Surging Mists vs Healing Sphere - Tank healing

[DirewolfX]

Random thought: It would be great if EnvM could be more front-loaded like Wild Growth with an instant tick.

Still, does anyone know the SP coefficient for Healing Spheres? I tried messing with them, but the numbers seemed lower than what people are throwing around here. I guess I'll estimate it tonight, if no one knows.

Are you using any macros to cast Healing Spheres? It seems clunky having to click twice to cast a heal on the tank, especially with a 0.5s GCD.

[Totaltotemic]

No, no it's not. It's more efficient than Shaman/Paladin flash heals. Less efficient than Priests. Druid's regrowth is weird, but it looks like Surging is less efficient. Druids are in a much worse place than us right now anyway.

It is definitely not more efficient than Healing Surge, which costs less mana (by 6k), has an abnormally high Crit chance via Tidal Waves, and is usually increased by 25% or more from Shaman mastery. The spread sheet you linked earlier ignores a lot of class mechanics that affect those heals to make them better, the only one Monks have is Mana Tea bringing Surging down to around 22-23k mana instead of 26340. Yes, Flash of Light is so awful it's in the "take it off your bars" category, which doesn't really make me feel better about Surging Mist.

As for Healing Sphere, our good buddy Valen's Calculations says that it has a 1.206 coefficients compared to Surging's 1.800. Also due to the fact that it does not scale with Mastery, lower-geared Mistweavers may not even see a difference between Surging and Healing Sphere. As you get more and more gear, Sphere's HPM starts skyrocketing past Surging Mist, and HPS is of no consequence because we can cast 2 Spheres in the space of one Surging. It's really quite silly, and more and more I'm leaning towards the feeling of just taking Surging off my bar and only using Healing Sphere should I ever feel the need for a very fast heal.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

well, the most effective use of the spheres (tankhealing) would probably be to as usual stay on tank with Soothing + EM, weaving in Surging if necessary, and if that doesnt seem tu suffice, go 3xSurge+EM+Healing sphere spamm. the idea is that you get the most HPS when EM is still ticking AND you chain Spheres. thats probably some nice burst.
what I dont like, that since 8 years of wow, I have allways used some raidframes for the party, where I have most of my concentration and the mouse, I don't want to go and click stuff on the rest of the screen, especially as the Spheres have to be placed somewhat accuratly. but one will have to get used to it

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 02:53 PM ----------


ps: if you and your tank work well together, you could preemptivly plant 3 healing spheres in a line next to the tank, so that he can take small steps in the "oh shit moments" to quickly pick them up, while you are healing him normally => biggest burst possible ^^

[Totaltotemic]

3xSurge+EM+Healing sphere spamm

I, too, enjoy spending 20% of my mana pool in 3 seconds.

[DirewolfX]

It is definitely not more efficient than Healing Surge, which costs less mana (by 6k), has an abnormally high Crit chance via Tidal Waves, and is usually increased by 25% or more from Shaman mastery. The spread sheet you linked earlier ignores a lot of class mechanics that affect those heals to make them better, the only one Monks have is Mana Tea bringing Surging down to around 22-23k mana instead of 26340. Yes, Flash of Light is so awful it's in the "take it off your bars" category, which doesn't really make me feel better about Surging Mist.

As for Healing Sphere, our good buddy Valen's Calculations says that it has a 1.206 coefficients compared to Surging's 1.800. Also due to the fact that it does not scale with Mastery, lower-geared Mistweavers may not even see a difference between Surging and Healing Sphere. As you get more and more gear, Sphere's HPM starts skyrocketing past Surging Mist, and HPS is of no consequence because we can cast 2 Spheres in the space of one Surging. It's really quite silly, and more and more I'm leaning towards the feeling of just taking Surging off my bar and only using Healing Sphere should I ever feel the need for a very fast heal.

If you're going to include tidal waves and mastery, you need to also include building Chi (for EM) and our mastery orbs. Eventually we need to just compare our entire toolkit, and then there's just raidbots which does say Shaman are now doing more HPS in 25H, leaving just druids to beat (it's like golf score right?). I don't think Surging Mists is great, I just don't think it's in a terrible place. It could use some improvements, for sure.

Anyway, I plugged that 1.206 number into my spreadsheet, which looks roughly like what I recall seeing in game. It does a whopping 8 HPM at ~25k sp and blows everything else out of the water with HPS, but it doesn't generate Chi. I also think the mechanic is ridiculous, and there's no way Blizzard will let it stand as the primary Monk single target healing ability. Most likely, we'll see the cast time go to 1 second or higher... I suppose if you can manage the clunky mechanic of it, it's very powerful right now. I'll test it out on the next Lei Shi kill... don't think I really need heavy tank healing anywhere else right now.

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 09:57 AM ----------

3xSurge+EM+Healing sphere spamm.

After EM, you usually want to channel your Soothing Mist on the tank, since it heals for 30% more... If you're going to Healing Sphere spam, just do that.

[Deau]

I like to think of EM as our GHeal replacement. And I do think that Surging Mist needs to be slightly more mana efficient. I'd actually like to see a mechanic where Soothing Mist ticks (non-statue) reduce the cost of Surging Mist on that target, which would make it more useful for sustained tank healing. For spot healing, I'd love to see them bring back the glyph that lets you cast Expel Harm on another target (and reduce the cooldown).

For an emergency heal, Surging Mist is as good as anyone else's flash heal. It's lighter spot healing where I'd like to see another option.

The reality though is that "spot" healing for other classes isn't done via their flash heal equivalent in first tier. It's done between either heal or greater heal equivalent which SoM+EM really really doesn't handle well. When it's down to either I get the spot heal because I have better reflexes than my co healer or I leave it to her because if I pick it up I'll run fucking oom because I have to use a "flash", I opt for the later.

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 05:41 PM ----------

Are you using any macros to cast Healing Spheres? It seems clunky having to click twice to cast a heal on the tank, especially with a 0.5s GCD.

It's tricky as they've improved those spammable positionned spell to not need to redo the selecting portion so you only need to hit the key once and you can then spam left click for a while. As such, evolving mostly around it (like PvPers do) outside aoe heal phases alleviates that hassle a lot

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 05:44 PM ----------

well, the most effective use of the spheres (tankhealing) would probably be to as usual stay on tank with Soothing + EM, weaving in Surging if necessary, and if that doesnt seem tu suffice, go 3xSurge+EM+Healing sphere spamm. the idea is that you get the most HPS when EM is still ticking AND you chain Spheres. thats probably some nice burst.
what I dont like, that since 8 years of wow, I have allways used some raidframes for the party, where I have most of my concentration and the mouse, I don't want to go and click stuff on the rest of the screen, especially as the Spheres have to be placed somewhat accuratly. but one will have to get used to it

---------- Post added 2012-12-07 at 02:53 PM ----------


ps: if you and your tank work well together, you could preemptivly plant 3 healing spheres in a line next to the tank, so that he can take small steps in the "oh shit moments" to quickly pick them up, while you are healing him normally => biggest burst possible ^^

The intention behind the thread though wasn't solely to consider burst healing - It was actually mostly to compare efficiency(hpm) and to a lesser extent, effectiveness(overhealing) and just pointing out the fact that it's our only competitive spot heal which is really lame.

[DirewolfX]

The reality though is that "spot" healing for other classes isn't done via their flash heal equivalent in first tier. It's done between either heal or greater heal equivalent which SoM+EM really really doesn't handle well. When it's down to either I get the spot heal because I have better reflexes than my co healer or I leave it to her because if I pick it up I'll run fucking oom because I have to use a "flash", I opt for the later.

Soothing mist does kind of suck after doing the math on it, but letting it channel for ~2 seconds (3 ticks) is only slightly worse HPS than other healers (but awful HPM), excluding the extra 50% from the statue, since then we'd need to compare to beacon of light, tidal waves, chakra: serenity, etc. I think we're forgetting that our best spot healing actually comes from Eminence, which provides a nice smart spot heal. Sucks for that random hunter standing in the middle of nowhere, but if your raid is positioned well, it usually can do some solid healing.

[Unspunreality]

So is using healing spheres ok/not ok? Ive mostly been testing it. We recently got a new MW, so Ive been finding applications for it. Granted my overall healing has gone down to about 3rd. We normally raid with disc/holy priests, a shammy and 2 monks now. We tend to 6 heal stuff however, so the last spot is usually either a 3rd priest or a pally.

Certain fights made it easy to make sure tanks didn't die. Such as heroic Feng. Stone Guards was absolutely impossible to use it on. Heroic Garaja(I totally spelt this wrong) was easy too, because the down teams always full clear spirits, so only damage was from voodoo dolls. Regular healed spirit kings, I found spheres nice for the outside soakers in heroic Elegon, since I can set it and forget it. I also used it as spot healing for the ranged on my side. I'd lay it beside them so they can use it as needed. For Will, I was bored and since we do it normal(No heroic yet) I can just drop it under the tanks feet since there is no real damage going out anyway.

Sadly it doesn't seem Tsulong gets orbs, I tried during LFR. So for him I went the normal route. Le Shi I could use it on aswell towards the end. Spray hurts and since tanks don't move its very easy to keep them topped off.

Havent finished HoF yet, we're working on blade lord heroic. We didnt have out disc priest last time so it sucked and we couldnt really do it.

That said. Im liking healing sphere. Just cause its different. I'm not topping meters anymore, but tanks aren't randomly dying cause it heals for a buttload.

I just need to get used to the non existant gcd and not overspam it.

[Totaltotemic]

To be honest, Healing Sphere is easily the best single-target heal we have now. The only thing stopping us from using it in every single-target healing situation is the targeting requirement, which can quickly turn it from our bread and butter to a hellish nightmare. It also has a nasty tendency to be picked up when only 10k health is missing, which leads to massive overhealing on practically any fight with a raid-wide damage mechanic (Gara'jal, Garalon, Heroic Will, Spirit Kings, Sha of Fear, Tsulong) even if it's only on the tank. This is largely because bosses only melee every 1.5 or 2 seconds, and if you're spamming spheres and the tank blocks a hit, all three spheres will end up going off due to the raid damage instead of the actual boss melees. Not granting Chi is quite irrelevant when talking about tank healing because if it's more efficient than EM, no one really cares.