Resto Shaman needs help

[Nanners1751]

I switched my main to resto shaman about two months ago and I am in dire need of help. I admit I don't have a lot of knowledge about the class, and would appreciate layman's terms. I'm 685 ilvl and I feel like I do okay but not great. I would greatly appreciate if people can look over my logs and/or offer suggestions as to help me improve.


(Sorry for hideous links, I apparently not able to post any)
Armory: us. battle. net/wow/en /character/ thrall /Bananners /simple
Warcraft Logs: warcraft logs. com/rankings/ character/ 547012/ latest/
Logs for Mythic Beastlord Darmac: warcraft logs. com/reports/ apJbAVf67 D2Xn4Mz #fight=1 (Pulls 1-5)

[Rainingblue]

Can't look at logs right now, but from your armory i can say this:
1) NEVER use Glyph of Riptide with talent Echo of the Elements: Or you go glyph + Ancestral/mastery or you DON'T go glyph and take EotE (i prefer Echo with different glyphs)
2) Conductivity is situational, i don't know where did you use it, but as default choice you should use Rushing Streams
Tomorrow i'll take a look at logs sorry for my terrible english, have a good night!

[henern]

Had a look at your logs from both the 26th and 27th and I'll just go through things in the order I saw it:
Starting at the buffs section:
1) Your healing Stream totem uptime is 20-25% on most pulls. With a 15sec duration and 30s cd the goal is to get it to 50%, but anything above 40-45% is ok.
2) Pretty much the same story with Elemental blast.
3) You can use your healing cds Ascendance / Healing Tide / Spirit link A LOT more. Now it looks like you save them for last phase and then use it only one time, but with your kill timings you should be able to use each one of them ~ 2 times before last phase even begins. There is no point just sitting on HTT for 6+min without any use at all!
4) You use ghost wolf for short periods of time, but never unleash life. If all you need is a short burst that's generally the spell to use. Also remember spiritwalker's grace. You have it glyphed so just use it whenever you have to move!

Some other things to note:
5) Talents/glyphs like the person above me wrote. I would just like to add that Astral Shift is most of the time preferred over Stone Bulwark Totem, especially when you're not casting SBT anyway :P
6) When looking at your mana you seem to wait with your channeled mana potion until you are completely dry before you use it. Just use it whenever you have less than 50-60% and you have a dull moment where you know you won't have to move/heal for 10sec (after spears / breath).

[Alltat]

Clickable Armory link
Clickable log link

As Rainingblue said, Glyph of Riptide should never be used with Echo of the Elements. Both are fine on their own, but never together. If you're using EotE, get rid of the glyph. Go with Glyph of Healing Wave or Cleansing Water (Darmac-specific) instead. I'd also replace Stone Bulwark Totem with Astral Shift, as SBT doesn't really do much at the moment. It doesn't seem like you ever used it anyway, so I guess Nature's Guardian is a viable option too (it's not as good as Astral Shift, but it's passive).


Looking at the logs, the most obvious thing is that you're not using your big cooldowns enough. Looking at the 09:31 attempt, you saved both Ascendance and Healing Tide Totem for so long that you could have used Asc once and HTT twice earlier in the fight and still have had them off cooldown for when you actually used them. That's about 3M almost free healing wasted, which would have done a lot to help make sure your healing team has enough mana left for the final phase. On the 09:41 attempt you didn't use Ascendance at all and HTT only once. You really need to get better at this.

In addition to that, you're also not using your smaller cooldowns enough. Your Healing Stream Totem uptime is around 10-20% on most fights, when it should be at 40-50%. Use it on cooldown. Healing Rain use is spotty, though it did get better. Darmac isn't entirely rain-friendly as the boss gets dragged around, but you should still be able to manage a 40-50% rain uptime. Elemental Blast use is okay, but could have been better. That would also help with the mana situation.

Your active time is also on the low side (93-98%). For comparison, my own active time for Darmac this week was 99.78%. Considering that Earth Shield keeps falling off and Elemental Blast use is a bit spotty, it's not as if there's nothing you could be doing. Try to fill every GCD, including while moving. Use Unleash Life when you need to move to get into position faster while doing some healing, and don't hesitate to use Spiritwalker's Grace to keep casting while dodging breaths and such.

I also see you're using Healing Surge a lot and barely touching Healing Wave. It should be the other way around; HW has about the same casting time as HS when Tidal Waves is up and costs much less mana. On the topic of spells, don't forget to use Fire Elemental Totem before the pull and again when it comes off cooldown. It's only like 250k damage, but that's not too bad for one GCD. And on the topic of things to cast just before the pull, get into the habit of refreshing Water Shield before every pull. It expired during one of your attempts, and even if you refresh it quickly that's still wasted mana and GCD that could have been easily avoided.


That's all I can see. Being more aggressive with cooldowns would easily bring you up above the other shaman. Improve your active time and get better at using your mana efficient heals more (HST, HR, ES) and you should be able to beat everyone except the disc priest.

[Nanners1751]

My main reason for not blowing big cooldowns is because my raid leader will call for them, and I absolutely hate having to say its down. I truly appreciate the advice given and I'm going to be testing it out tonight.

[Rainingblue]

So go talk to your raid leader and make him notice that as Shaman, your cd is the most part of your output. You are not a disci priest, you HAVE to use your cooldowns as soon as they are needed.

[Alltat]

My main reason for not blowing big cooldowns is because my raid leader will call for them, and I absolutely hate having to say its down. I truly appreciate the advice given and I'm going to be testing it out tonight.

He quite clearly isn't doing so enough, and you're wasting 2/3 Healing Tide Totems as a result. Either get him to actually call for cooldowns as often as they're available, or tell him to let you know in advance when he wants them so you can plan cooldown use accordingly. Asc and HTT are big parts of your healing, and if you just let them sit unused 75% of the time, your healing will be bad. Even if you do everything else perfectly, your performance will still be sub-par if you don't use your cooldowns properly.