Tips for my raid healing shaman

[gortz]

Hey,

I play a warrior tank for a 10man guild and must admit i've never played a shaman. We're currently on 4/6 BWD, 2/5 BOT & bh obv. I do however keep an eye on the healing meter for every fight and notice our resto shaman is running much lower hps wise than the other healers. Our holy pala is usually around 12k hps and priest 8-13k but it obv depends on the fight. Our shaman on the other hand is doing around 5.8-6k hps which seems rather low - his gear isn't bad either. However, he's also casting lightning bolts a lot to regen mana which you would think could be decent as it does do some dps but the dps is so low its pretty much insignificant. I'm making this thread in the hopes that you'll be able to give him some tips to improve his healing output

Here is his armoury so u can take a look:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...calipto/simple

Please don't harass him in game. If you could add any tips or tricks you have here i'll forward them onto him.

Thanks,

Gortz

[heal]

shammy healing has changed a lot in this xpac no longer can we spam op chain heals its become alot more dynamic learnig the right way to use his spells is crucial like using unleash elements to boost a tank heal and using riptide on cd to make the most out of tidal waves for faster / bigger heals.
while there is dispute about the spec and weather or not the lightning bolt to mana talent is viable and both sides have situations to back them up, the points it takes does mean u have to reduce the effectiveness of other abilities while getting mana back easy is a great idea saveing that mana in the first place i find the best way to go

healing stream atm does some crazy basically free group healing over longer fights and glyphed brings the resistance buff

but most will come down to practice with the new setup and finding what works

as well macros to add unleash elements before heals into one button or useing modifier macros to make make it faster to use multiple spells with one hotkey can reduce reaction time and increase thruput

[krillianlol]

Tell him to stop being such a wotlk hero and go for crit instead of haste. Haste is pretty crap since you dont need more output right now, you need more mana, which you get from improved water shield. Drop the points in focused insight and go for 3/3 ancestral awakening, its pretty much 30% more healing when you crit, but on a member with low hp. And if he isnt, tell him to use healing rain more, combined with riptide its very effective healing over time.

[Aqir]

Fact is that he should be running alot lower then any other healer atm. In theory shaman's can't even be close on the healing output as pally/druid/holypriest, the importent thing is that the raidgroup use the restoshaman right, let the shaman take care of melee dmg with chainheals for example, the druid and pally don't have to rush and heal melee just coz they can, since shaman is wicked at healing melee, due to the long cast on chainheal if you are in a meterhorny guild, the druid and pally might heal that and then run oom later, we run with shaman, druid and pally, and we we always have pally on top, followed by druid and then shammy on a normal fight, on stackupfight's, our shaman is way top, like 3-4 % over the pally and druid,

TL;dr Use the shaman right, let him take care of tank/melee and stack up as much as possible so he can use chains/healingrain

The reason for shamans being low atm is coz they don't have enought crit/haste, since when we crit we get mana back it's gonna be alot better in later tier's, that's why blizzard can't buff shamans really, since if they would do that, they would have to nerf them in later tiers once our crit/haste is alot higher

[Whoopsa]

There is so much wrong with that, I have a hard time figuring out where to start, so let's go with talents first.

THE RESTO "DPS WHILE HEALING" TALENTS ARE BAD. Go with Ancestral Awakening and Acuity, which actually help healing without making you STOP healing to cast dps spells. Also, stoneclaw totem is for PvP, not raids, and glyph of Healing Stream or Ghost Wolf are a thousand times better.


As for gear...HASTE IS THE WORST RESTO SHAMMY STAT RIGHT NOW. This is because haste = burning mana faster, when what you really need is Spirit and Crit. Spirit is pure regen, while Crit is a bit of throughput and regen rolled into one. Mastery is okay, but it gives no regen, which is what's really important. Having under 2k spirit is dreadful, and you should never ever reforge AWAY from spirit unless you never ever run out of mana. I have 2.3k Spirit unbuffed and still ran out of mana at the end of our Cho'gall kill (11/12 right now). Chances are he didn't bother to look at ANYTHING when cata came out and is spamming Healing Surge and Chain Heal, then doing no healing while spamming lightning bolt to get back up to full.


So, to recap, lose the dps talents and get real healing ones, lose the pvp glyph, and stat priority should be Spirit > Crit > Mastery > Haste, with mostly Int gems, going off color for Spirit and Crit as needed. Anything less than 9k HPS on most bosses is just bad.

Edit:

Fact is that he should be running alot lower then any other healer atm. In theory shaman's can't even be close on the healing output as pally/druid/holypriest, the importent thing is that the raidgroup use the restoshaman right, let the shaman take care of melee dmg with chainheals for example, the druid and pally don't have to rush and heal melee just coz they can, since shaman is wicked at healing melee, due to the long cast on chainheal if you are in a meterhorny guild, the druid and pally might heal that and then run oom later, we run with shaman, druid and pally, and we we always have pally on top, followed by druid and then shammy on a normal fight, on stackupfight's, our shaman is way top, like 3-4 % over the pally and druid,

I run with a pally and a druid also, and I'm always neck and neck with the pally and a bit above our druid. People saying that Shammies can't come close either aren't using Healing rain properly, are ignoring Unleash Elements and the 25% CH bonus w/ Riptide, or aren't gearing/enchanting correctly. CH is ONLY for periods of stacking up (or on melee as you said) when it would cause absolutely no overhealing at all, or it's just too expensive. If people aren't standing in healing rain, or you're not dropping your HS totem (usually 10% of my healing), your HPS will drop significantly. If you have to, yell at people on vent to get into the shiny blue circle, but by no means are Shammies UP.

[Deleted]

Why does he have leather items?

Isn't the mail bonus thing good?

[Whoopsa]

Why does he have leather items?

Isn't the mail bonus thing good?

Derp. I didn't even see that. Unfortunately you might have to sit your shammy until he at least raids the shammy class forums on battle.net, which are the lowest quality forums possible. If he can't pick up on the common sense of keeping the Armor Specialization bonus, you should reconsider taking him into progression raids.

[Aqir]

There is so much wrong with that, I have a hard time figuring out where to start, so let's go with talents first.

THE RESTO "DPS WHILE HEALING" TALENTS ARE BAD. Go with Ancestral Awakening and Acuity, which actually help healing without making you STOP healing to cast dps spells. Also, stoneclaw totem is for PvP, not raids, and glyph of Healing Stream or Ghost Wolf are a thousand times better.


As for gear...HASTE IS THE WORST RESTO SHAMMY STAT RIGHT NOW. This is because haste = burning mana faster, when what you really need is Spirit and Crit. Spirit is pure regen, while Crit is a bit of throughput and regen rolled into one. Mastery is okay, but it gives no regen, which is what's really important. Having under 2k spirit is dreadful, and you should never ever reforge AWAY from spirit unless you never ever run out of mana. I have 2.3k Spirit unbuffed and still ran out of mana at the end of our Cho'gall kill (11/12 right now). Chances are he didn't bother to look at ANYTHING when cata came out and is spamming Healing Surge and Chain Heal, then doing no healing while spamming lightning bolt to get back up to full.


So, to recap, lose the dps talents and get real healing ones, lose the pvp glyph, and stat priority should be Spirit > Crit > Mastery > Haste, with mostly Int gems, going off color for Spirit and Crit as needed. Anything less than 9k HPS on most bosses is just bad.

Edit:



I run with a pally and a druid also, and I'm always neck and neck with the pally and a bit above our druid. People saying that Shammies can't come close either aren't using Healing rain properly, are ignoring Unleash Elements and the 25% CH bonus w/ Riptide, or aren't gearing/enchanting correctly. CH is ONLY for periods of stacking up (or on melee as you said) when it would cause absolutely no overhealing at all, or it's just too expensive. If people aren't standing in healing rain, or you're not dropping your HS totem (usually 10% of my healing), your HPS will drop significantly. If you have to, yell at people on vent to get into the shiny blue circle, but by no means are Shammies UP.

The yelling part is idd very importent but i can't agree on that you should be above a pally/druid on a normal fight where this is no major stacking up etc, in that case your pally/druid just aint cutting it, check all topguilds wowlogs and you never have shammy's even close to pally's/druid's. it's not very importent what you are on your personal meters since you might just run with bad members, the interesting thing is what kind of hp's/healing done you actully have compared to other healers onw wowlogs

ontopic tho, this specific shammy doesn't really seem to know what his doing :-)

[Whoopsa]

The yelling part is idd very importent but i can't agree on that you should be above a pally/druid on a normal fight where this is no major stacking up etc, in that case your pally/druid just aint cutting it, check all topguilds wowlogs and you never have shammy's even close to pally's/druid's. it's not very importent what you are on your personal meters since you might just run with bad members, the interesting thing is what kind of hp's/healing done you actully have compared to other healers onw wowlogs

ontopic tho, this specific shammy doesn't really seem to know what his doing :-)

Our druid just isn't as geared. If he was geared, we'd be all right about the same, with the pally pulling ahead on non-stacked fights, and me pulling ahead on stacked ones. For example, on Maloriak I had 12k HPS while the pally had 11k and the druid had 9.5k. On Archimedes (or however you spell it), I had 10k, pally had 10.5k, and the druid had 9k (a lot less damage in general on the fight). To be fair, total HPS differs a lot depending on the raid, especially how much the healers are making up for people standing in fire, but I have compared the numbers with others on specific fights, and a lot of resto shammies just seem....bad.

[wasniahC]

Actually.. haste is pretty decent for a resto shaman atm. Burning through mana? Not quite. Haste increases the throughput of your cheaper heals, i.e it allows you to get more healing out through healing waves, and prevents you from having to swap to greater healing wave/healing surge as often. It also increases the efficiency of your riptide, healing rain and earthliving weapon proccs. You'd get most healing out of a fight by going for haste > spirit > crit > mastery for secondary stats, but this is quite punishing if you make mistakes in the decisions you make (what spells to cast when, judging the balance between efficiency and throughput).

Edit: Also, 1/3 ancestral awakening? Oh no please no D:
Drop some focused insight for it!

[Bobptimus Prime]

I've noticed I am generally a little behind our Pally and Holy Priest, but we're talking a margin of 6-8% of total healing, with no larger than a 10% spread between the three of us. And I honestly don't feel bad about that at all, given circumstances.

When Magmaw gets impaled, I'm not the one topping the raid off to start the next phase. They both know that I'm spamming LBolts, getting a full mana bar so I can go balls to the wall with my mana the next phase. Omnitron? Same thing, I'm not putting out the 11k+ HPS... But there's no need to. They both know that when it hits the fan and bad things start happening, I've got a mana bar that I'm more then capable of using. I've jokingly said I could run at 15% mana forever near the end of fights, and there are certainly points where that is more then true.

Shaman have always been more of a "defensive" healer, not so much pure throughput but instead a "steady, but ready" healer. Wrath Kids (No offense to you all, but srsly) got adjusted to the neverending mana pool and a single button, but before that we filled a much different role. And between Focused Insight and Unleash Elements, we have the ability to pop out REDICULOUS numbers on demand, without it costing too much more than it normally would.


To the people that say they're pulling more then competitive HPS numbers, congrats. I'm glad that somebody out there is showing it is possible. But that's not the role I choose to fill, and it doesn't necessarily have to be. Healing isn't about maximizing output and big numbers, it's about minimizing bad outcomes; however it is you come to that end is all on you.

[Fevr]

Here's the ultimate comparison. Open up his armory link, and mine. I can't post a url so armory Xerker on Wildhammer (US) if you like

Note that both our average ilvls are 348. Now look at his spellpower. It's 5087. Now look at mine. It's 5935. It's so obvious that he has never done any research about his class. My int, mana regen and crit are also much higher. Everyone else has pointed out what he's doing wrong. The biggest offence is that he's wearing leather shoulders and a cloth cloak. It doesn't matter that they're ilvl 359, because he's losing out on the overal 5% bonus from wearing all Mail. That's a couple hundred intellect right there. I can't believe he's been allowed to raid :/ Anyway, gl with him

[krillianlol]

Here's the ultimate comparison. Open up his armory link, and mine. I can't post a url so armory Xerker on Wildhammer (US) if you like

Note that both our average ilvls are 348. Now look at his spellpower. It's 5087. Now look at mine. It's 5935. It's so obvious that he has never done any research about his class. My int, mana regen and crit are also much higher. Everyone else has pointed out what he's doing wrong. The biggest offence is that he's wearing leather shoulders and a cloth cloak. It doesn't matter that they're ilvl 359, because he's losing out on the overal 5% bonus from wearing all Mail. That's a couple hundred intellect right there. I can't believe he's been allowed to raid :/ Anyway, gl with him

Yeah, he should totally use a mail cloak.

[Bobptimus Prime]

Yeah, he should totally use a mail cloak.

Is THAT what I'm doing wrong? Garrr!
Also, he meant to say Legs, it just came out Cloak. :P

[Fevr]

Whatever. Same point

[gortz]

Hey all

Just wanted to say thanks for the info/tips. Linked our shaman to the thread and he adjusted his gear/spec accordingly. Downed Chimaeron tonight and he was pulling much higher HPS numbers.

-Gortz

[Jahoota]

Hey all

Just wanted to say thanks for the info/tips. Linked our shaman to the thread and he adjusted his gear/spec accordingly. Downed Chimaeron tonight and he was pulling much higher HPS numbers.

-Gortz

Glad to hear it. His haste is at a good spot right now. After ~916 haste (correct my numbers if they are wrong) you should go for critical strike because you have enough haste to get an extra tick out of all 3 of our HoTs.

[rethea]

Don't just yell and make sweeping assumptions. Haste is FAR from the worst stat right now. The way any over-time spells work was revamped in Cata, giving us a plethora of soft caps. Read http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t110263-...ng_discussion/ please please please.