Riesen 5 Report post Posted April 10, 2015 Been using my Shaman a lot lately (both as a Healer and DPS). Recently changed guild and they use a different "healing method" than i'm used to. [Overview] I usually top the HPS, a restoration shaman with 4 pieces are insane. However, it feels like the RL are putting me as a "Tank Healer" because I have better gear. In most encounters I wouldn't mind being a "Tank Healer". But I'm used to the Paladins and Disc Priest mainly focusing on the tanks. The issue I faced was Blast Furnace. We had around 16-18 people with 4 healers. Paladin, 2 shamans and a Druid. If I'd choose, the Paladin would've been with the Tank tanking the Foremans Fieldspar as prio 1. In most of my kills, we had a druid solo one side. However, he let me and the Druid heal the side with the Fieldspar.. We managed to kill him, but I had 10% mana when we entered phase 2. According to most sites, Shamans are really good tank healers, but it feels like the damage is unpredicitble. During phase 1, I rarely use anything except Healing Surge. My other heals feels so slow to cast and I wasn't able to heal the dps because the tanks damage was unpredicitible. Usually I'm able to pop Unleash life and healing wave when I heal tanks, but not now. I did run with Echo of the elements instead of Ancestral Swiftness, since I prefer the extra SLT during the other phases. And during Kromog, he also wanted me to heal the tanks as a main priority. During both Kromog and Blast Furnace, I can pull a really decent HPS. (+40-50k) But as a tank healer I really struggle. I dont mind as long as we down the bosses. [Now to the question]. I currently aim for Mastery - Haste - Multistrike - Crit. But if you're a "Tank healer", would it be better to change my stats? (E.g) Haste - Crit - Mastery >>> So I will be able to cast spell quicker while gaining mana. Mastery is the best as a Shaman (no doubt) but since I have issues with the cast time and have to spamm Healing surge in most situations. Wouldn't Haste and Crit be better? and is it viable? (during tank healing) I don't want to sound like a prophet, but it seems like the other healers are "bad". And since we down bosses, the RL doesn't care to change the healing setup. Surely the best would be to find a "tank healer". Our 2, 4 pieces(Shaman) are based on Chain heal which I cannot cast during those encounters (I do cast it when it procs). But I personally feel that the Shamans are "wide healers" and not "tank healers". Anyway,hopefully you got the point and I've talked to the RL and we will change it as soon as we got some new healers. But is it legitimate to change my main stats to another if I focus on the tanks? I currently have 82.28 Mastery / 15.55 Haste / 12.83 Multistrike / 8.58 Crit. Even though we down bosses with my current stats, I'd like to do more than just spamming healing surge. Atleast until we gain new healers. [Others] I'm inlove with Multistrike even though it may not "proc" all the time. But is it a good stat to focus on as a Shaman? Mastery will always be first while wide healing in most encounters, and is it a special % you need on haste? While "wide healing" I feel like my haste is okey.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Uthedicia 3 Report post Posted April 10, 2015 (edited) As Restoration, I find it best to focus on Haste and Mastery for stats. They are both good but what you emphasize depends on healer makeup and what you need personally. I run normally with a paladin and druid and I find myself needing a mix of sustained and burst to fix the gaps that the two leave behind so I balance the two stats. If I were running with a paladin and priest (discipline), I'd probably prioritize haste to supplement the burst (accepting the small drop in sustained HPS to do so). After that, multistrike and critical strike are probably equal but for pieces you can't match haste and mastery together with, I'd pick one or the other. Multistrike would probably offer a little more throughput if you had a lot of it but critical strike offers a little better mana regeneration. As for tank healing, you are absolutely a better class than a druid or monk for doing it. If neither a paladin or discipline priest exists, you WILL be turned to for healing the tanks. If the other shaman is less geared than you, you will be asked to heal the tanks. The key is managing mana. Unless your tank is about to take a large gob of damage, you can probably go into the standard Riptide - Healing Wave x 2 combination. If they are taking large gobs of damage they can't avoid, then you might have to go into the Riptide - Unleashed Life (with Unleashed Fury) - Healing Surge x 2 combination. If they are taking large amounts of damage on things they CAN and SHOULD mitigate, YELL at them to have a cooldown for that... because that is putting unnecessary strain on you. Accidents do happen but if they are consistently missing the mark, that is on them to course correct and not you. In short, I wouldn't change anything in the stat department unless you'd like more burst or faster casts for the role you're in. For your mana issues tank healing, it comes down to the circumstance and whether it requires more preparation on your part or the part of the tank you're healing. You have nothing that can save them short of popping Ascendance (not guaranteed) or running to and dropping or projecting a Spirit Link totem. Edited April 10, 2015 by Uthedicia Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alltat 0 Report post Posted April 10, 2015 During phase 1, I rarely use anything except Healing Surge. My other heals feels so slow to cast and I wasn't able to heal the dps because the tanks damage was unpredicitible. Usually I'm able to pop Unleash life and healing wave when I heal tanks, but not now. I did run with Echo of the elements instead of Ancestral Swiftness, since I prefer the extra SLT during the other phases. Well, that might explain a large part of your problem. Never use Unleash Life unless you're moving (or on Blackhand p1 smashes, I guess). It's a HPS and HPM loss compared to just casting more Healing Waves. Unleash is a terribly inefficient spell these days. Not useless, but inefficient.Shaman tank healing is all about Tidal Waves and Healing Wave, using Healing Surge only in emergencies. Having a good uptime on Healing Stream Totem also helps smooth out damage, and does way more healing per cast time than anything else you could do. Refreshing Earth Shield during periods of lower damage is of course vital; you really want that +20% bonus but also don't want to have to stop and recast it during heavy damage. Make sure to check your logs regularly, as actual ES uptime is always much lower than it feels like at the time. But if you're a "Tank healer", would it be better to change my stats? (E.g) Haste - Crit - Mastery >>> So I will be able to cast spell quicker while gaining mana. It would be a weaker spell, though, and your ability to actually save a tank who suddenly drops low would be greatly reduced. Haste won't do that much for you, especially not if you're having problems with mana already. I wouldn't change the stat prio, though your haste is.But is it a good stat to focus on as a Shaman?It's okay, but it doesn't really do that much. Mastery wins by simply requiring much fewer stat points for a 1% increase, haste double-dips on spells like Riptide, Healing Stream Totem and Healing Rain (reduced casting time and increased healing done), crit gives us mana back, but multistrike just multistrikes and that's it. Not bad, but not impressive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Pandacho 286 Report post Posted April 10, 2015 Hello, guys. First of all, a couple of words about raid healing and healer comp. You are right, Riesen, when you have a Holy Paladin in the raid, they should be a tank healer. Beacons, shields, loads of single target damage mitigation abilities, great direct healing and pretty poor AoE - paladin is a very valuable class for the tank healing. Assigning a resto shaman with 4-p tier bonus (which is all about AoE raid healing) on tanks in this situation, is not a best utilizing of the strongest sides of both classes. I think that you should talk to your RL and try to explain this, if it's possible. I have though another question: does your Paladin and Druid use their damage mitigation abilities on tanks without being told to do that? Or when you are assigned to tanks, other healers just completely ignore them? 2 Hands of Sacrifice (30% reduced damage for 12x2 sec) and Ironbark (20% reduced damage for 12 sec) along with the tanks personals would make the healing so much easier. You should not get into the situation of HS spamming if other healers and tanks help you with the damage reduction. About the stats. In theory the resto shaman specialization is to keep the raid alive in the periods of heavy damage. Due to our Mastery, the lower is raid's HP the better is our healing. So Mastery and Haste would be the best stats here: Mastery=stronger heals, Haste=faster heals. Crit and Multistrike while being good stats too, are unreliable in their 'chance' nature. When your raid is dying, you have to be sure in your healing, you have to know that casting X spell you will provide Z healing which is right for Mastery+Haste. While with focusing on 'chance' stats, your X spell could provide Zx200% or Z-30% healing which is not what we really want in times of heavy damage. I don't want to say that you should ignore Crit and Multi - definitely not, but you shouldn't value them above Mastery and Haste. Now a bit of a math. @Alltat: I see that in every your post you are going to the point of not casting Unleashed Life ever. Could you please provide your calculations, logs or any other sources that you used to get to this statement? I will write now a modeling of resto shaman spell efficiency (HPM vs mana usage) with and without UL for two fillers - HW or CH. I do my calculations in HealerCalcs spreadsheed and the numbers are based on my toon's gear and stats: Armory: 4-p T17, Mastery: 81.82%, Haste: 16.44%, Crit: 8.88%, Multi: 12.52%, Spirit: 904. Talents: EoeE, RS, EB or UF, HT You can download the spreadsheet here and input your own stats for the modeling. *Please notice that these calculations are for 4-p tier bonus. *kHPCT: Total heal divided by cast time *Gross HPM: how much healing you’re doing on average per point of mana spent. *Marginal HPM: how much added healing you would do per point of mana, if you used that mana to cast your filler spells more often FOR ELEMENTAL BLAST TALENT: Healing Wave filler Chain Heal filler Time to OOM: 192 sec Time to OOM: 146 sec Gross HPM: 35.66 Gross HPM: 37.17 Marginal HPM: 27.51 Marginal HPM: 56.95 Chain Heal: Total Heal: 261718 HPM: 30.1 kHPCT: 122.8 Net Cost: 8699 Chain Heal with UL: Total Heal: 360056 HPM: 33.5 kHPCT: 105.6 Net Cost: 10756 Healing Surge: Total Heal: 98253 HPM: 15.7 kHPCT: 76.8 Net Cost: 6262 Healing Surge with UL: Total Heal: 147551 HPM: 17.7 kHPCT: 57.7 Net Cost: 8319 Healing Wave: Total Heal: 85661 HPM: 27.5 kHPCT: 50.2 Net Cost: 3114 Healing Wave with UL: Total Heal: 131182 HPM: 25.4 kHPCT: 44.0 Net Cost: 5172 FOR UNLEASHED FURY TALENT: Healing Wave filler Chain Heal filler Time to OOM: 125 sec Time to OOM: 96 sec Gross HPM: 34.03 Gross HPM: 36.47 Marginal HPM: 26.83 Marginal HPM: 65.08 Chain Heal: Total Heal: 256153 HPM: 29.4 kHPCT: 119.3 Net Cost: 8712 Chain Heal with UL: Total Heal: 352400 HPM: 32.7 kHPCT: 102.6 Net Cost: 10776 Healing Surge: Total Heal: 96296 HPM: 15.4 kHPCT: 74.8 Net Cost: 6268 Healing Surge with UL: Total Heal: 207178 HPM: 24.9 kHPCT: 80.4 Net Cost: 8332 Healing Wave: Total Heal: 83840 HPM: 26.8 kHPCT: 48.8 Net Cost: 3124 Healing Wave with UL: Total Heal: 182888 HPM: 35.3 kHPCT: 60.8 Net Cost: 5188 As you can see when having 4-p tier bonus, Chain Heal filler is always better than Healing Wave even than it drains your mana a bit faster. But here I think that we should manage our comfortable amount of mana through Spirit gear and Channeling Mana Potions. Do not forget that a crafted stage 4 Alchemy trinket is equivalent to about 100 hard Spirit. Notice that this model is based on my toon that has only one Spirit piece of gear (ring) and no Spirit enchant on the weapon. You can easily double your Spirit by using that gear in all the possible slots and / or Spirit enchant on the weapon. Regarding UL usage: As you can see in the calculations, the only spell you should NOT use UL with is Healing Wave WITH Elemental Blast talent, ONLY in this case UL+HW reduces HPM and heavily increases the Net Mana Cost (for almost 40%). For CH and HS with EB talent, UL slightly increases HPM with a slight increase of Mana Cost. So the right usage of UL here will be casting it in times of low and moderate damage with CH (on raid damage) or HS (single target) so you'll be able to heal the damage done with one cast of this pair (UL+CH or UL+HS) only. Tank healing: If you are assigned to heal the tanks, it's definitely worth to take Unleashed Fury talent and use UL+HS and UL+HW on CD with a CH as a filler. As you can see with UF talent, UL almost doubles your HPM output for single target spells which is actually your goal when tank healing. Which spell to use - UL+HS or UL+HW - is up to a specific situation. UL+HS doubles your HPM but also doubles the mana cost. UL+HW provides a lesser boost but the mana cost is halved. Anyways, UL is a valuable part of resto shaman healing, if you are using it in right situation. Hope, it helped Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cheze 6 Report post Posted April 10, 2015 I'd rather tank heal as a druid than a shaman this expansion; everybody seems to think that ES makes shamans into super good tank healers, but meh. Rdruid has easier/steadier throughput (LB/germination), an actual tank external, and more instants than shamans (especially with their two piece.) Meanwhile shaman has ES, riptide and spamming relatively long-cast ST heals. OP, your raid has a tank healer: the holy paladin. Not using them for that is dumb Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cakepies 2 Report post Posted April 12, 2015 (edited) Regarding UL usage: As you can see in the calculations, the only spell you should NOT use UL with is Healing Wave WITH Elemental Blast talent, ONLY in this case UL+HW reduces HPM and heavily increases the Net Mana Cost (for almost 40%). For CH and HS with EB talent, UL slightly increases HPM with a slight increase of Mana Cost. So the right usage of UL here will be casting it in times of low and moderate damage with CH (on raid damage) or HS (single target) so you'll be able to heal the damage done with one cast of this pair (UL+CH or UL+HS) only. Tank healing: If you are assigned to heal the tanks, it's definitely worth to take Unleashed Fury talent and use UL+HS and UL+HW on CD with a CH as a filler. As you can see with UF talent, UL almost doubles your HPM output for single target spells which is actually your goal when tank healing. Which spell to use - UL+HS or UL+HW - is up to a specific situation. UL+HS doubles your HPM but also doubles the mana cost. UL+HW provides a lesser boost but the mana cost is halved. Anyways, UL is a valuable part of resto shaman healing, if you are using it in right situation. Hope, it helped Alright, so counter theorycraft inc. I basically typed a bunch of numbers into my computer for an uncomfortable length of time but I double checked the math and redid it with several different variables to say confidently that If you don't have Unleashed Fury casting Unleash Life will be a decrease to the HPS of HW and HS and an increase in HPM. I did these calculations using my own stats at an average ilvl of 689 (Armory) with 6300 spellpower, 9.2% crit, 15.74% multistrike, 18.68% haste, and 7002 mp5 (includes water shield, weapon and trinket procs). The only buffs I assumed were the previously stated spirit buffs and tidal waves. I didn't take into account mastery or the buff from EB, as mastery is a flat increase to all healing and shouldn't dramatically increase the efficiency of one single target heal over another. Also, mastery requires average raid health assumptions and is generally a pain. The spirit from EB would definitely affect the relative mana efficiency of individual spells but I think the higher spirit you can generally assume the bigger the gap will be between the HPM of HS/HW combo'd with UL vs HS/HW solo. EB requires uptime assumptions which is never going to be an on cd thing every time unless you aren't actually healing. I also didn't do any calculations for chain heal but I'll get to that. To calculate the total healing done by a spell I took the tooltip heal amount (SP * Modifier*1.4[restorative waves]) and set that value as the base heal, or B. Then I set x to my crit chance and y to my multistrike chance. C and M are both 2, where C is a 200% increase to healing on crit and M represents the 2 chances to multistrike. x * C * B (Base Heal when crit happens) + (1-x) * B (Base Heal when no crit happens) + M * C * x * y * 0.3 * B (Heal when MS crits) + M * (1-x) * y * 0.3 * B (Heal when MS doesn't crit) = Total average heal (not accounting for mastery) Once I found the Total Average Heal I divided that number by the total cast time (including the GCD incurred by UL when applicable) to get the amount of heals per second, or HPS. Here are my results for HS/HW alone or with UL. Remember, these were done assuming tidal waves, because if you don't have tidal waves up you probably should be thinking about casting riptide and not unleash life. HPS of Healing Wave: 25882 Total Heal: 43481 Cast Time: 1.68s HPS of Unleash Life -> Healing wave: 22960 Total Heal: 67594 Cast Time: 2.944s HPS of Healing Surge: 43990 Total Heal: 55427 Cast Time: 1.26s HPS of Unleash LIfe -> Healing surge: 32933 Total Heal: 83123 Cast Time: 2.524s So save for gross miscalculations I'm pretty confident that unleash life results in a net healing loss for both spells, more notably for healing surge. Now let's look at the mana comparison. These numbers include the mana back from resurgence and my mana gained per second or mp5 divided by 5. I took the net mana cost and divided it into the Total Average Healing to get an HPM value, or heals per point of mana. HPM of Healing Wave: 45.33 Net Cost: 959 HPM of Unleash Life -> Healing wave: 57.96 Net Cost: 1166 HPM of Healing Surge: 11.4 Net Cost: 4859 HPM of Unleash LIfe -> Healing surge: 17.06 Net Cost: 4873 Now we see that UL actually makes both spells more efficient, and again we can see a more dramatic difference across healing surge and its combo. So in conclusion UL is in reality only beneficial if you are trying to make a healing surge cast more efficient (but weaker), or you need the 30% speed boost. Healing Wave is already incredibly cheap so there isn't going to be much of a reason to make it even less expensive. Anyways, I didn't bother running any numbers but there is no freaking way unleash life is going to be a better skill to cast than riptide when it comes to buffing chain heal, especially if you have high tide (which you should). Not only does riptide do a lot more raw healing than unleash life, but it buffs your CH for 25%, which is only 5% less than UL. Also, that riptide is going to effect subsequent chain heals, where UL will not. I suppose it would be something to look into if riptide was on cd but I typically find that taking almost 4 seconds to cast one heal is too long, as that's more than enough time for a damage pattern to completely change. To the OP: Tank healing in this expansion (or any, really) is a lot more about damage smoothing than it is raw healing, which is why death knights make the worst tanks (off topic but they do). Paladins and Druids are great for this as they are able to provide a constant stream of healing, paladins by their raid healing duplicating to their beacons, and druids by various HoTs and lifebloom. Disc Priests have a really strong single target with clarity of will, and it can't overheal. A Shaman on the other hand has some very powerful single target spells, but they are spiky in nature, and there is not much you can do if a tank drops before you can get a cast of HS off. Because we don't have any health stabilizing tools (earth shield blows and gives like the smallest heal in the game, it's alright for the 20% buff to direct heals though), shamans have to put a lot more of their focus on the tanks than other classes would if given the same assignment. Also, really, that's dumb. We get 2 set bonuses devoted solely to chain heal, and people still seem to think we have better things to do. If you are doing well at your role, tell your guild that shaman tank healing is bullshit, you have the class knowledge, they don't. Edited April 12, 2015 by Cakepies Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Moozedude 49 Report post Posted April 12, 2015 You've already pointed out the weakness of haste. You will OOM even faster. I main tanks, and I know that if I cannot provide a certain level of survivability, there is nothing an entire team of healers could do to save my butt. The fact that you have to spam Surge shows several weaknesses. First, beacons probably ain't up. Doesn't matter the assignment, pally beacons should be on tanks. Second, not enough hots. These offer a lot of smoothing, especially if the target is always below 100%, and in that situation are also ridiculously mana efficient. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Riesen 5 Report post Posted April 12, 2015 (edited) Actually I decided to go for Haste while doing Blast Furnace. Believe it or, it was a huge improvement. Surely I had to pop some Healing Surge but I was able to do more Healing Waves and as someone else mentioned, more dips on HST and Riptide. I had ~50% mana when we entered the next phase. Might've been that the other healers actually did their job or the tank choosing his CDS more carefully. But when I asked them, they changed nothing. Anyway, we managed to get new recruits (healers) after our raid. So I'll no longer have to "tank heal". I understand that some claim that with more haste, you'll drain more mana. But just because you have more haste doesn't mean you have to spamm spells all the time. Simply just give the option to cast a specific spell faster. If you compare my gear with someone with mythic gear. I have the same spirit as most of them but they have ~+7 more Haste. I doubt they go OOM with that haste if we have the same Spirit. =/ Surely the Mythic Shamans also have a higher mastery and not "tank healing". It's like a Blood DK. If you aim for a more survival mode, Haste is a higher prio for rune regen. If you aim for a DPS oriented, Multistrike is better. Why should it be any different as a Shaman? I play more carefully when I heal players to avoid overhealing. Just because they give me haste, doesn't mean I'll blow spells unless it's necessary. I simply want to use Healing Wave instead of Healing Surge. Also, some players claim that HC Blast Furnace is harder than HC Blackhand. But Blast Furnace just requires a high hps and dps. Blackhand is hard because it requires you to follow the mechanics properly. (surely every boss requires that). But it's more like your personal performace on BH. I doubt players will agree with aiming for Haste. I was actually looking for a approval when I first wrote this post. Basically I already made my decision to try it but wanted some support for doing it. I dont regret it and I want to thank you for the posts since it gave me an overall view that perhaps it's not mainly my "fault". Edited April 12, 2015 by Riesen Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
