Resto - 6.0 latest patch notes discussion

[shamantime]

They should just make Earth Shield not have charges anymore if they aren't gonna have an ICD. Give it no charges, no ICD, reduce the healing proc a little, and then we have a nice 10 min duration healing buff on a target.

[Deleted]

Beta is beta looking forward to going through logs from tonights raid testing

@Shamantime I don't think it needs its healing reduced it already does nothing as it is

[Deleted]

I'm really hoping that:

- the change to Earth Shield doesn't mean we will have to spend A GCD every 10sec to apply a new shield; this gets very old very very fast.

- that they will balance Chain Heal and Healing Wave, because there is nothing more frustrating than being forced to use single-target heal in large raiding formats (which are the ones I play) just because our aoe healing toolkit is broken.

[Forsedar]

I am also looking forward to raid testing tonight. I'll be streaming it for those who aren't in beta: HERE

Kind of interested to see how Gruul works out, as I think his AoE won't really be recoverable, especially in time to stack for the damage that needs to be spread around.

[Shockeye]

I haven't really been keeping up too much, but what's the change to Earth Shield? Is it becoming something more like Power Word: Shield that we'll toss out when needed rather than it being a more or less passive buff we apply to a tank?

[Deleted]

I haven't really been keeping up too much, but what's the change to Earth Shield? Is it becoming something more like Power Word: Shield that we'll toss out when needed rather than it being a more or less passive buff we apply to a tank?

The primary change to ES is that it stacks with other Shaman's Earth Shield now, meaning no more overwriting in raids (which is AWESOMESAUCE).

[Forsedar]

Just did some raid testing on Gruul. Now keep in mind this isn't 100% relevant to how our heals are, considering a lot of factors, but its just nice to have something to look at.



This was using Chain Heal more actively than everything else, though it still didn't surpass the single target healing. Riptide is high since I blanketed ~5 people with Riptide and made sure there was always 5 active for High Tide. Yes Earth Shield is at the bottom. I didn't scroll the window, sorry.

Raid size was 16.

[Shockeye]

Interesting. It's strange to see CH and HST so low and HW so high.
So how does raid healing as a Shaman feel, and what was your overhealing like and did that adversely affect your mana pool?

[Deleted]

Riptide is high since I blanketed ~5 people with Riptide and made sure there was always 5 active for High Tide. Yes Earth Shield is at the bottom. I didn't scroll the window, sorry.

Two questions here since i was not able to test it so far.
If i remember correctly, High Tide only affects up to 3 riptided targets, so why 5 targets?
And is chain heal checking for range on the riptided targets as well? (as example you chain heal the melee group and have 3 riptided targets in range group that is out of range for normal chain heal jumps, will it heal the targets?)

[shammypie]

Two questions here since i was not able to test it so far.
If i remember correctly, High Tide only affects up to 3 riptided targets, so why 5 targets?
And is chain heal checking for range on the riptided targets as well? (as example you chain heal the melee group and have 3 riptided targets in range group that is out of range for normal chain heal jumps, will it heal the targets?)

furthermore what was the uptime on HST, did you use the glyph of ridtide? What was the speed of the damage vs the average healing going. aka where was everyone sitting?

[Forsedar]

Interesting. It's strange to see CH and HST so low and HW so high.
So how does raid healing as a Shaman feel, and what was your overhealing like and did that adversely affect your mana pool?

Oh man. Mana was tight. I still believe we need tweaked in that department, but we were also given full PvP gear. I managed to get my offpieces with Spirit, but it still felt like mana was just flying away faster than I could recover it. You just didn't have time on Gruul to use efficient heals (Healing Wave) consistently for mana. There was almost no overhealing compared to how it is now. Most over healing comes from Healing Rain and Chain Heal.

Raid healing felt about the same as it is now, to be honest. You throw out healing rain while chain healing, and then healing wave when you see someone really low since Chain Heal just wouldn't be enough to put them at a survivable level. I'm not sure the skill levels of those I was healing with, but I blew 2 Holy Pallies and a Monk out of the water.

If i remember correctly, High Tide only affects up to 3 riptided targets, so why 5 targets?

For whatever reason, Chain Heal sometimes jumps to Riptide targets unexpectedly, but won't double back for its extra jumps gained from High Tide. I started increasing the amount of Riptides out on the targets and noticed at around 5 (We had 16 members in the raid) I was getting the proper amount of Chain Heal jumps. This was already brought up to Blizzard and I HOPE that they're looking into something. However, Riptide is still a very effective heal in terms of HPM. Its your highest effective spell not including totems.

And is chain heal checking for range on the riptided targets as well? (as example you chain heal the melee group and have 3 riptided targets in range group that is out of range for normal chain heal jumps, will it heal the targets?)

I was glyphed for Chain Heal, if that matters to you, but yes it did jump to ranged. Gruul testing would skew that answer as we were stacked in two groups behind the boss, but at least for Butcher Chain Heal was doubling back to ranged.

Source: Had riptide on myself.

furthermore what was the uptime on HST, did you use the glyph of ridtide? What was the speed of the damage vs the average healing going. aka where was everyone sitting?

With how HST was changed, and us losing the passive that buffed it, its healing isn't AS great as before. However, its HPM is 4x better than our best castable heal. Of course I'm not including Healing Tide, since that totem now heals everyone within 40 yards every 2 seconds. That Totem is still an incredible raid cooldown.

I used HST on cooldown and right on the pull for Gruul. There was consistent raid damage and I couldn't afford to waste a moment holding off on it. As for the damage going out, it just felt like people were really quick to go from 100% to 25%, and then they would hover around 40%-60% the rest of the fight. Its just a different feeling now since its not a race to get people back to 100%... you just can't do that now. You don't have enough mana or the power to do it.

Just like I explained to people in my stream, its now about keeping people at a survivable level. Butcher was different as it was just melee taking damage, but Gruul had everyone taking damage. You had to make sure Healing Rain was up as much as possible, and that you weren't missing even a moment on cooldowns. It does help to line up things like Healing Tide with the new Mage ability, Amplify Magic. Everyone takes 12% more healing for a short duration.


From my perspective, and looking at the ability list on my post, it seems fairly accurate. I'm okay with Healing Stream being down a little ways on an AoE fight. It just can't compete if its only healing 2 people at a time but it still did a fair amount of healing. My only gripe would be Ascendance being really, really bad. With the nerf to smart healing and other things- Ascendance which was once a powerful cooldown is now not even half as effective as Healing Tide.

Klik made some logs! http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...4&type=summary

Not all of them are there as we had some major disconnect issues, but there ya go. Its better than nothing, right? You will see some differences between the first few attempts, as I do try different healing styles (Chain Heal heavy vs Healing Wave heavy). Keep in mind I was having mana issues after about 3 minutes going Chain Heal heavy.

I also Unleashed Life sometimes out of habit. Its great if you're going to instant heal a tank up to full (to save them), otherwise it seemed to be a waste of a GCD.

[Shockeye]

It would appear then that our Mastery does indeed actually have some pretty decent value. Aside from Spirit, what are your feelings on ideal secondary stats, between Crit, Mastery and Haste, given your beta raid testing so far?

One thing I'm particularly concerned about is our perk of +10% healing done to targets inside a Healing Rain. This implies not so much that it's a bonus, but rather a penalty to healing those outside of the AoE, meaning there's a certain dependency for raiders to stand in the puddle in order for our healing to be optimally effective, removing that control from the Shaman. Is that something you noticed, or am I fretting un-necessarily?

[Forsedar]

It would appear then that our Mastery does indeed actually have some pretty decent value. Aside from Spirit, what are your feelings on ideal secondary stats, between Crit, Mastery and Haste, given your beta raid testing so far?

It is REALLY hard to tell. With the gear options they gave us, and reforging no longer available, its pretty hard to see the differences. However, if we're talking about straight availability: Mastery seems to be the forum favorite. With our new attunement (5% increased Mastery), and just Mastery food/flask I was around 78% Mastery. Gear was equally giving Haste, Multistrike and Mastery. This coupled with people always being below 100%, I actually like Mastery. Crit would probably be the least necessary stat at this point. We can't get enough of it to truly matter, and the 30% heal from critting no longer exists.

Mastery > Haste > Multistrike > Crit... though MS is proccing on Healing Rain, which may make it even more effective once we hit our first haste cap.

Is that something you noticed, or am I fretting un-necessarily?

Its something to definitely not worry about. I understood the worry, but at least with the bosses I was able to test- you're only hurting yourself not standing in Healing Rain for the heals. The 10% buff wasn't necessary for 5man Heroics as we were spread out so often that Healing Rain was utilized as much as it could have been. As for the raid testing, the mechanics had us stacking so half the raid was at least benefitting from the 10% healing increase (assuming the perk was implemented).

I'm not sure if the perks were working at all, so just assume there were 0 perks active for the logs I posted. I didn't see the initial 50% heal for Chain Heal so it may be safe to assume that Healing Rain didn't give the 10% healing buff either.


To summarize: Raiders are only hurting themselves not standing in Healing Rain to begin with. There is enough damage going out to warrant standing in it. Plus, the mechanics had us stacking more often than not so Healing Rain was easily utilized.

Its definitely something to not worry about at this point in time, but it was only 2 bosses tested.

[Shockeye]

Well, that's definitely encouraging and moving the meter from worry to cautious optimism.
I really appreciate your sharing of this info and in detail without bias.

We still have the Resurgence ability don't we, generating mana from Crits? Or is that reworked so much that it's just a "nice to have but not overly useful" feature, unlike on live now where it affords a very nice boost, allowing a lower Spirit to be maintained than perhaps may otherwise be possible.

I keep forgetting about Multistrike as a stat now.

[Forsedar]

We have Resurgence as a passive, so Water Shield doesn't need to be active to get mana back from crits. Though we should always have Water Shield active for its passive mana regen. I try to be as non-biased as possible, but I haven't done 100% complete thorough testing of everything. I am just speaking from personal experiences.

As it stands, its hard to tell how much spirit we will need as tuning isn't fully done yet (its apparent in all classes). I think for the next round of Raid testing I will use a Spirit flask to see if that makes a difference in terms of mana management. I had around 1,200 spirit without the 400 spirit flask. I used a mastery flask prior as it gave quite a boost to my healing.

[Deleted]

For whatever reason, Chain Heal sometimes jumps to Riptide targets unexpectedly, but won't double back for its extra jumps gained from High Tide. I started increasing the amount of Riptides out on the targets and noticed at around 5 (We had 16 members in the raid) I was getting the proper amount of Chain Heal jumps. This was already brought up to Blizzard and I HOPE that they're looking into something. However, Riptide is still a very effective heal in terms of HPM. Its your highest effective spell not including totems.

Chain Heal will jump to random targets after its initial target (the one you pick). After the 3 'base' jumps, it will check if there are any targets to jump to for the extra High Tide jumps.
Targets need to:
- Have Riptide on them.
- Not been hit by that Chain Heal yet
- Be in range (12yrd or 24yrd, depending on Glyph)

Since you will always cast CH on a RT'd target for the 25% boost, you'd need a tleast 4 RT targets. If any of the remaining 3 RT'd targets get hit by the base 3 jumps, then thats 1 less extra jump for High Tide.
So if you only have 4 RT's out, you could be very unlucky with RNG, and the base CH healing all 4 of those targets, leaving no elligeble targets for extra High Tide jumps.

[Deleted]

Thank you for the information.

[Forsedar]

Correct, that is why I decided to just keep 5 RTs out (only 1 extra GCD and its HPS is still nice). Just wanted to make sure I didn't lose the extra jumps due to RNG hitting Riptide targets before it finishes its first 3.

[Mythologicale]

While I find High Tide useful, I don't like it too much because the riptide based part only works in large groups (maybe only raid and big bgs) since you can't heal twice a target just because they have riptide. We depend too much on glyphs to make it work. The good use of this talent is when there is average sustained damage, then you cast riptide on everyone or a large group and start casting chain heal. But i find it a bit worrying the low healing that Chain Heal is doing.

In the other side, a question about Condensation Totem: What does it mean by ALL overhealing? ALL the overhealing made by the raid or just the shaman? Not that I like this talent, but if it's goin to stay (I hope no) I would like to know how it works.

[shamantime]

We have Resurgence as a passive, so Water Shield doesn't need to be active to get mana back from crits. Though we should always have Water Shield active for its passive mana regen. I try to be as non-biased as possible, but I haven't done 100% complete thorough testing of everything. I am just speaking from personal experiences.

As it stands, its hard to tell how much spirit we will need as tuning isn't fully done yet (its apparent in all classes). I think for the next round of Raid testing I will use a Spirit flask to see if that makes a difference in terms of mana management. I had around 1,200 spirit without the 400 spirit flask. I used a mastery flask prior as it gave quite a boost to my healing.

Riptide seems pretty high on your overall healing, is Riptide stronger than live and is it safe to say Resto could have a viable Riptide-blanket playstyle?