Glyph of Riptide vs Normal Riptide

[Axelond]

i would not use the glyph until most if not all top logs start using it.. currently almost nobody is using it.

[Rusken]

Glyphed riptide is too mana intensive for the return on healing. Unglyphed allows for decent High Tide management, and unglyphed provides the additional instant heal. I regret having that spell glyphed all through HM, seeing much larger returns without it.

You need more spirit if glyphed riptide is doing anything to your mana.

I glyph it for the ability to target CH to multiple people with High Tides, as it will only add extra jumps to targets with Riptide. Also pre emptive hots and CH buffs for spike damage. Also something do to during downtime that helps with the "attacks a random player" mechanics on almost every fight.

The biggest drawback I've found is it's very easy to get too riptide happy trying to hot as many people up as possible for upcoming sustained damage and can lose a GCD or two, but that's a problem that's fixable with a little discipline and practice.

[Alltat]

I don't think it is a waste of mana. In addition the Hot is doing more healing than the initial heal just spread over the time of the hot.

Not really. According to the tooltip numbers, yes, but check logs. The initial heal will always be on a lower health target, meaning it gets a significantly higher bonus from mastery. The HoT will be ticking on a target that's already healed up a bit from the initial heal and with diminishing effect for each tick. The HoT is also more likely to overheal. Going by actual logs of progression fights, the initial heal accounts for ~50% of the total healing done by (unglyphed) Riptide. It's also frequently the more useful half, as it's instant direct healing on a target that might otherwise be dangerously low on health.

You need more spirit if glyphed riptide is doing anything to your mana.

That's a weird statement. The point of spirit isn't to have infinite mana. It's to have just enough mana regeneration that you OOM roughly when the boss dies, preferably after drinking a mana potion. You could just as well argue that if glyphed Riptide does nothing to your mana, you have too much spirit.

[Deleted]

Add Healing Rain, Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield, and Elemental Blast to the list and you don't really have time to cast Riptide much more than every 5 seconds anyway. There shouldn't be all that much spare time to fill.



Could be fake, could be experimentation, could be just testing something unrelated before logging out. As you say, don't trust armory profiles of top guilds to be accurate while a race is ongoing. Either way, the fact that something is (hypothetically) good while chasing world first kills doesn't mean it's good when using a "normal" strategy in a less extraordinary raiding guild.

Keeping HST, HR, RT, ES and EB on CD, takes up around 50% of your activity.

[Pur1tas]

Riptide was changed when 6.0 hit, more of the heal was moved to the initial heal rather than the HoT.

Still the Hot does more healing. Just check the tooltip. I think like 130% sp for the initial heal and 180% for the hot.

@Alltat: I think we heal so very different or with so different heal setups, because even with very few healers there is almost never a point in time where I would get a good amount of heal out of the initial Riptide healing. Also I think it is better to get a chainheal of that heals 5 low players with riptide on them (or only 3 with riptide) compared to initially healing 1 player by a bunch but having 2 riptides that do the same as the unglyphed one, which is ticking on a player you used it on before. Especially as there is almost no fight in BRF where one single players gets a bunch of dmg on his own. I just think glyphed riptide gives us a much better way to deal with the raidwide dmg incomming in almost every fight in BRF. Especially in larger groups it seems to be a lot stronger than unglyphed version.

[wutpoae]

Still the Hot does more healing. Just check the tooltip. I think like 130% sp for the initial heal and 180% for the hot.

Yes correct, however a very large part of that is overhealing.

[The Yeti]

You need more spirit if glyphed riptide is doing anything to your mana.

I have plenty of spirit.

I'm saying it's a matter of return on your mana investment, and you have less returns hotting everyone (which leads to more wasted mana via overhealing) than you would by using riptide on CD and spot healing with wave with Tidal Waves up. The hotting of the full raid can work in some situations, but that's not where we shine. We shine putting out powerful burst healing when the raid is dying through our mastery, chain heal, healing tide. Leave the hotting to the resto druids.

[Pur1tas]

I have plenty of spirit.

I'm saying it's a matter of return on your mana investment, and you have less returns hotting everyone (which leads to more wasted mana via overhealing) than you would by using riptide on CD and spot healing with wave with Tidal Waves up. The hotting of the full raid can work in some situations, but that's not where we shine. We shine putting out powerful burst healing when the raid is dying through our mastery, chain heal, healing tide. Leave the hotting to the resto druids.

Well we shine if people are low and we can get hightide chainheals off on riptide targets. Essentially only the first Chainheal will acutally be that strong if you are not glyphing riptide. I think it is a playstyle thing, for example I don't even bother to heal a single target just because any other healer can do it faster and more efficient than me. I get some riptides going and precast a chainheal shortly before dmg is incomming. You will come in last with this playstyle on a lot of fights, but does it really matter? Did Darmac Mythic progression yesterday with 2 druids and 2 discs together. I did not do all that much to be honest and I feel they could 4 heal it easily, but towards the end when their mana gets less I still got some left and can push out some chainheals and stuff.

Really wierd playstyle for shaman atm and to be honest I am not too happy without it. Just the whole concept of us getting better when we have good gear and the rest of the raid has bad gear makes no sense. In the beginning of the addon I could not push out healing because I had no mastery. Now I can not push out healing because no one drops. It kinda sucks but I hope this gets better in Mythic now. For HM Mythic it was not that huge of a factor tbh.

[Alltat]

Well we shine if people are low and we can get hightide chainheals off on riptide targets. Essentially only the first Chainheal will acutally be that strong if you are not glyphing riptide.

That's not true at all. You should have three Riptides rolling at all times without the glyph, and unglyphed Riptide is worth casting on cooldown even during heavy damage, so (unlike with the glyph) you'll keep on having just as many Riptides up no matter how long that phase goes on. The glyph will let you have a few more Riptides up at the start of an intense phase, but the longer it lasts the more of them will be expiring, and with the glyph you have to sacrifice a lot of HPS to refresh them.

I think it is a playstyle thing, for example I don't even bother to heal a single target just because any other healer can do it faster and more efficient than me.

Which is a bit silly, since the only reason you can't do it as quickly and as efficiently is because you glyphed Riptide, thereby basically removing our cheap instant spot heal. Healing Wave is also cheap and fast if you can keep your Tidal Waves uptime high.

Really wierd playstyle for shaman atm and to be honest I am not too happy without it. Just the whole concept of us getting better when we have good gear and the rest of the raid has bad gear makes no sense.

I've found that it's really only true on farm content. On progression, gear levels don't really matter: we'll be good regardless. If you feel that our mastery is holding you back, the problem could be that you're focusing too much on trying to make the most of it, and having a play style centered on maximizing healing when people are low, rather than having a play style built around maximizing overall healing and using our mastery and cooldowns to smooth out those damage spikes.

[Pur1tas]

That's not true at all. You should have three Riptides rolling at all times without the glyph, and unglyphed Riptide is worth casting on cooldown even during heavy damage, so (unlike with the glyph) you'll keep on having just as many Riptides up no matter how long that phase goes on. The glyph will let you have a few more Riptides up at the start of an intense phase, but the longer it lasts the more of them will be expiring, and with the glyph you have to sacrifice a lot of HPS to refresh them.


Which is a bit silly, since the only reason you can't do it as quickly and as efficiently is because you glyphed Riptide, thereby basically removing our cheap instant spot heal. Healing Wave is also cheap and fast if you can keep your Tidal Waves uptime high.


I've found that it's really only true on farm content. On progression, gear levels don't really matter: we'll be good regardless. If you feel that our mastery is holding you back, the problem could be that you're focusing too much on trying to make the most of it, and having a play style centered on maximizing healing when people are low, rather than having a play style built around maximizing overall healing and using our mastery and cooldowns to smooth out those damage spikes.

1. Still with 3 riptides you get exactly one good chainheal off. Not a single more. With riptide glyph you can usually pre hot at least 7 people and get at least two good chainheals of.

2. I think it is not silly at all. The fact that I could use unglyphed riptide to heal this actually even proves my point. While I could have the possibility to do that, I do not think that this is the shaman task in a raid to be honest. Every other class has a possibility to just single target heal faster or equally fast to us making it just irrational to also use a spell that does that. There is no point to be able to do the same thing everyone else can. Ofc a Healing wave is cheap and fast but again I do not really see the point to cast a healing wave on a target that moves from 50-80% in the time I am casting it and finally hits a 80% target just to get that little healing out. It is essentially a waste of mana, time and attention you could be putting to something relevant.

3. I realize you are right partly. We are doing fine on progression if we play it correct. For example we did Mythic Darmac progression the other day with 2 druids and 2 discs (because the tanks were dying the holy changed to disc) and me. I did not pull the same number as the rest because of several reasons in my opinion. One being the fact that I was last in CD rotation getting the least amount of HTT out compared to Tranqs. Secondly I think 5 Healing Darmac might be a little over kill. Third being there is no point for me to actually heal for the first 30-45 seconds of the fight as there is no dmg and the little dmg there is gets absorbed or ticked away by druids. This sets me already about 2-3m healing done behind. Ofc I could try to get some healing out there but would it really be worth it? I don't think so.

3b. For the Mastery I am trying to get the most out of it as it is actually the only stat I have a bunch of. I am not trying to maximize my overall healing, as there is no point in doing so. The target should be to minimize the mana spend, while keeping the group alive. This is not resulting in maximum healing output ever. I see no point in getting out huge numbers, when they are actually not needed if you know what I mean. For Darmac I tried to get some riptides up before every AoE and precast a Chainheal, followed by another chainheal. While this might result in overall HPS loss for me it is a mana efficient way to get through the very long fight. The thing about our mastery is that it is good if people take dmg, but the target for a good progress is to not take dmg. They contratdict each other in a way. OFC there is inavoidable dmg and we shine there. It is just that I think maximizing the Mastery is the perfect way to optimize mana usage (not HPM).

So as a conclusion I understand that my playstyle does not make me look strong as a healer in numbers, but I just don't feel like shamans are supposed to do that. This whole Mastery thing just to me feels like we are not supposed to actually heal when there is no incomming dmg. Considering how strong our mastery is, when there actually is dmg incomming I just feel like we should play around this a lot more. Also I know the common theorey is to leave a fight with 0 mana. I disagree with that completely as in my opinion the optimal way would be to leave the fight with as much mana as possible, not optimizing the healing done, but keeping the group alive just barely with as little mana used as possible.

Well yeah this might be the wrong mindset and I am most definetly going to try unglyphed riptide more.

Again I thank you for the discussions Alltat

[Wengel]

You can't spot-heal with riptide while at the same time keeping it on the 3 essential targets to be used for High Tide Chainheals...
It's one or the other when you do not have the glyph.
Besides, perhaps it's just me but the direct heal component of riptide seems to be massivly exaggerated? It's not going to save someone from death like a PW:Shield would do.
My average fully raidbuffed with ~2000 mastery on a low health target and ilvl 670 is 22.5k crit... 14k average non-crit.
My max in the raid of yesterday was 30k crit on a DK at 1 health (with his do-not-die the next 3 seconds-thing active) - that was with ES on target as well to buff it by an additional 20%.

A tidal-wave boosted Surge will be far better suited for such emergencies as it actually heals the target enough to survive the next tick of whatever is incoming next.
Average of 120k crits with peaks at 150k on low targets with ES on seems a lot more life-saving to me at least.
Let the priest bubble the low target with an instant minimum-50k shield and then your mastery-empowered almost-guaranteed crit surge will take care of the rest.

You're not the only healer in the raid and the task of a shaman is not to save people with a weak instant-cast but to get them back up to safe levels of health using our strong single-target heals with our mastery.
Just like you wouldn't let a druid do the bulk of the tank healing.

Using the glyph allows you to have better control of one of the strongest components of the shaman - your chain heal.

Personally, i prefer having the ability to control my high-tide targets and not get screwed over if i miss using Riptide on CD every single time.
AOE phase incoming in 5 seconds, quickly riptide the 3-4 critical targets at that point to setup the high-tide chainheal spam is more valueable to me than a relatively small instant heal.

Matter of taste at least but every time i try without the glyph my output goes down significantly.

[The Yeti]

You can't spot-heal with riptide while at the same time keeping it on the 3 essential targets to be used for High Tide Chainheals...
It's one or the other when you do not have the glyph.
Besides, perhaps it's just me but the direct heal component of riptide seems to be massivly exaggerated? It's not going to save someone from death like a PW:Shield would do.
My average fully raidbuffed with ~2000 mastery on a low health target and ilvl 670 is 22.5k crit... 14k average non-crit.
My max in the raid of yesterday was 30k crit on a DK at 1 health (with his do-not-die the next 3 seconds-thing active) - that was with ES on target as well to buff it by an additional 20%.

A tidal-wave boosted Surge will be far better suited for such emergencies as it actually heals the target enough to survive the next tick of whatever is incoming next.
Average of 120k crits with peaks at 150k on low targets with ES on seems a lot more life-saving to me at least.
Let the priest bubble the low target with an instant minimum-50k shield and then your mastery-empowered almost-guaranteed crit surge will take care of the rest.

You're not the only healer in the raid and the task of a shaman is not to save people with a weak instant-cast but to get them back up to safe levels of health using our strong single-target heals with our mastery.
Just like you wouldn't let a druid do the bulk of the tank healing.

Using the glyph allows you to have better control of one of the strongest components of the shaman - your chain heal.

Personally, i prefer having the ability to control my high-tide targets and not get screwed over if i miss using Riptide on CD every single time.
AOE phase incoming in 5 seconds, quickly riptide the 3-4 critical targets at that point to setup the high-tide chainheal spam is more valueable to me than a relatively small instant heal.

Matter of taste at least but every time i try without the glyph my output goes down significantly.

It seems like you're favoring surge a little too much. Surge is so very mana intensive, and you still have a chance of not getting a crit when you surge, leaving expended mana on the table if you do not get a crit, when a healing touch with Tidal Waves will go only slightly slower but for significantly less mana. Just my two copper.

But back on the point. It is a style decision, but I still take high tides and still use unglyphed riptide. I find that in my raids I tend to be focusing my effort on one group, either ranged or melee/tanks. I just tailor my unglyphed riptides to those targets, and I get my bonus bounces from high tide. Again, it is a style choice, but the throughput is way higher with unglyphed riptide for the mana that is spent. It's a matter of cost equity, and riptide can really drain your mana for very little healing when glyphed, since HoTs will almost always overheal.

I think that especially after the Echo of the Elements change in 6.1, that unglyphed riptide will most certainly be the way to go. You areeffectively getting to riptide every three seconds. It pretty much negates the glyph and allows for coverage of 5-6 targets with riptide at once if you are spacing your riptide casts successfully.

EDIT - I acknowledge that I am both wrong and an idiot :P

[Pur1tas]

It seems like you're favoring surge a little too much. Surge is so very mana intensive, and you still have a chance of not getting a crit when you surge, leaving expended mana on the table if you do not get a crit, when a healing touch with Tidal Waves will go only slightly slower but for significantly less mana. Just my two copper.

But back on the point. It is a style decision, but I still take high tides and still use unglyphed riptide. I find that in my raids I tend to be focusing my effort on one group, either ranged or melee/tanks. I just tailor my unglyphed riptides to those targets, and I get my bonus bounces from high tide. Again, it is a style choice, but the throughput is way higher with unglyphed riptide for the mana that is spent. It's a matter of cost equity, and riptide can really drain your mana for very little healing when glyphed, since HoTs will almost always overheal.

I think that especially after the Echo of the Elements change in 6.1, that unglyphed riptide will most certainly be the way to go. You are effectively getting to riptide every three seconds. It pretty much negates the glyph and allows for coverage of 5-6 targets with riptide at once if you are spacing your riptide casts successfully.

uhhhm for what I got you do not get more riptides. It is a stack mechanic meaing that if you miss a riptide you start charging a second one. For the mana issues I have to say I got more mana reg than I can spend with riptide glyphed. I am full before the GCD is back up if I only spam Riptide.

For the Echo I am not 100% sure but it would be op if we had Spirit link every 1.5m instead of 3 like before. So I am pretty sure that for riptide it is just like every other charge mechanic, you get the same amount you would get before, just missing one is not punished that bad and you have 1 extra at the start of the fight. Overall I guess you get less riptides than you would have using echo before the patch.

[The Yeti]

uhhhm for what I got you do not get more riptides. It is a stack mechanic meaing that if you miss a riptide you start charging a second one. For the mana issues I have to say I got more mana reg than I can spend with riptide glyphed. I am full before the GCD is back up if I only spam Riptide.

For the Echo I am not 100% sure but it would be op if we had Spirit link every 1.5m instead of 3 like before. So I am pretty sure that for riptide it is just like every other charge mechanic, you get the same amount you would get before, just missing one is not punished that bad and you have 1 extra at the start of the fight. Overall I guess you get less riptides than you would have using echo before the patch.

You're right about the echo with riptide thing. Apparently I haven't had enough coffee this morning.

[Wengel]

I don't use Surge as the to-go heal, i use HW for that of course.
The difference is we were talking about using unglypthed riptide as an emergency heal for people close to death and for that event, surge is a better choice (in my opinion). Also versus HW regardless of tidal wave.
surge is still faster, and you'll be sporting minimum 50% critchance in a raid environment. Since we're assuming tidal wave is up you have the choice between a very fast big heal with 50% crit chance or a little bit less fast big heal with 20% crit chance for a 3k mana saved. (have not factored in that a crit surge would heal for much more than two HW would do on the same target - mastery boosts the crit surge greatly while it doesn't boost the followup healing wave as much due to the target having higher health % - thereby saving mana by using surge. Hope you know what i mean)

In such events, i use surge regardless of mana costs. Having both Everburning and heroic chew toy while also running with EB, it's the excessive spam of chain heal that will drain mana not the emergency spot healing of a few surges during a fight.

About the Echo talent of 6.1 it'll be interesting to test but i'm also very sure that it'll work like any other charge mechanic in game, allowing two uses of spirit link in rapid success of each other, and then having the 3 min cd before ONE come back up (add another 3 minutes before the second becomes available, should you not use the first charge again immediately).
I'm very certain riptide will function the same way.
It means you're not effectively penalised as hard for missing a riptide cooldown and you can pool two in a row should you need it, but you can still only keep 3 up at any one point in time.

With the 2 and especially 4-set bonus of the restoration set, i think glyphted riptide will start to shine even more when we start the excessive chain heal spam with much increased output (2-set) and much reduced mana cost proc (4-set).

- - - Updated - - -

As an addition, in my raids i tend to have riptide running on both tanks and myself plus a selected 4th target.
Need to CH the melee group, then i run it through one of the tanks, preferably the one with ES on but depends on who's taking damage at the time.
For ranged, i spam it either on myself or the 4th riptide target. In many cases i've noticed that the high tide will allow the last two jumps to go to the two tanks while i'm actually spamming the ranged group.

This at least to me helps stabilise the tanks despite actually healing the ranged groups.