Healing Tide Totem vs Ascendance for Elemental

[Aphtae]

I'm torn on this. HTT is a set it and forget it feature, and the healing seems to be competitive in most cases with AG. However, the 3 min CD vs AG 2 min, and the potential for AG to have a higher HPS output is keeping me up at night D:. As I understand, HTT is a true smart heal and AG just jumps to injured players, not necessarily the most injured. HTT = 5 players healed at a time, AG = 3. For obvious reasons some fights will benefit greatly from a HTT due to low dmg output potential. But for everything else? Toon is Melioidosis on Mannoroth-US.

[Taalyn]

Ancestral Guidance is a talent, Ascendance is a spell all Shamans get.

[Deleted]

AG is on top in all situations, unless you need a healing cooldown during phase where you cannot DPS at all. The amount of healing that TH does as elemental is pitiful and if I remember correctly, a single AG does more as early as 470-ish ilvl. And that's not taking in to account a 2 minute cooldown vs 3 minutes.

[Aphtae]

Sorry for the mistype, Asc should be AG in title.

---------- Post added 2013-03-24 at 01:00 PM ----------

I'm currently at 515 ilvl, and with HTT scaling with SP, each time I pop it I would get 800k-1mil healing. If I were to line up my Asc w/ AG (probably where the original mistype came from, wires crossing ftw) during increased dmg (buff/hero), of course it would outheal HTT, but that's only certain occasions.

[Deleted]

I'm currently at 515 ilvl, and with HTT scaling with SP, each time I pop it I would get 800k-1mil healing.

1m healing with AG would mean ~83k DPS for its duration, 10 seconds. It's not huge. On top of that, AG is not on the GCD and is usable more often.

HTT is great for situations where you can't DPS, but AG is the winner overall.

[kosajk]

its easy to check which will be beter numbers wise, when you pop AG 40% of your dmg is converted to heal on 3 friendly targets which makes 120% of your dps = hps for 10 sec now answer yourself how much dps you are doing

[Aleksej89]

AG always provides more healing in my experience (for Enha and Elem), and it does not cost a GCD plus it scales better.

[Deleted]

it mostly depends on the encounter - if you need the lower cd to heal more often, or you need the healing during a phase where you can do good dps or even line it up with ascendence - then guidance is the way to go. if you need the healing during a phase where you cant guarantee good dps and you need reliable healing, then go with tide.

[Draenox]

Quoted from elitistjerks.com:

Ancestral Guidance vs. Healing Tide Totem


For references I will take this 463 gear profile.
I'll go with the Echo_UF profile, which has a pretty constant damage output with around 17.000 SP.

HTT
Heals up to 5 people for 11 seconds and ticks every 2 seconds. Therefore maximum 30 ticks.
Each tick is about 4932+48.4% of SP, which is close to 13,230
13,230x30 is nearly 400,000 in 11 seconds with 3min cooldown.
short term 36,363 HPS; long term 2222 HPS

AG
Heals up to 3 people for 10 seconds for 40% of your damage.
With average of 64k dps this ends up as (64,000x10x0.4)x3 = 256,000x3 = 768,000 healing in 10 seconds with 2min cooldown.
short term 76,800 HPS; long term 6400 HPS


AG comes out clearly on top, even without any consideration of scaling or AoE situations or damage increasing mechanics.
Note that this isn't 100% correct, as a part of our damage comes from pets/totems etc, so it may not be copied.

That is in a 463 ilvl profile, and it already comes out nearly 3 times as good as HT at that point, so it is even better with current-content gear. Plus you can pop it together with DPS cooldowns, further increasing it's worth.

As others have said, the only place where HT would come out on top is in phases where you cant do any dps at all.

I think I remember reading somewhere that, in order for AG to outperform HT as Elemental or Enhancement, you would need an average of 42220 DPS during AG's duration. I can't find the source sadly, but pretending it's correct, that requirement is so low that you can do it in entry-gear for heroic dungeons