Resto Shamman: Deep Healing broken in 4.0.6 / Use crit until 4.1????

[Contravene]

My wife is a Resto Shaman and we have the Mastery/Crit questions so she stacks the opposing gear in the bank. I was reading the patch notes for 4.1 just now and I noticed this line..

Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.


1. Blizzard is basically saying deep healing is broken? "mastery is useless"
2. Do we think the above change will be implemented as a Hot Fix before the release of 4.1 PTR?

[Deleted]

Excuse me? It's not broken.
It currently benefits only direct heals, eg HS, GHW, HW etc, not RT, HR, EL etc.

[mugiwara1984]

My wife is a Resto Shaman and we have the Mastery/Crit questions so she stacks the opposing gear in the bank. I was reading the patch notes for 4.1 just now and I noticed this line..

Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.


1. Blizzard is basically saying deep healing is broken? "mastery is useless"
2. Do we think the above change will be implemented as a Hot Fix before the release of 4.1 PTR?

i somehow dont get what your point is. and it will not be a hotfix, its in the 4.1 patchnotes, so we will see it go live when 4.1 is released.

and its not saying its broken, it just says, that it needs a buff.

[Whoopsa]

The description of the spell itself currently reads "direct heals." It benefiting only direct heals (plus HR), is consistent with its description. I see no brokenness there.

[Contravene]

Sorry I said it was broken when it isn't.. I am mostly wondering about gathering the right gear to give her the best shot for 4.1 and to try to keep up to speed on things we should be trying to stack in the bank. We save any natural drops but we don't pointedly go after them.

[vixsin]

It currently benefits only direct heals, eg HS, GHW, HW etc, not RT, HR, EL etc.

A couple of corrections to that list:

Deep Healing currently applies on: HW, HS, GHW, Unleash Life, CH, HR (yes, HR is considered a direct healing spell, not a hot), RT Initial Hit
Deep Healing currently does not apply on: ES, EL, RT Hot, HST, AA, Cleansing Waters

In 4.1 it will apply to all of the above *except* HST and AA. Cleansing Waters, I believe, will also remain exclusive of Mastery, but I have not yet confirmed this on the PTR.

[Gistwiki]

A couple of corrections to that list:

Deep Healing currently applies on: HW, HS, GHW, Unleash Life, CH, HR (yes, HR is considered a direct healing spell, not a hot), RT Initial Hit
Deep Healing currently does not apply on: ES, EL, RT Hot, HST, AA, Cleansing Waters

In 4.1 it will apply to all of the above *except* HST and AA. Cleansing Waters, I believe, will also remain exclusive of Mastery, but I have not yet confirmed this on the PTR.

It applies to AA indirectly. It makes the heal that fuels the power of the AA proc larger, resulting in a larger AA. Mastery does not apply to it directly though, as that would be double-dipping.

[evan_s]

I'd bet that even after the patch mastery still won't apply to Earth Shield. It is functionally a direct heal, so should already be affect but isn't. I wouldn't be too surprised if it did actually work when cast on yourself but I have never tested it. Basically, I expect the 4.1 patch to change it to affect Earthliving weapon and the Hot Portion of riptide. A slight buff over all but not enough that I'd expect it to really affect how one is gearing.

[Jademist]

It's not broken.

And no, I still favor Mastery over Crit. Our heals crit often enough to give the target the Ancestral Fortitude buff. Deep Healing is great because it increases our healing to targets with lower health. I've seen one of my Greater Healing Wave crit for 89k (With Unleashed Life) on a target once. But that's my preference. At least my gear is already tweaked for mastery once 4.1 hits (of course i'm above the haste soft cap).

[vixsin]

It applies to AA indirectly. It makes the heal that fuels the power of the AA proc larger, resulting in a larger AA. Mastery does not apply to it directly though, as that would be double-dipping.

Correct. But I feel obliged to list it under "not applied" lest someone think that they get the intended 30% + Deep Healing bonus.

[Gistwiki]

Correct. But I feel obliged to list it under "not applied" lest someone think that they get the intended 30% + Deep Healing bonus.

Makes sense

[Irisel]

gimp =/= broken

[Radux]

Restoration Shaman are not gimp or broken. Mastery is not gimp or broken (even in its current implementation). The reason it initially got a bad rep is because its effectiveness is constantly changing, thus it became incredibly difficult to calculate.

Mastery right now = a good stat and it works just fine.
Mastery after 4.1 = a good stat and will work slightly better than its successor.

People are perfectly able to competitively heal with high amounts of crit, haste or mastery. That's been the wonder of this expansion thus far. However, crit will probably fall off in effectiveness after this tier, as it works better as a regen stat with a throughput bonus rather than just a throughput stat with a regen bonus. Haste and Mastery builds will become the norm for solid throughput builds in the future.

So to answer the OP: Have your wife use either set. It will work either way. Have her play to her comfort.

[Deleted]

Really, i could use some EJ-info about this...

I've seen Crit, mastery and haste shamans and can't really tell what's the best.

Me myself i'm still a hasteshaman and i did Chimaeron 10 normal with another r-sham that was mastery.

We we're both equally geared but i 'won' the healing, and hand more than 1k more hps than him. Looking at our heals my top ones we're earthliving, healing rain, CH. His we're just the singletarget-heals.

Perhaps Mastery will be best at 4.1, but what is best right now?

[evan_s]

I agree with Radux. Mastery really isn't a bad stat right now. I think it's mainly a PR issue because it's basically impossible to parse how effective it actually is. I'm not sure if an add-in could even do a good job of figuring it out because of lag issue. We know how it scales from testing so you should be able to calculate how much of a heal was from mastery if you know what their health is at the exact time it lands but since I've had situations where a NS GHW goes off but the target dies before they get the heal I'm not confident the lag factor could be eliminated. If it is showed up as Healed for 10k and a separate line for mastery healed for 2k or healed for 12k (2k from mastery) instead of just saying healed for 12k people would easily be able to see how much it actually contributes. Currently, the math does seem to indicate that if most people you are healing at 50% or less master is probably the best stat you can get. IE if it's hard content mastery is pretty effective.

Sure, mastery isn't very useful if you are keeping people mostly topped off but in today's healing environment that also means it isn't very challenging content and other stats suffer the same thing. Crit isn't very good if the additional healing is just more over healing.

[Jynus]

Really, i could use some EJ-info about this...

I've seen Crit, mastery and haste shamans and can't really tell what's the best.

Me myself i'm still a hasteshaman and i did Chimaeron 10 normal with another r-sham that was mastery.

We we're both equally geared but i 'won' the healing, and hand more than 1k more hps than him. Looking at our heals my top ones we're earthliving, healing rain, CH. His we're just the singletarget-heals.

Perhaps Mastery will be best at 4.1, but what is best right now?

Chim a gimmick fight. hps for it means jack all. I wouldn't look at fights like that. Also you need to consider something.
1) The easier and more farm the fight is, the better haste will be.

So ya, if you're doing farm content and blowing everyone away, well grats to you. But personally, I gear for progression where people will be low and close to dying a lot, and not gear for stuff thats a cakewalk.

For your answer, haste or mastery are both right now good to have, the difference is preference. Crit is not a throughput stat, its a regen stat. you should not be going crit if your goal is increasing your hps..

[Roidzilla]

Intel> Haste 916 (788 goblin) = spirit>mastery>haste>crit

So in other words once you have a comfortable level of spirit and the above haste mastery is your best stat. After patch mastery will be your best stat regardless of haste breakpoints.

[Asem]

spirit has diminishing effect around 2200 if im correct, I usually reforge around that. I haste til breakpoint, then balance out Mastery and Crit.

I sit around 14% mastery, 23% crit, 2200 spirit, Haste (as stated above for goblins) 836 rating Unbuffed

My preference is mastery on Progression right now. Only 7/13. Either way having close to 100k greaters is nice when a tank dips. Still rolling TC spec, like always. Pretty much a must on most, if not all Heroic encounters. With all this talk of topping charts and other nonsense, if your consistantly out performing someone else, its time to find a new healer. In our 10H group, all 3 of us are with in 1% of Healing done by the time an encounter is done, if you can accomplish that, then your doing something right as a group.

[Whoopsa]

spirit has diminishing effect around 2200 if im correct, I usually reforge around that. I haste til breakpoint, then balance out Mastery and Crit.

Excuse me? Spirit never has any kind of diminishing returns whatsoever. Unless something changed that I was unaware of, I'm pretty sure it never has.

[Dundebuns]

I used to be staunchly against mastery, but in the end you have no choice but to take it in some slots. I picked up ~40% healing through deep healing on my gear while maintaining at least 15% crit and 916 haste as an experiment. I'm in a 25 man progression guild, 8/13 heroic currently. I have to say, that on a great many fights it is an extremely useful stat. It makes sense at my gear level, as 5% crit wont really go as far as an extra 20% deep healing. Also, if you're serious about heroic nef tries (and hence need the 'tank' BH trinket to smooth over crackls) you'll end up taking a good chunk of it too. However I expect this will be incredibly beneficial.

Next patch deep healing will affect our riptide and earthliving hots. This will increase our healing output a lot, especially since earthliving procs all the time on low health targets (due to talents) and will hence take a large chunk of mastery.

However, I would probably recommend you use a lot of crit as you start out raiding. the mana returns are much better until you get good levels of spirit, and then slowly move over to mastery as you dig into the harder heroic fights.