Restoration Shaman Guide

[Inspector]

I disagree with everyone who is saying mastery is trash in this thread, imo its our best stat for raid healing. I heal for a 10m raid group and prioritize Haste (softcap)>mastery>haste>crit and I'm top healing done most of the time. For tank healing I can understand stacking crit because when you're healing only one person u obviously want to keep them capp'd at full health and not let them drop to the point where mastery will become usefull.

[Hypernetic]

I disagree with everyone who is saying mastery is trash in this thread, imo its our best stat for raid healing. I heal for a 10m raid group and prioritize Haste (softcap)>mastery>haste>crit and I'm top healing done most of the time. For tank healing I can understand stacking crit because when you're healing only one person u obviously want to keep them capp'd at full health and not let them drop to the point where mastery will become usefull.

While that's true, I'm starting to discover that mastery is pretty beneficial for tank healing as well. In pretty much all of the hard modes I've done so far the tank dips pretty low and quite often. I'm trying to add mastery without sacrificing too much crit.

[Endus]

Mastery is a stat that will, for fairly obvious reasons, gain and fall in value based not just on your stats, but also on the conditions of the fight, and also the other healers. If you're grouping with fairly meh healers and you're bearing the brunt, Mastery makes you even more awesome than you're already being. If your other healers are awesome, their healing will be topping people off more quickly and reducing the impact your Mastery will have.

So there is no easy one-size-fits-all answer to whether Mastery is awesome or not. The right answer is "it depends".

[kaldyr]

I think the worth of every secondary stat really depends on your play-style, spell selection, raid size, healing role, other healers, and the fight mechanics. That's a lot of variables. There are extreme examples of shamans pulling top parses on WoL by stacking spirit and haste, and others getting top parses on other fights by stacking all mastery.

My post count is too low to link, but Gdlol at US - Frostmourne stacks mastery. Novex at Us - Mal'Ganis stacks spirit and haste. Both of these shaman are pulling top 3 parses on World of Logs on various fights. I think those two are great examples of the stacking 'camps'.

Spirit and haste have wonderful interactions. Spirit regen compensates for the mana burn effect of haste. Spirit can also be seen as a throughput stat when stacked high enough by allowing you to burn your mana on more expensive spells more frequently. Haste can also be seen as a regen stat when stacked by allowing you to cast more mana efficient spells quickly in place of a more mana intensive spell for the same effect. The difference is all in the spell selection, so you can burst throughput when needed and then shift spells to shift back to extreme regen. Stacking spirit also allows you to play mana-battery for your raid, which allows every other healer to also push more towards throughput vs mana efficiency. (HPS vs HPM)

The flipside is the Mastery / Crit stacking 'camp', which does rather insane things to your throughput on certain fights and when you're bearing the brunt of the healing, as Endus put so well. Not too much to touch on here, all pretty obvious how it works.

Personally I'm not able to get multiple resto gearsets or I'd love to have one set of each. In the end for my casual 10 man normal raid I'm just going with a solid mix of the stats. Unbuffed 2200 spirit, 20% crit, 916 haste, 10 mastery (30%), then pushing them fairly equally. This seems to be working fine for our array of the variables this tier of content. Always the top healer in the raid with it and not overly concerned about mana. We'll see what the firelands bring us.

Edit: I personally rarely see Riptide glyphed go full duration without going to overhealing. I don't have any solid data to prove this, but I personally value Earth Shield and Water Shield glyph more than the off chance that the extra ticks from extended duration riptide will not be purely overhealing. In 5 man heroics I'll agree Riptide is more efficient than Water Shield, but in a raid scenario the other healers will top off your riptide targets most of the time.

The flipside arguement I can see is that the extended duration on riptide means that if the target drops again before it runs out you can still get the benefit for chain heal. I just don't see that as more of a gain than the flat mana returned for the current state of normal 10 man from personal experience. Maybe this value is different in heroic raiding or 25 man? Anyone else debated the glyph combos and have some personal experience with them? Would love some input on this!

[healmenow]

[QUOTE=kaldyr;10613490]
Spirit and haste have wonderful interactions. Spirit regen compensates for the mana burn effect of haste. Spirit can also be seen as a throughput stat when stacked high enough by allowing you to burn your mana on more expensive spells more frequently.


i personnally think haste is very good in raids for spells like healing rain and ch. I dont see the reason to stack spirit when u have that much haste Shaman s mana regenaration is awesome and u can always talent telluric currents. With that much haste u loose less time dpsing. But generally i dont think haste causes that many mana problems. Not all our heals are spammable.

[Alltat]

Well, part of the idea of stacking spirit is that it lets you heal more aggressively, using GHW and HR more. Since you won't be able to use any spells you want without consequence if you don't stack spirit, it will improve your throughput as well as your regeneration. In that same vein, haste will improve both HpS and HpM by allowing you to use HW more, though the HpM effects will be fairly minor compared to stacking other stats.

In the end, haste/spirit/crit/mastery basically do the same thing (improved throughput and efficiency) in slightly different ways. The ways in which they interact should mean that there are no particular benefits to stacking one stats or to maintaining a balance. With the exception of crit, which is unreliable for improving your direct heals (but much less random on HoTs), it shouldn't matter all that much what you stack so long as it fits with your playing style. Assuming you don't completely gimp your spirit, of course.

[Hypernetic]

Well, part of the idea of stacking spirit is that it lets you heal more aggressively, using GHW and HR more. Since you won't be able to use any spells you want without consequence if you don't stack spirit, it will improve your throughput as well as your regeneration. In that same vein, haste will improve both HpS and HpM by allowing you to use HW more, though the HpM effects will be fairly minor compared to stacking other stats.

In the end, haste/spirit/crit/mastery basically do the same thing (improved throughput and efficiency) in slightly different ways. The ways in which they interact should mean that there are no particular benefits to stacking one stats or to maintaining a balance. With the exception of crit, which is unreliable for improving your direct heals (but much less random on HoTs), it shouldn't matter all that much what you stack so long as it fits with your playing style. Assuming you don't completely gimp your spirit, of course.

wat.

How is crit less random on HoTs?

Spirit isn't a throughput stat either. Having more regen lets you cast more spells before you can go OOM for sure, but that has nothing to do with throughput and having longevity isn't going to help you burst heal through heavy damage at all.

[frester]

wat.

How is crit less random on HoTs?

Spirit isn't a throughput stat either. Having more regen lets you cast more spells before you can go OOM for sure, but that has nothing to do with throughput and having longevity isn't going to help you burst heal through heavy damage at all.

you obviously didn't understand what he was trying to tell you, it's true that spirit does not increase your throughput DIRECTLY but it certainly does so indirectly, as you can use couple more HSs or GHWs and not go oom, and i'm sure that is more throughput isn't it? but it doesn't mean spirit is more effective at increasing throughput than say haste.

as for crit being less random on hots, yes that is true in the sense that if you have say 20% crit, that means your direct heal has 20% chance to heal for 150%, but your HoT as a whole has a good chance (depends on number of ticks) to heal for 110% of its initial value.

[Hypernetic]

you obviously didn't understand what he was trying to tell you, it's true that spirit does not increase your throughput DIRECTLY but it certainly does so indirectly, as you can use couple more HSs or GHWs and not go oom, and i'm sure that is more throughput isn't it? but it doesn't mean spirit is more effective at increasing throughput than say haste.

as for crit being less random on hots, yes that is true in the sense that if you have say 20% crit, that means your direct heal has 20% chance to heal for 150%, but your HoT as a whole has a good chance (depends on number of ticks) to heal for 110% of its initial value.

Each tick still has the same crit chance, it's not less random.

Having more mana regen =/= throughput. It increases your longevity not your HPS.

When the raid is taking X amount of damage over Y seconds you will need Z HPS to keep them alive. This is known as throughput. Mastery will increase the amount you heal for in these situations, increasing your HPS, and as such is a throughput stat. Haste will allow you to cast more heals during this time, increasing your HPS, and as such is a throughput stat. Spirit will make sure you still have mana when the raid is dead, not increasing your HPS, and as such is not a throughput stat.

Obviously that example is a bit of hyperbole, but it's true.

[kaldyr]

As fester was saying, spirit is not directly a throughput stat, but it -is- a throughput tool if you change your spell selection accordingly. If you only cast the same spells, as you are suggesting in your post, then it does nothing to your throughput and only extends longevity as you suggest. But if spirit allows you to change your spell selection to more aggressive mana intensive spells, it has everything to do with throughput.

Assume a fight is X minutes long. No matter how you gear, reforge, gem, and enchant, your spell selection has to extend your mana to last X minutes. Going to extremes here, if you reforged out of spirit in every item for the minimum (not that anyone would, just taking extreme example) you would have to be extra careful on spell selection using HW as much as possible or you'd not last the X minutes. Throughput in this case is terrible since the only able to cast HW.

To the other extreme, every piece of gear has spirit, you gem spirit centric, and enchant for spirit (as done by a few shaman as noted in my post above). This allows you to blow as much mana as you want when you want, casting HS, GHW, and other mana intensive spells freely.

Most shamans sit somewhere in the middle of these two examples, and shifting spirit one way or the other does have an effect on your spell selection, and your spell selection is directly related to your throughput.


As for the crit being more effective on HoTs, this may appear to be the case for a single cast of each spell (for one single cast of Riptide, the initial and each tick can crit - that's 9 chances glyphed), and extremely small sample sizes due to the RNG, but over time it isn't the case, as Hypernetic says. Taking the 20% example, a single cast of HW gives you a 20% chance for +50% over the normal 100% effectiveness. That is 0.2 * 0.5 + 1 = 110% over a sufficiently large sample size. Now let's assume the same 20% crit and with 0% crit the initial heal of Riptide makes up 20% of the overall spell effectiveness and each of the 8 glyphed ticks makes up 10% (This isn't exactly true, but it doesn't change the result and it makes the math look nice). So we have ((0.2 * 0.5) * 0.2) + (((0.2 * 0.5) * 0.1) * 8) + 1 = 110%. Over time they are identical.

[Alltat]

Each tick still has the same crit chance, it's not less random.

It is less random, looking over the duration of the HoT. Fairly basic statistics. For clarity, imagine a 50% crit rate:

When casting GHW, you have a 50% chance of doing the minimum possible healing (non-crit) and a 50% chance of doing the maximum possible healing.

When casting Riptide, which ticks five times by default, you (on the HoT) have a 3% chance of doing the minimum healing (no ticks crit), a 3% chance of doing the maximum healing (all ticks crit), and a 94% chance of doing "somewhere in between".

If you cast three GHWs you have a 12,5% chance of getting lucky (all crits) or unlucky (no crits). If you cast three Riptides, you have (looking at the HoT ticks) a 0,003% chance of getting all crits or zero crits. That's one in about 33000.


The same reasoning applies regardless of your crit chance, as long as it's above 0% and below 100%. The more different chances you have to crit, the less likely you are to be exceptionally lucky or unlucky. So it's much less random, as you can be fairly certain of what you will get ("somewhere in the middle" virtually every time).

[Hypernetic]

Um no, that's not "less random" it's called a "percent chance". It's the same per hot tick as it is per cast of any other heal. NOT LESS RANDOM.

[Endus]

It's the difference between betting $5 on a coin toss, or betting $1 each on 5 coin tosses. The odds per flip are the same, but it's vastly less likely you'll win $5 if you do 5 bets, but also just as vastly unlikely that you'll lose $5.

[Hypernetic]

It's the difference between betting $5 on a coin toss, or betting $1 each on 5 coin tosses. The odds per flip are the same, but it's vastly less likely you'll win $5 if you do 5 bets, but also just as vastly unlikely that you'll lose $5.

Well it's more like doing both at the same time, unless people just sit there and do nothing while riptide ticks =D.

[Charge me Doctor]

those who says shit about restoration shaman mastery - is a bad person. You don't need to heal 100% of time, usually you can wait untill tank will be dropped to low health and use your GHW and spam lightning bolts. YOU can make a mastery a good stat if you will heal people who are in hurt (chain heal style). Not just a "woops, he isn't on 100% health, i'll heal him and overhill, fuck my mana bar, fuck my mastery".

[Hypernetic]

those who says shit about restoration shaman mastery - is a bad person. You don't need to heal 100% of time, usually you can wait untill tank will be dropped to low health and use your GHW and spam lightning bolts. YOU can make a mastery a good stat if you will heal people who are in hurt (chain heal style). Not just a "woops, he isn't on 100% health, i'll heal him and overhill, fuck my mana bar, fuck my mastery".

You really can't do that with tanks in hard modes.

Mastery is still great, even on tanks. They get rocked.

[taymatt]

You really can't do that with tanks in hard modes.

Mastery is still great, even on tanks. They get rocked.

You can't do it in regular mode raids either. This person must be talking about dungeons. Easy ones.

[Endus]

You can't do it in regular mode raids either. This person must be talking about dungeons. Easy ones.

As a shaman who off-spec heals for regular modes up to and including Nefarian, there's a fair bit of opportunity for regen via Telluric Currents in a lot of boss fights. The only two fights I really felt constant pressure to heal was Chimaeron and when I was tank-healing the Onyxia tank on Chimaeron.

I'm also geared badly for resto; I don't have any tier yet, and I'm using partial Elemental gear. I need to rework my gear, and I'll probably end up going heavier on mastery and crit, lower on haste.

That said, hard modes are ENTIRELY different. I haven't healed a lot there, just a few attempts on Halfus (H) before our regular healer showed up, and it's a big step up. I'm honestly not comfortable with my gear for that yet.

[klimon]

Endus, are you talking about 25 mans or 10 mans?

[Endus]

10 mans, so if I'm not healing we're down 1/2 to 1/3 of our healing, where in 25-man it would be more like 1/5th, plus it's easier to get the max number of people into Healing Rains and such in 25-man.