Potentially awesome Resto Shaman

[BamBamBeano 1]

Hi all,

We have a shaman healer that doesn't appear to be playing to their potential and while I want to help out...I know not the ways of the resto shaman. By just reading through the Resto Shaman guide and reviewing their logs it looks like Healing Surge is used way to often and maybe Unleash life isn't used enough. Also, the enchants and gem for Crit should be changed to Mastery.

Would the experts mind taking a look at this character and logs and give me some general pointers to pass along?

Armory

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/elune/Helva/advanced

Logs

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pVALk4m6DgN7zPyR#source=7&type=healing

[chiznitz 4]

Just a quick note from me.  I'm seeing healing stream totem was only dropped 8 times and the shaman is spec'd into Call of elements as well.  On my imperator logs healing stream totem is a HUGE amount of my healing.

 

(8 drops x 30s CD)  = 2 minutes of healing stream and 2 minutes of cooldown.  This leaves over half of the 11 minute fight without using healing stream totem, this would move HST into 2nd for his healing.   These calculations do not include using call of elements to drop hst back to back. 

[Stoove 347]

Hi there BamBam! We'll do our best to give some constructive advice. First off, I want to discuss something which isn't really related to Helva directly.

 

Firstly, be aware that on some fights you might find 4 healers to be too many for 14 player raids. This depends largely on the fight; for Mar'gok I agree that 4 healers would be appropriate, but for others you'll tend to find that dropping a healer would improve your overall healing. The reason I pick this out first is that Shaman are massively disadvantaged when there is too much healing for the content - either from gear or from number of healers. We aren't competitive because we heal best when people are dipping low for extended periods (this also tends not to be the case on N Mar'gok due to the damage patterns). When you get to harder content, you'll find your Shaman is naturally doing more healing anyway. However, the theorycrafters have a phrase which we use sarcastically - "Mastery cures everything". Basically, it means that you can't rely on low HP levels to fix your play. This is just one aspect of what's going on with your Resto Shaman.

 

Now, I'll pick out some really glaring things from the logs.

 

Riptide - it should be used on cooldown or as close to that as possible. Not only is it super efficient, it enables better HPS or efficiency in other spells (Chain Heal, Healing Wave, Healing Surge). Your Mar'gok fight was 10 minutes long and your Shaman should be aiming for 120 Riptide casts. They cast Riptde 52 times and didn't even achieve 100% uptime on the HoT. Managing Riptide is one of the most fundamentally important parts of the Resto playstyle.

 

Healing Stream Totem - same story as Riptide. HST has a 30s cooldown so you can use it twice a minute - 20 times in your Mar'gok fight. Helva achieved 8 casts, which is abysmal (aim for 17 or over). HST may not be at the insanely good levels it was during MoP, but it's still an essential part of the Resto healing style.

 

Helva has specced for Elemental Blast on this fight, but I see they only cast it once. EB is on a 12s cooldown and has a roughly 60% maximum uptime. Helva has a 1% uptime. Either they need to spec out of it or use it more often. Actually, for Mar'gok I like Unleashed Fury because it's super efficient and will help save people using those single-target casts. Frankly, speccing for any of those talents is worthless if your Shaman isn't using them.

 

Helva should probably be using Ascendance more often. It's not all that great as a throughput cooldown in its own right, but on long fights like Mar'gok you can think of it as a mana saving cooldown - time it to coincide with some burst damage (a transition phase or a Force Nova) and use it with the normal rotation instead of spamming something expensive like Chain Heal. Popping Spirit Link Totem at the same time is useful as it reduces overhealing, but isn't mandatory.

 

Mana - Looking at Resources -> Mana for the Mar'gok log, Helva went down to 50% mana at the end of the fight. I would expect someone playing well on this fight in her gear to be going down to 10% or so at the end of the fight, and that's because they should be spending their mana on more expensive spells like Chain Heal (and the HST and Riptide upkeep as discussed earlier). Honestly, if your healers are staying that high on mana then either; 1) they have too much Spirit, 2) they are casting too few expensive spells, 3) you have too many healers [which I discussed earlier]. For reference, here is a graph of my mana over time on the same fight.

 

Chain Heal - Helva is specced for High Tide, and to make taking that talent worthwhile they need to cast Chain Heal a lot. Helva cast Chain Heal only 8 times during the fight, which tells me that either Helva needs to spend more mana and cast her Chain Heal more, or they need to change their spec and use Cloudburst Totem (and use it). If they respec, I suggest also taking Totemic Persistence to make the rotation significantly easier.

 

Now, I've been very critical of Helva here. Let me say that I think Resto Shaman are one of the more difficult healers to play correctly right now, and are in general at a disadvantage in the situation you have on this fight. If Helva isn't using any aids to her rotation, I suggest that she downloads WeakAuras2 and uses some standard strings to remind her about HST, Riptide, etc (I have a page on this and there is an Icy Veins thread also).

 

Now for the less important matter of gearing. Yes, Mastery is recommended over Crit. However, it does come with the caveat that you'll only really see the benefit in the appropriate healing environment (where Resto Shaman should shine). Gear is secondary to play-style, though.

 

Finally, if you get Helva to read this then make sure they know that they're welcome to message me (and usually also Pandacho) for some more discussion. I always think that the willingness to adapt playstyle is more important than getting it right first time, so you're right to say that Helva has the potential to be awesome

[Pandacho 286]

Finally, if you get Helva to read this then make sure they know that they're welcome to message me (and usually also Pandacho) for some more discussion.

You or Helva could definitely message me

I will not write here right now - Stoove was faster and covered everything important ^^

 

Actually, I will add one thing.

I went through all the fights in your log and as I see, Helva never change their talents depending on encounter. 

First thing, resto shamans should do this - we have different talents for different patterns of damage and movement. Second: the 7 tier talent that they are spec'd into (High Tide) works only with Chain Heal spell which Helva doesn't cast.

 

But I would suggest one thing before everything else - go and talk to them. You have too many healers for the content you are doing and sometimes people feel very unmotivated in this situation and just let the things go, pressing occasional buttons and throwing minimum of spells. I saw this a couple of times, so it might be a good idea to check whether they unmotivated or not knowing to play the class.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Pandacho

[BamBamBeano 1]

Thank you so much for that, way more detailed and involved than I was expecting (or could ever have done myself). This awesome breakdown makes me want to start a thread for every single member in our raid.

We normally run with 3 healers but had to pug one because one of ours didn't show up until later, then we just kept the 4th.

[Stoove 347]

You're totally welcome. :)

 

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[Regal 21]

Stoove and Pandacho are great and basically told you everything you'll need to know.

Here's a couple of things I noticed that might be worth mentioning:

• As already said, riptide should be cast more and the uptime should be higher
• There are a lot of Healing Surge casts. This could indicate that there was only burst damage and Helva was trying really hard to be useful. Or it could just be poor mana management? I dont' really know, but here's what I'm thinking: if there's several people that need to be healed at once, I think Helva is trying to quickly heal them by doing X times of Healing Surges instead of doing a Chain Heal or two which would be much more effective especially with the High Tides talent, which leads me to my next point...
• The # of Chain Heal casts are pretty low, but have a pretty decent amount of healing. This means that they were probably cast at appropriate times, but just not often enough.

I think the most important thing here would be to have a discussion with Helva outside of the raid. If you've read the shaman guide on here, then you should have a general understanding of how to play. Take that, plus the tips on here, and see if Helva is following that. See what they are doing well and what they aren't. Because logs are helpful and we can definitely look at them, but what we can't see is how the healers are working together. The druids and disc priest are going to be exceptional healers, preventing a lot of damage and healing up what little goes through. If the raid group is great at avoiding mechanic damage, there honestly might not be enough for the shaman to heal!

Stoove had mentioned that, and an ideal healing environment for a Resto Shaman, but it could honestly be the explanation you're looking for.