1. #1
    Deleted

    Raiding resto shaman - help needed

    Hi to all shaman-forum residents, nice to meet you. I'm Redd, a fire mage. Why is that important? It's the only class I really know anything about. Why is that a problem you ask? Well, I've set up a casual guild a few months ago and we starting raiding a bit. On a casual level. However, my knowledge about most classes is well below par so I'm not exactly your perfect RL.

    I have done quite a bit of research in hopes of being able to give him tips based on that, but as I've never even touched a healer, it's pretty hard to make good calls and be confident about my suggestions.

    On to the matter at hand: Our resto shaman. He's been with us for quite a while and we love having him as a raider. However, his performance changes quite a bit from night to night, and from boss to boss. Basically, he goes from around 20k Hps to around 40k-45k on different nights.

    The bottomline of the issue:

    Is it possible for Shaman healers to perform very differently on varying bosses?

    Next to that, as I'm accustomed to people wanting that, I have quite a few logs from the last few nights online. It would be absolutely awesome if you guys can look over his performance in general (not necessarily on a specific pull) and give me your verdict. Any tips I get I can pass on to him in hopes of improving or stabilizing his HPS would be immensely welcome.

    Please do keep in mind that we're pretty casual. We like doing normal modes, but that's challenging enough for us. I don't expect our shaman healer (or anyone in our group) to perform on a 'top10 eu rank' level. As a last sidenote: Our last raid (friday march 1) was awful. We had pugs, a few trial members... it was just a train-wreck all over the place. We ended up deciding not to 'waste' our 3/6 lock and called it early.

    Thanks a million in advance.

    Signed,

    A completely lost "RL".

    I'm not singling out our shaman healer. I'll be making a few of these topics where needed, and will be judging the rest as well. Including myself!

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Sorry that noone replied, I have changed mainspec to Enh from Resto a couple of months ago - but (assuming you are 10 man) it is quite possible. If it was 25 man it's even more possible. I can go Off-spec Resto for Imperial Vizier 25 HC and dominate people with 15 iLvl better gear that are main-spec healers.

    But for 10 man, as I said it is possible, but not to as such an extent. If you said which bosses I could help much much more. On Feng or Gara'jal, his healing would be a bit higher than on Stone Guard or Spirit Kings I'd imagine. Resto shamans are basically the kings of AoE Healing in 25 man, not so much 10 man but they aren't not viable.

    Hope I helped a little.

  3. #3
    Quick disclaimer, I main a holy paladin but the other main healer in our group is a resto shammy and I do play a resto alt from time to time.

    Taking a look at your logs for zor'lok, here's a few things I notice.
    1 - you're healing comp is resto/disc. Although that's not a problem, it's worth mentioning because disc priests inherently weaken resto shamans' healing capability. Resto depends a lot on mastery to provide the big numbers you're looking for, and their mastery functions by making their healing more powerful as their targets' health gets lower. On the other side of that, disc functions by not letting their targets take the damage in the first place. If you look at the first damage spike on zor'lok (first force and verve), your priest spikes to nearly 200k hps while your shammy is down at only 50k. This is during spirit shell which is negating a lot of the damage before it ever gets to health bars, so your shammy is inherently doing less healing because there is less he's physically able to do.

    Keep in mind that this isn't a reason to not bring resto shammies. It just means that they have to plan their healing around what's going to happen. As a holy pally, I have a lot of absorbtion healing as well, so our resto shaman and I will trade off the heavy lifting when one of our cd's is rolling or when there's not heavy damage going out. Often, he'll just LB for mana while I handle healing during light damage phases so he can burst heal during heavy damage phases without draining all of his mana to do so. At the same time, when healing tide or ascendance are up for him, I back off on group healing and focus on just doing mana efficient single-target with mostly holy light and holy shock.

    2 - his cooldown useage could use some work. He has access to healing tide (which was used on the 7+ minute zor'lok attempt, but seemingly only once), ascendance (which wasn't used) and his 2 empowered elementals (he used only 1). This is probably part of why is healing swings so widely over different fights. Partly, cooldown useage depends on how much damage is going out. You don't want to use healing tide while the priest is spirit shelling, for example. But that doesn't mean that he should just hold all his powerful abilities in reserve until the raid is below 50% health. The key here is understanding the damage patterns of the fight and knowing when to just use normal healing and when to use the big cooldowns.

    3 - on Will of the Emperor, he does much better in terms of raw numbers. (partially because he's healing with a druid instead of a disc priest). He does better with cooldown useage here but he still only uses one of his empowered elementals. However, he uses healing tide twice instead of only once and gets an ascendance off.


    Overall, 2 big things to take away. You should not expect "stable" hps out of a shaman in the same way you could out of other healing classes. Their hps fluctuates greatly just because of how their mastery functions. In a way, their ideal for progression because their healing is strongest when people are nearly dead the whole time. Second, he definitely has ways to improve, mostly from just getting more out of his available cd's.

  4. #4
    MUCH of shaman output comes from burst CD's (asc and healing tide totem). I wouldn't worry too much about being beat by a druid on elegon (OMG SO SPREAD). And doing better on Will (quisi-burst from titan gas every 2:30).

    That being said... his Healing stream totem... 60 ticks total in 9 minutes on will. So he dropped it... maybe once a minute. That's an on-CD ability not once a minute (so twice a minute). Did your range/healers never stack during titan gas, because I don't see healing rain at all. Even on elegon... 1 healing rain was cast, every time a protector explodes the ranged should be stacked near the edge primed and ready to get healed up by healing rain - which the druid shouldn't be pro-actively sniping.

    Either your ranged aren't stacking, or your shaman doesn't realize that Healing Rain is like 2.5x more efficient and 6x more HPS-casting than any other spell he has. Even moreso when combined with unleash elements(life).

    So basically, Healing Rain and Healing Stream are the OP sustained healing spells. Tomorrow healing rain is getting it's cost reduced by 15% so that'll make maintain Healing Rain on 4-6 people during AoE even more effecient.

  5. #5
    Mechagnome
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    I can’t see you logs right now so I will just say this. Judging a shaman healer by HPS is not a good idea as pointed out by other posters.

    I take it that there is more to this than low hps numbers; can you share your concerns without casting a bad light on your friend? Are people dying, is he out of mana, is the other hearer out of mana? Are heals pools always low? Are you 2 healing or 3 healing? Are you directing the dps to use the AoE provided by you healers?

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Is it possible for Shaman healers to perform very differently on varying bosses?
    Resto shamans depend greatly on how the fight is designed. The more the raid is allowed to stack, the more they're able to compete with other healers. Resto shamans have strong burst CD:s and provide great AoE healing when healing rain is usable. What they lack is being able to heal multiple targets that are spread out and those are the kind of fights where your resto shaman will struggle.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    Thank you very, very much for the replies guys! The information you've given me is invaluable, and it wouldn't have been easy for me to get that without coming here for help. I understand the shaman much better now, so I'll be able to anticipate mechanics and have us use strategies that utilize the shaman cd's to a higher extent.

    I won't go into much specifics, as I can't counter argue you guys' in any way. I'm taking all information as is, and will be passing it on. Thanks again!

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