get more benefit from mastery)

[Puupi]

If you count the absorbs poh heals for about 250k not 500k and I think chain heal heals for less than 130k too.

Just checked the logs from my healing partner disc priest. His PoH hits on average of 40k. He has around 25% crit and 50% mastery. 40k x 5 x 1,25 = 250k which is the base heal. Now the absorbs: 250k x (0,50 x 1,50) = 187,5k. So 250k+187,5k= 437,5k per cast. On average.

PS: Does a critting PoH add double divine aegis? If it does, it's even more per cast.

EDIT: And chain heal numbers are a bit harder to evaluate as it's so dependant on the target it is cast on. ie. (tank with 10% hp, riptide and earth shield up, unleashed chain heal) vs. full hp random dps with 95% hp without riptide. The difference is like 500k vs 40k (arbitrary numbers)

[Deleted]

Short answer is sometimes there isn't always a good target for RT after the tanks and unless everyone is really topped off a CH with the glyph does pretty well. I rarely run without the glyph in 10m these days.

You made my day by making absolutely zero sense. Love you!