Tips & Help for our two Shamans

[Deleted]

Hi,

I'm currently leading a Raidgroup and we are doing "fine" I think but our two Shamans are struggling sometimes so I wanted to ask you guys to look over some logs and the Armory and maybe have some tips.

First Enhancer:
eu)battle)net/wow/de/character/ambossar/Kalasina/simple

Second Resto:
eu)battle)net/wow/de/character/der-mithrilorden/Kyat%C3%A9r/simple

Logs: .warcraftlogs.com/reports/LYaXK6ATZVd12pQh/

I don't have that much experience with Shamans so I hope that you guys can help me out Thanks

[Hotto Pantsu]

Hi,

I'm currently leading a Raidgroup and we are doing "fine" I think but our two Shamans are struggling sometimes so I wanted to ask you guys to look over some logs and the Armory and maybe have some tips.

First Enhancer:
eu)battle)net/wow/de/character/ambossar/Kalasina/simple

Second Resto:
eu)battle)net/wow/de/character/der-mithrilorden/Kyat%C3%A9r/simple

Logs: .warcraftlogs.com/reports/LYaXK6ATZVd12pQh/

I don't have that much experience with Shamans so I hope that you guys can help me out Thanks

Well I'll just comment shortly on enhance guy as that's what I play. No flask, no pre-pot or pot during fight? That alone costs crapton of dps. Twins fight, stormstrike every ~15sec (7.5sec cd pre-haste), huge loss. To me it just seems he's a lazy guy, missing 5-10k dps compared to ppl with similar gear. Enhance requires aggressive play, you can't just take a nap during the fight or you will quickly see it on the meters. Smack him around a bit and make sure he at least gets the flask/pot matter taken care of.

[Deleted]

Kyatér is using too few Healing Stream Totems.
He should be using High Tide as his lv 100 talent, not Cloudburst Totem.
Still too few healing stream totems, can't stress it enough. (4 totems on a 4+ minute fight)
Echo of the Elements is very situational, Ancestral swiftness for the 5% haste and oh shi- button should be standard, elemental mastery is better on fights like butcher.
Glyph of Riptide is usually amazing (better than the spiritwalker glyph I see), the instant amount is negligible, you mostly use the button to pre-hot or get stacks of tidal waves.
3 Healing rains over a 4+ minute encounter where the entire raid could benefit from it 90% of the time, is way too few.

He has 90 casts over a 252 second long fight, with the vast majority being 1.5s or below, he's either just being too careful with his mana, or being limited by his low spirit (his only spirit is from his necklace).
He didn't use his Shards of Nothing trinket on-use effect even ONCE during the entire raid. Wat. (even the laziest person in the world should at least macro it with Healing Tide Totem) (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ss=-3&source=5)

tl;dr I don't have much more time to spend looking over the logs, so I might have missed something, but for starters he should start using the healing legendary ring (spi/haste), change some talents, get some more spirit in general and be more proactive in his healing.

[Deleted]

wow thanks for the Feedback

Will talk to them and tell them what need to be changed. Awesome thanks

[Deleted]

Kyatér is using too few Healing Stream Totems.
He should be using High Tide as his lv 100 talent, not Cloudburst Totem.
Still too few healing stream totems, can't stress it enough. (4 totems on a 4+ minute fight)
Echo of the Elements is very situational, Ancestral swiftness for the 5% haste and oh shi- button should be standard, elemental mastery is better on fights like butcher.
Glyph of Riptide is usually amazing (better than the spiritwalker glyph I see), the instant amount is negligible, you mostly use the button to pre-hot or get stacks of tidal waves.
3 Healing rains over a 4+ minute encounter where the entire raid could benefit from it 90% of the time, is way too few.

He has 90 casts over a 252 second long fight, with the vast majority being 1.5s or below, he's either just being too careful with his mana, or being limited by his low spirit (his only spirit is from his necklace).
He didn't use his Shards of Nothing trinket on-use effect even ONCE during the entire raid. Wat. (even the laziest person in the world should at least macro it with Healing Tide Totem) (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ss=-3&source=5)

tl;dr I don't have much more time to spend looking over the logs, so I might have missed something, but for starters he should start using the healing legendary ring (spi/haste), change some talents, get some more spirit in general and be more proactive in his healing.

Actually, It is a 12 man raid, so cloudburst is completely viable if used properly. Same for EotE, comes down to preference really. People like to bring up that with proper CD management the talent really only gives 1 extra SLT, however perfect CD management is a myth and in practice EotE will help with distributing Riptide and Unleash Life, especially during the times you need it, and gives a lot more room for error.

Glyph of riptide is useless in a small raid, consider runnning it in a bigger raid (maybe) to spread for High Tide chains, but in smaller raids glyph of chain healing is more usefull with EotE instead of glyph of riptide, just my 50cents. Agree with the rest of the points you bring up though.

[Deleted]

Actually, It is a 12 man raid, so cloudburst is completely viable if used properly. Same for EotE, comes down to preference really. People like to bring up that with proper CD management the talent really only gives 1 extra SLT, however perfect CD management is a myth and in practice EotE will help with distributing Riptide and Unleash Life, especially during the times you need it, and gives a lot more room for error.

Glyph of riptide is useless in a small raid, consider runnning it in a bigger raid (maybe) to spread for High Tide chains, but in smaller raids glyph of chain healing is more usefull with EotE instead of glyph of riptide, just my 50cents. Agree with the rest of the points you bring up though.

I didn't actually notice that they were running with so few people, that's on me. But I'll only very rarely switch out the riptide glyph for chain heal on very spread fights such as Ko'ragh, it really helps with keeping up tidal waves in my experience. This also diminishes, like you mentioned, how I value EotE, effectively just making it an extra, situational SLT. The price is too high imo, and while SLT in itself is a solid cooldown, you can always sub for it if the fight/your setup demands it, otherwise I simply find the talent inferior. For 5-mans and CMs, EotE is most likely far superior, but for the longer raid fights I heavily favor AS or EM.

Running cloudburst might work for really good shamans who play around it, but, and I mean no disrespect, for the average/below average shaman, having the far stronger chain heals and being able to somewhat control who gets a jump, is far easier and still very strong. With the 2-set tier, cloudburst becomes garbage in comparison, and with the 4-set, taking the talent over high tide would be ludicrous

[Alltat]

The restoration shaman is doing four things wrong that I can see:

Not aggressive enough. He consistently has the lowest active time of all the healers, basically spending a lot of time not casting. On two separate occasions during the Twin Ogron fight he spends ten full seconds not casting anything. He needs to be more "aggressive", make sure to always keep casting instants when moving, use Spiritwalker's Grace to keep casting while moving, and generally just do more. He has the mana to spare, and the times when he doesn't it's because he's idling when he should be casting Elemental Blast to gain the spirit buff.

Too reactive healing style. Lots of Healing Wave and Chain Heal. Both are great spells, but most of the time they're essentially filler. His top priorities should be Riptide (get rid of the glyph and cast it on cooldown), Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield and Healing Rain (any time the raid is stacked). Keep those on cooldown, then worry about direct healing spells. Make sure to drop a totem and a rain before any predictable incoming damage. Obviously prioritize using a direct heal on anyone who is in immediate danger of dying, but realize that doing so will reduce your overall healing output and cause everyone else's health to drop a little bit lower as a result.

Not using major cooldowns enough. Even on long fights he only ever uses Healing Tide Totem and Spirit Link once each, if at all. He didn't use Ascendance a single time during the entire raid, despite it being a free off-GCD spell that heals for about half a million. Looking at your Ko'ragh wipes, he didn't use a single major cooldown on any of the attempts. I guess this ties in with the first point about being more aggressive. Don't save the cooldowns for when things go bad, because by then it's usually already too late. Use them during predictable periods of high damage to prevent things from going bad, and/or early on to buy time for all your healers to regenerate some mana.

Misused and unused spells. His use of Unleash Life in particular seems a bit random; it's an excellent spell when you have to move but mostly useless when standing still. He should be casting it more when moving (it grants the same speed boost as Ghost Wolf) and stop using it when standing still. Aside from that, he's also not really using any non-healing stuff. He could be dropping his fire elemental before each pull for a few hundred thousand free damage. He could be using Capacitor Totem to stun the adds on Ko'ragh. No Tremor Totem on the twins trash. Not a single interrupt during the entire raid.

Echo of the Elements is very situational, Ancestral swiftness for the 5% haste and oh shi- button should be standard, elemental mastery is better on fights like butcher.

Echo of the Elements is fine. The extra Spirit Link is handy on a lot of fights, double Unleash Life improves your mobility quite a bit, and the extra charge on Riptide (and the cooldown-collecting it results in) is a significant HPS gain. They're roughly the same. That's pretty much the one tier we have where it's down to personal preference and there isn't a "correct" choice. All three talents are good.

Glyph of Riptide is usually amazing (better than the spiritwalker glyph I see), the instant amount is negligible, you mostly use the button to pre-hot or get stacks of tidal waves.

I would say that Glyph of Riptide is usually garbage, but can sometimes be made to work. The instant heal is absolutely not negligible when unglyphed, hitting for 20-25k on average and contributing 4-5k HPS over a fight if used on cooldown. The baseline number is low, but being an instant direct heal means it works better together with our mastery than any other spell in our arsenal. Even on fights where I'm pushing 50k+ AoE HPS, the direct heal from Riptide is 7-8% of that. That's very, very far from being negligible. I don't get why people keep saying that it is.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

The restoration shaman is doing four things wrong that I can see:

Not aggressive enough. He consistently has the lowest active time of all the healers, basically spending a lot of time not casting. On two separate occasions during the Twin Ogron fight he spends ten full seconds not casting anything. He needs to be more "aggressive", make sure to always keep casting instants when moving, use Spiritwalker's Grace to keep casting while moving, and generally just do more. He has the mana to spare, and the times when he doesn't it's because he's idling when he should be casting Elemental Blast to gain the spirit buff.

Too reactive healing style. Lots of Healing Wave and Chain Heal. Both are great spells, but most of the time they're essentially filler. His top priorities should be Riptide (get rid of the glyph and cast it on cooldown), Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield and Healing Rain (any time the raid is stacked). Keep those on cooldown, then worry about direct healing spells. Make sure to drop a totem and a rain before any predictable incoming damage. Obviously prioritize using a direct heal on anyone who is in immediate danger of dying, but realize that doing so will reduce your overall healing output and cause everyone else's health to drop a little bit lower as a result.

Not using major cooldowns enough. Even on long fights he only ever uses Healing Tide Totem and Spirit Link once each, if at all. He didn't use Ascendance a single time during the entire raid, despite it being a free off-GCD spell that heals for about half a million. Looking at your Ko'ragh wipes, he didn't use a single major cooldown on any of the attempts. I guess this ties in with the first point about being more aggressive. Don't save the cooldowns for when things go bad, because by then it's usually already too late. Use them during predictable periods of high damage to prevent things from going bad, and/or early on to buy time for all your healers to regenerate some mana.

Misused and unused spells. His use of Unleash Life in particular seems a bit random; it's an excellent spell when you have to move but mostly useless when standing still. He should be casting it more when moving (it grants the same speed boost as Ghost Wolf) and stop using it when standing still. Aside from that, he's also not really using any non-healing stuff. He could be dropping his fire elemental before each pull for a few hundred thousand free damage. He could be using Capacitor Totem to stun the adds on Ko'ragh. No Tremor Totem on the twins trash. Not a single interrupt during the entire raid.


Echo of the Elements is fine. The extra Spirit Link is handy on a lot of fights, double Unleash Life improves your mobility quite a bit, and the extra charge on Riptide (and the cooldown-collecting it results in) is a significant HPS gain. They're roughly the same. That's pretty much the one tier we have where it's down to personal preference and there isn't a "correct" choice. All three talents are good.


I would say that Glyph of Riptide is usually garbage, but can sometimes be made to work. The instant heal is absolutely not negligible when unglyphed, hitting for 20-25k on average and contributing 4-5k HPS over a fight if used on cooldown. The baseline number is low, but being an instant direct heal means it works better together with our mastery than any other spell in our arsenal. Even on fights where I'm pushing 50k+ AoE HPS, the direct heal from Riptide is 7-8% of that. That's very, very far from being negligible. I don't get why people keep saying that it is.

Just by reading this I learned quite a bit. I do pretty well, but I always felt I could do more. Now I know what more I can do.

Also, I absolutely agree with you're last 2 points about EotE and Riptide. I have always felt exactly the same way about them.

[ljos]

The restoration shaman is doing four things wrong that I can see:

Not aggressive enough. He consistently has the lowest active time of all the healers, basically spending a lot of time not casting. On two separate occasions during the Twin Ogron fight he spends ten full seconds not casting anything. He needs to be more "aggressive", make sure to always keep casting instants when moving, use Spiritwalker's Grace to keep casting while moving, and generally just do more. He has the mana to spare, and the times when he doesn't it's because he's idling when he should be casting Elemental Blast to gain the spirit buff.

Too reactive healing style. Lots of Healing Wave and Chain Heal. Both are great spells, but most of the time they're essentially filler. His top priorities should be Riptide (get rid of the glyph and cast it on cooldown), Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield and Healing Rain (any time the raid is stacked). Keep those on cooldown, then worry about direct healing spells. Make sure to drop a totem and a rain before any predictable incoming damage. Obviously prioritize using a direct heal on anyone who is in immediate danger of dying, but realize that doing so will reduce your overall healing output and cause everyone else's health to drop a little bit lower as a result.

Not using major cooldowns enough. Even on long fights he only ever uses Healing Tide Totem and Spirit Link once each, if at all. He didn't use Ascendance a single time during the entire raid, despite it being a free off-GCD spell that heals for about half a million. Looking at your Ko'ragh wipes, he didn't use a single major cooldown on any of the attempts. I guess this ties in with the first point about being more aggressive. Don't save the cooldowns for when things go bad, because by then it's usually already too late. Use them during predictable periods of high damage to prevent things from going bad, and/or early on to buy time for all your healers to regenerate some mana.

Misused and unused spells. His use of Unleash Life in particular seems a bit random; it's an excellent spell when you have to move but mostly useless when standing still. He should be casting it more when moving (it grants the same speed boost as Ghost Wolf) and stop using it when standing still. Aside from that, he's also not really using any non-healing stuff. He could be dropping his fire elemental before each pull for a few hundred thousand free damage. He could be using Capacitor Totem to stun the adds on Ko'ragh. No Tremor Totem on the twins trash. Not a single interrupt during the entire raid.


Echo of the Elements is fine. The extra Spirit Link is handy on a lot of fights, double Unleash Life improves your mobility quite a bit, and the extra charge on Riptide (and the cooldown-collecting it results in) is a significant HPS gain. They're roughly the same. That's pretty much the one tier we have where it's down to personal preference and there isn't a "correct" choice. All three talents are good.


I would say that Glyph of Riptide is usually garbage, but can sometimes be made to work. The instant heal is absolutely not negligible when unglyphed, hitting for 20-25k on average and contributing 4-5k HPS over a fight if used on cooldown. The baseline number is low, but being an instant direct heal means it works better together with our mastery than any other spell in our arsenal. Even on fights where I'm pushing 50k+ AoE HPS, the direct heal from Riptide is 7-8% of that. That's very, very far from being negligible. I don't get why people keep saying that it is.

Just started Shaman healing, and this was an invaluable read... Thank you very much!

[Deleted]

I would say that Glyph of Riptide is usually garbage, but can sometimes be made to work. The instant heal is absolutely not negligible when unglyphed, hitting for 20-25k on average and contributing 4-5k HPS over a fight if used on cooldown. The baseline number is low, but being an instant direct heal means it works better together with our mastery than any other spell in our arsenal. Even on fights where I'm pushing 50k+ AoE HPS, the direct heal from Riptide is 7-8% of that. That's very, very far from being negligible. I don't get why people keep saying that it is.

It's garbage to me until I it starts providing 3 tidal waves charges instead of 2, until then it's a hps loss because A. You often overheal with your initial riptide heal anyway, and B. you can't do a 3rd healing wave or surge in a row without it being ''unempowered''.

I only go without the glyph on few fights. The healing provided by riptide with or without the glyph is completely laughable, it's used for the bonus to Chain Heal and for tidal waves for surge crit or faster Hwaves.

Glyph of Riptide is absolutely not garbage.

PS. EotE, as I mentioned, is situational and shouldnt be the go-to talent, because the extra SLT is only really useful on fights like Blackhand, Gruul and other fights where you're stacked up to mitigate heavy damage. Standard choice when doing fights like Kargath, Ogron, Tectus, Kromog and such, should always be AS, if EM isn't required to empower your Ascendance + HTT combo.

[Deleted]

The restoration shaman is doing four things wrong that I can see:

Not aggressive enough. He consistently has the lowest active time of all the healers, basically spending a lot of time not casting. On two separate occasions during the Twin Ogron fight he spends ten full seconds not casting anything. He needs to be more "aggressive", make sure to always keep casting instants when moving, use Spiritwalker's Grace to keep casting while moving, and generally just do more. He has the mana to spare, and the times when he doesn't it's because he's idling when he should be casting Elemental Blast to gain the spirit buff.

Too reactive healing style. Lots of Healing Wave and Chain Heal. Both are great spells, but most of the time they're essentially filler. His top priorities should be Riptide (get rid of the glyph and cast it on cooldown), Healing Stream Totem, Earth Shield and Healing Rain (any time the raid is stacked). Keep those on cooldown, then worry about direct healing spells. Make sure to drop a totem and a rain before any predictable incoming damage. Obviously prioritize using a direct heal on anyone who is in immediate danger of dying, but realize that doing so will reduce your overall healing output and cause everyone else's health to drop a little bit lower as a result.

Not using major cooldowns enough. Even on long fights he only ever uses Healing Tide Totem and Spirit Link once each, if at all. He didn't use Ascendance a single time during the entire raid, despite it being a free off-GCD spell that heals for about half a million. Looking at your Ko'ragh wipes, he didn't use a single major cooldown on any of the attempts. I guess this ties in with the first point about being more aggressive. Don't save the cooldowns for when things go bad, because by then it's usually already too late. Use them during predictable periods of high damage to prevent things from going bad, and/or early on to buy time for all your healers to regenerate some mana.

Misused and unused spells. His use of Unleash Life in particular seems a bit random; it's an excellent spell when you have to move but mostly useless when standing still. He should be casting it more when moving (it grants the same speed boost as Ghost Wolf) and stop using it when standing still. Aside from that, he's also not really using any non-healing stuff. He could be dropping his fire elemental before each pull for a few hundred thousand free damage. He could be using Capacitor Totem to stun the adds on Ko'ragh. No Tremor Totem on the twins trash. Not a single interrupt during the entire raid.


Echo of the Elements is fine. The extra Spirit Link is handy on a lot of fights, double Unleash Life improves your mobility quite a bit, and the extra charge on Riptide (and the cooldown-collecting it results in) is a significant HPS gain. They're roughly the same. That's pretty much the one tier we have where it's down to personal preference and there isn't a "correct" choice. All three talents are good.


I would say that Glyph of Riptide is usually garbage, but can sometimes be made to work. The instant heal is absolutely not negligible when unglyphed, hitting for 20-25k on average and contributing 4-5k HPS over a fight if used on cooldown. The baseline number is low, but being an instant direct heal means it works better together with our mastery than any other spell in our arsenal. Even on fights where I'm pushing 50k+ AoE HPS, the direct heal from Riptide is 7-8% of that. That's very, very far from being negligible. I don't get why people keep saying that it is.

wow thanks for this feedback. I really apreciate the feedback from all of you big big thanks !

[oldnmean]

It's garbage to me until I it starts providing 3 tidal waves charges instead of 2, until then it's a hps loss because A. You often overheal with your initial riptide heal anyway, and B. you can't do a 3rd healing wave or surge in a row without it being ''unempowered''.

I only go without the glyph on few fights. The healing provided by riptide with or without the glyph is completely laughable, it's used for the bonus to Chain Heal and for tidal waves for surge crit or faster Hwaves.

Glyph of Riptide is absolutely not garbage.

PS. EotE, as I mentioned, is situational and shouldnt be the go-to talent, because the extra SLT is only really useful on fights like Blackhand, Gruul and other fights where you're stacked up to mitigate heavy damage. Standard choice when doing fights like Kargath, Ogron, Tectus, Kromog and such, should always be AS, if EM isn't required to empower your Ascendance + HTT combo.

What do you mean by 3 tidal wave charges??? To my knowledge tidal wave won't stack past 2! The main benefit of the RT glyph is giving you more candidates for the extra CH jumps through High Tide.

[IntellectuallyChallenged]

It's garbage to me until I it starts providing 3 tidal waves charges instead of 2, until then it's a hps loss because A. You often overheal with your initial riptide heal anyway, and B. you can't do a 3rd healing wave or surge in a row without it being ''unempowered''.

If "A" is your problem, then I'm sorry, but you might be doing it wrong. I have never used Riptide on someone that is above three quarter health. Which leads me to "B". EotE procs often enough for me to be able to have almost 100% uptime on Tidal Waves. Meaning you should be able to use an "empowered" Healing Wave or Healing Surge most any time you need it. At least that's been my experience anyway. It also could be we have different styles of play. For me, the unglyphed Riptide and EotE are my bread and butter. Throw some Unleash Life in the mix and it's beautiful.

[Alltat]

I only go without the glyph on few fights. The healing provided by riptide with or without the glyph is completely laughable, it's used for the bonus to Chain Heal and for tidal waves for surge crit or faster Hwaves.

If Riptide isn't providing any significant amount of healing, it's can only be because you're not actually casting it much. Looking at logs, unglyphed Riptide cast on cooldown does around 8k HPS at ilvl~680, not counting Tidal Waves or High Tide synergies. That's hardly a laughable contribution. If you look at pretty much any log of someone doing more than 50k HPS on any fight, Riptide will be their most or second most cast spell and doing a big chunk of their total healing. On a fight where AoE throughput is a concern, proper use of Riptide is key to maximizing it.

PS. EotE, as I mentioned, is situational and shouldnt be the go-to talent, because the extra SLT is only really useful on fights like Blackhand, Gruul and other fights where you're stacked up to mitigate heavy damage. Standard choice when doing fights like Kargath, Ogron, Tectus, Kromog and such, should always be AS, if EM isn't required to empower your Ascendance + HTT combo.

The main benefit of Echo of the Elements isn't Spirit Link, but that the extra charge on Riptide means you can cast it more and with less overhealing. You're able to time it better before predictable damage, and being able to delay Riptide by a few seconds without losing cooldown time means you don't miss out on anything when it comes off cooldown at the same time as Healing Stream Totem, Healing Rain or Elemental Blast. I know EotE looks very unimpressive on paper, but try it for a raid or two before you dismiss it.

[Licarius]

Having recently made the switch from Riptide glyph and AS I can happily confirm that Echo of the Elements has reinvigorated the spec. The smoothness of the spec is back, it 'feels' better.

Plus ive seen a hps gain with correct usage.

[Wengel]

funny though with all the talk about riptide glyph - i can't heal properly "without it".
I have no problems logging 95-99% for my gear levels always running with the glyph - mainly to setup high-tide exactly as i want them.
Note that i do mainly run in raids of 17-23 players meaning more of my healing comes from chain heal and proper management of high tide.

Not once have i been in a situation where the riptide un-glyphted heal would have actually saved anyone especially when you need to use it on cooldown to get the most use of it, and being limited to 3 riptide hots at any one time.
EotE helps on the managment though as the charge concept makes it less critical if you miss a cast at the exact point it comes off cd, but in most fights i still prefer AS or EM, only swapping to EotE for fights where i'll need the extra spirit link totem (flamebender being the obvious example).

I do think it's a matter of play style in regards to using it or not. Especially considering that i can't seem to find another glyph that would actually do much good to replace it with in the first place.

If you play to it's strengths rather than it's weakness, it's a very strong glyph - 2 and 4 set bonus obviously amplifies this as it pushes you towards even more chain heal usage.

[Alltat]

funny though with all the talk about riptide glyph - i can't heal properly "without it".
I have no problems logging 95-99% for my gear levels always running with the glyph - mainly to setup high-tide exactly as i want them.
Note that i do mainly run in raids of 17-23 players meaning more of my healing comes from chain heal and proper management of high tide.

Overly dramatic expressions of opinions aside, Glyph of Riptide is honestly very well balanced right now. If you're good you can do the same numbers with or without it. It's a slightly different play style, though, and it isn't for everyone. Glyphed Riptide requires a lot of planning ahead and generally a lot of experience with raid healing to quickly get a feel for the pace of incoming damage on progression fights. And at the end of that, you get the same results as you would have gotten with equally clever use of unglyphed echoes.

In virtually every log I see of someone underperforming, the easiest way for them to improve their performance is to simply remove that glyph. Not because the glyph is bad, but because if you don't use it wisely it actually reduces the healing you do, and they'd get better results if they focus on mastering everything else first. If you know what you're doing then the glyph can work for you, but as far as advice for players who are struggling go, "get the glyph" is never helpful while "ditch the glyph" often is. It should come with a For experienced players only warning.

Not once have i been in a situation where the riptide un-glyphted heal would have actually saved anyone especially when you need to use it on cooldown to get the most use of it...

I think you're underestimating that initial heal. With decent mastery, it should hit for about 10% of a player's health. That's not massive, but it's usually enough to bring them out of "imminent danger" territory unless they did something stupid. It's not exactly a Healing Surge, but still useful. And the timing of the cooldown stops being a problem if you use Echo of the Elements, which I would probably recommend anyway because of how much smoother it makes the whole spec feel. I know that's a really vague statement, but it's hard to explain beyond recommending that everyone try it.

[Wengel]

@ Alltat
I think we agree then - i just see so many posts inhere about advocating for removing the glyph that i wanted to pitch in my experience with it.
Fully agreed that it's probably easier for players who are struggling in general to remove the glyph and focus on mastering the other aspects of the class/spec first, and by combining the unglyphted version with the Echo talent to make it less punishing to get used to the style.

The glyph indeed requires significantly more "pre-planning" and also requires that your raid team performs at a consistent level so you can actually plan/predict correctly. Bit of the same way as Disc Priest healing, do the predictions right and you'll win, do them wrong and you'll suck.

In regards to the initial heal of the unglyphted version, i know it can do upwards of 30k crits when stars align on a very low health member and having high mastery levels (believe i'm just shy of 90% when raidbuffed etc). Usually in my raids at least, when someone dips that low it's either the tank (that has an incoming heal landing a split second later anyway), or a mechanic handled wrong which means you got multiple members dipping into the "risk of dying" category, and being able to 'maybe' save one of them usually doesn't do much good as too many deaths will just mean a wipe anyway.

Also depends greatly on your other healers and your number of people in your raid. Can see the glyph being more of limited use if you're 10 players only as an example.
Using the glyph also removes the biggest part of the Echo talent need, except for fights where the extra spirit link totem becomes critical and you're more free to take AS or EM.

Example of my riptide use (it isn't perfect, but it gives an idea):
http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/combat...ga=112.506.585

[Alltat]

In regards to the initial heal of the unglyphted version, i know it can do upwards of 30k crits when stars align on a very low health member and having high mastery levels (believe i'm just shy of 90% when raidbuffed etc).

Again, you're underestimating it. Looking at the logs for this week's heroic farm, my average initial Riptide heal did 20,246 effective healing (at ilvl 682). On yesterday's progression wipes, the average initial Riptide heal did 23,260 effective healing. It gets even higher on fights where the raid is hovering at lower health and overhealing is less of a concern - the average was 24,745 on our first Kromog kill. That's averaged over the entire raid/encounter, so with no particular stars aligning. On someone who is actually low enough on health to need an emergency heal, it should be doing another 15-20% from mastery.

[The Yeti]

One thing is, damage isn't nearly as bursty as it used to be. It used to be that heals had to bring you from near death to full health in order to be good (Wrath, for instance). Players now can sit around 60-80% and not be in imminent danger. Therefore, 20-25k healing from the initial blast of riptide helps a ton.

Being a healer who used to glyph riptide, and was running high percentage logs with it, I'm running better percentage logs with EotE and unglyphed tide. Again, I do not feel like Glyphed Riptide is bad, I just don't like it is as useful, and your healing will be an entirely different style than without it.