EotE undervalued in guide?

[Striated 0]

Hey, just came back to WoW after a long break since the beginning of Cataclysm. I read up about the shaman and changes, how to play, and have also done loads of dungeons to learn how to play again and get my ring rust off.

I noticed the guide in the sticky values Cloudburst Totem more highly than Echo of the Elements, partly because, and I paraphrase: "HST will be dropped on CD in a raid enviroment, which makes this talent useless, as it will only add 1 extra HST per 5 minutes" or something to that effect. After testing the talents out myself, that's just not true. The two charges of HST granted by EotE can be used to guarantee a near 100% uptime of HST, instead of a 50% uptime. That seems to me a major boon. Add to this the additional HoT from riptide that we can keep up due to an extra charge of riptide, plus an extra charge of a pretty potent "panic button". It just seems to be a very strong competitor for that spot than the guide lets on. Have I missed anything?

[Pandacho 286]

2 hours ago, Striated said:

Hey, just came back to WoW after a long break since the beginning of Cataclysm. I read up about the shaman and changes, how to play, and have also done loads of dungeons to learn how to play again and get my ring rust off.

I noticed the guide in the sticky values Cloudburst Totem more highly than Echo of the Elements, partly because, and I paraphrase: "HST will be dropped on CD in a raid enviroment, which makes this talent useless, as it will only add 1 extra HST per 5 minutes" or something to that effect. After testing the talents out myself, that's just not true. The two charges of HST granted by EotE can be used to guarantee a near 100% uptime of HST, instead of a 50% uptime. That seems to me a major boon. Add to this the additional HoT from riptide that we can keep up due to an extra charge of riptide, plus an extra charge of a pretty potent "panic button". It just seems to be a very strong competitor for that spot than the guide lets on. Have I missed anything?

I'm not sure how did you test the HST with EotE talent because it works exactly like it says in the guide.

You drop the first HST, after 15 sec when it expires, drop the second charge HST, after 15 sec the 2nd one expires and you drop the 1st one and.... that's it - after 15 sec your 2nd one will still be on the remaining standard 15 sec CD. So from the 3rd dropped HST you just maintain its regular cooldown.

You don't have to believe me - test it this by yourself but don't stop after 2 totem drops, do at least 5-6.

Now, your second question: an additional Riptide is not bad, not at all, the thing is that IV guides are aimed for the raids rather than 5-men encounters: with this is mind, one HoT on a one person can not compete with CBT that does raid wide healing.

But I would agree that in 5-man instances EotE is competitive and I personally use it there.

[Furty 51]

It says "  Echo of the Elements is good for high movement fights where throughput is less of a concern, such as Trilliax. "

Don't think much more of an explanation is required. It's situational in raids as it is marked in the guide.

[Echoslayer 0]

EotE is undervalued but not for the reasons stated here, with EotE and crashing waves your healing wave becomes healing surge, permanently, the on demand tidal waves gives us FAR more throughput than cloudburst which is sitational at best,

On demand crit, on demand haste, the synergy between crashing waves EotE, with the tidal chains and Queen ascendant perks seems to have been completely ignored.

[Valks 2,375]

Bumping this up since I'm not even slightly qualified to answer, but I don't want to see it go unanswered! Will also tag @Pandacho since she normally knows things :D

[Pandacho 286]

4 hours ago, Blainie said:

Bumping this up since I'm not even slightly qualified to answer, but I don't want to see it go unanswered! Will also tag @Pandacho since she normally knows things :D

Hmmm, I think that I answered to topic starter but can talk things through once more :)

IV guides are meant for the raid environment which makes EotE with or without Crashing Waves vs CBT with AG a serious lacklustre.

I did yesterday a full Normal Nightmare run that finally gave me my own live logs and not something from someone on Beta.

EotE in raids gives you just one more HST and some Riptides during a standard fight, while every CBT was charging (yesterday for me in every fight) for 900K (without AG)-1.6M (with AG) healing every 30 sec. doing literally no overhealing. 

Healing from CBT:

Ill'gynoth: 10.29%

Elerethe: 7.35%

Dragons: 10.55%

Xavius: 8.48%

Regarding Crashing Waves vs AG in raid: once more, just like EotE, it affects single target healing while resto shaman in raids shines as a raid AoE healer and keeping people alive during heavy raid wide damage. We don't heal raid alone but with 3-4 other healers when at least one of them shines in single target focusing. Yesterday with AG I was able to top 28-man raid from 40%HP to 100% in 4-5 AoE casts and with its 2 min CD I was able to use it 3-4 times every fight with 6-10% of total Healing Done. I really can't see Crashing Waves overcome this now.

PS: I want to remind once more - I'm talking here about raid environment only, the healing in 5-man is completely different and uses different set of talents and spells.

[Valks 2,375]

Thanks for the in-depth analysis Panda! :) Tagging @Echoslayer