Chain Heal question

[Drarim]

Something I've wondered about for a while is that......

Say the tank and the melee have taken damage.But the melee have lost more hp than the tank. In that case is it still always better to CH through the tank (given the tank has Riptide and Earth Shield on him). Or is it better to CH through one of the melee?


cheers

[Deleted]

Earth Shield's buff only works on the initial hit, but does not buff any subsequent jumps. For next tier (if the currently planned changes stay in place), you'll always want to cast Chain Heal on a target with riptide, even if the initial hit is a full overheal. Right now on the other hand, the initial hit makes up around 40% of Chain Heal's total healing, so you do not want it to overheal much. I can't tell you which is better, because it basically comes down to healing the person the other healers in your team are not healing. Alternatively, you could also pick the target that is more likely to take additional damage in the next 2 seconds (ie. whoever has fewer absorbs on him).

[Shockeye]

You want to cast CH through a target with Riptide ticking to get the most healing delivered to the other targets.

I just use CH as a lazy top up spell really, it doesn't heal for enough to make it a life saver or substantial heal, just takes less time than a bunch of HWs (but that's 10 man, not 25).

Now if you can put a Riptide on the melee first, that's ideal as you then avoid or diminish the overheal.

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Chain heal does not get benefits from the jumping heals so earth shiled/ riptide is wasted.

Are you sure? The tooltip says "Your Chain Heal spells are 25% more effective when their primary target is affected by your Riptide". To me that says the CH is 25% more effective when the first target has Riptide. That 25% boost is translated through to subsequent targets as the CH has been made more effective via hitting the primary target with Riptide.

Or have I been misunderstanding this wording all along?

[Deleted]

No, sharpy is just wrong. Provided CH is cast on a target with Riptide, then Riptide buffs all of Chain Heal's hits by 25% and Earth Shield buffs the healing done on the Earth Shielded target by 20%

[marklar]

i would always heal through the riptide target, especially if that's the tank. the tank is at more risk for taking additional damage before you get another heal off, and the CH will always bounce to the lowest health melee second, so they'll still get a nice heal. you can always throw a riptide on the lowest health melee if you're really worried about them. or a HS if the situation is dangerous.

[shammypie]

CH is only buffed by riptide. Earth shielded targets will recieve 20% more healing but it doesn't matter which link they are in the chain and ES does not affect any other hits.

[laurenbethel]

Chain Heal used to do more back in the day didnt it?

[Mietsch]

In 5.4: If melee is on 25% HP and tank on 50% you should CH the Melee if both have Riptide on them. If the tank has Riptide on him (which he should) and melee doesn't, it depends on your mastery if the CH will be stronger. The smaller the margin in HP, say melee 30% and tank 40%, the more CH on the tank will become more powerfull when only the tank has Riptide. So I would always go for the tank unless he has a lot more %HP then the melee.

[Drarim]

But if you CH on a target with ES on, then that first heal will be larger. Wouldn't that mean that the consequent jumps would be larger heals as well?

[Shockeye]

But if you CH on a target with ES on, then that first heal will be larger. Wouldn't that mean that the consequent jumps would be larger heals as well?

No, the ES boosts the heal to that target but doesn't affect the overall Chain Heal coverage.
The difference between ES and Riptide is that ES just boosts the heal to that target while Riptide increases the whole spell effectiveness.