Single Target Restoration Shaman

[Transistor 0]

Hi! I am confused about the restoration shaman guide. Here is what I am wondering, out of a few options for specifically single target healing under stressful circumstances.

 

 

- Do I give up on Unleash Life when they are taking massive damage, or always use it?

- Is it better to overwrite a pre-existing Riptide to get Tidal Waves or cast a healing surge/wave instead?
> Should I cast Chain Heal to get Tidal Waves stacks back up, if not Riptide? Or just spam surge/wave even without Tidal Waves?

 

 

Thanks in advance!

[JuicyBrucie 2]

Riptide, UL+HW or UL+HS big heals for single target. I use UL every single time when its available. Rule of thumb after 2 cast of HW or HS cast another riptide if its up to keep tidal wave proc'ed. CH for a single target is a waste of mana. 

[Stoove 347]

So that's a very complicated question to answer completely, but some useful points;

• You should be using Riptide to stack Tidal Waves, but not Chain Heal,
• Riptide is beneficial to cast when it will do effective healing with the HoT component. Overwrite as little as possible. Have the HoT on the tank at 100% uptime.
• If the tank is in imminent (under 2s) danger of death, Healing Surge. If death in 2.5-3s, use Healing Wave instead. If danger is over 3s but imminent, Riptide + Healing Surge. If there's high damage but roughly stable tank (not about to die) then Riptide + Healing Wave.
• If there's low damage and nobody will benefit from the Riptide buff, it's slightly better to not cast Riptide. Having said that, if there's any chance to one of the cases in the last point, you want to be casting Riptide rotationally anyway in order to make sure you're better able to respond (heals with RT buff are always better than without!).

It's complicated to make the correct decision, basically.

 

Unleash Life isn't good to use rotationally, but it is good if you're timing a heal to coincide with a damage spike. Unleashed Fury makes Unleash Life worth casting rotationally.

 

How's that? :)

[Cheze 6]

Personally I try never to use healing surge without tidal waves up; it's just too inefficient to spam like that in any but the highest-risk circumstances.  If the tank already has a lot of time left on riptide, just chuck it on a melee who is likely to take damage.

 

Obviously you should not use unleash life if the extra GCD is likely to cause tank death; sometimes the tank needs a heal right now and delaying that in favor of riptide/unleash isn't possible.  Ideally you are on top enough of tank health not to be in that situation though.

 

A good trick is an unleash > AS+surge macro; I've gotten good mileage out of that in challenge modes.

[Stoove 347]

Personally I try never to use healing surge without tidal waves up; it's just too inefficient to spam like that in any but the highest-risk circumstances.  If the tank already has a lot of time left on riptide, just chuck it on a melee who is likely to take damage.

 

So the reason that I said to use Healing Surge was based entirely on the time until death of the tank. I only advocate using Healing Surge when it's the only thing which will fit in that time to save the tank.  If the tank is in imminent danger then you don't have time to Riptide somebody in order to get the Tidal Waves buff. The "over 3s but imminent" gives you just about time to get a RT+HS off, which is still faster than RT+HW and heals for more on average.

 

Beyond imminent danger, it's not worth using Healing Surge.