Resto Stats

[shazz]

Hi there, first time posting in these forums, but I'll give it a good shot, hopefully I don't repeat too much of what other people say and if I do, I guess that means what we are saying is probably correct and I'm glad I can help reinforce that.

Currently our guild is 2/6H and we are now progressing on Gara'jal.

Currently im gearing/gemming and enchanting for Spirit > 871haste soft cap > 50% mastery > crit
I'm gemming 320 spirit in blue sockets, 160spirit/80int in red sockets and 160spirit/160crit in blue sockets.

I'm also currently using Ancestral Swiftness for 4th row, and Primal Elementalist for 6th row for my talents.
I'm using Ancestral Swiftness because with this plus the haste buff from eleshams/spriests/boomys I can gain the extra tick on Riptide, Healing Rain and Earthliving without loosing too much mana regen from reforging to haste. Also, the instant cast can be very helpful, one specific time I can think of it being really effective is for Feng the Accursed on his Spirit of the Staff phase, I often find I need to use AS then HR for the Arcane Velocity channelled AoE ability, as the dbm timer can be really off so it can be very hard to precast with effective timing, with this you can put one down while running in, of course this can also be done with SWG, but If it's on the rotation when you are using healing cd's and not the barrier, the cast time can offen be to slow.
I'm using Primal Elementalist for one, because fire elemental does a decent amount of dps from only having to use 1gcd and two, because with both the earth and fire ele you can access It's ability called Empower, which if activated (must be activated manually, can macro this is) the elemental will channel this on you, increasing you healing done by 10% for the duration of the elemental (also increases damage done by 5% but this is not really relevant), this means you can have 10% increased healing for 2/5's of the fight, which is quite a decent amount especially on some of the harder bosses.

I'll now discuss my thoughts on the various haste caps, currently for most bosses, (most being them all apart from Gara'Jal because of the spirit buff) I find the 871 haste cap to be most effective, as I can gain a few increased ticks without loosing too much crit (I'll talk about crit next) and have the instant heal via the talent. Using EM/EotE and then getting the 2017 haste cap looks ok, but in my opinion, this is not as effective, this is due to the fact you have to loose 1.3k crit to gain this new cap, and this new cap only gains ticks on Riptide and Healing Rain and not for Earthliving, which the other cap+talent does have. Of course you are thinking EM or EotE will make up for this loss in crit/Earthliving tick, but to me EM is pretty useless, as shammy's already have 3 rather large raid cd's and these already combined with your other 2 healers cd's would make trying to fit in a time to use EM pretty difficult, EotE is nice, but I still feel the crit is much better for most of the current raid encounters (again Gara'Jal being the only exception).
Now just talking about haste in general, haste of course increases you hps, as you can pump out heals faster, but with current gear I feel the crit that would have to be lost to gain this haste would be too much, and the fact that the faster you cast spells, the faster you are going to get through your mana, and currently mana regen is THE biggest thing for rshammys.
Regarding Gara'Jal and haste, I feel like this is the one boss where it may be beneficial to go for the AS+3764 haste cap and then go with intellect and mastery, as you need ALOT of healing for this guy on heroic and if your gear is lower this may also help you alot on normal mode. Of course this is only viable because of the huge mana regen buff you gain when healing yourself in the spirit realm, and without the haste you will be continuously capping your mana while you have the buff. However, on heroic mode you gain a debuff after leaving the spirit realm, which prevents you from entering for another 30seconds, which means you can only go in every other spirit totem, and you will only be able to do this if you do not get the voodoo debuff, which means if you are not able to go into the spirit realm for say 3 rotations of the totem, you could very well be oom by this point as you will have alot less regen, and will be sucking up your mana alot faster with all that haste.

Now onto crit, for me, I have found crit to be THE best stat with current gear levels after spirit>871haste>50% mastery as the passive ability Resurgence got a huge buff with mop, meaning that the amount of mana your spells regen when they crit via this ability is quite large and I find it personally find it alot more useful than increased haste and mastery.

Quick regards to intellect, I feel it is currently NOT viable to gem for intellect or chant for intellect > spirit as the throughput gained from the intellect is far too minimal compared to that of the mana regen gained from spirit.

Mastery is a very easy stat to reach the cap now, as with the 3000mastery(at level 90) passive now provides 15% mastery, plus the base mastery of 24% as resto (a total of 39%) means you only need to gain another 11% (2200 rating) mastery for the cap, which is fantasic, and easy to get, and also this puts mastery at its most effective for the majority of fights (majority due to the fact mastery becomes less/more effective depending on the current health of the target, so if the fight has targets that are constantly at low health and taking large amounts of damage, one example being Gara'Jal, then mastery would gain increased effectiveness).

My stats. In my current gear with the raid haste buff (I shall only use this external buff as it is the only buff which effects caps) the mastery buff passive from shamans, Water Shield and Earthliving.

Intellect: 12,010
Spirit: 9,483
Spell Healing: 22,028
Haste: 7.01% 815 (I was on 895 which is the soft the cap, but the 80+ all stats chest enchant seems to have hotfixed an no longer gives a haste bonus.)
Mana Regen: 18,521
Combat Regen: 13,169
Crit Chance: 15.08% 4,886
Mastery: 50.04% 5208

I may add more when I read through this again, but I hope there is at least something that is helpful Also looking at it again it does look like a huge wall of text, but hopefully you can maintain interest and read through the whole thing ha.

[Jynus]

There is no such thing as a mastery cap. the fact you think there is means your advice is suspect. Mastery in no way loses value past 50%.

[shazz]

No its value is just seriously decreased after 50% and other stats start performing better.

[Jynus]

No its value is just seriously decreased after 50% and other stats start performing better.

Again no, they do not. Mathamatically or otherwise. points of mastery past 50% are just as strong as points of mastery past 40%.

[Deleted]

Spirit is roughly equal to Int on a 1 to 1 ratio, not just on gems.

I didn't said it was just on gems. I was talking about gems because the way you gem can be misleading about stat weights.

If you gem spirit, you will increase your mana regen by about 38%. If you gem Int, you will increase your overall healing by about 6%.

How much spirit and intellect are you talking about?

This type of "cap" is not available at this time in raids. The more spirit you get, the more you can cast spells.

I see people stating that they finish certain fights having from 5k to 10k spirit so I bet we are already at the point that spirit start loosing his value.

The more intellect you gain the less heals you cast the less spirit you need. Both statements don't provide anything useful to the discussion, in my opinion.

Quick regards to intellect, I feel it is currently NOT viable to gem for intellect or chant for intellect > spirit as the throughput gained from the intellect is far too minimal compared to that of the mana regen gained from spirit.

The mana regen you gain from spirit is minimal aswell, you just think it's better because a lot of people say so.

[Azatos]

So with the "mana saved" from not having to cast another heal, because your stats are so much better...what are you going to be doing? There are some fights where damage is constant, and you're having to cast non stop, but I guess not in your case.

[Deleted]

If you have too much mana saved at the end of the fight you can still reforge out of spirit for even more throughput.
If the mana saved is enough to let you finish the fight then you are in a good spot.
If the mana saved isn't enough then you have to understand where is the problem because more spirit is not always the correct answer.

But if you are doing 20k hps and you are going oom in the middle of the fight probably it's better to skip all these 3 points and start from the basic.

[Deleted]

The mana regen you get from crit through resurgence is very very nice.

Together with a good level of spirit, shouldnt have very many mana problems if you play it wisely (telluric currents helps somewhat as well - minimal mana gain (for me it's about ~1.5% considering the natural mana regen during the cast time, but still very nice)).

With about 52% mastery, ~20% crit raid buffed, I'm liking the output and mana regen balance quite a lot.

[shammypie]

Again no, they do not. Mathamatically or otherwise. points of mastery past 50% are just as strong as points of mastery past 40%.

there is two expansions worth of math and theorycrafting done on this subject of Mastery vs. Crit. At points of mastery beyond 50% the breakpoints of raid health move down. Meaning the raid must be even lower health for mastery to be better than crit. Therefore it is highly suggested that resto shamans pick 50% as their "cap".

Mastery's bonus is not the linear increase that you believe it to be. The only time this holds true is in the most basic of cases.

[Lostep]

mastery's bonus is not the linear increase that you believe it to be. The only time this holds true is in the most basic of cases.

^^^^^^^^ this

[Radux]

there is two expansions worth of math and theorycrafting done on this subject of Mastery vs. Crit. At points of mastery beyond 50% the breakpoints of raid health move down. Meaning the raid must be even lower health for mastery to be better than crit. Therefore it is highly suggested that resto shamans pick 50% as their "cap".

Mastery's bonus is not the linear increase that you believe it to be. The only time this holds true is in the most basic of cases.

Jynus is actually the person who found those thresholds of health in regards to Mastery vs. Crit. He also made up some nice little charts showing that increasing levels in both Mastery and Crit complement each other in a linear scale.

So no. There is no amount of Mastery that you can get where effects are diminished. There are only effective levels of health where some stats will do marginally better (assuming the target(s) will always be above said health breakpoint).

[Jynus]

Jynus is actually the person who found those thresholds of health in regards to Mastery vs. Crit. He also made up some nice little charts showing that increasing levels in both Mastery and Crit complement each other in a linear scale.

So no. There is no amount of Mastery that you can get where effects are diminished. There are only effective levels of health where some stats will do marginally better (assuming the target(s) will always be above said health breakpoint).

In fairness, while I was one of the first to theorize a lot of this stuff back in the days of cata beta, the actual math work was done by those much smarter than me as a collaborative effort. And the concept of a stat losing value the more you stack it was utterly foreign to me and took someone on these boards to educate me on it. Tho when we did the actual math, we found out that while it was possible for a stat to lose value the more you stack it, in actual practice it's very hard to do due to gear inflation. However if you mastery stack with the insane amount of base mastery shaman get now, it might be an issue. I dunno, I haven't been able to fully mathcraft it yet.

In regards to the person you're replying to, I think I just figured out why people seem to think 50% is the cap. They are confusing the idea of a breakpoint and mastery bonus, thinking they are the same thing.

[shammypie]

In regards to the person you're replying to, I think I just figured out why people seem to think 50% is the cap. They are confusing the idea of a breakpoint and mastery bonus, thinking they are the same thing.

yeah i think your right about that especially with wow heroes confusing people with stat priorities.

[CaseyTheRetard]

1 intellect on gear gives 1.05 [5% Mail Specialization] * 1.05 [5% Stat Buff] = 1.1025 buffed intellect, so those numbers should be 10.25% larger - not that it affects your conclusions. Thanks

The 10% spellpower buff was neglected in the math as well, so it should be more like:

10000 int (~20000 SP total)
100 Gear Intellect = 110.25 Buffed Intellect which provides 121.275 SP
121.275 SP = 0.387% healing increase
110.25 Int = 26.124 Crit Rating

26.124 crit rating = 0.0528% Increased (Single-Target) Healing
0.0433% Increased (non single-target) Healing

0.387% + 0.0528% = 0.4398% Increased (Single-Target) Healing from 100 Gear Int
0.387% + 0.0433% = 0.4303% Increased (non Single-Target) Healing from 100 Gear Int

[Jynus]

That one attempt where your hps was so high was an anomaly, because your other attempts that were approximately the same duration your hps were almost half that. I'm not saying that you're not a good resto shaman, I'm just saying that is not the "norm" for you. In fact, looking at the Elegon attempts as a whole, you were near the bottom of the healers as far as hps goes (even considering your one really good hps attempt)

On Elegon, I would definitely have to say that a rshaman healing 10-man will run up against more mana issues than a 25-man. For one, you'd have a chance to take more breaks to LB spam. You also are running with another shaman, that's another MT totem. There's more healing CDs available within the raid. Etc.

I'd definitely be interested in seeing your 10-man Elegon kill. Good luck!

I didn't raid for the 10man kill. But I set as world top 50 parse on 25man. 5k spirit buffed.

In fact, I'm making it a point to only raid with 5k spirit buffed for the xpack just to prove the point that it can work and that bigger smarter heals can dump out the hps over long fights with ease.

[shammypie]

I didn't raid for the 10man kill. But I set as world top 50 parse on 25man. 5k spirit buffed.

In fact, I'm making it a point to only raid with 5k spirit buffed for the xpack just to prove the point that it can work and that bigger smarter heals can dump out the hps over long fights with ease.

Ok ..... and i rank in the top 5 parses in the world so what? Lightning bolt mana regen just doesn't cut it anymore and is on par with doing nothing but personally gimping yourself is stupid. the best thing to do is to use the right heal for the right job and take into consideration how much time alloted you have. You don't need to set there doing nothing for 2 mins so u can throw out some biggies real fast and then go back into a shell. just be smart

[Jynus]

Ok ..... and i rank in the top 5 parses in the world so what? Lightning bolt mana regen just doesn't cut it anymore and is on par with doing nothing but personally gimping yourself is stupid. the best thing to do is to use the right heal for the right job and take into consideration how much time alloted you have. You don't need to set there doing nothing for 2 mins so u can throw out some biggies real fast and then go back into a shell. just be smart

U under a different name? I don't see anyone with your name anywhere on WOL for elgalon.

I'm unsure of your point on LB regen?? I know it sucks. But there are periods on this fight where there is literally zero damage for 15 seconds straight, and it's a dps check to kill pillars. You would have to be a gawd awful shammy to NOT take TC for elgalon. And gimping myself? Are you saying that top 50 world is gimped? It's a very odd point you're trying to make if thats the case. Mine is simple: Spriit isn't the be all end all people make it out to be. And you can output dam good hps thats among top throughout possible parsed by going for stronger spells smartly. Which I am doing.

P.S. I was consistently hitting 50k with a few close to 60k on emperor attempts going into last phase. Which woulda put me #1 world of any class. Not bad for 5k spirit and a >10min fight. It's like if you heal smartly with big heals you save mana. I was always 200k+ mana going into last mist.

[shammypie]

U under a different name? I don't see anyone with your name anywhere on WOL for elgalon.

I'm unsure of your point on LB regen?? I know it sucks. But there are periods on this fight where there is literally zero damage for 15 seconds straight, and it's a dps check to kill pillars. You would have to be a gawd awful shammy to NOT take TC for elgalon. And gimping myself? Are you saying that top 50 world is gimped? It's a very odd point you're trying to make if thats the case. Mine is simple: Spriit isn't the be all end all people make it out to be. And you can output dam good hps thats among top throughout possible parsed by going for stronger spells smartly. Which I am doing.

P.S. I was consistently hitting 50k with a few close to 60k on emperor attempts going into last phase. Which woulda put me #1 world of any class. Not bad for 5k spirit and a >10min fight. It's like if you heal smartly with big heals you save mana. I was always 200k+ mana going into last mist.

yes, this is my old name. I currently run as spoiled. Before you even ask, the first week we killed it was on 10 man and we weren't runnig logs. I was around 84k for the fight with the holy paladin grabbing the tanks. Since then the amount of healing needed has gone down as our dps slowly improves. So if you want to go measure your epeen against mine go right ahead i don't give a f***.

What i am trying to point out is that while spirit is as you said not the god stat people make it out to be, it is one of our highest stats and lets us do so much more. While this may be counter intuitive as our class is set up for those massive bursts where you will want to throw everything at the raid. Spirit will allow you to do even more of that and will be critical in maintaining high hps in non burst phases. It also helps your fellow healers out. No one cares you can pull 200k for 20 secs if you sit there doing 10k for 2 mins afterwards.

The reason why i do not like the TC glyph is because there are more attractive glyphs you can use. Cleansing waters for instance for all the dispelling, Fire elemental totem for lining up with annihilates, water shield for extra mana, Recall for free hst and elementals. The amount of damage you contribute with your lighting bolt is appalling dismal. You buy maybe 1-2 secs on the pillar which may or may not be useful if your waiting on a another pillar.

[Mavalynn]

U under a different name? I don't see anyone with your name anywhere on WOL for elgalon.

I'm unsure of your point on LB regen?? I know it sucks. But there are periods on this fight where there is literally zero damage for 15 seconds straight, and it's a dps check to kill pillars. You would have to be a gawd awful shammy to NOT take TC for elgalon. And gimping myself? Are you saying that top 50 world is gimped? It's a very odd point you're trying to make if thats the case. Mine is simple: Spriit isn't the be all end all people make it out to be. And you can output dam good hps thats among top throughout possible parsed by going for stronger spells smartly. Which I am doing.

P.S. I was consistently hitting 50k with a few close to 60k on emperor attempts going into last phase. Which woulda put me #1 world of any class. Not bad for 5k spirit and a >10min fight. It's like if you heal smartly with big heals you save mana. I was always 200k+ mana going into last mist.

Again, Jynus....not to call you out or anything, but you did NOT maintain 50K-60K for the full duration of Will of the Emperor as you insinuated. Your longest attempt was 4 minutes (at least according to the logs). So, you haven't yet survived a full 10 minutes with 5k spirit. Also, we have to distinguish between 25-man and 10-man. In 25-man, I can see how you can get away with less spirit because you can get away with not always casting, and take a few gcd's to regen (or casting LB)...because you have other healers that will carry you, and then with shit gets rough...throwing out big heals to boost your hps. However, 10-man...I would argue is a different story when you're two healing fights. So, for example, on Will of the Emperor, I can't just decide to stop casting. If I'm not healing the tank, I have to heal a raid member otherwise, someone will die. The WotE fight is much different as a rshaman in a 10 man vs. in a 25 man, as with any of the other bosses. I'd love to have an equal comparison between you in a 10-man vs. my logs.

Note: The Elegon fight isn't fair to look at hps since the healing buff. I saw my hps jump 20k in the last 10 seconds of the fight after dropping Ascendance and Healing Tide totem, which both are on the side of being op.

Also, again, looking at your other boss parses, you do not maintain that type of throughput for the other encounters. You're hps are pretty average in comparison to the other healers you run with. It just seems very inconsistent.

I'm a firm believer in a balance of regen stats and throughput stats. I think it's misleading to tell any new (or inexperienced) shaman that they don't need spirit and that they can get away with 5k, when 1.) You do not know their healing/raid comp. 2.) You do not know where they are in their raid progression. 3.) You don't take into consideration their raid size. There's so many factors that come into play. It's really up to them to determine how much spirit is necessary, and at which point to start stacking throughput stats.

I think it's great that you've established the challenge for yourself of maintaining 5k and still able to healing normal raid bosses. But do not assume that just because they are shaman healers saying that they'd like more spirit that they lack skills, or that they need to be smarter about their healing.

I'm just now at 7500 spirit and I'm to the point now where I feel comfortable with my regen. I'm now gravitating more towards throughput.

YOU can rank with lower spirit/higher throughput. Well, I can rank with higher spirit/lower throughput. Who's to say what's better other than the person playing the character and what they're comfortable with?

Note: Rankings are changing constantly as more and more people are progressing and gearing. So, early on...it doesn't really say much that you ranked, when you'll be bumped down fairly quickly at this point in the expansion. It just means that you had fewer people to compete with.

[Jynus]

1) we didn't log last night for the full night of attempts. So I dunno exactly what you're looking at. But I assure you I was using recount and factoring in the 3khps higher it usually is. You will also recall you called me out for elgalon on this very same issue last time and here I am now. I assure you I'll rank on emperor as well when we do get him. Oh, and aside from elgalon, I don't use TC or spend periods of time sitting around saving healing GCD's. If there is healing to be done, I'm on it.

2) I was casting the entire time on those attempts. There was no downtime unless raid was full or almost full. And even then I was usually offwatching tanks. I can maintain a 30k hps through rip, Hw and HST with few problems and it's basically mana positive. Very rarely am I needing to do more than that outside of HS for the odd save. So I just maintain that and save the big CD's and AOE's for mists.

3) I get what you're talking about for other fights, but I don't see things same way as you. It's farm, who cares. I sure don't. I suppose I could ask to gimmik it to make it harder for me if you really want. Watch me on any progression fight, thats where I'll shine, and thats what i'm built for.

4) Overall I agree with a lot of what you said, but you're missing the overarching point in all of this. Which is, if shaman is spirit spirit spirit over everything else because we absolutely NEED that regen or we are hosed, then how can a lowly 5k buffed shaman put up numbers like this? Thats the core point. Even you saying that i'm coasting during low periods and only outputting when there is deep raid damage, well how in the hell is that a bad thing? o.O Isn't that healing smart? When damage is low use your low cost spells, and when it's high, blast it out. I mean isn't that how healing is designed to work?!?!? why would I blast out a HR when only a handful of people need healing or everyone near full hp? o.O

I'm not saying higher spirit is bad at all, pls understand this. Nor am I advocating other shaman do what i'm doing. I know I'm actually lower than I would like. (I also think 7500 a more ideal #) And this is NOT a epeen thing where i'm claiming that I'm some gods gift to shaman. This is solely that a gimped 5k spirit shaman is able to put out world ranked hps. Thats all, and the implications being that mayyybe spirit isn't as important as people think it is. That maybe understanding encounter mechanics and healing smart in the grand picture of things are far more an important thing to focus on. (elgalon a PRIME example of this, you called me out for my low hps on my first day of attempts, but I grew to understand how the encounter worked and where I fit into healing it to the point where I just outright kicked butt. The answer to my problems wasn't more spirit to have the regen for bigger heal spells, but smarter healing) I'm happy you're able to parse as well. And I too would like to 2heal 10man so I can see if what you're talking about is really all that different.

I agree with your note. But also understand oh if I had a dollar back in wrath for number of times I was told this.