Replace healers with enhance possible?

[Rabian]

Recently hit 90 on my shammy, using arena gear for LFR tonight. After placing second on both damage and healing at the same time on bosses it makes me wonder if it would be possible to do a raid with only enhance shamans as healers, the output is crazy and I am still in pretty crappy gear. Or would there not be enough single target heals to keep the tanks up?

[Aoek1]

only effective if the entire raid stacks for everything all the time, mechanics will prevent that.

[Gneisha]

I have mostly 522 gear, with a few heroic or thunderforged pieces. I drop instant healing rains and use healing tide when I feel the healers could use a little help (or when they call for my cooldown). I don't even come close to them in terms of healing done.

You need to remember that you were in LFR, with LFR healers and LFR dps. No, it's not really viable to replace dedicated healers with enhancement shamans. For old content, sure - it's not like a lot of heals are needed anyway. For relevant stuff? Nope. We'd never keep the tanks up. We'd never be able to hit all the ranged when they're not stacked with melee. And your dps would suffer a fair amount when you're using all your maelstrom stacks on healing spells instead of lightning bolt (or chain lightning).

Maybe - maybe - a group with extremely talented, extremely well geared players (mostly heroic gear) doing normal modes (or flex), maybe they could pull it off. Certainly it could be a fun challenge.

[Deleted]

Well if you want to maximize heal, you could glyph chain heal and use it always with 4-5 maelstrom weapon stacks (if you don't need it for HR). For LFR healing, this might be enough.

In normal raiding, you can only support a real healer - though there's a point where say an encounter needs only one and a half healer and then, an enhancer could be that half healer, especially when thebig healing phase is a stacked group.

[Rabian]

Ok, thanks for the input. Perhaps a 10 man could work with a pally and two enh shammies as the heals?

[Gneisha]

Ok, thanks for the input. Perhaps a 10 man could work with a pally and two enh shammies as the heals?

Big maybe, imo. If it's a fight where the mechanics call for everyone to stack up, it's possible. If there's a lot of spreading out, not so much.

Of course, I could be wrong - I raid in a 25 man group, so we generally have 5 healers at least.

[Darksoldierr]

Its up to the boss fight, if its a spread out fight, enhance won't have any healing. In LFR, everyone is literally stacked together, thus making enhance look godlike. There are only few fights on normal and heroic, that make us shine as much.

[Deleted]

Ok, thanks for the input. Perhaps a 10 man could work with a pally and two enh shammies as the heals?

Well first of all, you should take Ancestral Guidance, not HTT. Drop a HR with 5x MW, use AG, at best with EM (+ Ascendance) and you get some crazy healing output (i do e.g. 5 Mios per use of AG that way). AG is a lot better for offhealing right now, especially when at the same time, the healing rain heals a lot of people.

Pala + 2 Enh heals might work, if the group is somewhat overgeared. But there are points like Lei Shen where healing is necessary, but noone to attack - meaning you get no MW, you go oom. Having an enhancer and an elemental shaman looks better to me (or shadow or boomkin).

[Gneisha]

Well first of all, you should take Ancestral Guidance, not HTT.

I take whichever works better for the fight. Sometimes you need those clutch heals but can't hit anything. Both have their good and bad points.

It means everything is working as intended.

[snaxattax]

enhance shaman are really, really strong for healing melee (mostly in 25 mans where you have a significant amount of melee+tanks/MWs that can mostly be standing in your healing rain) and for fights which encourage raid stacking (like megaera). in PTR, they're getting healing tide totem as well, so they'll have even crazier healing potential. the way flurry interracts with their spells is sick, and that maelstrom weapon healing glyph is just icing on the cake.

[Deleted]

I take whichever works better for the fight. Sometimes you need those clutch heals but can't hit anything. Both have their good and bad points.

It means everything is working as intended.

But well, okay, i always run with enough healers, but i think there's no scenario where i can't hit anything and need some burst healing. Which encouters do you actually mean? I might think about transit phases in Lei Shen, thoough the group healing support in 90% of the fight is somewhat more important. That's it.

On asidenote, HTT is very very weak right now. AG can output 6 mios + it has a lower cd, while HTT always stays under 1 mios. It's easy to say that AG used like i do is 5-10 times better than HTT.

[Embermoon]

Recently hit 90 on my shammy, using arena gear for LFR tonight. After placing second on both damage and healing at the same time on bosses it makes me wonder if it would be possible to do a raid with only enhance shamans as healers, the output is crazy and I am still in pretty crappy gear. Or would there not be enough single target heals to keep the tanks up?

I just ran a Magaera normal, with another guild, as a fill-in. They only had two heals that night, and asked me to swap to resto. I did 65k hps on the meters in my fail resto gear, but then they didn't have the dps, so they asked me to go back to enhancement. There I did 62k hps on the meters, while topping dps.

Despite how that looks on the meters, I wouldn't be likely to recommend swapping MS healers out for enhancement, on normal content. For one, Magaera is a gimmick fight, where our HR has the opportunity to shine this way. Second, even with putting out "big numbers," all I was really doing was blanketing the raid, which let the other 2 healers handle the tanks a little bit better. We still barely got the fight down, with half the raid dead. If I didn't have AG and BL both available for the last head, it would have been a wipe.

[Pitkanen]

enhancement has a 10 second window of powerful healing, otherwise they blanket heal people standing in a limited position. The good news is that they basically just lose their weakest GCD ability to do it.
You can't replace all your healers with them. Because enhancement's ability to tank heal and spread heal is not powerful enough. My guess is that you'll likely see a few top end guilds at least try to replace 1-2 healers with 2-3 enh in 25 man content just to cover melee while boosting raid dps.

[Raiju]

I take whichever works better for the fight. Sometimes you need those clutch heals but can't hit anything. Both have their good and bad points.

It means everything is working as intended.

AG works better for pretty much everything except lei shen transitions.

@OP if the magic fight exists where normal tactics involve stacking ultraxion style, enh shaman can practically be another healer. I can happily do 50k+ hps with the healing rain + HST when everyone is stacked, but no fight really allows for it.

@Pitkanen I believe you mean strongest GCD ability. MW5LB is only really topped by SS (and you shouldn't be putting yourself in a position where you have to choose with those 2 either in T15)

[takolin]

AG works better for pretty much everything except lei shen transitions.

@OP if the magic fight exists where normal tactics involve stacking ultraxion style, enh shaman can practically be another healer. I can happily do 50k+ hps with the healing rain + HST when everyone is stacked, but no fight really allows for it.

@Pitkanen I believe you mean strongest GCD ability. MW5LB is only really topped by SS (and you shouldn't be putting yourself in a position where you have to choose with those 2 either in T15)

That's not exactly true. FS, LL, SS and stormblast all do more damage/GCD than a single LB. Only UE and ES do less damage/GCD. The reason you delay SS and LL for LB is the fact that over the coarse of an encounter you can squeeze out more damage by using LB first as you'll use more of then to overcome the inherent weaker damage.

[Raiju]

That's not exactly true. FS, LL, SS and stormblast all do more damage/GCD than a single LB. Only UE and ES do less damage/GCD. The reason you delay SS and LL for LB is the fact that over the coarse of an encounter you can squeeze out more damage by using LB first as you'll use more of then to overcome the inherent weaker damage.

I don't remember saying strongest damage, I said strongest GCD (using their own words). Maybe most important is more accurate but while you're being pedantic he is telling others that MW5LB's are filler.

[Vvulf]

If you are looking for the truly OP spec when it comes to DPS and healing output ... look no further than Discipline Priests.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2...?s=3591&e=3969

192k effective HPS
51k effective DPS

[Embermoon]

If you are looking for the truly OP spec when it comes to DPS and healing output ... look no further than Discipline Priests.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2...?s=3591&e=3969

192k effective HPS
51k effective DPS

And if you reverse those values, then you have enhancement shaman, and possibly shadow priests, as well. Which is more OP? Why are any of the 3 OP?

[Nitwit]

I take whichever works better for the fight. Sometimes you need those clutch heals but can't hit anything. Both have their good and bad points.

It means everything is working as intended.

AG will do more healing than HTT even if you can't hit anything. Drop a HR and pop AG.

[Tziva]

Part of the reason Resto is weak right now is because there is not a lot of stacked fights. An enhance shaman would face the same issues since that's the only sustained healing they can do. Might be OP when stacked but near useless aside from limited burst when spread, which doesn't make them a very appealing healer.

The bigger issue for me is that typically players want to either DPS or heal and do it well, they don't really want to do both in a mediocre way. The healing-minded player will eventually get frustrated with their lack of toolbox as enhance, and the DPS-oriented player will probably get annoyed they are coming in last on DPS every fight because they're having to spend a lot of time and procs on healing. Unless this was a fun "LOL lets see if we can do it" experiment with friends (or as a supplemental heal in a 25), I would be really wary about signing off on such a comp.

And if you reverse those values, then you have enhancement shaman, and possibly shadow priests, as well. Which is more OP? Why are any of the 3 OP?

I know enhance is very strong offhealing while stacked but spriest healing is not super great anymore, at least not compared to the past. In BC I would often beat some of the healers. In Wrath, I'd be under the healers but barely. Now I am no where near the healers, below the tanks, and am lucky if I beat some of the better self-healing classes (looking at the last non-LFR raid fight I did as shadow, I did 6% of the healing - half of what the best tank did, who did half of what the healer above him did).