Struggling with Raid Healing

[killzwitch]

I must have played with my spec and reforged my gear so many times just to try things out that now i have found a setup which i like and enjoy.
As said i love playing my shammy but i do feel a little 'boost' is in order so we can compete with the holy pally/priests of the game!

If that boost comes in the form of a more powerful chain heal I think it would be lovely, it seems a tad gimped that our old trademark requires so much build up time and eating a hot for it to be mana efficient.

[Powell]

there is a big difference between HPS and efficient healing.
Shamans are known for their more efficient healing then say Paladins, spamming heals and getting 50% overheals on the beaconed target is not efficient, it may not matter to them, cause they wont go oom, but you cant rely on pure HPS charts when that happens.

In addition, we cannot play with our mastery in a raid enviorment with other healers, while you become so much more efficient on low health targets then any other healers, they will not permit someone to stay low hp.
In dungeons i usually keep my party around 50-80% (depending on the situation) because i benefit more from that, as its better for my mana due to bigger heals aka less healing., it might be risky, but its far more efficient.
In Raids this won't happen, so you can't put the full potential of your class into it, wich is something blizzard will need to change.

[Phoenix15]

Glad to see things worked out pretty well for you with the changes!

I looked at your character sheet and your gear and gems have vastly improved. One thing I do wanna ask though is are you mainly a raid healer or a tank healer or one of those that watches the tanks and heals the raid when they can?

The reason I ask is because of your use of Master/Spirit gems. If you are primarily focusing as a raid healer then that's fine, but if you're more of a mix or tank healer then i'd suggest swapping those gems out for Crit gems (int/crit, or crit/spirit)

But those are minor tweaks. Also remember any haste above 916 for you is really not that worthwhile now, so you could afford to restore like your ring back (44 haste -> crit)

And...don't forget ur shoulder enchant. I see ur close to exalted so no worries, just with min/maxing tips I always point out even the smallest things

And if you want to check out what I did, feel free!
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../nihune/simple

All in all good job and keep up the good work!

[Adril]

Never cast GHW w/o tidal waves

And drop Healing Stream totem it's easily 1k HPS But most improtantly it's not just for HPS sake, it's very usefull spell.

I use similiar spells to you, but with heavy usage of GHW. And usually i'm pumping more than 10k.

PS. It can as well be that you have very good healers with you, if your teampartners are good it's harder to get 'higher numbers'.

And as usual. Recount doesn't matter! Yeh it does, it's very good feeling when you know it's you who pushed the raid, and not the others who carried you

i just have to ask, is this on 25man? or 10man? because i doubt there is many shamans who can sustain 10k HPS over a long fight in 10man.

[Whoopsa]

I won't go into trying to correct the 50% of things in this thread that are just plain wrong, instead I will give some general tips.


1) Ignore Chimaeron healing meters, because most healing above 10k is effectively overhealing. Also, have your ranged stand in such a way that you are spread out, but can still hit 6 people with Healing Rain. That, plus HST (with enough spellpower) = enough to get people above 10k between each and every slime (except when having to renew HR).

2) Don't use the Water Shield glyph. While it does give a bit of mp5, that is not counted as Spirit, which is affected by Mana Tide. Essentially, pure mp5 is kind of useless, and all 3 healing Primes are better.

3) Chain Heal is NOT useless. As long as it hits all 4 people, you have the glyph, and 0 overhealing is done, it is well worth the mana cost. Unfortunately those situations don't happen often, but when they do, keeping Healing Rain down and using CH with Riptide/Unleash is the way to go.

4) If you end any fight with more than 20% mana, you're doing it wrong and should have used more Healing Surge. Yes, I mean ANY FIGHT.

5) Always gem Int and Int hybrids for set bonuses, unless you're realllllly lacking a certain stat.

6) Stay away from mastery. While it isn't horrible, Spirit, Crit, and Haste all outshine it, in that order.

7) Drop Telluric Currents, for the love of god. Ancestral Resolve is good for taking less damage (which means less healing needed), and Totemic Reach is VERY useful for very spread out fights like Cho'gall, Nefarion, and Atramades. You can take the extra 2 points in Acuity if you'd like, but it isn't all that necessary.

[Tromp]

Lots of opinions on here. It would help to know a bit more information. As someone mentioned above, are you typically tank healing or raid healing? How you gem/gear/spec can also be effected by the ambitions of your guild, raid make-up, play style, etc. I lean towards min/max'ing all that you can out of your toon, so most of this will come from that angle. Here's some suggestions, but take them with a grain of salt.

- I would recommend dropping mining for another profession. Engineering would be great to go along with Jewelcrafting.

- Regem - Remove the mastery gems and use Reckless (int/haste) for yellow sockets and Purified (int/spirit). I would ignore the socket bonus in your belt and double gem Brilliant Chimera's Eye on your belt. Once you gear up a bit more and get comfortable, branching out a bit won't be an issue. Consider enchanting your pants.

- Spec - Be sure to be put 3 points into Acuity. I haven't visited EJ in a little while, but the cookie cutter spec was something along the lines of 3/7/31. However, you find that the majority of progression raiding shamans have spec'ed deeper into the Elemental tree and not pick up Ancestral Swiftness. We are able to get hit capped with current gear with 2/3 in Elemental Precision fairly easily.

- Consider Stoneclaw Glyph over Healing Wave. Also, Water Shield can become a better alternative as your guild progresses in content.

- Pick up an Intellect trinket with a 'Spirit' use (i.e. Dream Owl / Core) in place of the mastery trinket. Popping the trinket + Mana Tide Totem = full mana bar.

There's a handful of other stuff, but I will leave it at that for now. Best of luck to you.

[Instant]

i just have to ask, is this on 25man? or 10man? because i doubt there is many shamans who can sustain 10k HPS over a long fight in 10man.

I only do 10 man as for now.

Magic word is HST It typically does 1k/1.5k HPS for me. It also heavily depends on who you're healing with. If other healers are slacking, or aren't that good you'll go higher.

Also Tear of Blood and Core of Ripeness helps a lot ;p

[killzwitch]

1. Not having problems anymore Phoenix and Instant appear to have solved pretty much all my problems - I still raidlead and we aren't hardcore so a certain amount of babysitting is required which affects my focus.
2. I am purely a raid healer, to me the tank's HP bar is just another one that shouldnt be dropping below 50% without a hot or two on it, we have a Pally covering the tank healing and a holy priest as the raid/tank healer - I do take account of the tank's position and that a chain heal on him will often spalsh to the melee - fight depending.
3. The Mastery and Spirit gems are purely from Elemental - they were the first gems one of our JCs could make and hit rating + Elemental overload is win win - this will be changed to more friendly go between gem shortly.
4. I'll tweak me gear to just kiss the 915 mark =)
5. Got Exhalted last night on my last dungeon run of the evening - I'll get that sorted.

Thanks for your link Phoenix I'll check you out on WoL and Armory =)

Tromp - I hate levelling profs but you may be onto something with your suggestion /cry, Tell currents is currently used as we raided Magmaw Half and Tron council recently, all which we are capable of doing with me 'off dpsing' to gain mana. I do have said trinket and use it in conjunction with my MTT - I do need to use it earlier in the fights mind you.

Whoopsa
1. We have very few people with ilevel about 350 so have left Chimaeron for a little while till gear and practice in our classes and cata raid environment gives us a better chance - ty for your point.
2. I had really hoped Blizzard would pick up on WS being pure mp5 - I've removed it now since yeah the bonus was tiny and the E/L throughput is now even better.
3. I only raid 10man so often CH is a tricky one to use as the bounces tend to stop short of 4 - I'm sure it will come practice, I only use it with unleash and on a Riptided target.
4. I often do in the 3 fights we now farm due to Tell currents - point taken however.
5. Stacking more int is starting to look more and more appealing as I do next to 0 overhealing and yet people still aren't bang on 100% after a heal - my resto gems need a thorough bashing.
6. I have some mastery shite from my Elemental gear (some is shared) given how Resto/healers need to be perfect I think my Ele dps is gunna have to take one for the team =)
7. Tell currents is currently God in Magmaw, I could really do with a 2nd Resto spec but then I lose the ability to be a competant DPS - which is rare in my Battlegroup!

Powel - I agree our Mastery (imo) is pants as everybody else's mastery and healing not only trumps it but also prevents it from being totally effective (unless you're two healing) - I'd have liked to have seen a small green area under the targets of our critical spells which heals for X amount of the heal over 6 seconds - the bonus here being that others can stand in it, the negative being it only occurs on crits. - NVM =(

[Adril]

I only do 10 man as for now.

Magic word is HST It typically does 1k/1.5k HPS for me. It also heavily depends on who you're healing with. If other healers are slacking, or aren't that good you'll go higher.

Also Tear of Blood and Core of Ripeness helps a lot ;p

i use Healing Stream totem with Resistance glyph all the time, and have core of ripeness and this int trinket with spirit use from JC, so when im using Mana tide, i can pop both trinkets and get around 17k spirit for 15-20sec which regen quite a lot of mana.

My healing combo is Resto Shaman(Me) Resto druid and a holy priest(he is slightly new to healing, so he isnt performing better then us, even though he is a priest, and have better tools for pve). we usually ends fights with close to no mana.

the Resto druid always is higher than me, he is quite good, and i also see myself as a quite competent healer.

[TheDrednaught]

Shamans feel to me as a LEGIT support class. Shamans have always been a support class that could keep up with your straight laced healers. But with how things have gone and with us being a good ~5% behind in healing we have gone from equals to subordinates and are more of raid buffers between life and death. More of a assistant to the real healers IE: Priest/Druid/Paladin

[killzwitch]

Shamans feel to me as a LEGIT support class. Shamans have always been a support class that could keep up with your straight laced healers. But with how things have gone and with us being a good ~5% behind in healing we have gone from equals to subordinates and are more of raid buffers between life and death. More of a assistant to the real healers IE: Priest/Druid/Paladin

Something that cannot be allowed, currently our only unique buff is the Res buff our healing totem provides, the rest of the buffs we do, SP/Haste etc can brought by other SPECS/CLASSES and in cases more powerful versions are evident.

After playing my mates priest and having a paladin myself I can see we have a much much more difficult time in adjusting to both the healing changes and the learning curve is nasty for us and faceroll for them.