ToT 10 Man, resto shaman

[shammypie]

hello vemel,
I will admit that i just started raiding heroics this week (10/13) as resto. My toon is called xmogpolice on area 52 and i'm in the process of switching over a lot of my gear. Feel free to look at some of my logs as I have some ranks (albeit low but considering my late start they aren't bad) so feel free to look at some and maybe give you a better understanding of where your healing is going to come from.

i heal with the same comp of healers as you do with a disc/spriest being our swing healer. i myself am behind the hpally and others in gear but manage to keep up. I recommend getting ~3900 haste (breakpoint + lag leeway) with AS and PE. Past that i go for crit until you hit the soft cap (healing surge 100% crit with tidal waves). Even on heroics you don't have many people who dip below 50% for very long and crit is useful at all health percentages (especially single target heals) and refunds mana. Overall your numbers are going to be lower than the holy pally due to the nature of the beast. Don't feel too bad as 5.4 will make this a lot better. However Nothing beats Shaman CDs when it comes to healing and we have a lot of them.

As for spell selection keep in mind the following things.
1. is healing rain going to heal a decent number of people for the duration or not? If it isn't don't really worry too much about using it.
2. Do i need to use the chaining glyph for this fight? How bad is your stacked damage and how much spreading will you have?
3. Is mana an issue or can i clip hst? Now this is usually a non issue but some fights go long and having that extra mana is a vast difference in regen.
4. Red, Yellow, or Green? I use these terms from my heal bot as thats the colors raiders are painted depending on how much health they have. Typically if they are red, use HS, yellow use GHW, and green use HW. However if you can/need to use Chain heal or Healing Rain do so before resorting to single target.
5. Is someone going to die? Almost every rule can be broken in order to keep someone from dying. In fact this is your sole purpose in the raid and don't get distracted by numbers if bringing you over that druid is the difference between a wipe and killing it.

[Barrun]

As Shammypie suggested a crit build is very effective for 10 man heroics. I aim for 11k spirit, 3764+ haste, and then stack crit. If you go this route don't completely exile Glyph of Riptide, it has its time and its place; being able to produce Tidal Waves on demand is invaluable. Two healing a fight like H Twins where everyone is spread out (taking constant damage) and often spiking low in health it really helps to be able to throw a Riptide followed by two GHW's or HS', rinse and repeat, the decrease in efficiency of Riptide is worth it. Glyphed Riptide is also a great way to bait a meta proc.

Stacking int as you mentioned seems to be what shaman with really high item levels are doing, where mana becomes less of an issue because of already high crit - effectively it's just exchanging some mana regen (crit) for extra throughput. I would suggest trying out a crit build, if you like it and get to a point where mana becomes a non-issue then try going primarily int.

[Axelond]

So Ive been trying out this haste build on my shaman for the last two weeks (Link) going for the 3rd healing rain (15136) cap instead of the 2nd (7613) cap. I was just barely able to get it with my gear going for pure haste everywere and the only thing I am really losing is like 2k int and 2/3 of crit and mastery and with over 1k rating needed of mastery/crit for 1% gain according to the RSS addon its not that big a loss. Mana is no problem because the legendary meta scales with haste and with 50% haste you should have around 20-25% uptime on it some recalling is needed on longer fights but on most fights mana no problem and being GCD capped is just so nice, Your healing stream will get a lot of extra ticks (god knows how it works) and healing rain heals for tons

So far ive been doing fine 2 healing 10 man 7/13 hc every week but tbh I have no idea how good it is vs standard int/7613 haste and crit build. Its probably way stronger in 25 man and will most likely be the standard build in 5.4 with HR buff and more gear and the 18% more 2nd stats trinket next patch but I am still having a good time using it now in 5.3 when the guild I am in is very overgeared for the content we are doing atm.

[Deleted]

its no secret that shamans are weak in 10 mans, with a fair margin, however you can keep up with other classes, it just takes alot of hard work (i eam currently 13/13 HC) and have been healing amongst a druid, disc and holy paladin, but for the most part manage to outperform them, even if the fight doesnt include any/much stacking. You just have to work harder to achieve it, allways look into what other shamans are doing, and/or figure out your own strats, reforge for every progression boss, 1 set in stone reforge will NEVER bring you any good.

If you allways do this, and keep trying to improve you will beat him eventually (asuming he doesnt do the same ^^)

[shammypie]

its no secret that shamans are weak in 10 mans, with a fair margin, however you can keep up with other classes, it just takes alot of hard work (i eam currently 13/13 HC) and have been healing amongst a druid, disc and holy paladin, but for the most part manage to outperform them, even if the fight doesnt include any/much stacking. You just have to work harder to achieve it, allways look into what other shamans are doing, and/or figure out your own strats, reforge for every progression boss, 1 set in stone reforge will NEVER bring you any good.

If you allways do this, and keep trying to improve you will beat him eventually (asuming he doesnt do the same ^^)

Don't forget it isn't all about the numbers when it comes to killing fights. Shamans have a CD niche that is going to become more powerful in 5.4. I think too many raiders, especially progression ones, focus on the numbers to prove their worth. One of the major things i ask resto shamans to see if they know their stuff is when they use hst. many will say on cd or lining it up with some other cd they are gonna use later so they fit together. not many will mention using it right before major damage in tot and procing the HST glyph on people to reduce incoming damage (not tracked by numbers).


As Alejandro said you can beat other healers by performing really well when it comes to the meters. Don't let raid averages scare you away. For us its a little bit more difficult and often requires having intimate knowledge of the fight, a good raid awareness and instinct, and cooperate raid group to let you heal the fullest.

As far as Barrun and the glyph of riptide i wouldn't try it unless you want to put a lot of work into perfecting it. The glyph has its use but not many can use it effectively. Usually i suggest to people to take chaining over riptide due to the healer heal component of CH and ease of use. In H twins there are only a few times you can't use CH and these occur during low damage phases. Furthermore with casting chain heal you won't run out of tidal waves stacks, just make to stagger your riptide and ch for maximum effect.

[Barrun]

Don't forget it isn't all about the numbers when it comes to killing fights. Shamans have a CD niche that is going to become more powerful in 5.4. I think too many raiders, especially progression ones, focus on the numbers to prove their worth. One of the major things i ask resto shamans to see if they know their stuff is when they use hst. many will say on cd or lining it up with some other cd they are gonna use later so they fit together. not many will mention using it right before major damage in tot and procing the HST glyph on people to reduce incoming damage (not tracked by numbers).


As Alejandro said you can beat other healers by performing really well when it comes to the meters. Don't let raid averages scare you away. For us its a little bit more difficult and often requires having intimate knowledge of the fight, a good raid awareness and instinct, and cooperate raid group to let you heal the fullest.

As far as Barrun and the glyph of riptide i wouldn't try it unless you want to put a lot of work into perfecting it. The glyph has its use but not many can use it effectively. Usually i suggest to people to take chaining over riptide due to the healer heal component of CH and ease of use. In H twins there are only a few times you can't use CH and these occur during low damage phases. Furthermore with casting chain heal you won't run out of tidal waves stacks, just make to stagger your riptide and ch for maximum effect.

For more emphasis on the subject of the Riptide glyph, shammypie is very correct in that the CH glyph is much easier to use. I never take both the Chain Heal and Riptide glyphs at the same time, I swap them in and out depending on the encounter, and on occasion use neither. For success in healing in 10 mans however a Chain Heal every 4 seconds isn't going to provide the spread out throughput some encounters require (2 healing), glyph of Riptide is a means to compensating for our lack of multi-target spread healing, never use it for blanketing the raid - the hot is pretty shit. Use it for the Tidal Waves so you can throw out as many Healing Surges with a high crit chance as possible to maximize your spread throughput. Ji'kun quills for example, if you're healing by yourself on the main platform and Healing Tide is on cooldown Healing Surge becomes your friend. Buffering peoples shield on HC Tortos with fast GHW's is another circumstance where the glyph can really help. But as mentioned before, taking both Chain Heal and Riptide gylphs at the same time probably isn't a good idea.

[Deleted]

Don't forget it isn't all about the numbers when it comes to killing fights. Shamans have a CD niche that is going to become more powerful in 5.4. I think too many raiders, especially progression ones, focus on the numbers to prove their worth. One of the major things i ask resto shamans to see if they know their stuff is when they use hst. many will say on cd or lining it up with some other cd they are gonna use later so they fit together. not many will mention using it right before major damage in tot and procing the HST glyph on people to reduce incoming damage (not tracked by numbers).

This. On some fights, like Tortos normal, you shouldn't ever cast HST on CD, but instead you should make sure it is available for stomp, as the 10% damage reduction is way more important to your raid that the healing it can provide in between stomp.
Doing this won't make you look better on the meters, and instead will make you look bad because you'll have less HST casts overall, however it benefits the raid more.

Also, as a shaman your performance on meters highly depends on the performance of the other healers and of the raid team. If you heal with 2 other healers who are as good or better as you, and your raid doesn't take too much avoidable damage, you'll certainly be at bottom of the healing meters. But if you raid with poor healers, or there is more damage going on, then you can easily top the meters. In my experience, I'm usually dead bottom while healing with our usual raid team (paladin + disc, both very good healers), but can outperform them if we 2-heal stuff. And in our last raid I beat my HPS record on Megaera while 3-healing with some random pick up healers, while I got my previous record while 2-healing with a disc priest.

[Seriss]

This. On some fights, like Tortos normal, you shouldn't ever cast HST on CD, but instead you should make sure it is available for stomp, as the 10% damage reduction is way more important to your raid that the healing it can provide in between stomp.
Doing this won't make you look better on the meters, and instead will make you look bad because you'll have less HST casts overall, however it benefits the raid more.

Not to sound like a smartypants, but...

a.) Quake Stomp is physical.
b.) HST buff/glyph reduces nature, frost and fire damage taken to be reduced by 10% on people who have been healed by it, for 6s after that heal.

Have I overlooked something where we provide 10% reduced damage taken on physical damage?

Rockfall dmg is nature though, so whenever people get hit by Rockfall damage, HST helps. And they get hit all the time because you don't need a direct hit to be damaged. Might as well drop it shortly before Quake Stomp or immediately after (because sometimes, you have that HTT that is also good to set down just when Quake Stomp happens) to reduce the nature damage taken for the lucky people who get a heal.

[Deleted]

Don't forget it isn't all about the numbers when it comes to killing fights. Shamans have a CD niche that is going to become more powerful in 5.4. I think too many raiders, especially progression ones, focus on the numbers to prove their worth. One of the major things i ask resto shamans to see if they know their stuff is when they use hst. many will say on cd or lining it up with some other cd they are gonna use later so they fit together. not many will mention using it right before major damage in tot and procing the HST glyph on people to reduce incoming damage (not tracked by numbers).


As Alejandro said you can beat other healers by performing really well when it comes to the meters. Don't let raid averages scare you away. For us its a little bit more difficult and often requires having intimate knowledge of the fight, a good raid awareness and instinct, and cooperate raid group to let you heal the fullest.

No offcourse not, but over the course of this tier, (from a raid leaver POV) it sadly feels like the demand for cd's become far lesser with a good healer composition, and raid makeup, and in the long run it really does make more sense to balance you setup around the stronger throughput rather than cd's (offcourse there are exceptions, such as lei shen HC and durumu HC,) where there is a short demand for intense damage, while the rest is sort of lol where a shaman is extremely effective, sepite having poor numbers (Lei shen healing surge spam, hello!) But my point is that, despite what everyone says, numbers does come into play in the long run, i can only imagine how much easiyer twins would have been if we could 2 heal it, ot magerra, dark animus, Council (not saying theese figths cant be 2 healed with a resto shaman, but it required a stronger healing team than then if you had a disc, paladin) the list is long.

And when it comes to it, all the other classes (except for druids "sort of") have a relieable frequent healing burst, disc has SS, Paladins and monks have chi and holy power, which to a high degree, mixxed up with the "pro-active healing" they migh have (Blanketing rejuvs, Thunder focus tea, "PW:s/SS spamming, Eternal flame blanketing.) mean that they - if played correctly can largely fill the role of our cd's on a much more regular basis, but i agree its not all about numbers, but its not all about cd's either in most cases, since this can be counterd by all classes, by playing well really.

But no shaman certainly has a niche, and if you use your cd's well you will kill stuff eventually,