[PVE Guide] Restoration Shaman 6.0.3

[Pur1tas]

So I know we had this discussion several times already and seemingly we come to a different conclusion every time. I really love glyph of riptide but I feel it does very little but boosting Chainheal and keeping up tidal waves. I realize that theoretically unglyphed riptide should be better if used on CD, but does this change when we get 2 or 4 set bonus? I feel like especially with the extra chainheals it would be good to have more than 3 riptides out at once (and dont say you can with Echo pls. Echo sucks imo + its going to get a change making it even worse). So what are your thoughts on this one? As some of you know I am in a group overhealing all fights but I will be going with a more tightly tuned group this week so I am thinking if I should remove the glyph of riptide.

Also How moch spirit do you guys have? I am at around 1.2k and if I am not using Conductivity but use Healing rain on CD I oom so increadibly fast that I even feel like rather not using it at all. I realize it is very mana efficient but it heals so little that I would rather put out 1-2 chainheals in order to heal people instead of using so much mana on Healing rain. Healing rain is no smart heal anymore if I am not mistaken, which means that if 10 people get damaged and there are 20 people in the healing rain it is possible that not a single tic hits an injured player right?

Thanks for the great discussion in here. I am really apreciating the information we can get here and the open mindedness of everyone. Keep up the good work fellow shamans

[Alltat]

So I know we had this discussion several times already and seemingly we come to a different conclusion every time. I really love glyph of riptide but I feel it does very little but boosting Chainheal and keeping up tidal waves.

I'm not sure if we'll ever get a really good answer for this. It's extremely dependent on raid size, player positioning and encounter-specific mechanics, so it's not something that's easily modeled. It's also entirely possible that one is better for sustained HPS while the other is better for burst HPS. I think the only thing people can actually agree on is that trying to blanket the raid in unglyphed Riptide as if you were a druid isn't going to work out at all (it doesn't seem to be working for resto druids either this expansion). As you say, Chain Heal and High Tide is the real selling point.

Also How moch spirit do you guys have? I am at around 1.2k and if I am not using Conductivity but use Healing rain on CD I oom so increadibly fast that I even feel like rather not using it at all. I realize it is very mana efficient but it heals so little that I would rather put out 1-2 chainheals in order to heal people instead of using so much mana on Healing rain. Healing rain is no smart heal anymore if I am not mistaken, which means that if 10 people get damaged and there are 20 people in the healing rain it is possible that not a single tic hits an injured player right?

Healing Rain is semi-smart: it can distinguish between injured and uninjured players, but can't tell the difference between a player at 60% and one at 80%. It will do quite a bit of overhealing, but it's still worth using. Yes, one Healing Rain only does about the same amount of healing as one Chain Heal (it can do a lot more, but on average it doesn't), but one rain costs less mana than one Chain Heal and you can drop it before predictable AoE damage. Healing Rain is higher HPM, so it shouldn't be possible to OOM because you're using a spell that's too mana efficient. The only real "trick" to Healing Rain is that you always need to be thinking ten seconds ahead, placing it where people will be moving to rather than where they are, precasting it right before predictable AoE damage, casting it just before you activate Ascendance to duplicate its healing, and so on.

As for spirit numbers, I've got roughly 800 + Hourglass + Mark of Shadowmoon, so about 800+340+180 = 1320. Seems to be enough for everything so far, as long as you're okay with chugging potions and getting progression kills with <10% mana left.

[trackdude]

So question?

I saw awhile back that healing stream was getting a buff? Now I don't see anything about them buffing it? Is this correct or was it just a tooltip fix?

[Koor]

I saw awhile back that healing stream was getting a buff? Now I don't see anything about them buffing it? Is this correct or was it just a tooltip fix?

Just a tooltip fix.

[Thumbtacks]

So I know we had this discussion several times already and seemingly we come to a different conclusion every time. I really love glyph of riptide but I feel it does very little but boosting Chainheal and keeping up tidal waves. I realize that theoretically unglyphed riptide should be better if used on CD, but does this change when we get 2 or 4 set bonus? I feel like especially with the extra chainheals it would be good to have more than 3 riptides out at once (and dont say you can with Echo pls. Echo sucks imo + its going to get a change making it even worse). So what are your thoughts on this one? As some of you know I am in a group overhealing all fights but I will be going with a more tightly tuned group this week so I am thinking if I should remove the glyph of riptide.

Got the 4p last night, tried it out for a few Heroic fights. Once I got the 4p I glyphed Riptide. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

1. Riptide costs basically nothing, which is good. You get the mana back for it before the GCD is up.
2. It does not do a lot of healing.
3. It does, however, proc the 4p, which is really good and also with High Tide means it will smart heal an extra two targets.

So what I've been doing is trying to blanket the raid before a pull, and then using it as filler whenever I'm not healing a tank or when the DPS have taken damage but not enough to justify a healing wave. Ideally it means about 1/4-1/3 of the raid will have Riptide on them at any given time (with our raid size of like 26 it worked out that somewhere between 6 and 10 people had riptide on them during a fight like Darmac, for example).

I wouldn't say you should use it as a way to proc the 4p during a heavy damage phase (Tantrums, for example), you should still use Chain Heal since that can proc it too. However, having a lot of people with Riptide means you get more out of Chain Heal, and you get a lot out of chain heal with the 4p.

so i'd say use it as a filler when you have a second to spare, but don't rely on it for a lot of healing. Once you get the 4p it becomes really useful, before that...probably not as much. I wouldn't glyph it without the 4p, personally. Especially if you think you have mana problems.

Also How moch spirit do you guys have? I am at around 1.2k and if I am not using Conductivity but use Healing rain on CD I oom so increadibly fast that I even feel like rather not using it at all. I realize it is very mana efficient but it heals so little that I would rather put out 1-2 chainheals in order to heal people instead of using so much mana on Healing rain. Healing rain is no smart heal anymore if I am not mistaken, which means that if 10 people get damaged and there are 20 people in the healing rain it is possible that not a single tic hits an injured player right?

I'm sitting on something like 1.3k, I think. Are you using Elemental Blast? If not you should be, it's great when you're not at whatever spirit you'd prefer.

I really don't use healing rain as much as I should, I only use it on fights where I know people will be for the majority of the time, and when I know it won't go to waste. On Gruul, for example, I use it. Same for the ranged DPS on Oregorger. I don't think it's SUPER useful, personally.

[LordGalpin]

Iv recently Rolled a Shaman grom a disc priest ( to help with guild setup).

My healing is still extremely low for my gear now, just hit 674 and im only doing roughly 38-40k on major dmg fights like Kromog ( yes my guild takes alot more dmg than most...) The one main problem i have with my healing rotation is, when should you heal people with riptide on them and when should you heal another target to maximise the healing from chain heal from High Tide Talent.
This is a huge issue for me, alot of the time when the entire raid is taking damage, i am putting a riptide on a player then using chain heal, and the raids either healed up by then or the heal will hardly be effective as druids and monks will ofc heal it first.

So should i on high aoe fights spam a target with riptide or people without to maximise High Tide healing?

Cheers

[Koor]

Iv recently Rolled a Shaman grom a disc priest ( to help with guild setup).
My healing is still extremely low for my gear now, just hit 674 and im only doing roughly 38-40k on major dmg fights like Kromog ( yes my guild takes alot more dmg than most...) The one main problem i have with my healing rotation is, when should you heal people with riptide on them and when should you heal another target to maximise the healing from chain heal from High Tide Talent.
This is a huge issue for me, alot of the time when the entire raid is taking damage, i am putting a riptide on a player then using chain heal, and the raids either healed up by then or the heal will hardly be effective as druids and monks will ofc heal it first.

So should i on high aoe fights spam a target with riptide or people without to maximise High Tide healing?
Cheers

Try to use riptide on cooldown so you have riptides rolling in advance, and then when you need to use chain heal, you can often find a target low enough that has riptide to chain heal from. Using CH on someone with riptide boosts all CH jumps by 25%. If you CH someone without riptide it doesn't guarantee that high tide will jump to the riptide target -- if the target with riptide happens to be selected in the first four jumps, you still won't get extra jumps. And even if you get an extra jump from 4 to 5 targets, this is only a (1.5+4)/(1.5+3) = 22% boost, compared to 25% guaranteed from chaining someone with riptide.

Delaying CH to cast riptide first for the 25% boost is OK if people won't die in between (sometimes there is no time to delay it), but you are describing the opposite case, that delaying CH by a single GCD to cast riptide, caused other healers to already heal the damage and make CH overheal. This is an overhealing scenario in which chain heal probably wasn't needed in the first place, and healing wave may have been the better choice.

[ryudaraku]

Hello Shaman friends, I have a quick question.

the tooltip for Healing Rain says six targets, I have a friend who insists that it heals more than six people.

I remember Healing Rain healing everyone in it, but it started to diminish past a certain number of people standing in it, is that still true or is it directly capped at six targets?

[Pur1tas]

Hello Shaman friends, I have a quick question.

the tooltip for Healing Rain says six targets, I have a friend who insists that it heals more than six people.

I remember Healing Rain healing everyone in it, but it started to diminish past a certain number of people standing in it, is that still true or is it directly capped at six targets?

It heals 6 players per tic. These 6 players can be different players every tic if I am recalling it correctly.

[Kiyoka]

I tried both glyphed and unglyphed riptide tonight and much preferred having it glyphed. It was healing for a bit more while glyphed and it felt like I had more freedom on when and who to use it on, especially on fights where I had to take glyph of chaining. Even ranked in the 95th+ percentile while using it on a couple of fights. I think the difference in healing is pretty small either way though and it might differ from raid to raid. It's close enough that you should just use whichever style you prefer.

That being said, I did pickup 4pc tonight and would highly recommend running it glyphed once you have 4pc. The proc has no ICD and is far too valuable to only give yourself an 8% chance every 5-6 seconds.

[Alltat]

It heals 6 players per tic. These 6 players can be different players every tic if I am recalling it correctly.

Healing Rain is basically a Healing Stream Totem with a very short range that targets six players each time it ticks, yes. Back in Cataclysm it was a "real" AoE heal with diminishing returns and stuff, but it has since been remade into a stationary smart heal dispenser that just happens to come with a circular graphic indicating its maximum range. Standing inside the circle does not guarantee that you actually get healed by it. Healing Rain is still an excellent spell in any stacked AoE situation, but the mechanics of it are a bit unintuitive.

That being said, I did pickup 4pc tonight and would highly recommend running it glyphed once you have 4pc. The proc has no ICD and is far too valuable to only give yourself an 8% chance every 5-6 seconds.

Chain Heal still procs Tidal Waves, and you shouldn't be casting glyphed Riptide more than every 5-6 seconds on average over a fight anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much.

[Kiyoka]

Chain Heal still procs Tidal Waves, and you shouldn't be casting glyphed Riptide more than every 5-6 seconds on average over a fight anyway, so it doesn't really matter all that much.

I worded that poorly. What I meant was, it feels like it's more ideal to front load the % chance of it proc'ing by riptide'ing multiple targets that you expect to be taking damage soon and then hopefully "forcing" a proc versus it being a bit more random when you're just casting Riptide on cooldown. As an example, on Blackhand I might riptide 4-5 people right before a demolition where I can then transition straight into spamming chain heal while hopefully having "forced" a proc in those 4-5 earlier riptides.

[Pur1tas]

I worded that poorly. What I meant was, it feels like it's more ideal to front load the % chance of it proc'ing by riptide'ing multiple targets that you expect to be taking damage soon and then hopefully "forcing" a proc versus it being a bit more random when you're just casting Riptide on cooldown. As an example, on Blackhand I might riptide 4-5 people right before a demolition where I can then transition straight into spamming chain heal while hopefully having "forced" a proc in those 4-5 earlier riptides.

Also there are enough moments in almost every fight in BRF where you would actually be doing absolutely NOTHING if you didn't have glyphed riptide. At least for my experience. I healed one side of Furnace solo (or almost at the end our disc came over after the other side finished) and I did not do much except riptide, healing rain and HST for healing and was totally fine. If I did not glyph riptide I think I might have had to use a real cast every now and then but like this I spend almost 0 mana while keeping everyone at a decent health level. Also for fights like Oreguy, Hans and Franz, Maidens, Thogar, Darmac and Flamebender, where you actually have a lot of time to do absolutely nothing if you play it right I think glyphing riptide is very viable. You can get some riptides going and prepare for incomming dmg (well on maidens you just sit and wait till 20% as they do nothing till that point).

I don't know about riptide every 5-6 seconds but I rather have some riptides going in preperation of incomming dmg or someone failing than to do nothing, especially as it really heals a lot and the hot part is a lot stronger than the initial heal.

[Deleted]

and I did not do much except riptide, healing rain and HST for healing and was totally fine. If I did not glyph riptide I think I might have had to use a real cast every now and then but like this I spend almost 0 mana while keeping everyone at a decent health level.

That is actually detrimental for your raid. You can always dps, even if it does pitiful damage, it would've been more helpful for the group than prehoting topped people. Hell, the 6.1 dps buff makes it an even better habit.

[Deleted]

Hi all,

happy to see this useful discussion.

Since I saw some great feedback Alltat gave on some logs posted, I would like too ask for similar support:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=13&source=7

Also I´m looking for some advice on what to look out for.
Here are things I´m analyzing:

is HST basically dropped on cd?
how is Earthshield Uptime?
how many Elemental Blasts cast?
is Ancestral Swiftness used enough through the fight?

In past expansions I used Queries to analyze my WoL logs.
Now we are using Warcraft Logs and I´m wondering if anyone has Queries to evaluate a Resto Shaman with Warcraft Logs?

How often should Unleashed Life be cast in order to call it "good enough"?

What else should I be looking for and what do others notice analyzing my logs?

[Pur1tas]

That is actually detrimental for your raid. You can always dps, even if it does pitiful damage, it would've been more helpful for the group than prehoting topped people. Hell, the 6.1 dps buff makes it an even better habit.

Ohh I was just talking about the healing part. Ofc I keep EB on cd and Lavaburst as well. Usually that fits pretty well in the heal rotation while keeping HST on CD and using Healing rain just before a Heatthingy.

I usually went for:
EB
Flameshock
Lavaburst
HST
Healing rain (just before first Heat explosion thingy)
Get hots on everyone on my side (we played with like 16 people and I had less than half on my side so that was pretty fast)
Restart from step 1
If I had downtime I casted some Lightning bolts but usually that was pretty well.


@Karmasutra

I am only looking at Blast furnace now

You missed two HST but I think that is okay considering sometimes delaying it by a second or two just makes more sense or you need to cast something else first so I think 14 in 8:20 is pretty solid.

Riptide uptime is great

EB uptime was pretty bad but I think on Blast furnace it is kinda tricky because if you cast it on a dead Elemental or an Elementalist with his shield up you do not get the buff.

Ancestral Swiftness seemed to be used well over the fight. I think its a 1:30 CD and you used it 4 times in a 8:20 fight. Considering you wont really need it in P1 I think that looks good.

Earthshield was not horrible but pretty bad at some points. You had a whole minute without anyone having your earthshield, which is obviously subopimal. You did will for the start but it looks like you missed it towards the end of P2 getting it back up somewhere around there.

I think for Unleashed it is really a nailbiter. I tend to use it very little and usually only with my instant Healing Surge Makro. I think you can obviously use it more often, but in situation where it would actually be needed the GCD messes you up more than it benefits you in my opinion. You used it quite often and I think that is probably more optimal than my usage of it, especially as the speed boost helps you sometimes.

So overall I would say you did pretty well with the things you mentioned, except for Earthshield where you missed like almost two minutes throughout the entire fight.

[Alltat]

Also I´m looking for some advice on what to look out for.
Here are things I´m analyzing:

is HST basically dropped on cd?
how is Earthshield Uptime?
how many Elemental Blasts cast?
is Ancestral Swiftness used enough through the fight?

Add Riptide casts, Healing Rain uptime and Healing Tide/Ascendance use and that's about it. There's a ton of other stuff you can check if you're interested in anything special, like dividing the number of Chain Heal hits by the number of Chain Heal casts to see how much use you're getting from High Tide, but the uptimes and casts are generally the most interesting data. There's always room to improve in those areas, so you can check that after every raid and find out what to work on for next time.

How often should Unleashed Life be cast in order to call it "good enough"?

Cast it when you're moving and either need the speed boost or don't have any other instants off cooldown. It's not really worth casting when standing still, as it's a loss in both HPS and HPM compared to spending that time casting CH/HW. You can use it before predictable damage, but most of the time it's more useful to spend that time refreshing Earth Shield, putting down a Healing Stream Totem, pre-dropping a Healing Rain, and starting to pre-cast a Chain Heal. There are very few fights where it really helps to add UL to the mix.

[Deleted]

Hey thanks for the feedback guys, that was quick!

I had this feeling about Unleashed Life but stuck with what I was doing in MoP (casting it to buff HR).
So good to know it´s oftentimes more of a waste if used standing.

Yeah I missed that Earthshield dropped in the Furnace fight - bummer
Guess I need a Weak Aura Warning if there is no ES on a tank.
Does anyone have something like that?

[Deleted]

Yeah I missed that Earthshield dropped in the Furnace fight - bummer
Guess I need a Weak Aura Warning if there is no ES on a tank.
Does anyone have something like that?

It's kind of hard to create a light weakaura like that because you basically have to scan every single raid member for the lack of a particular buff. The inverse is quite easy though (tracking stacks of your own ES on anyone), will post once home.

[The Yeti]

It's kind of hard to create a light weakaura like that because you basically have to scan every single raid member for the lack of a particular buff. The inverse is quite easy though (tracking stacks of your own ES on anyone), will post once home.

WeakAuras works great, but I'd personally recommend ShieldsUp. It tells you who ES is on and how many stacks they have.