How recount(the addon) showed me the glaring hole in resto that needs to be fixed...

[Deleted]

The TC quite obviously has a valid point which many people are either choosing to ignore, or it simply lies beyond their comprehension.

For me, this isn't about shaman vs another class at heals, or even about shaman vs shaman. IMO for any given resto shammy, the totems are simply not balanced well.

I appreciate that totems provide different buffs depending on the situation, and that a player has to use their intelligence to decide which to use - which is fine. The problem is that an intelligent player will (nearly?) always pick HST over MST because of the difference in power/benefit.

[Carighan]

I appreciate that totems provide different buffs depending on the situation, and that a player has to use their intelligence to decide which to use - which is fine. The problem is that an intelligent player will (nearly?) always pick HST over MST because of the difference in power/benefit.

As said before, not necessarily. You can have 1,5k blanket healing, or say... 1k more intelligent healing from a healer done with surplus mana. The latter saves people, the former makes you look better on the meters.

In most fights, the intelligent healing is the better choice though.

[ripponesan]

Aye, and we did after downing the dragon twins and finally slapping our foreheads in disgust at how we missed the cause.

And to the person above you, valk, you're talking about a loss of 900k healing done over a 5 minute boss fight. 3k x 300 seconds if you were wondering at the math.

No other class has any sort of loss of healing that high for what should be a raid buff helping your group. We shouldn't have to sacrifice the kind of healing numbers that would top off 9 people over an entire fight at the mana cost. I'm pretty sure that's a failure of design on bliz part, not inherient qq on mine. Besides, I was dropping my healing stream... And ended up 100k healing behind the holy paladin at the end with both of us healing over 9k hps.

The problem is the design of resto healing and healing stream, or alternately the fact mana spring provides no additional healing affect for a shaman besides mana gained which can come from another source. If mana spring in some way increased our healing numbers in a flat rate, I wouldn't mind dropping it every time. Otherwise I'm only a mana battery and a bad healing one at that....

one could argue, that Healing stream totem is simply OP and you should be happy until it gets nerfed.
On the other hand you could do the math and check if those 900k healing you lost would be healable by the amount of mana which mana spring recovered over this 300 seconds.
326 * 300 = 97800 mana recovered. i dont know but i guess that should be enough to do 900k healing with it.
Well given that you still have enough of GCD´s ready to actually do those heals.

on another hand, HPS is well some kind of indicator of you potential healing power. But holding people alive takes more than hps.

---------- Post added 2011-01-11 at 01:32 PM ----------

the OP's heart is in the right place -

we are the worst healer in the game right now. there is ONE reason to bring a resto shaman - mana tide totem.

well i know another reason. I dont know why or how, but somehow resto shamans tend to be good players, instead of the monstrous resto druid mass.

[Voltigeuse]

In rereply to the original poster I say that i agree with him and that the totems are a rather inellegant way of dealing with a class that uses buffs to fill in the gaps from absent classes. The problem comes when one a glyphed HS totem is just way more powerful than the other totems and it does just that in prolonged instances of heavy raid damage and even from a standpoint of personal survivability.

I make it a point to always carry a set of Drums of the wild for the times when we have just 1 pally and no druid and I would only drop ms totem in the incredibly rare times that there is no other possible way to provide the extra mp5 as the healing aside the elemental resistance is just too powerful to do without.

TLDR easy fix is for Blizz to attach the mp5 of mana totem to the healing totem.

[Sharaki]

Strange, World of Logs for our kill of Magmaw last night doesn't show Healing Stream Totem numbers anywhere near 3k.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2904&e=3388

Just checked our Magmaw from this reset: healing stream doing 3,3k hps

If you don't have it doing over 3k HPS, your totemplacement is awful

[Deleted]

Aye, and we did after downing the dragon twins and finally slapping our foreheads in disgust at how we missed the cause.

And to the person above you, valk, you're talking about a loss of 900k healing done over a 5 minute boss fight. 3k x 300 seconds if you were wondering at the math.

No other class has any sort of loss of healing that high for what should be a raid buff helping your group. We shouldn't have to sacrifice the kind of healing numbers that would top off 9 people over an entire fight at the mana cost. I'm pretty sure that's a failure of design on bliz part, not inherient qq on mine. Besides, I was dropping my healing stream... And ended up 100k healing behind the holy paladin at the end with both of us healing over 9k hps.

The problem is the design of resto healing and healing stream, or alternately the fact mana spring provides no additional healing affect for a shaman besides mana gained which can come from another source. If mana spring in some way increased our healing numbers in a flat rate, I wouldn't mind dropping it every time. Otherwise I'm only a mana battery and a bad healing one at that....

And what is 900K? 5 time full tank healing. 10% of your healing?
And what do you get with manareg with 3 healers (ignore the higher DPS from casters)? at least 5-10% more healing ffrom everyone of them or nearly 25-30% longer healing till they get oom. That is much more than 900k healing.

Then we didnt calculate that over healing of the totem. Most of the time at least 20% of the players have full HP and get overhealing. Then it is used over a long time, but it doesnt burst when you need it.
The totem is good, but you lack controll over the healing and so it isnt as good as the mana reg for a good raid.

[shadowkras]

The only log so far in this thread showed 1400 and 1900 hps with HST.
You need to leave people under 80% health so they always get healed by the totem/hots/smart heals, otherwise you hardly will pull 3k hps with the totem alone, as the totem heals for 1200 on a 2 second pulse.

1200 *5 = 6000 /2 = 3000
Assuming it never overheals, which it often will.

ost of the time at least 20% of the players have full HP and get overhealing.

If you have so much overhealing, you failed the point of cataclysm entirely. I will just say one word:

Triage.

It means not topping everybody wasting all your mana to keep people at full health, its not even necessary to, nobody will get hit by 100-120k damage hit unless they did something terribly wrong in the fight.
So stop topping people, 80% health is plenty and will let HoTs work better, even if you have no HoT healers in your raid, some dps classes have HoT thats help easing the healing (ret paladins, spriests, all sort of shamans, etc), or have self healing abilities that are small but steady (fury warriors, DKs, ret paladins, spriests, warlocks, etc).

[Thela]

As said before, not necessarily. You can have 1,5k blanket healing, or say... 1k more intelligent healing from a healer done with surplus mana. The latter saves people, the former makes you look better on the meters. In most fights, the intelligent healing is the better choice though.

See, now I can give up on you getting it. Look up above this post. The problem is the inequity of the buff vs losing the healing. I don't think anyone who has healed at all in cata cannot agree with me that the less healing you have to direct out, the better you can heal overall. Lets break down the facts one more time: At 1.2k healing per target at 5 targets healing stream totem heals for 3k hps. (1200 x 5)/2 = 3000. Over a five minute fight, 3k hps is 900k healing done. 3000 x (60 seconds x 5) = 900,000. THIS IS BASELINE, JUST A SIMPLE FACT. It doesn't mean you will end up getting 3k hps out of the totems on a raidlog, but it damn well will heal for a huge amount over a fight with smart healing management to allow the totem to be as effective as possible. Shaman healing has been balanced around this measure else bliz would never have let it go to live the way it is. That means resto is capped by an arbitrary heal that is undirected. I would love to completely remove the totem for the healing output that it does transferred into our other heals. Being reliant on a 'fire and forget' game mechanic in a reactionary and proactive healing environment is a crippling structure to our healing. And I know what I'm doing as resto. Its not as if I just want to complain about it. I just think this is a problem that could and should be addressed by bliz in a timely manner. Resto shouldn't be so detrimentally affected by one totem over another. That's the end all and be all of the post. Recount is just the tool that made me realize the disparity and start doing the math on it. Used correctly and with the right mindset, it is a very good thing to have, not to just wag your meter topping at others.

[SuperNick]

I'm happy with healing stream totem. It heals nicely and it's one less HoT I don't have to worry about.

Seeing people ASKING to have a nerf or another manual HoT so we have even more to micromanage just sorta blows my mind.

I personally don't see this as a "glaring hole that needs to be fixed" - it's simply the fact that the other totems in the same line are fairly bad, as you stated, they're unbalanced. Mana spring should be much more regen than it currently is, the pushback totem is just pointless and the glyph of HS now handles the resistance totem. A few definitely need reworked. If the other totems were equally as good, you'd make more choices based on situational use but as it stands why bother. It's not a game breaking mechanic, it just limits your choice. No less than feeling the need to take earthshield as an absolutely required talent though really?

A long fight you might opt to use a totem that provides 1000 regen. A heavy magic fight, you might opt to use a totem that has 300 resistances (as opposed to glyphs 190 or whatever)

As a last note, not sure why people are saying we're the worst healer, but shaman as a whole is in a fairly decent place in my opinion. We killed 10 bosses or so now in my guild with Paladin, Priest, Shaman (me) and we are always very evenly matched on healing output. I guess you can argue gear/skill etc, but the way it stands, we kill bosses comfortably and at no point do I feel i'm bringing other healers down because "my spec sucks".

[Panic]

So the "glaring hole" you found that is worthy of bringing to blizzards attention, is that you didn't get to top the healing chart because there was another shaman? You're bringing the wrong attitude to raiding if this is really what concerns you.