Resto - couple of questions

[Ham on Rye]

This is my first tier on a resto shaman main. I'm doing well, and we're 6/13 heroic 25 so far, but I know I can still do better. I'm hoping to get some advice on the following three things:

1) Ascendance usage - when you pop Ascendance, what should I be casting. I have Spiritwalker's Grace macroed into it and I've been spamming Healing Surge for 10 seconds, but I can't imagine that's the best thing to do.

2) Those of you that are Tailors - should I be switching from Darkglow embroidery to Lightweave embroidery? I've got 14.5k spirit unbuffed right now, and I think it's plenty for what we're up to for the most part.

3) I know I should be bouncing my Chain Heal off someone with Riptide to give it the healing boost, but in 25 man it always seems like the person by the time I cast Riptide and then start casting a Chain Heal, that person with Riptide is healed up to full by the time I can get the Chain Heal cast off. Is it that important to do all the time, or should prioritize the more damaged people without Riptides over the less damaged people that have a Riptide?

[Madelein]

This is my first tier on a resto shaman main. I'm doing well, and we're 6/13 heroic 25 so far, but I know I can still do better. I'm hoping to get some advice on the following three things:

1) Ascendance usage - when you pop Ascendance, what should I be casting. I have Spiritwalker's Grace macroed into it and I've been spamming Healing Surge for 10 seconds, but I can't imagine that's the best thing to do.

2) Those of you that are Tailors - should I be switching from Darkglow embroidery to Lightweave embroidery? I've got 14.5k spirit unbuffed right now, and I think it's plenty for what we're up to for the most part.

3) I know I should be bouncing my Chain Heal off someone with Riptide to give it the healing boost, but in 25 man it always seems like the person by the time I cast Riptide and then start casting a Chain Heal, that person with Riptide is healed up to full by the time I can get the Chain Heal cast off. Is it that important to do all the time, or should prioritize the more damaged people without Riptides over the less damaged people that have a Riptide?

1) Ascendance - drop healing rain on raiders (like stacked melee or stacked raid) and chain heal if 3+ people close enough together. If you have the ability to use 2 healing c/d's at once and your RL does not require you to space them out, Ascendance, Healing Rain, Spirit Link Totem and spam chain heal. What I do is I drop my healing rain and then I use Ascendance and chain heal and I will save my Ancestral swiftness and drop healing rain just before ascendance runs out.

2) If you are comfortable with what you have, it's fine.

3) Riptide makes your chain heal heal for more. It is a smart heal. So if you use it on someone who has the riptide buff and they have been topped off, it's usually fine as it will automatically jump to the person with the lower health so long as they are in range. Should you try to have riptide on your CH target as much as possible? Yes. Is it a crime if you don't? No.

[Deleted]

1) Use unleash elements and drop healing rain just before you ascend.

2) I keep spirit proc, and drop spirit from gear instead.

3) Hps wise, healing 4 people with unboosted CH is slightly better than healing 3 people with boosted CH. But the difference is small, so once you start casting CH don't cancel the cast if your target gets topped off mid-cast.

[Ham on Rye]

1) Ascendance - drop healing rain on raiders (like stacked melee or stacked raid) and chain heal if 3+ people close enough together. If you have the ability to use 2 healing c/d's at once and your RL does not require you to space them out, Ascendance, Healing Rain, Spirit Link Totem and spam chain heal. What I do is I drop my healing rain and then I use Ascendance and chain heal and I will save my Ancestral swiftness and drop healing rain just before ascendance runs out.

Hmmm... maybe my mistake is running with the Chain Heal glyph then.

Thank you

[Tiberria]

This is my first tier on a resto shaman main. I'm doing well, and we're 6/13 heroic 25 so far, but I know I can still do better. I'm hoping to get some advice on the following three things:

1) Ascendance usage - when you pop Ascendance, what should I be casting. I have Spiritwalker's Grace macroed into it and I've been spamming Healing Surge for 10 seconds, but I can't imagine that's the best thing to do.

2) Those of you that are Tailors - should I be switching from Darkglow embroidery to Lightweave embroidery? I've got 14.5k spirit unbuffed right now, and I think it's plenty for what we're up to for the most part.

3) I know I should be bouncing my Chain Heal off someone with Riptide to give it the healing boost, but in 25 man it always seems like the person by the time I cast Riptide and then start casting a Chain Heal, that person with Riptide is healed up to full by the time I can get the Chain Heal cast off. Is it that important to do all the time, or should prioritize the more damaged people without Riptides over the less damaged people that have a Riptide?

1. ULE - HR immediately before casting Ascendance and you preferably want to have your Fire or Earth Elemental totem buff up as well. Spamming Chain Heal off a Riptide target is higher Ascendance HPS than Healing Surge if the CH will hit 3+ targets. At 10 seconds, when HR comes off cooldown, use Ancestral Swiftness to instant cast a second HR (don't bother waiting to line it up with ULE).

2. If you don't need the regen, then switch to Lightweave or alternately just drop more Spirit from gear and keep Lightweave. I'd actually recommend dropping tailoring altogether; if you don't need the Spirit proc, it becomes weaker than every other profession, because random INT procs are undesirable for healing, and you are already giving up 180 INT to cloak to get your tailoring enchant in the first place.

3. CH off a Riptide target where the first target is 100% overheal = 1.25+1.25+1.25 = 3.75
CH off a non Riptide target = 1+1+1+1=4
The difference is extremely small, so it doesn't matter that much either way.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmmm... maybe my mistake is running with the Chain Heal glyph then.

Thank you

Yes - there is almost no reason to use the Chaining glyph in 25 man, because you will almost never have an issue hitting 4 targets with CH. There isn't a single SOO fight that I use it for.

[Shockeye]

Glyph of Chaining is more suited for 10 man or flex where people are spread enough that the extra jump length is very handy.

[Ham on Rye]

Glyph of Chaining is more suited for 10 man or flex where people are spread enough that the extra jump length is very handy.

Yep, I know, but I always felt like it was still being productive since we seemed to be spread out around the room a lot. But the ability to spam it during high damage might be more useful.

- - - Updated - - -

1. ULE - HR immediately before casting Ascendance and you preferably want to have your Fire or Earth Elemental totem buff up as well. Spamming Chain Heal off a Riptide target is higher Ascendance HPS than Healing Surge if the CH will hit 3+ targets. At 10 seconds, when HR comes off cooldown, use Ancestral Swiftness to instant cast a second HR (don't bother waiting to line it up with ULE).

2. If you don't need the regen, then switch to Lightweave or alternately just drop more Spirit from gear and keep Lightweave. I'd actually recommend dropping tailoring altogether; if you don't need the Spirit proc, it becomes weaker than every other profession, because random INT procs are undesirable for healing, and you are already giving up 180 INT to cloak to get your tailoring enchant in the first place.

3. CH off a Riptide target where the first target is 100% overheal = 1.25+1.25+1.25 = 3.75
CH off a non Riptide target = 1+1+1+1=4
The difference is extremely small, so it doesn't matter that much either way.

Yes - there is almost no reason to use the Chaining glyph in 25 man, because you will almost never have an issue hitting 4 targets with CH. There isn't a single SOO fight that I use it for.

Thanks much, Tiberria. I'll keep all that in mind.

The reason I hadn't switched to Lightweave already is because of just what you said - Int procs are not great for healers. I'll see how hard it will be to level something new on my backwater server (mats on the AH not easy to come by), or maybe I'll just drop some extra spirit off my gear and replace it with throughput.

[Deleted]

Yes - there is almost no reason to use the Chaining glyph in 25 man, because you will almost never have an issue hitting 4 targets with CH. There isn't a single SOO fight that I use it for.

Actually, with a melee-heavy setup, Malkorok tends to favour the glyph a lot. I noticed up to 50% increase in Chainheal healing done while using that glyph on that particular fight. Which is pretty irritating because you aren't used to cd on Chainheal

[Ham on Rye]

Actually, with a melee-heavy setup, Malkorok tends to favour the glyph a lot. I noticed up to 50% increase in Chainheal healing done while using that glyph on that particular fight. Which is pretty irritating because you aren't used to cd on Chainheal

I can't tell you how many times I have spammed chain heal in a raid only to do nothing, because of the cooldown. I might just remove the glyph because of that.

[Deleted]

To expand what Tib said about Chainheal: you can also Chainheal through Earthshielded tank. As long as Riptide is on that tank, the 3 bounces will have higher potential healing than 4 unbuffed ones, + there's a chance tank will get a hit that you might also heal.

The downside is, there are fights where the tank is not going to be in range for the bounce to happen, so you need to know when you can do that.

About chainheal glyph: pair it with Riptide one. Alternate RT/CH/RT/CH and you'll be fine.

[Tiberria]

Actually, with a melee-heavy setup, Malkorok tends to favour the glyph a lot. I noticed up to 50% increase in Chainheal healing done while using that glyph on that particular fight. Which is pretty irritating because you aren't used to cd on Chainheal

Malkorok logs in general are very deceiving and not particularly useful to evaluate the effectiveness of healing, because certain things count as 100% effective healing on full shield targets (like Renewing Mists/Uplift and all targeted HoTs and direct heals) and certain other things (like Healing Rain) count as 100% overheal on the same targets and/or favor healing pets over players with full shields. It's almost impossible with logs to really evaluate what healing is real healing (i.e. healing that is actually topping off shields that aren't capped) and what healing is just padding on full value shields that the logs pick up as effective healing. Monks only look good on this fight because 100% of their healing is credited as effective when the bulk of it is useless.

The most effective output on that fight is probably glyphed Riptide spam, because Riptide counts as 0% overheal typically and because the nature of the ticking raidwide AoE damage on shields makes HoTs very effective for this fight.

[Deleted]

To expand what Tib said about Chainheal: you can also Chainheal through Earthshielded tank. As long as Riptide is on that tank, the 3 bounces will have higher potential healing than 4 unbuffed ones,

Incorrect. ES heal bonus will only apply to ES-ed target and not to any subsequent jumps.

[Deleted]

Yes, but its still the same Chainheal. Glyph doesnt change its behaviour, it just makes it jump longer distance. I did testing on Malkorok and indeed, if your raid composition consitutes of too few ranged players, Chainheal will NOT bounce 4 times (sometimes won't bounce at all!). So while the logs are decieving indeed, i still think glyph is the way to go for this particular fight. And yes, Riptide is priceless here (and in few other fights as well, Thok comes to mind), hence i advise it despite the minor hps loss it induces.

[Tiberria]

Yes, but its still the same Chainheal. Glyph doesnt change its behaviour, it just makes it jump longer distance. I did testing on Malkorok and indeed, if your raid composition consitutes of too few ranged players, Chainheal will NOT bounce 4 times (sometimes won't bounce at all!). So while the logs are decieving indeed, i still think glyph is the way to go for this particular fight. And yes, Riptide is priceless here (and in few other fights as well, Thok comes to mind), hence i advise it despite the minor hps loss it induces.

They changed Chain Heal in 5.3 so that it no longer requires a chain of people at sub 100% HP to continue the chain. It will now jump to 4 targets as long as there are 4 targets in range. Therefore, if CH isn't bouncing on Malkorok, it has nothing to do with Malkorok and just has to do with the fact that the ranged is too spread out for it to bounce off. If you cast it on melee, it will still hit 4 targets regardless of shield status.

[Deleted]

Yes, precisely. It is not bouncing full 3 times due to gaps between ranged people being too big (and that effect increases with less ranged people spread over the same area, hence me mentioning melee-heavy setups). The issue with "you can cast it on melee" is that it is usually the ranged you want to cast it on - puddle soakers take the most damage, plus the melee is covered by your Healing Rain already. That's why i think the glyph is really good for this particular encounter on 25.