Healing critique/advice for H Arch (logs included)

[Tolian]

The group I run with is trying to get our first kill, and I'm looking for any advice you all might have for what I can improve on for this fight. For most of the attempts that went over 5 or 6 mins I was in the 40-50k HPS range, but I'm sure there's a lot I could do better to bump that up. The raid comp fluctuated a bit over the night, but it was usually 2/5/12-14.

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...9&type=summary

Things I can see that I could probably do better is try to get more HTTs in, as I usually only had 2 (or sometimes even 1). Similarly with Ascendance. I've been trying to get better at keeping RT on cooldown, and pushing my CH hits per cast up to at least 5 or more targets, but both areas I know could use some more work.

What tricks/tips do the rest of you have for maximizing throughput on this particular encounter? Any advice would be appreciated!

(Also, is it just me or are pally tanks seriously OP at self-heals? Check out the heals for our MT, Quillex...)

Thanks!

Astraan

[Deleted]

Tbh there isnt very much damage on this fight outside of shackles and rain of chaos but you can do a few things to optimize.
All of this depends if your raid leader assigns cooldowns and you dont overlap with a tranq or revival.


Healing tide as the first mountain spawns. Desecrate does a decent amount of raid damage and will allow you to get decent healing tides off.

As everyone is stacked for shackles. Drop a healing raid > Ascendance and spam chain heal during the breaks. You can drop spirit links for the other breaks.

Make sure you use Unleashed Elements to move around the place. I only started playing resto shaman this patch and this was one of the hardest things to force myself to do. Most of the time 30% is more than enough to get you to where you need to be in time. You cannot heal in ghost wolf form so while you unleash you can apply riptide, earth shield, HST totem. Plan your movement before you do it bank Riptide charges or use SWG off cooldown for any major movement.


Looking at your casts you used 59 healing waves compared to 8 surges. Then comparing that to your mana you barely dropped below 100k. You can afford to use healing Surge alot more instead of wave and spam alot more chain heals during damage. Try and time your chain heals to hit just as damage is going out.

Dont forget healers also get a potion useage like dps. If you dont use the mana potion atleast use an int pot during your Healing tide or something. Channeled pots baisically give you back full mana if used after a Elemental blast so dont be afraid to spam.

Hope this helped.

[Tolian]

We finally got our first kill last night, and I did indeed start using the HTTs for the first desecrate which worked out well. As a general rule I've tried to shy away from using Surge when it's not a life or death situation, and with the RT usage I pretty much always have TW up for my HWs to make them just as fast. But, with the WF H Phylactery, I don't have quite the same mana issues anymore so as you say, using HS instead when it won't overheal is probably a good call due to the crit buff from TW. I'll try to incorporate that into my play a bit more and maybe start using some of these channeled mana pots which have started collecting dust in my bags, lol.

Hadn't thought about using an int pot during HTT. Sounds like it might be seriously awesome HPS haha. I'll play around with it.

Thanks for the advice!

[Ximaus]

First of all congrats on your kill. I just wanted to touch on one thing.

with the RT usage I pretty much always have TW up for my HWs to make them just as fast.

The purpose of using Riptide is not for Tidal Waves; it is because Riptide is a major source of your healing. Your Riptide healing should have been double the amount it was give or take. You want to use it on CD (or at the very least use it enough to keep it charging) and blanket the raid with it whenever you expect there will be damage. This all assumes you use Echo (which you should) but if you don't use Echo then you won't get as much use out of Riptide.

EDIT: I just noticed you actually 5 heal that fight. The standard is to 4 heal it with 20. There's just not that much damage and the extra DPS can help you push phases faster. You should still have done more Riptide Healing but you are overhealing that fight.

[Tolian]

Ya, I try not to ever sit on 2 charges and actually made a weak aura to yell at me if I am. I agree with the overhealing thing for sure, but we had to pug a decent amount of folks, so I think the idea was that better to have more heals just in case. Dunno, wasn't my decision. I personally like underhealing for the challenge, but that's just me.

What I was getting at with my statement about RT and TW was more that we cast RT so much these days that between that and CH I've got TW up pretty much the entire fight. Not that I cast RT specifically for the purpose of generating TW . I guess I can always try to get it out more pre-emptively for the HoT on future damage, rather than as an instant reactively for damage that has already happened, which is pretty much how I select targets for it now.

[Ximaus]

I didn't mean to imply you were making a mistake by overhealing it but if you overheal a fight then the analysis of your performance changes. It's just too hard to tell how much damage you had to heal without reviewing the entire playback in detail. I compared how much Riptide healing you did with how much I generally do but that is with 4 healers for 20. I typically do 7M for that size group and you were at 3M. It will vary by healer comp but we have the same comp you do sans a Monk.

I would say given how many healers you brought you probably just didn't have enough to heal.

[Deleted]

Grats on your kill!

As has been pointed out, you are in a bit of a bad spot since you are bringing one extra healer into the fight. If you had one less healer and managed to down Archi, the other healers would probably have a little higher throughput while you most likely would skyrocket and climb a couple of steps on the healing ladder. The very first kills on a progress boss is where Rshammies tend to shine the brightest, and as everyone learns the mechanics better and gets more gear, our HPS tends to fall off while other healers (I'm looking at you, Dpriests) take a larger bite of the healing cake. If you manage to get a more stable roster with less RNG pugs, try to convince the RL to have on healer go DPS and roll with fewer healers.

I agree with the areas of improvement that you mentioned in your first post, with the fight lengths you should be able to push out 2-3 HTTs and Ascendances, and also make more use of SLT. Also work on your RT casts, try to never have 2 RT casts available, and basically cast it on CD unless you have to chain-cast CH or HS on raid/tanks.
Looking at 4 of your longest logged fights you:

-cast RT every 7.26-9.4 sec (on average), although you died and lost ~40 sec activity time on one of those encounters, which skews the numbers. Try to cast on CD

-hit 4.12-5.06 targets per CH cast, this is usually dependet on either choice of CH target (accidentally casting CH on a far-away ranged target/Doomfire target) and getting less bounces or poor RT spread at the time.

-cast HST every 34.9-37.6 sec on average, quite nice!

-you seem to have a LOT of excess mana during many of those fights, except the one where you died after 7 mins (21 % try, 7:57 fight length). You are 4-healing it there, but so are you on some other tries as well, such as the 26 % 9:19 (what happened here? long fight) attempt - not sure what's differing between those runs healing wise.
Shamans in particular are good at converting mana to HPS, as long as there's damage going out and you're not overhealing and outgearing the fight. Dish out more CH and HS where appropriate/when people take damage.

-mentioned earlier, but to further emphasize: use cooldowns more liberally. Does a healing coordinator or RL call out and assign cooldowns? There's a lot of absorbs flying around in your raid with your composition, and from my experience my HTT and Ascendance animations/raid callouts seem to be somehow connected to MWs spamming Uplift/Revival. These things significantly affect your throughput.



I just got back into raiding and joined a group of friends/friends-of-friends who've been working on HC for a bit, they got their first kill last week about 1 hour after I had to log off.

On this weeks kill we went 2-4-13/14 with Dpriest, 2xRdruid and me on my shammy, unfortunately no one recorded logs so can't compare numbers directly, but with our 4-healer setup I was pushing 60-70k HPS with ~705-6 ilvl.

I've only had around 15-20 HC tries in total so I'm by no means an expert on the fight, but here's how I try to use cooldowns:

-HTT usage: first desecrate / Oh-S#!t-allure-flame derp - Handle all Shackles + Focused shot (the pewpew-arrow thing) - last phase when there's infernals and other raid damage all over the place

-Ascendance: Shackles/Focused shot as above, pop up HR+HST just before the damage starts hitting, precast CH (with UE if there's time) and spam it - use for more throughput during infernal spam, but try to cover ranged players + tank with RT so you get decent bounces

-SLT: cast when clumping below Blasted targets just before they land, precast CH so it hits just after they've landed. If you're fast you can project SLT to the tank/meele cluster in case tank is dropping low (not likely with your comp) - not sure how you do with Focused shot (sorry, that's not the correct name, but the pewpew-arrow thing) but we try to stack just under Archi with the arrow player and target running just outside the raid. You can mitigate a lot healing req by popping down healing rain+HST so it hits players under Archi but also players going out to shoot eachother, and dropping SLT redistributes the damage nicely. Use creatively during the last phase, pop on meele squad or tank, even just for the 10% damage reduction.

-SWG: you don’t use it that much, not sure if there’s little need for it or if you forget it. It’s awesome for Allure Flame transitions, or if you’re the blast target, you can pop it in the air to top you off and pre-cast a UE-CH that hits right when you land. It’s invaluable for the last phase when you probably have to move about a lot to avoid infernals or to keep healing while moving out of the raid if you’re the arrow-guy shooting someone.

Sorry for the wall of text, hope you picked up something practical from here.