Resto Healing in WoD

[Regal 21]

Moderator's Note: This thread was pinned because it turned into a really excellent discussion/brainstorming session about WoD healing. The best things you can learn here are all about assessing Talents and Glyphs, and spell choice - join in and tell us what you think!

 

Hey everyone, I've been using Icy-Veins for a couple years now, but this is my first actual post!

So I've been healing on my resto shammy for quite awhile now. 

And it seems to me that healing is like 10x harder in WoD. 

I've read the guide that Icy-Veins has for healing and specifically Shaman healing.

I'm looking for advice on how to be a better healer since raid content is coming out next week!

Either tips or personal preferences are welcome

 

For the most part, I follow the guides on here.

But I have made a few changes of my own that I feel have made healing more manageable. 

 

Talents:

Tier 1 - Nature's Guardian

Tier 2 - Windwalk Totem

Tier 3 - Totemic Persistence - This comes in handy so much now that Cloudburst Totem has been introduced. However, I wanted to know if anyone else uses this? I found that I hardly ever used call of the elements. 

Tier 4 - Echo of the Elements

Tier 5 - Rushing Streams

Tier 6 - Unleashed Fury- Before WoD, this seemed useless and I hardly ever used Unleash Life. now I find myself using it all the time just to keep up with damage! With the changes they've made to Echo of the Elements, I can use Unleash Life quite frequently and increase my overall healing. Primal Elementalist definitely had it's benefits, but now 1min of 5% increase to healing just isn't as beneficial as a frequent increase of 95% to a single spell. Again, Cloudburst Totem definitely influence my decision on this. Using Unleash Life on cooldown to get the huge healing increase also increase the healing from Cloudburst Totem significantly.

Tier 7 - And you guessed it, Cloudburst Totem is my final talent choice. Really, I feel this talent shines so much in WoD. I haven't really tried Storm Elemental Totem on my resto for group play, but High Tide does seem to be pretty good too. I just don't find that I can have enough targets with riptide on because I don't use the Glyph of Riptide and use my Echo of the Elements proc on Unleash Life. 

 

The major glyphs I DO use are:
Glyph of Healing Stream Totem

Glyph of Chaining

Glyph of Healing Wave

Sometimes I'll switch in Glyph of Spiritwalker's Focus in for Glyph of Healing Wave for high movement fights. 

 

edit: My ilvl currently is 636

 

I have created a graph that may be helpful for those wishing to know more of the specifics about the shaman toolkit. Go to Post #63 on Page 4.

Edited December 3, 2014 by Regal

[Stoove 345]

I wrote a huge reply, but lost it when I closed my tab by accident. =_=  I'll write it again later.

 

Until then - thanks for your post and welcome to the forums! :)

[Pandacho 279]

Hi, Regal
Frankly, almost all my talents and glyphs are different. I'm not saying that mine are better, but I can explain my choices.

 

Tier 1: Stone Bulwark more frequently than Astral Shift and Natural Guardian. SBT mitigates some amount of damage even when I'm on 70-80-90% of HP, while NG starts to work only from 30% HP - less chances to get there for healer, especially in raid encounter. Removing threat? If healer drops to 30% HP and have a threat - something is definitely goes wrong.^^ I don't want to say that NG is useless, but it's much more encounter specific than SBT imo. Same with Astral Shift - it's more encounter specific.

Tier 2: Earthgrab Totem. I use it very frequently for trash fights and adds, same as Capacitor and Grounding totems. Windwalk is nice, but it seems to me that in terms of frequency I use Earthgrab x10 more. 

Tier 3: Call of Elements for boss fights (mostly) - for casting totems twice in a row, Totemic Projection for trash fights - throw Capacitor and Grounding in the middle - make mobs happy ^^

Tier 4: Ancestral Swiftness (including 2 macros for 'oh shit' instant casts of GHW and HR). I'm not using Echo of Elements because of Glyph of Riptide that is 'must have' for me.

Tier 5: I was using all three talents, changing between them according to encounter. I think that in incoming raids I'll try to give a go first to Conductivity with HR on melee group or on the raid if we have to stack. Later in expansion I maybe move to Rushing Streams, but in current gear and with gutted HST and RS abilities, i'm not sure it worth it in raid. But we'll see.

Tier 6: Elemental Blast is my choice. I think that +500 to stat every 8 sec. from 12, worth much more that +50% to one cast in 15 sec. Unleashed Fury buffs Unleash Life which has 15 sec. CD. So it's not like every single target cast has a buff.

I chose Primal Elementalist when not much healing is required and I want to help with DPS.

Tier 7: High Tide with the Glyph of Riptide. The reasons are explained in this very interesting article . I didn't check the numbers in live raid yet, but I highly appreciate the logic. I will not use Cloudburst totem until learning all the raid encounters patterns. As for me, I feel that this totem works in some approach like IF+SS worked for disc priests in SoO. If you know the damage pattern of specific fight - you can do wonders, but if not - it's a waste. I do use Storm Elemental sometimes, but will leave it aside and try High Tide first.

 

Major Glyphs: Glyph of Riptide - 'must have' for me in raids. All the rest are situational. It may be Spiritwalker, Chaining, HST, Fire elem or Flame Shock. Can't say for sure now because it highly depends on specific of fights.

Minor Glyphs: Ghostly Speed - 'must have' for me, Astral Fixation, Lakestrider.

 

That's it for now

Edited November 27, 2014 by Pandacho

[Stoove 345]

So, here's my response now that I have a lunch break.

 

1. Natures Guardian mechanics are great for Mages, but not so great for us. As a healer, you should know when it'll be optimal to place a Stone Bulwark Totem or to pop Astral Shift, and that maximizes the benefit from it. Natures Guardian isn't controllable, and is therefore mediocre in my opinion.
2. Windwalk Totem is fantastic, but don't underestimate the power you get from controlling adds using Earthgrab or Frozen Power. Switch these around a *lot*.
3. Persistence is nice if you take Cloudburst, but it won't give you extra if you cast it at the same time as Healing Stream. I dislike Call of the Elements, because it's hard to use it optimally from a throughput point of view - best from a utility standpoint IMO. My preference is for Totemic Projection, which allows you to place Capacitor Totem or Earth(bind/grab) where they are needed. That's really fantastically useful.
4. I love Echo of the Elements. It's a fantastic talent that gives you rotational flexibility - there's a lot of gameplay depth from a very simple mechanic. It's also wayyy better than Glyph of Riptide, because Riptide is a lot more frontloaded than it was in MoP. Ancestral Swiftness' passive is forgettable, and its active isn't all that missed if you're used to playing EotE style. I will be swapping into Elemental Mastery as and when it's needed for burst on a fight.
5. I actually had to look up this tier, because I've had Rushing Streams for so long. Ancestral Guidance is a nice alternative when the fight demands lots of burst, but I don't like it. Conductivity isn't useful to me, because Healing Rain is weaker than it was in MoP and the melee have enough splash healing as it is. The only time I'd use Conductvity is in a very stationary, stacked fight. Rushing Streams has an interesting benefit now that HST is random; you're more likely to heal someone with HST who needs the heal! That's a nice change - a compensation for the RNG that HST now has.
6. I really like Primal Elementalist for the damage reduction, the flexible healing buffs, and so on. It's really cool. On the other hand, Unleashed Fury plays nicely into Echo of the Elements, since Unleash Life can be cast several times in a row thanks to that. I haven't actually tried it yet, but I think I will. NB: Unleashed Fury will be EXTRA awesome when combined with Echo *and* High Tide in a raid; the Chain Heal combo does a huge amount of healing.

Now, Tier 7. This won't fit in a bullet point (sorry). Pandacho gave a nice explanation of one viewpoint for High Tide, but I disagree on two fronts. Firstly, Cloudburst Totem scales quite smoothly with outgoing damage, whereas High Tide is only useful when there are big AoE spikes. Cloudburst is highly efficient when there is medium to low damage outgoing, as I explained here, and you get its benefit throughout the fight - stability is useful and important! So, Cloudburst is more generally applicable to most fights and additionally is more mana efficient and scales better between damage levels throughout the fight.

 

I would advocate High Tide as a talent in fights where there is big spike/AoE damage on the raid. In this case, you're casting a few Chain Heals every so often (worrying less about mana than if you constantly spam it) and combining with Unleashed Fury and Echo of the Elements, the healing potential from your Chain Heal really rockets. Again, you have to *need* that burst healing for it to be worth taking.

 

TLDR: I think use Cloudburst, and opt in to High Tide on a fight-by-fight basis.

[Pandacho 279]

Don't you think, Stoove, that usage of Cloudburst totem can be somehow problematic for unexperienced healer? Roughly speaking, you have to spamhealing for 15 sec. to get the totem to its highest potential. And here I see two problems: 1) it can be low damage period before the spike, so you just burn your mana to fill the totem, not for needed healing, hoping for right timing. It really remind me disc priests who were just casting SS on CD, not counting on the actual damage spikes. 2) Right, you can cancel the totem before its time expires, but then you don't get its full potential.

Cloudburst Totem IS a good talent, but it looks for me more like an instrument for the healers with good planning skills and perfect understanding of the encounter timings. I will use it, definitely, but let's wait for the actual raids start :)

Btw, it seems to me that both talents (CBT and HT) come along with additional talents and glyphs for the best utilization of their potential. 

Edited November 27, 2014 by Pandacho

[Stoove 345]

So, I think that that analysis of Cloudburst Totem focuses very hard on a large sudden spike in damage which needs to be topped immediately. That's not actually usually the case in WoD, though; usually you will heal everyone else up more slowly, and in that case one needn't pre-organize the Cloudburst to go off right after the damage spike. Equally, I don't think that one needs to worry about getting CBT's "maximum potential" on every cooldown, because it is a perfectly respectable efficiency and healing boost at any throughput level, which is a significant point in its favor against High Tide.

 

So, Cloudburst Totem shouldn't be thought of as a burst tool; it's more like a rotational tool. Chain Heal won't be in your rotation most of the fight (since it's so expensive!), but it will be efficient and strong regardless. On the flipside, if it's massive burst damage that you have to deal with then High Tide is infinitely better than Cloudburst, and it's supposed to be.

 

Finally, I agree that Cloudburst Totem is unfairly harder to use. I think that's a design flaw, but that just makes it something that I think everyone should learn to do through experience. Despite the difficulty, it's nevertheless an important gain in any situation where you won't be constantly using Chain Heal.

[Starrfyre 7]

Hello all,

 

At the moment the only experiences we have to draw from are from HC's, CM's and MC (40 man raid I know but useful to test some abilities). In HC's and CM's I'm really loving Echo, Unleash Fury and Cloudburst. I've found that it's very useful for tank healing and if your DPS are behaving themselves and avoiding damage, then the tank is your main concern.

I agree, Cloudburst can be a bit underwhelming, however, as a 30 second CD you can almost forgive this. Personally, I like to combine it with Ascendance and Spiritwalker's Grace for those periods where there's a lot of group wide damage so Warlord Zaela in UBRS for example - people always get hit by the fire!

 

For Raid healing I have to go for High Tide and Glyphed Riptide but I think I'm going to keep Unleashed Fury. I'm just really fond of using it! I know there's a lot of unhappy Resto Shamans out there at the moment but I feel that we're in an ok place dungeon wise. Just need to wait for raids to open next week!

 

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on stats? I know there is a lot of debate at the moment about Haste and Crit. Mastery seems to be the overall winner and it's proving to be a life saver in CM's.

 

Starr :)

[Pandacho 279]

I'm a big fond of Haste. Just personal preference :)

1st place - Mastery

2nd place - Haste & Multistrike

Always trying to dump Spirit to the minimum. I'd wish we get the reforges back....

[Starrfyre 7]

I still prefer Crit to be honest. Haste could be a bit iffy going into raids as you will burn through mana a lot quicker so Crit might be a bit safer. Not that we have much of a choice in the matter! I have the same amount of haste and crit atm!

 

Going to keep those Mana Potions close going into Highmaul next week just in case haha

[Pandacho 279]

I still prefer Crit to be honest. 

We had a big thread here recently with the math that Stoove did. Shortly, he explained that crit is almost useless in WoD due to changed mechanic.

Post #16 in this thread. 

Or I can copy it here:

 

Stoove, on 29 Oct 2014 - 9:13 PM, said:

I said that it was the "main feature" because of the changes that we've seen to Crit recently. Before, the main attraction of Crit for Resto Shaman was the Ancestral Awakening which procced from Crits; it made a serious contribution to our ability to splash/AoE heal. We've lost AA, and as a result Crit's previous attraction has taken a dive. Now in terms of throughput, Crit is genuinely inferior to Haste and Mastery; the remaining advantage over them being that Resurgence gives us mana return. Since we don't need mana return, and the other two stats are just generally better in terms of throughput, I don't see a good motivation to take Crit any more.

[Starrfyre 7]

I must have missed that. Thanks for posting :)

[Wavez 0]

Hello there this is my first time posting ! I read Stooves Statlords of shamanor and he says Ancestral Swiftness passive is forgettable yet he rates haste second to mastery in this  blog post this is confusing i  would like to know if he still feels that echo is better? Also i was curious if there is a particular amount of mastery i should stack too before going into haste say 50 %or 60 % range any help would be greatly appreciated ty.

[Stoove 345]

Hello there this is my first time posting ! I read Stooves Statlords of shamanor and he says Ancestral Swiftness passive is forgettable yet he rates haste second to mastery in this  blog post this is confusing i  would like to know if he still feels that echo is better?

 

Haste is a good stat, don't get me wrong on that, but a 5% Haste boost is both boring and not all that important overall. Echo of the Elements fundamentally changes how flexible your rotation is as a healer, and in comparison that fact is worth a lot more than a little Haste (in my opinion).

 

Also i was curious if there is a particular amount of mastery i should stack too before going into haste say 50 %or 60 % range any help would be greatly appreciated ty.

 

I don't think so, but I'll have a look at trying to make a study of it at some point just to confirm it. My logic right now is that Mastery is great and therefore you should just take as much of it as possible! :)

[Ihaku 0]

In WoD, even normal dungs i run out of mana like in no time. Had to switch to EleBlast to keep it under control. Maybe its cuz ppl i play with, standing in aoe and stuff.

HR is poor right now.

Assuming to Recount the biggest healing i do with totem, next is Surge (cuz of stanig in stuff:) and Riptide is third.

When my spirit will rise i will go for sure for Unleash Ele 95% boost means aprox 30k heal.

And one thing- did anyone also notice that High Tide isnt working like it supposed to? CH decreses in power for what i see during jumps

[Regal 21]

Thanks for the posts everyone! Some really great discussion and great ideas!

I have so many different things to respond to!

 

So, I think that that analysis of Cloudburst Totem focuses very hard on a large sudden spike in damage which needs to be topped immediately. That's not actually usually the case in WoD, though; usually you will heal everyone else up more slowly, and in that case one needn't pre-organize the Cloudburst to go off right after the damage spike. Equally, I don't think that one needs to worry about getting CBT's "maximum potential" on every cooldown, because it is a perfectly respectable efficiency and healing boost at any throughput level, which is a significant point in its favor against High Tide.

 

So, Cloudburst Totem shouldn't be thought of as a burst tool; it's more like a rotational tool. Chain Heal won't be in your rotation most of the fight (since it's so expensive!), but it will be efficient and strong regardless. On the flipside, if it's massive burst damage that you have to deal with then High Tide is infinitely better than Cloudburst, and it's supposed to be.

 

Finally, I agree that Cloudburst Totem is unfairly harder to use. I think that's a design flaw, but that just makes it something that I think everyone should learn to do through experience. Despite the difficulty, it's nevertheless an important gain in any situation where you won't be constantly using Chain Heal.

I agree with Stoove about CBT. I haven't really tried out High Tide too much, but that's because it's so darn expensive!
I am noticing that Blizzard has made it so there are combinations of talents/glyphs that make things suited more to individual playstyle.

 

Mine is: Echo, unleashed fury, and cbt. To get a lot out of my single target heals, which are more mana efficient.

The other is: Glyph of Riptide, High Tide, and Elemental Blast. Chain heal will be extremely useful for group healing, which definitely makes up for not needing CBT. however, it's definitely expensive mana-wise and not always the most efficient. But the boosts, including the consistent increase to spirit, from Elemental Blast should help offset that. 

 

Since raiding isn't out yet, we've only been able to test on 5mans with tank healing (with the exception of MC)

But this may mean that depending on what the role of the Shaman is, raid wide healing or tank healing, will determine which combination is most effective. 

 

Secondly, I've liked using Nature's Guardian because I don't have to worry about controlling it. It does proc often and gives me time to heal myself after I've secured the tank or some other priority targets. That said, I haven't really tried SBT so I think I should definitely do that. Maybe mitigating it will prove to be more helpful and I won't get into that "danger zone"!

And lastly, Thank you so much for answering my question about CBT and a second healing totem! Actually Pandacho's article was a great help! I still feel that totemic persistence is really helpful because there are many times that I really want as much healing as possible. Whether that's CBT+HST/HST+HTT/HTT+CBT. Even if CBT can't store healing from the others, still useful. Especially since sometimes i just can't wait for CBT to pop but i don't want to waste it by using it early! so that HST can really help out. I've even used this talent to do spirit-link+capacitor during encounters with a lot of adds like the dragon in UBRS (can't think of his name at the moment!) 

P.S. Before raiding comes out, I've tried utilizing crit this time instead of mastery. So far, It seems to help with mana management, but with good gear that's not a problem anyways. So, I'd suggest mastery overall. The numbers are looking better for it and if Blizzard's prophecies come true, then players will rarely be at 100% health so the shaman mastery will be utilized much more often.

[Ihaku 0]

mana can be a problem thou cuz spirt can only be on less gear part than in MoP

[Pandacho 279]

Secondly, I've liked using Nature's Guardian because I don't have to worry about controlling it. It does proc often and gives me time to heal myself after I've secured the tank or some other priority targets. That said, I haven't really tried SBT so I think I should definitely do that. Maybe mitigating it will prove to be more helpful and I won't get into that "danger zone"!

I would suggest you to try both Stone Bulwark and Astral Shift.

 

Speaking in terms of raiding, you as a healer most of the time will not be in direct touch with the mobs aggroing at you and damaging you personally (well, definitely less than tank, melee dps and even ranges). I don't remember many boss mechanics that constantly leave you below 30% of HP.

 

If it is constant low-moderate damage over time - SBT is awesome. Just use WeakAura to remind you to drop it on CD. (I have Auras for both SBT and HST, because both of them have to be up all the time they are off CD).

Unfortunately, I can't provide logs showing amount of damage absorbed by SBT yet, but I can do it after the raids will start.

 

I use Astral Shift as an utility - when I'm going to take a big amount of damage for some purpose, or when the boss mechanic works in pulses of raid wide heavy damage. Use DBM, cast AS a sec before the damage done, profit.

 

In my opinion, better to prevent damage than to react hectically, trying to remain alive with 20% HP.

SBT, AS - prevention, NG - reaction :)

[Starrfyre 7]

Correct me if I'm wrong but CBT doesn't collect the healing from other healing totems, does it? I tried it but it didn't seem to do anything.

 

I've abandoned my use of SBT now as it doesn't really shield for a lot anymore. Astral Shift is amazing, and a must if you're going into CM's.

 

@Ihaku - I haven't had many issues with mana regen, however, I think that's more a gear thing. I do expect raids to really test our use of mana though.

[Stoove 345]

Correct me if I'm wrong but CBT doesn't collect the healing from other healing totems, does it? I tried it but it didn't seem to do anything.

 

Correct.

[Nalesh 2]

Hi guys,

 

just started playing Resto Shaman at the beginning of this Addon, having great fun so far!

On the other hand I'm a bit overwhelmed by the different talent options you have, but I think when raiding starts we will figure out more about it!

 

Thanks for all your different ideas, very interesting to read!

 

A lot of you guys said Healing Rain is pretty weak atm - do you think it is even worth using without Conductivity (in Raids?)

 

Greetings Nalesh

Edited November 28, 2014 by Nalesh

[Regal 21]

Definitely still worth using healing rain. 
True, it sucks compared to what it was. But if you can get enough people stacked inside it, it still helps.

Also, if you use CBT, Healing rain helps increase the throughput of it. You can lay down HR before you summon CBT, and then it'll store basically 20% of the entire rain and then you can still cast during it as well.

Overall, don't forego the rain.

Honestly, I haven't used Conductivity before.

Could I potentially have two healing rains down then?
And if I could, does conductivity increase the duration of both of them?!

Because if it does all of that, I could see it increasing our healing quite a bit.

The only thing to keep in mind, and that always worries me about healing rain, is how mobile will the fight be? If you put down HR to heal raid-wide damage, and then everyone scatters to avoid a mechanic, then not only have you wasted ~2sec of casting and a global cooldown, but you've also wasted a talent going into the fight because Rushing Streams would've proved more useful if everyone has to be on the move. 

[Wavez 0]

Hello again id like thank Stoove for his reply and also say thanks to everyone else in the discussion it has been informative and helpful 

[Samashock 0]

I have found love for cloudburst comboed with stream works really well. They have the same cd and duration. I have loved in heroics/CM but not quite sure about raids yet. I will be starting off in a 12-15 man heroic that will expand into mythics. I currently use unglyphed riptide and it is AMAZING! I tried unleash fury riptide and its realy good followed by healing surge when your tank is about to drop because your riptide will crit 40k with a 60k followed right after. I plan to experiment with the teir 7 talent in raiding honestly in smaller grps i really do see cloudburst winning out but in mythics may need to switch to hihhtide. Which is fine with echo if elements its really easy to keep several out at a time.

[JuicyBrucie 2]

Alright stat observation and testing.
I been using my tank as a guinea pig with mastery and haste. 

 I tired a balance approach with 60% mastery and 30% haste through gear and prismatic. I found myself doing like i thoughy ok at healing when tank and party gets low. Keeping the dps healed up enough. Also tested this in proven ground too. I found it mana consuming.

Mastery stack at 90% haste at 14%. I found this being extremely effective and easier time healing, while doing challenge mode, achievement runs and endless proven grounds. I found out the best key to keep everyone tops is to let everyone get their ass kicked. I went from a spaz healer to a methodically healer.  Tier 4 i use elemental mastery, tier 6 primal buffs are just OP, and tier 7 cloud burst. I did play with ULF and had really big heals over 200-230k on my tank when i let him get to 35% health. I find this great if i were a tank healer in a raid of 15-25 man. But i love cloud burst a lot. Great mana return great up keep for topping off the party/raid. Its an easy rotation to adjust too, Though my heals are slow but i lvoe it bc at the time i cast it off i get a much greater return in mana and healing. 

But the downside to this. Mobility is a killer with a slow cast. Why i need elemental master and spirit walk macro. I will be testing this build next weekend in our first raid to see how effective it is. MC 40 was god awful and a terrible raid to test it on but i did avg 50k hps and i got 90hps in a few boss fight.

Also im curious is too much is a bad thing with mastery? Atm healing 5 people is easier than 10-30. 

 

ps i practically ignore healing rain and only use chain heal for zerg pop hero mode. I hate to say it. I really dont use CH. Though i would use it on melee/tank for raids though, just dont need it in dungeons.  UL/riptide macro UL/HW macro and UL/HS my bread and butter. healing totem and cloud burt consant up keep does make my job easy.

Edited November 29, 2014 by JuicyBrucie

[Ihaku 0]

Conductivity cant make 2 HR - teste it last night. The first one dissapears when second one i casted.

 

I repeat my question ones more: did anyone also notices that CH with HT decreases its power during jumps?