Resto Shaman Questions, Help Appreciated.

[Zaeo 2]

Hey there, So My shaman's name is Zaeber. I'm on the Realm Zul'jin.

 

I'm here because I am currently behind my guild's raid healers by an unacceptable amount.

 

During trash, I can pull 21k hps on average, and am within 3-7% of the healers, but as soon as movement gets involved, like tectus, It plummets to around 15k hps, and I fall behind our druid healer and disc priest by nearly 20% for the remainder of the fight, even with spirit walkers grace.

 

I am the only shaman in the guild at this moment in time, so I can't bump heads with a guildie, and so I come here, Seeking ideas.

 

Right now, the Talents I chosen are as follows:

 

Nature's Guardian*considered Astral shift, haven't played too much with it*

WWT

Totemic Persistance*I pop CBT and HST at the same time, or HST and HTT for intense raid healing needs*

Echo

RS

Primal elememtalist with empower/Reinforce on castsequence for 2 minutes of boosted healing back to back

CBT

 

Glyphs:

 

HST

SWF

HW*considering Fire ele*

 

As mentioned, our raid's heal comp consists of a Druid, Disc priest, and Resto shaman, with a Holy/ret pally for certain heavy healing needs.

 

I have read the guide, and my stats as of right now are

 

3586 int

9.58%crit

16.18% haste

72%Mastery

976 spirit*I'd like to get more, not quite where i want to be mana wise.

1.29% multistrike

4.75% Versatility*I definitely want to drop this down a bit, not been lucky with my rerolls*

 

Thanks for any input!

 

[Pandacho 286]

Hello, Zaeo!

We have to see your raid logs to give you a feedback

Are you able to provide any, please?

 

Upd: Okay, never mind, I found your logs. But for the next time, it would nice to mention where you are playing - EU or US - it's not obvious and the realms' names are just the same. And link the logs - in your case they weren't of your guild, but somebody's private logs.

 

I will look into your logs today.

Edited December 26, 2014 by Pandacho

[Zaeo 2]

Hey Panda, Thanks, Will post that info asap for future, Sorry about that.

 

I appreciate you taking the time to look at it. US-Zul'Jin Zaeber

 

Edit:

 

The logs posted by Valatros for the successful brackenspore and tectus kills are a bit out of date, I will fill in changes I have made since then as it becomes apparent. 

 

Can you suggest a combat log addon? I'd be happy to post more logs for more accurate information of how my healing evolves.

 

Thanks!

Edited December 26, 2014 by Zaeo

[Pandacho 286]

Hey, Zaeo.

I think that this thread will explain everything that you need to know to be able to upload your own logs

If  there will be something that you can't understand, I'm glad to help. Remember that you don't have to wait for raid to test it - just go hit a dummy for a minute and upload.

 

I will still give you some feedback from what i saw in Armory and available logs. 

 

Armory:

My first question will be: why don't you use  the DMF trinket (Winged Hourglass) with awesome spirit proc?

You can check this article for the updated trinkets' values.

2. Why don't you have 3 crafted items but only two and why any of your crafted pieces upgraded to stage 2? It was enough time to upgrade one of them for free just from using your garrison profession buildings and getting enough Primal Spirits for Savage Blood from your garrison mine and garden.

3. Why do you use 'Bracer of Amputation'? It's so badly itemized for resto shaman that even most of 630 blue bracers would be better. Crit is currently on the last place in stat weights and Versatility is so bad that even doesn't worth to be mentioned.

4. You don't have Spirit on your Neck, Back or Trinkets - it makes me to wonder how you are able to manage mana in raids.

 

I would highly recommend to read this article if you are interested in stat weights math, if you are not interested in math, you can just use this table for AMR custom weights.

 

Talents and Glyphs:

 

I wouldn't talk about tiers 1-2.

 

Tier 3: Totemic Persistence. Very good talent if you are using your HST and CBT on CD.

In your Brackenspore kill (9:22 min) you used HST 12 times (could use it 18) and didn't use CBT at all. Were you spec'd into High Tide? If yes - why to take Totemic Persistence, if not - why didn't you use CBT?

Same for Tectus: 10 casts of HST in 8 min. fight (could make it 16) and no casts of CBT.

If you were spec'd into High Tide for both fights (even that you said that you use CBT), you didn't use Chain Heal a lot too: 11 times on Brackenspore and 6 times on Tectus.

 

Tier 4: Echo of the Elements. Awesome talent. I like it for both CBT and HT. As you know, it gives a chance for your next Riptide and Unleashed Life not to incur its CD. But if  your Riptide is glyphed, your EotE proc could be spent only on UL (we'll put aside dispelling for now). So you utilized only half of its power in addition having weak Riptide.

Why did you glyph Riptide? You are healing with Resto druid and Disc Priest - they will always be ahead of you on HoT (shield) healing. Resto shaman power is in heavy powerful heals due to Mastery, not in HoT blanketing.

So you have EotE talent but casted UL on Brackenspore only 7 times (it could be 37 even without EotE procs) and no UL casts on Tectus at all.

So its another fully wasted talent.

 

Tier 5: Rushing Streams. Good choice. But to make it really work, you should cast HST more, actually on CD. You didn't.

 

Tier 6: Primal Elementalist. Was a good choice in Pandaria. Not a choice in Highmaul.

You have 2 awesome talents in this tier: Unleashed Fury which empowers UL and increase your single target heal on 50% or Elemental blast which increases your Spirit by1000 for every 8 sec. after cast and gives 500 secondary stat buff in addition.

I don't know why to chose 10% increased healing for 2 min instead of any of these two talents.

 

Tier 7: Cloudburst totem. Good talent if you actually use the totem. You didn't, even once. So....

 

Raid CDs and utility:

 

Brackenspore (9:22 min)

HTT: 1 (should be 3)

Ascendance:1(should be 3)

Spirit Link Totem:1(should be 3)

Berserking:1(should be 3)

Spiritwalker's Grace: 0 (let's say you didn't need it here)

Earth Shied: 33.87% uptime - really bad. has to be close to 100%

Fire Elemental: 1 (could be 2)

Earth Elemental: 0 (Primal Elementalist talent wasn't utilized)

 

I see that you were dpsing a bit during the fight. What's the reason?

 

Tectus (8:10 min)
HTT: 2 (could be 3)
Ascendance: 0(should be at least 2)
Spirit Link Totem:1(should be at least 2)
Berserking:2 (could be 3)
Spiritwalker's Grace: 0 (you complained that it's a heavy movement fight and you have a glyph for Spiritwalker's Grace, so what was the reason not to use the ability?)
Earth Shied: 50.71% uptime - really bad. has to be close to 100%
Fire Elemental: 1 (could be 2)
Earth Elemental: 0 (Primal Elementalist talent wasn't utilized)

 

You can read this and this thread if you are interested to improve your raid healing.

Good luck

Edited December 28, 2014 by Pandacho

[Zaeo 2]

At the time, I was specced into High tide, and Call of the elements.

 

I currently have a tendancy to keep cds for heavy healing needs, And I do not utilize them sometimes due to drifting into a panicked frenzy trying to keep everyone i can alive, and spamming heals vs blowing cds and healing stronger.

 

The underutilization of earthshield is kind of surprising, as I feel like I have had it up on a target constantly, But that's probably one of the major issues I have as far as healing goes. Added a Weak Auras Indicator to help improve utilization.

 

Riptide was glyphed at the time of running this, due to an old method of shaman healing back in Lich king days*That was when i last healed with a shaman* I have since switched that out...the unglyphed riptide is really nice for quick emergency heals*UL, Riptide, HS HS*

 

Speaking of which, Would using UL for Riptide normally be better than using UL Healing wave? Not sure how much of a difference that makes

 

The Casting on CD HST will be helpful, I wasn't exactly sure how often I should use it, Been practicing on some Heroic Highmaul Trash runs, what a difference.

 

As for Healing tide CD, At least for tectus, I try to save em for when we get uphevals, Should I? or just use it when raid is sufficiantly damaged?

 

As for the gear issue of craftables: I had 3, a shield, but then I got the 661 to drop. The bracers were basically a direct upgrade from what I had at the time, same stats, more of them. And trinkets is just luck of the draw, no luck in getting the ones I want, Will look into Winged Hourglass. Its a matter of affording it, I'm not a scribe, nor do I have much gold at the moment; I had a paladin healer i was switching from, Hence the lack of upgraded pieces, I just hit 100 on friday before that raid, so the gear that i had was obtained in a period of 2 days. 

 

Thanks for the insight, Will try to adjust further.

 

Edit: The dps was during the first part of the fight, first 30 seconds, everyone was completely topped off, so I dropped a flame shock and searing totem. Also, I dropped fs/ST on mind fungus because it was not dying fast enough, leading to 3 second Healing Surges...even a little bit could shave off a second on that debuff.

 

Edit 2: Versatility is at 1.75% atm, The previous 4% number was likely with some raid buff or something.

 

Edit 3: I looked up Vixsin's gear, spec, etc, http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Stormreaver/Vixsin/advanced

 

Guessing that's a good stat weight benchmark to go for? :P

Edited December 27, 2014 by Zaeo

[Pandacho 286]

I currently have a tendancy to keep cds for heavy healing needs, And I do not utilize them sometimes due to drifting into a panicked frenzy trying to keep everyone i can alive, and spamming heals vs blowing cds and healing stronger.

Theoretically you are right, but did you notice that our raid CDs are so less powerful in WoD? You can't top raid with your HTT anymore - it gives about 25% of HP. So if you are waiting until your raid is really low to pull your raid CDs - sometimes it's not a very good idea.

 

Riptide was glyphed at the time of running this, due to an old method of shaman healing back in Lich king days*That was when i last healed with a shaman* I have since switched that out...the unglyphed riptide is really nice for quick emergency heals*UL, Riptide, HS HS*

Unglyphed Riptide is not an emergency heal.

It has actually two uses:

1) Low raid damage: normal heal nicely working with the new WoD healing mechanic without damage spikes. You Riptide a target and just leave it to tick and heal. Sure, you can use HW or HS after Riptide, but no topping is necessary, you mostly just waste mana on something that will be HoT healed in the next 30 sec.

2) High raid / single damage: in addition to its actual heal, empowers your next CH (raid damage) or HS / HW (single damage). In this case I prefer to cast Rt+UL+CH or Rt+UL+HS on the target.

 

Speaking of which, Would using UL for Riptide normally be better than using UL Healing wave? Not sure how much of a difference that makes

Well, I prefer to use it with Healing Surge or Chain Heal. 

Why do you think that UL for Riptide is better?

 

The Casting on CD HST will be helpful, I wasn't exactly sure how often I should use it, Been practicing on some Heroic Highmaul Trash runs, what a difference.

It is not 'helpful', it has to be casted on CD. 

 

As for Healing tide CD, At least for tectus, I try to save em for when we get uphevals, Should I? or just use it when raid is sufficiantly damaged?

The second. Some times Upheaval is not casted even when announced, so you can get yourself into situation when you save your CDs until the end, never using them, while your fellow healers burn their mana healing the damage that you could heal.

 

Edit 3: I looked up Vixsin's gear, spec, etc, http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Stormreaver/Vixsin/advanced

I'm not sure why are you looking at gearing of somebody 676 ilvl doing deep Mythic progression.

The weights and enchants are different for the different ilevels. Why don't you use something that is good for your ilvl and current progression? The table and article that Stoove wrote regarding stat weights for different ilvls, did you read it or at least looked into the table? I linked it in my previous post.

Edited December 28, 2014 by Pandacho

[Grimmang 0]

But (!) you had your Riptide glyphed for both fights which 'automaticaly' forces your EotE proc to be spent on your glyphed weak Riptide, because it's always off CD, so it almost always will be your next proc cast instead of UL.

 

I'd just like to point out this is inaccurate. Blizzard hotfixed this weeks ago, and glyphed Riptide will -never- use your EotE procs now. 

[Pandacho 286]

You are right. I didn't notice that update.

[Zaeo 2]

Alright, Well, Monday is my guild raid day that is planned. I'll upload the logs then and post them then. I appreciate the info!

 

And My mindset for Vixsin as a guideline was to see how a "high end raider" shaman's stats weighed out and try to get as close to that as I can. As I've mentioned, I'm the only shaman in my guild/friends circle, so I have no one to talk theory with and try to get tips to improve.

 

I did read the articles, and did find the information to be helpful, Thanks for linking!

 

I did notice that a UL Riptide initial heal is around 26-50k depending on crit, and am not sure if the UL will increase the hot effect, haven't noticed one way or the other, but the fact that it is an instant heal that healed for about what a normal healing wave heals for, I considered it an emergency heal setup.

 

Thanks guys!

Edited December 29, 2014 by Zaeo

[Pandacho 286]

am not sure if the UL will increase the hot effect

UL increase Rt HoT effect - I checked it yesterday.

But I still think that UL should go to HS or CH and not to HoT. HS with crit from Tidal Waves and UL buff can heal for more than 100K in 1.5 sec (I saw it yesterday when tested different spells with and without Tidal Waves, UL, UF, etc.), Riptide will never get close, because it's a HoT, not an emergency heal. But anyway it's only my opinion. Feel free to play as you feel it comfortable

Edited December 29, 2014 by Pandacho

[Zaeo 2]

Here's the Log. Feel free to dissect it

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/3F6rnKfjcHmpVD7y#fight=64&type=summary

 

ES not where its supposed to be at, but definite improvements. >.> Damn tunnel vision healing..

Edited December 30, 2014 by Zaeo