Not quite sure how to handle the Restoration Shaman

[Uthedicia 3]

I have a restoration shaman in my raids that is performing quite a bit under HPS-wise for my raid group. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm no expert on restoration and that to provide instruction to him on where to improve might actually hurt him more than help. That's why I'm making this post here. I'm at my wits end with this. I want a couple perspectives on where he could improve in his HPS... though I know HPS isn't everything in a fight and that decisions matter more than anything. 

 

Here is his armory, http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/aerie-peak/Skythorn/advanced

 

Here are a couple of logs where he was with us: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/WbNAFxt62hTPjnVy#fight=4&type=healing, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JBZyA7C6Yd2hG93K#type=healing

 

I don't want to have to remove him from my group as he's generally willing to follow instructions almost to the letter and is a well to do individual. He's just not where I need him to be. 

[Cantdoit 9]

Armory might not be showing the talents he was using in the raid but I noticed Primal Elementalist and didn't see the Empower buff. I wouldn't personally recommend that talent either way, Elemental Blast is pretty much the best of that tier in every situation.

 

Also, very few healing surges out of him, at the berserk on Butcher it's usually best to start dumping your mana to keep people healthy. And I know several people disagree with me on this, but I prefer High Tides over CBT, I think there's just too many opportunities for CBT's healing to be barely noticeable. Considering Chain Heal was his 2nd highest source of healing, he would definitely benefit from High Tides, even if he's unable to keep the extra Riptides up.

 

Also, he's using the mastery weapon enchant, switch that to spirit.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Cantdoit

[Uthedicia 3]

Armory was more so for gearing, to see if there were issues with that. As far as I know, the only way to know talents chosen at the time of the raids was to read buffs and debuffs in the logs. 

[Stoove 347]

You know what, at first glance it looks like your Shaman is performing admirably.

 

Let me give you a little context; Shaman are generally bad on fights that your raid overgears, and on fights where the damage is spiky and people have to be topped super fast, and on basically any fight where your Disc Priest shines. Now, you just linked Butcher Heroic 23 with 5 healers, all of whom were over 640 ilvl. In that case, I have absolutely no surprise that your RSham is the lowest on the meters there. Their spell distribution seems fine and they're using their mana up nicely, so at first glance it looks like you're just not seeing situations where they can actually shine.

 

Ko'ragh is always a good one for me. I'll take a closer look tomorrow and see if I can spot anything then. :-)

 

Edit: Unless they are gemming Versatility for the damage reduction component, I'd recommend that they replace those gems with Haste or Mastery (their choice).

[Cheze 6]

the thing that struck me about your butcher kill is that his overheal was quite low; < 15% for most of his primary abilities.  He also seems to have managed his mana relatively well (using it steadily, ending the fight pretty low.)  His spell usage seems fairly normal (maybe consider using conductivity and using those mana gains for more chain heal, but that'd be a fairly minor difference.)  He could also use HTT/ascendance once each early in the fight to save the raid some mana, but that's arguably not a smart play just for the sake of chasing meters.

 

I would regem that versatility in favor of haste or mastery, and consider stacking haste as long as mana isn't a concern.

 

The reality is that as long as everybody has mana to dump and incoming damage is relatively low, shaman has a difficult time competing with monk/druid/paladin.  If one healer is that far behind the rest of your raid and isn't doing much obviously wrong, it may just suggest that you're using too many healers.

[chiznitz 4]

Butcher

 

Looking at the heroic butcher fight...my guild runs the exact same healing makeup for that fight.  I don't see anything glaringly wrong.  I have actually posted here with the same issue, not being able to get above other healers in HPS.   These logs look exactly like ours.

 

Personally for butcher I would go with High Tide and glyph of chaining along with EotE and conductivity.  I would use Healing Wave between chain heals along with refreshing some riptides.

 

Brackenspore

 

He could output a lot more HPS on this fight.  He only used healing surge once.  With the blue mushroom giving back gobs of mana the spell can be spammed on the blue mushroom for longer uptime.

 

Imperator

 

I see you were working on imperator.  Personally I see no reason to use a bunch of chain heals so early in the fight.  This is a very long fight and that mana would be better spent on healing waves, he is going to need the mana at the end of the fight, trust me.

[Stoove 347]

I like the emphasis on mana spend in this thread. It's increasingly occured to me that mana control is utterly key for RSham at the moment, so that's good advice. Have a Like for that!

 

This is a very long fight and that mana would be better spent on healing waves, he is going to need the mana at the end of the fight, trust me.

 

This. So much.

 

Also, on Heroic farming you don't need more than 4 healers at that gear level (though it sure is easier with 5). Hence, see my signature.  =P

[Uthedicia 3]

I want to thank you guys for this insight, you've all given me great feedback on this. I'll point him toward this thread and discuss a few things with him. 

[Stoove 347]

So I promised to follow this up again and I'm sorry it took a while to get back to it. I've recently taken up a leadership role in my guild, and this week has been full of interesting things to talk about. Anyway, I had a look at the H Ko'ragh log you linked and I have some comments.

 

So, remember that I said that spell selection was fine on Butcher? I think I see one problem just by looking straight at Ko'ragh. Skythorn doesn't seem to be adapting their spell selection for different bosses. On Butcher, the spell selection they used was appropriate because of the stacked nature of the raid on that fight. On the other hand, on Ko'ragh your raid uses a spread out tactic and your RSham has to change their spell selection. The most important thing is that on a spread-out fight, your Shaman's Chain Heal and Healing Rain are far more inefficient. Single-target spells like Healing Surge and Healing Wave are much more appropriate for this situation.

 

The general strategy for that kind of fight should probably be to try to single-target spot heal during the fight and charge Cloudburst Totem as efficiently as possible. You could think about Glyph of Chaining for this kind of fight, and actually on Ko'ragh that would work nicely due to the damage patterns.

 

Another thing I noticed is that your player isn't using their cooldowns optimally on Ko'ragh. The main requirement of cooldowns on this fight is to heal over the damage from Expel Magic: Shadow, and that happens roughly every 1:15-1:30. Your Shaman should be able to hit every single one with a major cooldown due to the timing of the ability, and they only hit two. Encourage them to think more carefully about when they can use their cooldowns - using them more than once each fight drastically improves our overall performance.

 

I hope that advice helps a little, as I sympathise how hard it can be to diagnose your raiders' problems. Honestly, it looks a little like your RSham needs to think more carefully about their role in your healing team and try to play towards that. Resto Shaman often have to play around other classes (as opposed to Disc and Paladis, who seem to just play however they like). On spread out fights, though, you should expect them to perform significantly worse simply because our toolkit can't handle that as well.

 

Good luck! :-)