[PVE Guide] Restoration Shaman 6.0.3

[Koor]

@Koor: Are we talking cutting edge or average Heroic clear / starting Mythic guy? because if we are talking about you average guy he should not go for high HPS numbers as a shaman and therefore in a lot of cases there is no need to cast any "other spells". It really depends on your other healers and your group tbh. If avoiding dmg is going well and you have a druid or disc in the group you will most likely have not that much to do in most fights. It depends on so many factors, but I do not think that glyphing riptide or EoE (which I think is harder to manage) are a hard skill cap thing. I can see what you are talking about though

I was talking challenging content, otherwise I think talent choices don't really matter, but I don't necessarily mean cutting edge mythic. For example for a resto shaman in a 6/7hc guild, heroic imperator is challenging content. And if the guild is small, say 13 players running with a 2/3/8 setup or 15 with a 2/4/9 setup, would I advise glyphing riptide, taking high tide, and using chain heals?

No, I think using cloudburst and healing waves as Puupi suggested is the safer build, *for that shaman*, since he'll likely perform better with it.

Imperator is a long fight, and while a mythic guild which has it on farm clears it in 9 minutes, that heroic guild probably has 13 minutes attempts, so it is objectively harder to sustain mana for that long. The raid might also step on some mines which makes it even harder to sustain mana. While in ideal conditions, with extra two high tide jumps and no overheal, chain heal wins on both HPS and HPM, it requires a high skill cap to ensure this really happens, and in practice when the shaman has lower skill, using chain heals would likely make him run out of mana, and glyphing riptide won't recover the loss of the 75% initial heal.

On the other hand, with such a small group, each healer only needs to take care of about 4 players in average. Selecting the lowest HP player out of four to cast healing wave on has a lower skill cap than ensuring optimal high tide usage, and is likely to win on HPM in practice, while the extra healing from cloudburst is a nice bonus which doesn't require much thought other than using it on cooldown (though it can be optimized further of course).

[Barrun]

I find this very interesting and I'm willing to try EB more now.
I was wondering though, when you wrote the sentence I quoted, did you also consider a possible 75% mana return from Totemic Recall if used when Elementals are about to expire? Or 50% without glyph.
Especially if you time your healing stream totem right, you can return mana from both that and elementals, and it's quite a large amount of mana.

This "trick" used to work really fine in MoP, granted that the return was 100% back then.
Have to say I always hated this "trick" though, many times fights are so frantic I miss the chance to use Totemic Recall, it's also another thing binding your rotations, your cooldowns and honestly there's only so much I can keep my focus in my mind at the same time, I'd be more than willing to give this away for other stuff like the new and improved Elemental Blast.

Totemic Recall was nerfed and now only restores 50% mana while glyphed. Due to changes in haste healing totems now provide an additional partial tic of healing at the end based on how much haste you have so clipping your HST at the end to get mana back is no longer viable. Mana back on elemental totems is really the only thing you can get back with Totemic Recall without losing out on direct healing and with only getting back 50% its made Totemic Recall not a viable option for managing ones mana, used perfectly on both elementals you get about 2.5 Healing Waves worth of mana back. Properly managed Elemental Blast should turn out to be roughly a 40+ percent increase in spirit with current gear levels, without taking into consideration the throughput gains from the other stat buffs you get. I wouldn't suggest Totemic Recall glyph in any scenario.

I also agree with this and would appreciate if you would explain why you think Glyph of Riptide is so valuable, when the logs/rankings basically show that it isn't.

For a more thorough discussion of this glyph refer to here. I'd be thrilled to see some analytical arguments as to why its not valuable, all I've yet to see so far is the logs/rankings argument and currently I'm ranked #3 on Warcraftlogs.com and use it on every fight. If people are primarily looking at Mar'gok for logs healing that fight is a (slow) race against attrition so any loss in efficiency is hard to justify and I can totally see why not using it here is beneficial. Ultimately it allows for more effective use of Chain Heal which when used properly is our highest HPS and most mana efficient heal.

Have you even looked at shaman logs lately? High Tide ends up being generally 4.5-5.0 CH hits per cast, not 6. On average, CH has overheal% of 20-25, HW 5-10%. If you overheal more than that with HW, it's either intended (spamhealing tank), or you are failing miserably at spot healing. I'm not spreading misinformation, you are just clueless and I don't need to be told how to get most out of the class by someone who started playing shaman like half a year ago and hasn't even done heroic/mythic raiding before this tier.

Just wrong, look at top parses and CH overheal is much lower than that. I'm going to quote your first post in this thread just to show how utterly confused you are. You gave us this brilliant insight,

healing isn't a metric

Now after claiming "healing isn't a metric" you're trying to justify my opinion as being wrong by referring to a metric based website where I'm holding a healthy #3 spot for all resto shaman. Resorting to personal attacks is just a clear sign you don't have anything constructive or meaningful to say, quit grasping at straws and crawl back under your bridge.

[Puupi]

Just wrong, look at top parses and CH overheal is much lower than that.

Not true. Some parses have low overheal, but 15-20% is quite normal.

Now after claiming "healing isn't a metric" you're trying to justify my opinion as being wrong by referring to a metric based website where I'm holding a healthy #3 spot for all resto shaman.

Exactly, healing isn't a metric, so comparing HPS rankings is like competing in special olympics - you know how that metaphor continues. Ranking high as a healer is a result of your raid standing on shit they shouldn't stand on, your fellow healers being bad, your healing setup being bad, lower than normal amount of healers or a combination of all of these things.

Resorting to personal attacks is just a clear sign you don't have anything constructive or meaningful to say, quit grasping at straws and crawl back under your bridge.

I'm resorting to personal attacks? You are the one doing them continuously. I do have lots of constructive things to say, the problem is you can't handle criticism and alternative viewpoints at all.

[Caziel]

I'd be thrilled to see some analytical arguments as to why its not valuable, all I've yet to see so far is the logs/rankings argument and currently I'm ranked #3 on Warcraftlogs.com and use it on every fight.

I went through the top 10 shaman all-stars for Mythic and examined several fights from each's most recent parse, just to see what talents they were taking.
* 8 shamans did not glyph riptide, 2 did
* 8 shamans used AS, 2 used EM

So it looks like AS/unglyphed is the "default", but the other options (EM, glyphing riptide) seem viable also.

[Barrun]

I went through the top 10 shaman all-stars for Mythic and examined several fights from each's most recent parse, just to see what talents they were taking.
* 8 shamans did not glyph riptide, 2 did
* 8 shamans used AS, 2 used EM

So it looks like AS/unglyphed is the "default", but the other options (EM, glyphing riptide) seem viable also.

Yea I noticed the same thing, I'd love to hear some justifications for peoples choice in taking AS and not glyphing Riptide, all I've seen thus far is "other people do it". I still firmly believe EM and Glyph of Riptide allow for a higher potential throughput and efficiency as I haven't seen any analytical case for the contrary, I do believe they're harder to use however and thus they might not be the preferred choice. I think AS and no Riptide glyph having a higher representation in top logs isn't indicative of their actual potential but only that they're easier to use. With anything I do my philosophy is to always try and achieve the absolute best and I think (and have made a case for) EM and Riptide having the highest potential and until I see someone present a case otherwise I will continue to believe this. No player is perfect so actually seeing people approach the maximum potential is going to take people getting used to changes that came with WoD. When I get more than a couple minutes I'll amend the guide to explain how/why AS tends to be the talent of choice but I still have yet to see much of a case for AS actually being better than EM other than it being easier to use.

[Caziel]

The main argument may be that the AS instant heal can save someone from death, despite AS possibly being lower throughput/numbers than EM.

[Volitar]

I'm wondering Barrun, do you ever cast EM outside of HTT or Ascendance?

[Deleted]

I'm wondering Barrun, do you ever cast EM outside of HTT or Ascendance?

Why would you? That's completely counter-intuitive because if you're popping it on CD you're just averaging it out to the same 5% passive haste that AS gives. The whole point of speccing EM is to increase the potency of your cooldowns.

Yea I noticed the same thing, I'd love to hear some justifications for peoples choice in taking AS and not glyphing Riptide, all I've seen thus far is "other people do it". I still firmly believe EM and Glyph of Riptide allow for a higher potential throughput and efficiency as I haven't seen any analytical case for the contrary, I do believe they're harder to use however and thus they might not be the preferred choice. I think AS and no Riptide glyph having a higher representation in top logs isn't indicative of their actual potential but only that they're easier to use. With anything I do my philosophy is to always try and achieve the absolute best and I think (and have made a case for) EM and Riptide having the highest potential and until I see someone present a case otherwise I will continue to believe this. No player is perfect so actually seeing people approach the maximum potential is going to take people getting used to changes that came with WoD. When I get more than a couple minutes I'll amend the guide to explain how/why AS tends to be the talent of choice but I still have yet to see much of a case for AS actually being better than EM other than it being easier to use.

Sure, let's talk about potential throughput and ranking!

EM vs AS is definitely an easier topic to dive into. Personally, I'd say I'm using EM (and shard of nothing) every time I'm actually trying to rank (and sitting our disc priest!). EM is absolutely the superior talent in any situation where there is a burst phase that can be cooldown'd and your throughput won't go into overhealing. However, not many bosses in Highmaul even have such periods anymore. Tectus upheavals last 2-3 seconds max (and to rank tectus healing these days you need your dps to... stop dps), Popping raid healing CDs on Brackenspore is just a case of padding mushroom healing to your own character, lolkargath, etc.

In an ideal scenario your EM+Trinket+Berserking healing tide will hardly overheal and propel you to the top of the WCL gods. However, on most bosses that actually requires suboptimal play from your other raid members and isn't beneficial to your raid in the long run. I wouldn't say that the case of EM vs AS is just that EM is harder to utilise (let's be frank, it's not, you just pop it in correlation to boss abilities), but rather that the opportunities for maximum EM usage are few and far between. And at that point, you still have to select something in that talent row and Echo sucks in raids.

As for Glyph of Riptide - the use case you presented in the linked post is a very interesting scenario. I don't use that playstyle for one reason that isn't tied directly to your own performance - you aren't healing in a vacuum and by glyphing riptide and maximising high tide CH you are trying to enroach into a different niche that is already carved out for Rdruids/MWs/Holy priests. It is effective, no doubt, but at that point as an impratial raid leader I would just ask you to reroll to a class that fills that niche better. Perhaps this will change in foundry with our tier bonuses and that playstyle will make other classes obsolete and will become the de-facto rsham playstyle, but for now personally I prefer to use Glyph of Chaining, which prevents back to back chain heals that are required to maximize Glyph of Riptide.

[Deleted]

Didnt play Shaman during the ptr and im kinda lazy now.

Anyone know how the T17 Resto 4set will work? Does the buff stay for the next 10 sec or your next chain heal within 10 sec? From reading the tooltip i understand it will stay for 10 sec but a guildie of my says otherwise.

EDIT!
Are we gonna have spirit link avaible all the time with the echo change or wassup with that?

Thanks

[Deleted]

Didnt play Shaman during the ptr and im kinda lazy now.

Anyone know how the T17 Resto 4set will work? Does the buff stay for the next 10 sec or your next chain heal within 10 sec? From reading the tooltip i understand it will stay for 10 sec but a guildie of my says otherwise.

EDIT!
Are we gonna have spirit link avaible all the time with the echo change or wassup with that?

Thanks

On the beta the buff had a set duration, regardless of the amount of CH used.

[caelym]

has anyone experimented with mark of bleeding hollow? maybe with 2 spirit trinkets? I have a high spirit build atm (1700) and i'm finding that I lagging behind in hps when it comes to shorter fights. also is EB worth the talent spot just for the 8sec 500 stat boost?

[Volitar]

On the beta the buff had a set duration, regardless of the amount of CH used.

wait the proc isn't consumed on use? So we are just like CH spam bots? That doesn't seem right.

[Puupi]

wait the proc isn't consumed on use? So we are just like CH spam bots? That doesn't seem right.

Yep it's a set duration. And it procs even when you already have 2 stacks of Tidal Waves. So Chain Heal spam it is.

[Alltat]

Hey I would just like to add my Ele Blast macro.

Late response, but you can shorten that considerably:

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,harm][@mouseovertarget,harm][] Elemental Blast

Does the same thing in one line, and also doesn't stop if you accidentally get a friendly target at any step. I personally use this one, though it requires you to actually pick a target:

/cast [@mouseover, harm, nodead] [harm, nodead] [] Elemental Blast

Yea I noticed the same thing, I'd love to hear some justifications for peoples choice in taking AS and not glyphing Riptide, all I've seen thus far is "other people do it".

Consistency and life-saving. Both are things that healers are generally willing to give up HPS to get.

Unglyphed Riptide is more consistent, in that you get the heal with each cast. With the glyph you give up easy guaranteed healing in order to hopefully get extra benefit out of High Tide. Since the initial heal makes up a very significant fraction of the total healing done by Riptide (about half, usually), it's not a trivial sacrifice and there isn't any guarantee that you'll actually benefit from doing it (since you would have had ~3 Riptides up even with the glyph). You can't predict exactly how the Chain Heal bounces will go, so it's a gamble; unglyphed just has less variance.

Unglyphed Riptide also has pretty good potential for saving lives. It's instant, has a short cooldown, and heals for quite a lot on low health targets. A non-crit Riptide can heal for ~10% of someone's health instantly if they're low. On any fight with periodic damage (i.e. all of them), that's usually enough to keep them alive until you can land another heal. Of course people shouldn't drop low, but anyone who has ever done any progress raiding knows that people will anyway.

Combined, this means that even if it's not the theoretically "optimal" choice, it can still be the best choice in an actual raid environment.

[Deleted]

On a side note, I'm really glad to see Puupi and Alltat post again.

[Koor]

wait the proc isn't consumed on use? So we are just like CH spam bots? That doesn't seem right.

Personally I'm looking forward to a bit more chain heal spam After all chain heal is our iconic spell, and it has been weak in the previous expansion, it's nice that it's going to be powerful and affordable again.

[Nicthecat]

Right now I'm 4/7 mythic, just killed tectus today and going to work on butcher tomorrow. Currently, I use the stat priority INT > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit > Multi > Vers. I swap around my tier 4 and 5 talents as I see all of them being useful in many different situations (except echo in its current state). I am sitting around 26% haste, 19% crit, 62% mastery, 2% multistrike, and 1361 spirit (I do use EB on cooldown, on every fight). Just curious if someone could tell me how haste is doing compared to mastery after the hotfix where haste got a 11%+ buff.

[Alltat]

Just curious if someone could tell me how haste is doing compared to mastery after the hotfix where haste got a 11%+ buff.

It was behind by considerably more than that (think 30%) the last time I saw any math (which was probably about a month ago). It'll lessen the gap, but it's not even close to catching up.. I wish I had saved the link to the theorycrafting, but someone can probably provide one.

[Puupi]

In addition (to the inferior absolute mathematical HPS value of haste compared to mastery), haste is the only secondary stat that comes with a negative "backfire" effect; it increases your mana consumption. Now that there are no haste plateaus anymore and haste having its' bad side effect, I wouldn't suggest prioritizing haste over any other stat (except for versatility). Of course having some haste is a good thing and it certainly has some good qualities to it, too, but when it comes to enchanting and gemming, it really isn't a stat you should pick.

- - - Updated - - -

On a side note, I'm really glad to see Puupi and Alltat post again.

How sweet of you, thanks. Good to see you still around, too!

[Pur1tas]

Right now I'm 4/7 mythic, just killed tectus today and going to work on butcher tomorrow. Currently, I use the stat priority INT > Spirit > Haste > Mastery > Crit > Multi > Vers. I swap around my tier 4 and 5 talents as I see all of them being useful in many different situations (except echo in its current state). I am sitting around 26% haste, 19% crit, 62% mastery, 2% multistrike, and 1361 spirit (I do use EB on cooldown, on every fight). Just curious if someone could tell me how haste is doing compared to mastery after the hotfix where haste got a 11%+ buff.

From my experience Haste is and has always been a utility stat for healers. So because there are two stats on each piece of gear and our stat "priority" is Mastery>Crit>Haste I think going for Haste Mastery or Haste Crit is both okay, with Mastery being a lot stronger during progress. I would not go for Crit Mastery even though we get more out of the crit I do not feel it compliments well with how our mastery works and therefore Haste seems more viable to me. This is only my opinion and how it felt for me while playing it. Going for haste as your main secondary stat though seems a little overkill