Reston00b questions - Part two

[Dedalus]

Hi all.
I posted some time ago looking for advices in healing when I was 15/16. Now I'm nearly 60 and I have new questions for you

Chain heal. I rarely use it because I never had any situation where all my party take AoE damage, but now I placed the first talent point in Tidal Waves and I'm asking my self if I should not try to use Chain heal more in order to get the Tidal Waves effect and get fast heals. Also, how work exactly the jumps of this heal?

Healing. Usually I use Healing wave to heal the party and Healing Surge for the "Oh crap!" moments. I start to heal someone in the party only if he go down the 80% of life or if I see that my Healing wave don't overheal too much (I use Pitbull which show me if I overheal and how much), but when I heal the tank I find myself to heal him also if it is at 97,% hoping to get a critical heal and proc Ancestral fortitude. It's a bad habit or should I leave it? For what I see in my recount reports I have and overhealing of about 20%.

Recount (Healing Stream Totem). A lot of you say that Healing Stream Totem is a big part of our healing (and I belive you, I get talent and glyph), but when I go to check on Recount the most effective heals I don't found it. I don't think to have an old version of Recount so there is some options that I have to modify?

Thanks for help

[ChildeRoland]

Healing Stream is either named somehing else or count as a pet in recount.
Using mana stream on my own shaman so don't know for sure.

[RagingCelt91387]

The thing about Chain Heal is that you should really only use when your group takes AoE damage. Sadly at your level the amount of AoE damage on any given fight is minimal. Tidal Waves also procs off of Riptide so whether or not you use Chain Heal all that often shouldn't factor in there. I run Skada instead of recount and HS Totem is a significant increase to my overall healing done and with the glyph for resistances it is hands down the best Water Totem to drop. Don't worry about the numbers its putting out for you right now but when AoE damage gets higher, like in later Outland and Northrend dungeons you'll be glad for it.

[Mordret]

Healing stream is vey good but not in early levels, and getting tidal wave is very good boost to healing. But until 70 healing with shaman is mostly keep ES and throw some healing waves.
Jumps from CH always picks people with lowest health first. But jumps has limited range and it effectivnes drops with each jump.
To keep Tidal Waves use Riptide, its moslty better option in random dungeons.

[Dedalus]

The thing about Chain Heal is that you should really only use when your group takes AoE damage. Sadly at your level the amount of AoE damage on any given fight is minimal. Tidal Waves also procs off of Riptide so whether or not you use Chain Heal all that often shouldn't factor in there.

Unfortunatly I will not get Riptide before level 69 ^^''''', that is the reason why I was thinking about Chain heal

I run Skada instead of recount and HS Totem is a significant increase to my overall healing done and with the glyph for resistances it is hands down the best Water Totem to drop. Don't worry about the numbers its putting out for you right now but when AoE damage gets higher, like in later Outland and Northrend dungeons you'll be glad for it.

Skada? I will give him a try

Healing stream is vey good but not in early levels, and getting tidal wave is very good boost to healing. But until 70 healing with shaman is mostly keep ES and throw some healing waves.
Jumps from CH always picks people with lowest health first. But jumps has limited range and it effectivnes drops with each jump.
Too keep Tidal Waves use Riptide, its moslty better option in random dungeons.

Thanks for the explaination and the suggestion

[Tronada]

when I heal the tank I find myself to heal him also if it is at 97,% hoping to get a critical heal and proc Ancestral fortitude. It's a bad habit or should I leave it? For what I see in my recount reports I have and overhealing of about 20%.

I'm not sure how your mana is holding-up with using healing wave. It doesn't put much of a dent in mana at 85. So if you have plenty of mana, spam HW on the tank as much as you want. The only time you should worry about overheal is when you are running out of mana.

Once you get riptide your rolling hot should help you maintain AF on the tank.

If you can sustain your mana throwing lightning bolts with Telluric currents it might be less boring to do some dps between healing surges on the tank.

I wouldn't chain heal just for tidal waves unless you know it's going to hit at the very least two people. I remember using Nature's Swiftness + chain heal in bad situations and then utilizing the tidal wave charges to stabilize the group.

Chain heal will jump to the lowest health targets within 12.5yds of each other. I reviewed an addon on my blog that may help you determine when it's worth it to cast chain heal.

One of the biggest mistakes I see from resto shamans in 5 mans is not keeping earth shield up on the tank at all times.

If you have any more questions feel free to PM me.

[Dedalus]

I'm not sure how your mana is holding-up with using healing wave. It doesn't put much of a dent in mana at 85.

Also at 59 I have no problem to spam healing wave, but I feel like I'm wasting mana casting an heal when the tank is at 98% :/
And only because I hope to get a proc.

If you can sustain your mana throwing lightning bolts with Telluric currents it might be less boring to do some dps between healing surges on the tank.

At the moment I don't have Telluric currents because I never had big issue with mana, but I know that in the end game is a great talent and I'm ready to switch to it when I will be "big" xD

I reviewed an addon on my blog that may help you determine when it's worth it to cast chain heal.

I will look at your blog for sure!

One of the biggest mistakes I see from resto shamans in 5 mans is not keeping earth shield up on the tank at all times.

Earth Shield is always up on tank or whoever is tanking (sometimes tanks mess up or go away in the middle of the run leaving us alone ) but I have to admint that sometime happen.

[vixsin]

@OP, in answer to your original set of questions ...

Re: Chain heal - As mentioned previously, in most leveling dungeons, you won't come across much group damage effects (provided your party is doing things correctly). So yes, you won't be using it as much. While a CH cast will activate Tidal Waves, you would likely be better served by simply casting a more appropriate heal or two within the same time frame. Casting CH, when players are taking minimal or no damage, just for getting the sake of the TW buff would be a waste.

Re: Overhealing - Given your low levels of crit while leveling, I don't think you should be worrying about keeping up Ancestral Fortitude--you'll wind up burning more mana trying to get AF to proc than you would healing through the slightly increased amount of incoming damage.

Re: Recount and Healing Stream - I'd advise you to update your addon, but more so I'd advise you to not put too much weight into healing meters while leveling. The journey from 1 - 85, at least from my perspective, is a time to become more comfortable with the class and learn how to handle a variety of situations. Learn which spells to use when, learn about totem placement, learn more about proactive healing, learn about the nuances of healing different tanks, learn how to keep Water Shield and Earth Shield at 100% uptime; there will be plenty of time once you hit max level to worry about fine tuning everything.

Best of luck to you in your path to 85.

[Disciplined]

There is an option in recount called 'Merge Pets w/ Owners' if check this box it will add your HST to your own healing

[Dedalus]

The journey from 1 - 85, at least from my perspective, is a time to become more comfortable with the class and learn how to handle a variety of situations. Learn which spells to use when, learn about totem placement, learn more about proactive healing, learn about the nuances of healing different tanks, learn how to keep Water Shield and Earth Shield at 100% uptime; there will be plenty of time once you hit max level to worry about fine tuning everything.

That's really a good point. I'm worrying to much.

There is an option in recount called 'Merge Pets w/ Owners' if check this box it will add your HST to your own healing

Thanks for the info

A note aside: what a hell of blogs you have guys! There are so much information, consideration, analisys and so on... really well done!

[Tronada]

That's really a good point. I'm worrying to much.

Thanks for the info

A note aside: what a hell of blogs you have guys! There are so much information, consideration, analisys and so on... really well done!

Life in Group 5 is the paragon of Resto Shaman blogs. And who said that Paragons and Shamans don't mix?

[Agallochh]

Chain heal. I rarely use it because I never had any situation where all my party take AoE damage, but now I placed the first talent point in Tidal Waves and I'm asking my self if I should not try to use Chain heal more in order to get the Tidal Waves effect and get fast heals. Also, how work exactly the jumps of this heal?

The way chain heal works is actually very awesome. It's a smart heal, meaning the chain will prioritize lower HP targets over higher HP targets. As it is at 85, with Glyph of Chain Heal (Increases healing done by your Chain Heal spell to targets beyond the first by 15%, but decreases the amount received by the initial target by 10%.) I tend to try and target the guy with the most HP around the targets that need heals so it prioritizes the lower HP targets and they get the boosted 15% heal. At lower levels I can see the use of this being very minimal. If your heals aren't seeming too "slow" then I would suggest skipping using chain heal at all and just heal in lieu of Tidal Waves.

Healing. Usually I use Healing wave to heal the party and Healing Surge for the "Oh crap!" moments. I start to heal someone in the party only if he go down the 80% of life or if I see that my Healing wave don't overheal too much (I use Pitbull which show me if I overheal and how much), but when I heal the tank I find myself to heal him also if it is at 97,% hoping to get a critical heal and proc Ancestral fortitude. It's a bad habit or should I leave it? For what I see in my recount reports I have and overhealing of about 20%.

It's not a bad habit. Since Healing Wave doesn't impact your mana like.... at all... then you won't go oom by doing it. Over healing ONLY matters if you go OOM. I can have 97% over healing and I won't care if I finish the fight with a bunch of mana left. Not like I do this, as I use times where healing isn't needed to do some DPS.

Recount (Healing Stream Totem). A lot of you say that Healing Stream Totem is a big part of our healing (and I belive you, I get talent and glyph), but when I go to check on Recount the most effective heals I don't found it. I don't think to have an old version of Recount so there is some options that I have to modify?

I've never cared to see exactly how much my HST helps with my healing. It's a fire and forget spell, and usually in a raid setting I find myself with both pally buffs, negating the need for me to use Mana Stream since the buff is applied with Blessing of Might and does not stack. With the glyph, it also frees the Paladin's aura's up so they don't have to use resistance aura. The healing that HST does (ticks for ~1650hp at 85 in a raid) is decent as a fire and forget spell since everything else you can drop in it's place is usually covered. Also, since my mana regen is at a really good spot, I don't need the mana that Mana Stream provides in almost any situation and much prefer some heals ticking.

[Thomasaquina]

@OP:

Vixsin is good peoples and can be trusted for good advice. When you reach the raiding scene (and I hope you do, because the challenge is awesome!), keep checking out the LiG5 blog.

In general, I find that overhealing/spamming heals isn't a bad thing unless it is negatively impacting your mana or your ability to react to the given situation. There used to be the ABC rule (Always Be Casting) when mana wasn't an issue, and in the raiding scene now I find that still to be the case, except my filler is now Lightning Bolt to restore mana via Telleric Currents!

Also, a suggestion for tracking earth shield and mana shield and trying to maximize uptime: an addon called ShieldsUp
I started using this a few months ago and its a great way to help proactively refresh ES and WS before they fall off.

[Lienne]

Life in Group 5 is the paragon of Resto Shaman blogs. And who said that Paragons and Shamans don't mix?

I see what you did there.

[Dedalus]

Life in Group 5 is the paragon of Resto Shaman blogs. And who said that Paragons and Shamans don't mix?

Well, I was talking also about you blog. The addon you were talking before is quite intresting and I will try this week end with Skada for sure

...

Thank you also to you for your opinions and infos

Vixsin is good peoples and can be trusted for good advice. When you reach the raiding scene (and I hope you do, because the challenge is awesome!), keep checking out the LiG5 blog.

Look, the way I am know I can't dare to do not trust anyone also if i don't know him ^^'''.

Also, a suggestion for tracking earth shield and mana shield and trying to maximize uptime: an addon called ShieldsUp
I started using this a few months ago and its a great way to help proactively refresh ES and WS before they fall off.

For the shields I was thinking to use power aura, but this is more better (no configurations to do xD!). Thanks for the hint.