Whats goin on with shaman heals? other classes seem so more Op!

[Lituallup]

So ive healed all thru Wolk and now with cata im starting to raid a bunch with my guild, i have about 5 epics plus my first teir piece. the problems seems in raids im not putting up the numbers i did back in wolk. I find pallies and priest kill me in recount and druids are too. When i do compete with other classes im oom soo fast.so whats goin on i know what my rotation is andmy gear is better then others? PLz help!!

[ruzhy6]

The grass is always greener... go check the first page of each of the other healer's class forums. Posts like this for every one of them (except possibly paladin but they are getting nerfed some).

[Lituallup]

i dunno i just seem to do really bad numbers compare to the rest, but i hear ya i feel shamans need a face lift!

[Umon]

i think shamans are ok...i have no problems outhealing other healers and if im not first im behind by 1-4 % and thats not something u can call underpowered...shamans have made a 180 degree turn from wotlk....reset ur mind and learn the class all over again
but ppl rly got to stop geming haste...this isnt wotlk anymore....

[Lituallup]

yeah i know how haste is not as good as wolk and i under stand that, my trinkets might need to be replaced. i usally us ES on tank then healing wvae and tidal wave becasue i can do those all day with my mana regen, do ppl use chian heal anymore? i use healing rain only when big amounts of aoe dmg gois out.

[Trianglehead]

So I think I am ready to make a post in regards to Cata's impact on the resto shaman.

My History of resto shaman - Raided "semi-hardcore" in tbc up to and included first boss of sunwell before the guild collapsed pre wotlk. I did not play during Wotlk due to RL issues and have started playing again since cata release and now I have 8/12 cata under my belt with ascendent council at about 5 3-8% wipes so thats in the bag dps just need to up their game imo lol.

From going from TBC to CATA the changes on the resto shaman were huge and I was overwhelmed. For those that did not play in tbc 25 man raids and our healing was keep ES up on tank, WS up on outselves, totems active and basically spam chain heal we had nothing else. I used xperl for raid frames and just mouse over spam chain heal with heroism when asked, bloody easy and we always topped the healing meters, always!

As everybody knows cata has introduced a large variety of different spells we need to utilise based on fight mechanics at the time which is more challenging for us and I must say I do enjoy it even though spamming chain heal and getting epic loot easily was fun too haha.

I found healing heroics very difficult until my gear level was higher (its now 353) but now with my experience of the healing system in cata and an increased gear level i find healing heroics very easy and find myself doing ints and dpsing on most boss fights provided the group has some know how of their role also. Generally in heroics I keep riptides rolling on tank and whoever else to keep tidal waves proc up and the usual garbage every body knows already.

In regards to raids I can not stress how good Healing Rain is, which i will get back to in a sec. Currently i raid 10 mans and our set up is priest pally sham. I am currently topping healing meters on most fights but realistically I think the other healers could improve as I do agree shams need some changes and they should be doing better on HPS. Blizz took away our totem buffs, our heroism uniqueness and made chain heal cast time terrible. Imo blizz should let tidal waves also give haste to CH rather then proc it that would make a world of difference.

Litallup I only use chain heal when everybody is stacked inside healing rain purely due to the fact the cast time is to slow to keep up with damage in a lot of encounters or the fact that we wont get 4 bounces. Healing rain is awesome, yes its only good when we stack but out of the 5 bosses I have killed in BWD they all require stacking for a phase of the fight. magmaw - pillar groups, omni - mamgatron phase (sometimes), maloriak (all the time except blue phase), atramedes (ground phase - loose range stack) and chimareon (biletron offline). Ppl say it costs a lot of mana but does it really? 10160 mana or something lets compare this to GHW and HS ... you couldnt get off two of these for the same cost as healing rain. Long story short I use healing rain a lot and its the dps duty to use their own initiative and jump inside it. Healing rain is what will bring ya HPS above 10k or at least is a nice resto sham range of about 8-10k on 10 mans, 25 mans you could obviously get a lot more due to 25 ppl stacking in healing rain. To ensure i dont go oom, once healing rain is down i generally keep riptides rolling out , tidal waves proc up and spam healing wave with UE when i gotta move round and situational uses of GHW and HS depending on damage spikes and if your assigned to tank healing.

Check out my armoury for stats if you want but recently since utilising healing rain more and getting a few upgrades in raids I have not had issues with going oom early in fights. I may finish fights close to oom but thats how it should be imo. some fights are interesinting for instance ascendant council.. easy as to heal until phase 3 when ya spamming healing surge like crazy and praying dps can pull through. My top two heals for this fight were healing stream totem and riptide and I topped the healing meters lol.. seriously there isnt much damage though provided ppl do not get hit by things you dont need to get hit by. Always keep glyphed healing stream totem down.

Hope this babble helps a bit. I am nervous about heroics to be honest and will give another report once I have some experience and can give a valid opinion about it. As ppl get more experience and more gear everything becomes easier thats just the way of the WoW. I find all fights i have done so far in cata raids very simple mechanics wise for our healing roles. basic movements out of stuff and applyin the correct heal.

[jammyd]

For the little we seem behind other healers i think we make up for it for been basically awsome in the over healing department i sit at like 12-15% overhealing usually and the nearest any other healer seems to get is 25% in 10 mans im 9/12 as a healer atm and our kills have been pretty clean

[vindicatorx]

Haste still has its place in regards to Riptide ticks past that its lost its viability. I do not believe if you are soley casting healing wave and riptide that you are topping healing meters there is no way thats possible unless the other healers in your raid aren't doing their jobs right. Healing rain is great given the proper circumstance and as Triangle stated I use Chain heal when the group is stacked for high raid damge conditions like Chimaeron's massacre. I almost top heals on that encounter but no where near it on any of the others. The amount that a healing wave heals for is just awful sure if I spam it I will be 100% mana the whole encounter but its not strong enough by itself to keep a tank up in a 5 man heroic let alone a raid. I still don't get how we got weaker as we gained levels should have at least had the same healing potency as we did at 80 imo. Say what you want but right now we are gimp I know we are getting a few buffs in the next patch so it might be fine with these adjustments once that happens we'll see.

[Hoptam]

I use Chain heal when the group is stacked for high raid damge conditions like Chimaeron's massacre.

Just have killed Chimareon 10 HC and I have to say one thing - I usualy use one chain heal per Feud phase and its the one that is boosted by UE+RiptideDOT else its waste of mana in my oppinion and I couldnt my grp up this way - the way to go there (at last for me) is healing rain obviously and else HS spam.

In the kill I reforged all crit and haste to mastery (had 925 haste or so), thou yesterday when we came there and I tried to reforge all mastery into crit and I didnt felt gimped at all (ended up with enough mana even after 5 feud phaess)


http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=10908&e=11285

[Trianglehead]

Vindictorx - the only time my top three heals were so different was in ascendent council fight this is largely because of the lack of healing needed in the first two phases and large amount of movement. basically healing stream and riptides do the job in that fight. i still topped meters probably because i had full mana p3 and spammed healing surge plus healing rain untill it got too chaotic. My HPS was not high to top the meters only about 7.5k hps which is why i said my other healers need improvements. I have healed with other pallys and priests ( not on that fight though) and got owned every encounter on the meters. I do not think i am the best healer any where near that just passing on what I have experienced so far in my cata raids.

I am skeptical about our so called buffs in the new patch as chain heal will still have to slow cast time (hence my suggestion to let tidal waves work for CH also). our MTT is getting nerfed and GHW is gonna cost nearly as much as bloody healing rain lol.. obviously a situational spike damage heal... We will still need tweaking into the future but atm we are definately viable as healers, dunno bout heroic content till i visit it though.

[Aran]

Litallup I only use chain heal when everybody is stacked inside healing rain purely due to the fact the cast time is to slow to keep up with damage in a lot of encounters or the fact that we wont get 4 bounces. Healing rain is awesome, yes its only good when we stack but out of the 5 bosses I have killed in BWD they all require stacking for a phase of the fight. magmaw - pillar groups, omni - mamgatron phase (sometimes), maloriak (all the time except blue phase), atramedes (ground phase - loose range stack) and chimareon (biletron offline). Ppl say it costs a lot of mana but does it really? 10160 mana or something lets compare this to GHW and HS ... you couldnt get off two of these for the same cost as healing rain. Long story short I use healing rain a lot and its the dps duty to use their own initiative and jump inside it. Healing rain is what will bring ya HPS above 10k or at least is a nice resto sham range of about 8-10k on 10 mans, 25 mans you could obviously get a lot more due to 25 ppl stacking in healing rain. To ensure i dont go oom, once healing rain is down i generally keep riptides rolling out , tidal waves proc up and spam healing wave with UE when i gotta move round and situational uses of GHW and HS depending on damage spikes and if your assigned to tank healing.

/thread

Seriously. I do what he does, and it works perfectly and im right below holy priests and paladins, but we're close ^^

[Trianglehead]

Hoptam i checked your raid logs for Chimaeron. I am still learning here but does earthliving generally contribute towards you healing so much and is there a way to boost this? The have made healign on the sham so technical now comboing together three diferent moves to get the most out of your chain heals and GHW.. of course it will become more second nature with some practise. I am still comparing it to my old days of spamming chain heal in black temple and not having to worry about anything.. dont even thnk we had any kind of dispell back then ahaha and i know we never interrupted.

One other question. What do you believe is a good level of crit to attain before going back into haste (stacking further then 916) or even mastery? Havent seen many of the top 10 man guilds in the world using mastery in there stat selection at all though. I got around 20% haste and didnt know if i should go further my man has been ok so I have been puttin up my Int spirit and haste whilst retaining 20% crit levels.

[Disegame]

Hoptam i checked your raid logs for Chimaeron. I am still learning here but does earthliving generally contribute towards you healing so much and is there a way to boost this? The have made healign on the sham so technical now comboing together three diferent moves to get the most out of your chain heals and GHW.. of course it will become more second nature with some practise. I am still comparing it to my old days of spamming chain heal in black temple and not having to worry about anything.. dont even thnk we had any kind of dispell back then ahaha and i know we never interrupted..

For that fight Earthliving does so much healing due to the fact that everyone hp is constantly low and we have a talent that gives EL like a 80% proc chance when people are below 35% so it procs almost every time you heal in that fight.

[Trianglehead]

Ah that makes a lot of sense. I was wondering why earhliving contributes so much to shamans healing in heroic fights.. everybody is always on a lot lower health then normal

[Marsc92]

I heard to keep stacking crit. Reliable boost to increase healing via crits, better mana regen via IWS, mitigation via AH and more healing from AA. In fact it scales so incredibly well with gear.

[Madd77]

So ive healed all thru Wolk and now with cata im starting to raid a bunch with my guild, i have about 5 epics plus my first teir piece. the problems seems in raids im not putting up the numbers i did back in wolk. I find pallies and priest kill me in recount and druids are too. When i do compete with other classes im oom soo fast.so whats goin on i know what my rotation is andmy gear is better then others? PLz help!!

I have a priest, shaman and druid @ 85. They all seem more than viable (if by viable you mean metersLOL) Now topping meters on my druid is super easy while maintaining my mana, the shaman does just fine.

The second poster in this thread said it best

The grass is always greener... go check the first page of each of the other healer's class forums. Posts like this for every one of them

[Hoptam]

One other question. What do you believe is a good level of crit to attain before going back into haste (stacking further then 916) or even mastery? Havent seen many of the top 10 man guilds in the world using mastery in there stat selection at all though. I got around 20% haste and didnt know if i should go further my man has been ok so I have been puttin up my Int spirit and haste whilst retaining 20% crit levels.

for now my healing idealogy is to completly left healing wave away (chimaeron is a bit different kind of fight so healing wave works nicely with TW as its just enough to get ppl above 10k) but else I am the HS spammer and for that you dont need haste at all - thats also why I stack crit because I want as much mana back from LB crits as possible (+ other effects of the crit) - this commes from ten man normal raiding - hard modes might prove me wrong and I will have to completly reconsider my healing style but one thing is for sure - healing wave and its 11k crits are basicly a drop in the water.
(to maintain my mana I obviously have to spam LB as much as I can = I dont top ppl off if I know no major dmg is comming in theyr way - but thats proly something I can consider as I know if the person screws up it is almost 100% dead body no matter how much HP that person had = as I know my coraiders I know when exactly they need to be up and I make sure they are else its job for my totem and other healers (smart/aoe heals to bring them up)

Hop

[Deathfairy]

From what i am seeing is our 3 shamans are WAY below rest of the healers. My own shaman 348 iLvL strugles to keep more then 8k healing without going oom. While palies and priests pull 12k+ without much issues. I havent healing raids on shamy other then agalon beacuse alt rading isnt up and running yet.
And 10 man Agalon is very decent fight for shamy healing with 5 people stacking, and even then 8k is max for me and i am oom by end of the fight.

Mostly HR, CHain heal, riptide and HW healing + decurse.

[Potatoman]

Shaman healing is strange compared to other classes. We could help you easier if you posted your armory...

As others have said, our healing may not be as strong as paladins currently, but we're better suited for certain roles. As Jammyd said, check the overhealing for your fights and compare those numbers as well as your Healing done. When my groups do BoT/BWD, we roll with 2 resto shamans and a holy paladin, and the paladin's overhealing is usually double the shaman's.

Due to our mastery, we're better at healing people the lower they are, even if you have little to no mastery, the base mastery helps enough. If we had better ides on your glyphs/spirit, etc. it would really help.

[Deathfairy]

Shaman healing is strange compared to other classes. We could help you easier if you posted your armory...

As others have said, our healing may not be as strong as paladins currently, but we're better suited for certain roles. As Jammyd said, check the overhealing for your fights and compare those numbers as well as your Healing done. When my groups do BoT/BWD, we roll with 2 resto shamans and a holy paladin, and the paladin's overhealing is usually double the shaman's.

Due to our mastery, we're better at healing people the lower they are, even if you have little to no mastery, the base mastery helps enough. If we had better ides on your glyphs/spirit, etc. it would really help.

Unless i am wrong healing done does NOT include overhealing so it is pretty irrelevant stat unless they go oom overhealing which they dont.