Struggling with Raid Healing

[killzwitch]

Thought I would come here for a bit of assistance on my general performance - it being slightly under what I expected.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../seawad/simple
(Issues I am aware of, missing 1 JC gem, Specced for TC [Magmaw spec], few mastery gems [Elemental was MS], cheap ass Meta).

Yesterday my raid (Holy Pally, Holy Priest, 2 Wartanks, DK, Rogue, Surv, FrostMage, Feral) downed Halfus and Tron - with attempts at Chimaeron (very sad times). I usually stare at the meters as most DPS do, furiously trying to beat everyone on dmge, dispells, interrupts, dmge taken etc and I tend to do rather well. However as a Shammy raid healer I was dragging behind at around 7-7.5k HPS with the Pally on 10k and the priest a good 10% above me - mine seemed massively low - I was RLing, shouting tacts, interrupting, dispells but still there was never a moment that I wasn't casting or moving or jiggling around.

My conceptions from all the guides I've read are:
Healing Wave when there isn't much to do.
Keep ES on Tank.
Riptide on CD (never overwrite).
Don't use CH as its poor atm for the cost and cast time.
HRain when 4+ targets are huddled and due to take dmge.
Healing surge rarely or only during Oshi moments.
(I also avoid GWH due to the cast time).

So most of my heals come from Healing wave, Riptide and ES - I have never gone OOM, but then again I sync trinkets and procs with Manatide to ensure I always use every tick efficiently + potions too. I'd love to see some logs of other shammies healing these fights or any Raid bosses tbh so I can see the amount of gumf your packing - My only healing exp comes from TBC Holy Pally soooo yeah, less than Dynamic.

I know we downed bosses (yey) but I hate coming away from an encounter having put out a poor-moderate performance and learnt jack all

Cheers babez

[Deleted]

I tend to use Healing Surge far more than Healing Wave in raids. Healing Wave is far too low HPS in most circumstances and I only tend to cast HS when I know a crit won't overheal as with TW up it's over 50% crit chance for me I think (and certainly for you with your crit rating). I also tend to make heavy use of Unleashed Elements, most for HS but also for the occasional CH.

I wouldn't discount CH completely. It's not as good as it was but if it makes all it's jumps it's still decent HPM and can be useful when Healing Rain is too much or to supplement HR in particularly heavy AoE.

[Instant]

Never cast GHW w/o tidal waves

And drop Healing Stream totem it's easily 1k HPS But most improtantly it's not just for HPS sake, it's very usefull spell.

I use similiar spells to you, but with heavy usage of GHW. And usually i'm pumping more than 10k.

PS. It can as well be that you have very good healers with you, if your teampartners are good it's harder to get 'higher numbers'.

And as usual. Recount doesn't matter! Yeh it does, it's very good feeling when you know it's you who pushed the raid, and not the others who carried you

[killzwitch]

And as usual. Recount doesn't matter! Yeh it does, it's very good feeling when you know it's you who pushed the raid, and not the others who carried you

Exactly why I do look at meters =)

Ty for your help chaps, I will try to utilise GHW/HS a bit more when I have Waves up and use chain heal a tad to see it's effectiveness =)

HStotem is down, I do often cheekily forget to replace after Manatide has finished - I'll make a /s macro for this.

[Instant]

One more thing (i took a loot at your character sheet).

Reforge some crit into haste. You need ~5% on your character sheet to get another Healing Rain tick 'for free'

It's really worth it :]

[killzwitch]

One more thing (i took a loot at your character sheet).

Reforge some crit into haste. You need ~5% on your character sheet to get another Healing Rain tick 'for free'

It's really worth it :]

My precious crit!!! Nooooooo.

Yeah good idea, I've reforged some haste2crit so I'll just restore dems bits, ty for the tip babe.

[Deleted]

Hi Killzwitch!
Like Instant said - get some haste, about 1k is fine, personaly I like to have more.
I think, that you have way too much mana regen - you have reforged everything into spirit and crit and gemmed for int+spirit or mastery; thats fine, but you are dropping other important stats (like haste and int) just for mana regen.
I dont think that dropping GHW completely - with tidal waves it is great with approx the same time of casting and because of better scaling with spellpower than healing surge.
Also, dont hesitate to use CH in heavy AoE dmg. CH boosted with UE and casted on someone with riptide is something you want to do

[PHILIP1193]

Ok so long post as i took a godo 20 mins looking over your spec....


You need a lot more haste mate. Crit is fine and all that but, those extra ticks soon stack up on the longer fights. You need 961 (if i remember correctly, but it maybe less), but that said more haste isn't an issue, just dont go mad on it, im running 1027 haste and im fine with mana consumption in raids. But like its been said already reforge some crit to haste.

You have a lot of int which is no bad thing and your spirit also seems to be fine, but you may wanna start touching on mastery (go see my thread, where there is a hugh debate about it) when i say touching on it gain another 5% or so of it, every little helps, with that in mind look to get the neck from warhammer exalted, reforge some mastery to spirit and you got a very good neck!!

I also feel your glyphed wrong. You have improved water shield, which is fine for when you got bugger all regen when starting out, but given your stacking spirit so much its not needed as much, so i suggest you replace that with the earth living weapon one, which will increase your HPS. I also have no idea why your running the glyph of totamic recall, when you could be running the healing stream one. Healing stream is very effective right now and the resistance buff it gives is very good.

You also have issues with only having 1 of 3 in Acurity!!! BIG MISTAKE!! You'll want that extra 2% crit because you should be reforging some crit off your gear for haste as i said before, so that will ensure you get it back.

The rest of it i think your doing right and seem to be overall well geared, aside from a couple of gems which you have already accepted are wrong.

One thing you should note is that pally and priests are currently very good healers, when specced and played right and us resto shamans are lagging some what, how ever i feel with the changes i have suggested, that you should be more on par with them

Phil

[Tangster]

dont completely ignore chain heal. as some already said its great with UE and becomes VERY mana effiecnt when it his all four targets, specially if you are glyphed for it. HS vs GHW is more based on personal preference imo because you really shouldnt be casting either without TWs up. (GHW more so).

Listen to Phillip above me as well, all his gear/spec suggestions are spot on imo

[Deleted]

I disagree with the comment about the Water Shield glyph. Unless mana isn't a concern which I find highly unlikely at the moment, you shouldn't be thinking about it as lost throughput. According to a post I saw elsewhere (EJ forums resto thread), the WS glyph is currently worth ~250 spirit. If the ELW/ES/RT glyphs aren't worth more than a similar amount of crit/haste/mastery (ie throughput stats) you might as well use WS glyph and reforge spirit to something else if you feel you have too much regen. Personally I don't think any of the throughput glyphs are worth that much spirit.

[killzwitch]

Awesome advice - greatly appreciated, I have a fair bit of gear with Haste on due to Elemental Spec - I'll look into stealing some pieces.

I guess I saw the advantages of high crit rating (proccing Ancestral, +10% smart heal, + Imp watershield) and just tunnelled it =(

Your long post is appreciated Phil, I will move some points from Tellcurrents when not doing Magmaw and hopefully see alot more throughput. I have cock all idea why I'm using TotemGlyph - cutting corners due to lack of glyphs when I made the spec most likely =( - I'll fix this ASAP.

I'll go look through you thread now on Mastery to see the situations where it is effective.

GL and ty to all!

[PHILIP1193]

I disagree with the comment about the Water Shield glyph. Unless mana isn't a concern which I find highly unlikely at the moment, you shouldn't be thinking about it as lost throughput. According to a post I saw elsewhere (EJ forums resto thread), the WS glyph is currently worth ~250 spirit. If the ELW/ES/RT glyphs aren't worth more than a similar amount of crit/haste/mastery (ie throughput stats) you might as well use WS glyph and reforge spirit to something else if you feel you have too much regen. Personally I don't think any of the throughput glyphs are worth that much spirit.

I do see what you mean about the glyph, but he already has good mana regen and has stated he doesn't go OOM in fights (while it maybe worth +250 spirit) i would still highly suggest he looks at using the earthliving weapon glph to increase his HPS. If he does find he is going OOM again then look at putting the glyph back in. But given he already has so much spirit, then i dont feel it will be missed that much, but that my opinion and killzwitch should if nothing else, trial it and proove me wrong, by saying he is now going OOM .

Awesome advice - greatly appreciated, I have a fair bit of gear with Haste on due to Elemental Spec - I'll look into stealing some pieces.

I guess I saw the advantages of high crit rating (proccing Ancestral, +10% smart heal, + Imp watershield) and just tunnelled it =(

Your long post is appreciated Phil, I will move some points from Tellcurrents when not doing Magmaw and hopefully see alot more throughput. I have cock all idea why I'm using TotemGlyph - cutting corners due to lack of glyphs when I made the spec most likely =( - I'll fix this ASAP.

I'll go look through you thread now on Mastery to see the situations where it is effective.

GL and ty to all!

You are right when you say you want to stack crit because it indeed does offer mana regen, but when you get your haste up and then still retain the same crit rating as your now using acurity which will give you back any crit rating you'll loose through reforging, you will find your regen going up even more. More spells cast = more spells that you can crit with which means more regen . Im about 29-31% crit when in raiding thanks to the warrior buff, kings, int flasks etc etc. So i crit 1 in 3-4 spells (in theory). So my regen is fine, which leads me back to not using the water shield glyph.

The thread on mastery has a lot of people talking about haste in it (annoyingly enough), but the first couple and last couple of posts on it are worth a good read. While I dont feel mastery is some "amazing" stat i dont think ignoring it is the best way to go as i think it has its place and according to the theory crafting a guy did in one of the posts, its actually looks quite good. My advice is, experiment with it.

I'd be intrigued to see how your healing fares with the changes we have suggested in place

Phil

[BenBMW]

Holy Paladins and Holy Priests are currently completely dominating healing in raids. Their heals are much more efficient, and they hit harder. If your heals as a shaman match that of a HPally or HPriest in a raid, then either the Pally or Priest suck or they were dead half the fight. One of the main problems I find is that out heals (resto shaman) are quite reliant on the coordination and cooperation of the raid to boost our effective heals. CH is rather lol (unless using in conjuction with UE+Riptide and being able to hit all 4 targets), which just makes us have quite a bit of lead-up time. I mean, we need to spend 3 GCD's just to get a 1 effective AoE heal off. Of which, it will take away one of our HoT heals as it is. So not only do we have to take that into consideration, but we need to try to pre-plan who to riptide that we can then UE+CH that target as riptide is about to fall off to get the maximum benefit. What other healing class has to do some stupid shit like that? No one.

Now let's focus on HR. Sure, this CAN be a useful AoE spell but only if people are stacking properly and standing in it for at least 75% of its duration. All the other healing classes have instant AoE Heals (either by a DoT or just instant healing, not talking about cast-time) that will heal X people in a certain radius of whatever target you happen to cast it on. People can then run around and do whatever they want, they've already gotten their heal or HoT affect. They don't actuallly have to stand in anything. Druids do have Effloresence (spelling?) but that heal isn't really designed to be extremely powerful, not so much to really be a comparision to HR. Then again, druids are kind of behind HPallys and HPriest as well.

I've been kind of dissappointed with Resto shamans ATM, at least in terms of personal gratification from Recount meters. What people don't realize is the utility that we bring to the raid. Our mana-tide totems are extremely helpful, and give HPallies and HPriests a lot more healing power (especially if they have trinket procs or on-use spirit trinkets that can be used in conjuction with mana-tide) to the raid. We are, as we have been for most of our existence, a buffing class. Something that most people will almost always fail to realize, and you'll have some stupid idiot messaging you and asking why your HPS are so low compared to the HPally &/or HPriest. Either we need to be brought up a bit, or they need to be brought down a bit. I'd prefer being brought up.

Anyways, I guess the point of my post is that hang in there and hopefully blizzard will increase our healing to be more in-line with HPallies and HPriests. Make no mistake, they take your mana-tide totem for granted. I sure know my HPally and HPriest did when I was switched to an Elemental Shaman just after purchasing my Valor Trinket (f*cking bastards! What a waste of points */cry*).

As an aside, go check out WorldofLogs and look at the shaman representation for top 40 heals on each fight. I think you'll find we make up maybe 5%. That should tell blizzard something. That, or the fact that it's been known a lot of the top world guilds have benched their resto shamans in favor of HPallies and HPriests to min/max the raid.

[killzwitch]

I did notice the mastery thread derailing into discussions on Haste but I guess that you can't alter one secondary stat without weighing up comparisons to our other options. Interesting that the last few posts seemed to indicate a lack of love for crit, I assume that as the gear progresses it sort of just comes naturally with the high Int + spare crit on gear/tier - I look forward to finding out.

BenBMW - I can see from a few logs that love for shammies is dropping off - perhaps they simply don't need manatide later on or that as you guys mention the spell coeffs are too low for Shams atm (I would agree, especially on CH).

I will amend my stats and ensure my gems are correct + spec and then come back and let you know how my healing has faired =)

[Phoenix15]

Everything that has been mentioned above is good advice and should be heeded accordingly. Im gonna mention a few points and kinda bounce around a bit but its all good info i promise

With your level of spirit I'd swap out your glyphs to ES, ELW and RT. ON heavily mana intensive fights use the WS glyph and replace RT, not the ELW one. For all the other fights you should definitely be using Riptide.

Some people have mentioned improving your haste and thats a definite should. If you increase your haste over 916 you'll gain another tick of Riptide, ELW, and Healing Rain with no additional mana cost . That'll also make the Riptide glyph more useful as you'll be able to keep 3 Riptide HoT's up at the same time.

As far as your spec I'd drop out TC and put those two points in Acuity for the additional crit rating. That spec is good on a FEW fights, liike Magmaw but with your gear you really shouldn't be running into TOO many mana problems unless you're just spamming HR and GHW which isn't the best plan. If you feel you still need mana on Magmaw you could always Mana Tide one impale with your trinket, then use Potion of Concentration to restore an additional 22k mana during one of the phases then MT on the 3rd one.

The questions about Mastery go like this. The lower health the targets have overall the better your healing will be. Soo for fights like Chimeron where any healing above 10k during phase 1 is considered overhealing, and you need to get heals off fast, Mastery is G.o.D. Other fights where the raidwide damage isn't as extreme and you're mainly focusing on tank healing, Mastery falls to the wayside and crit tends to take over. That being said what I've been doing is converting most of my elemental gear set into a backup Mastery set for those specific fights. Remembering to keep my haste above 916. Another tip for that fight (Chimeron) is to put on Glyph of Earthliving Weapon. With the talent Blessing of the Eternals granting an additional 80% chance to proc earthliving weapon on targets that are below 35% health (10k falls into that category) your ELW heal will be your #1 heal on that fight. Mine last night in a 25 man raid was ahead of all other heals by almost 15%.

The comments about keeping Riptide on CD are very smart. Not only does that give you three HoT's rolling through the raid, it also can proc 10% damage reduction with Ancestral Healing and IWS mana returns, it also gives you a deliciously high uptime on Tidal Waves. Now some are arguing to use GHW with it and others argue to use HS with the Tidal Wave buff. There are benefits to both and you should know them and know when to use them. GHW gets the haste buff that should take ur cast down to approximately 1.7 seconds (once you reach 916 haste lol) which is only 0.2 seconds behind healing surge. It doesn't improve your crit % with GHW but a crit does give you a 100% chance to proc a IWS mana return along with the normal AA and AH procs that go along with crits. Using Healing Surge in conjuction with it gives you a 30% crit chance increase to HS but keeps the cast time at 1.5 seconds. Now this increase crit chance is great for proccing more Ancestrial Awakening to give you a smart heal in the raid as well as to refresh a buff of Ancestral Healing for the 10% damage reduction but these crits only give you a 60% chance to proc IWS.
So my rule of thumb is this: When its primarily single target damage that is being taken and you can afford the additional 0.2 seconds and need a BIG heal, go with TW + GHW. If the target is taking fast damage and the raid is taking a decent amount of damage as well, us TW + HS to proc more AA smart heals and get your target heals a hair faster. OR...since TW has 2 charges, use one GHW and one HS
A good rotation for this is to cast Riptide to get your TW going, then UE and use which ever spell you need the most first. HS or GHW to give them the +20% heal from UE and the TW buff. Then cast whichever you want to consume the TW secondary charge. By that time RT should be off of CD to recast it.

Now to chain heal, there are somethings that can boost chain heal's efficiency. In fights where you have to maximize your AOE healing (like Chimeron's phase 2 when he casts Fued) these are good things to remember. Chain heal is fairly decent when it can hit the 4 targets. Healing a target first with RT makes it 25% stronger but does consume the HoT. What I do is pop Spiritwalker's Grace and cast Healing Rain on the group up point as I'm running in, then pop off 3-4 Chain Heals on my RT targets until HR is off of CD again. You'll put out some serious HPS that way.
Now if you mix that with the talent Nature's Blessing which improves all healing on targets with an Earth Shield and your tank happens to be group up as well and needs to be topped off, that'll improve the healing on him/her by another 15%, unfortunately the 15% bonus only counts on that one hit, the additional jumps of chain heal aren't given the 15% boost.

Now even with all these tips, unless its a gimic fight like Chimeron that really plays to a shamans healing style, you're going to lose to an equally skilled and geared Holy Pally and Holy Priest EVERY time until Blizzard changes things. We just don't have the same healing "oomph" if you will that they do. All you can do is do what you can and keep the raid alive. If no raid members die to healing issues then you did your job!

[Instant]

One thing that i just have to comment on.

EVERY healer's AoE is position sensitive. It's not true that we're only class that has to be carefull with theirs AoE. It's also not true that ours is only AoE with cast time.

Paladis have limited range on their Radiance, and priests have cast time on PoH, which also leaves a 'zone' which you have to stand in. They have PoM and CoH though which are both instant cast spells. Also Beacon is still OP spell. Even when it's 'only 50%' it's just crazy. :C It shouldn't be more than 20% and even that is very powerfull. 20% more healing done with one spell button push, that's active for 5 minutes. It's just stupid, and i can't understand how can they keep still keep it like this.

Druid are 'instant casts' based class, so no wonder they have lots of spell of the type. And wild growth is still powerful.

What we need most imo is higher coefficient on our single target spells. It's not good when my HW heals for 7k and Paladins Holy Light for 10k, and i have more spellpower. It's just not :O

As for nerf others/buff us thing. HPriest was in terrible place right after start. Some hotfixes helped, but i believe they overdid it. In case of paladins they were just afraid that people won't be able to switch to new model, so they made paladin's healing stronger than it should be. I hope they will be brought to our level and not vice versa, cause i actually enjoy 'working' for my HPS. Raids are again fun cause i have to think and not just mindlessly spam spells

[killzwitch]

I agree Instant that Beacon is still a bit mental - It's a given that it makes everyone else's life easier but at the cost of raid places in some instances due to the 50% strength. I'd like to see HW being a bit more powerful it is supposed to be our go to heal but sometimes without a crit it makes a splat sound like egg on a fat person's face and we all /cry.

Another assum post Phoenix, well explained the pros and cons of GHW vs HS, I overdo the amount I use HW when I could be making my life a whole lot easier using these larger spells with Tidal Waves, I will be adjusting my gear/spec/pots/glyphs before this evening's raid to really get a handle on how Resto Shammy SHOULD be played. Just to confirm 2 things I'm only partly sure of due to hearsay.

1. RP + Unleash + Chainheal = 4 targets hit with an increased heal, not just those with RP? (AKA the 3 jumps are based off the exact value of the first hit, regardless of the buffs on the splash targets?)
2. Healing rain - Does it proc EL, and is it effected by Blessing of Eternals?

Really looking forward to this evening now that I've found some holes in my cheese.

...that sounds a bit wrong.

[Instant]

Yes. All 4 targets that are healed by CH recieve benefit from Unleash and Riptide. That's why it's really nice, but requires 2 GCD and ~2.2 sec cast time, AND good positioning of a group. But you can help yourself, if you keep Riptide on CD and cast it on as many people (who are in need of healing though). I usually seek for whoever has <5 secs of Riptide's HoT and CH them.

Healing Rain does proc EL (there was a short moment during beta when it didn't) and is affected by Blessing. Although from what i remember base 20% is dividided between ticks of HR. So you won't have 100% but around 84% per tick

HR is also affecter by our mastery! (which is really nice find)

[killzwitch]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../seawad/simple

Updated most of what was suggested and hit the recommended Haste, sorted the healing stream glyph, abused Riptide (poor Riptide), Chain healed and also made greater use of Healing Rain and GHW - I was still a bit heavy on the HW usage but it's an improvement, Only hit around 8.5K on Halfus and 6.5k on Tron (I was Mr. Interrupt and dispell =() Magmaw was a vast improvement thanks to Chain heal and few icons I setup on Vuhdo.

I didn't change my WS glyph just yet as I didn't want to remove too much Manaregen in one go - however Mana was fine.

I didn't remove Tell Currents and put points in Acuity as we were running Halfus, Magmaw and Tron - I use LB on all of these.

Thanks very much for everyone's help - I luckily managed to yoink the Nether Scion Helm last night and a spare Belt from Magmaw for DPS&Mastery gear so you are all loved.

[Deleted]

As someone has said above i wouldnt keep looking at recount if your a shammy healer.
Our guild downed chimaeron the other day using a resto sham (me), resto druid and holy priest.
At the end of the fight i was on 11.5k hps, the druid on 10.5k hps and the holy priest on 16.5k hps (lol).
If you check out World of Logs you will see that resto shammies do not feature hardly anywhere on any of these encounters while certain classes dominate certain fights..(holy priests on Chimaeron for example).
This isnt to say resto shammies are bad healers as i love my shammy..it just takes a bit more work to be competent at playing one.
I personally would like to see shammies being buffed a litlle with the healing but i`m not going to qq if we dont...i`ll just still carry on healing to the best that i can and hope to down more bosses..(currently 8/12 10 man and 3/12 25 man).

I must have played with my spec and reforged my gear so many times just to try things out that now i have found a setup which i like and enjoy.
As said i love playing my shammy but i do feel a little 'boost' is in order so we can compete with the holy pally/priests of the game!