New to Resto Shaman [Help]

[Shirushi 7]

Good day,

My name is Shirushi and I am new to the shaman class. I have been healing now since Emerald Nightmare has come out, and I feel that I am missing something with my healing. I know really vague right. I want to be able to maximize my HPS, but according to the logs especially on the Cenarius attempts in Log 2 my healing seems to be lacking. I am attempting to stick to the rotation as much as possible and I know my timing on my totems is a little off. If you require more information please let me know. My artifact weapon has 25 points in it, and my next artifact trait will be Tidal Pools.

I have tried Cloudburst Totem but was having issues working it into rotation properly, our raid group usually stays as spread out as possible which I know hurts my healing a little. I am looking for any advice that can be given on helping me better understand the Resto Shaman and to master the class. Below are my armory link and two logs that I have gathered.

Armory Link

Log 1

Log 2

Edited October 14, 2016 by Shirushi

[Pandacho 286]

Hello and welcome to the forums :)

Well, let's start from the very start.

Your Artifact weapon: I see you followed the guide.

Well, I personally disagree with the posted there paths order. The standard way for a resto shaman is right down path to Queen's Decree, then left upper path to Tidal Pools, and then you make your way to the 3rd Gold through Ghost in the Mist->Sense of Urgency->Floodwaters. Some people prefer the right side to the 3rd Gold through Caress of Tidemother and Servant of the Queen but this is very minor difference. This way is the fastest to get all three Golds. You spent a lot of time with 5 traits that do almost nothing to your healing (Ghost in the Mistx3, Refreshing Currents, Sense of Urgency is doubtful because in how many fights so far Heroism was paired with some serious healing? Not many, right?) instead of going right away for Empowered Droplets and Tidal Pools that both directly add to your Healing Done.

Anyways, it's not your fault and there's nothing you can do now about it now but it is a part of doing less healing.

Your gear: not even one enchant and a Crit gem? Our best secondary stat is Mastery. There are some arguments what's the next - Haste or Crit, but there's no doubt about Mastery so you gem and enchant Mastery or Intellect. 

Your Haste is very low, so not only you miss additional ticks of Riptide and totems but cast more slowly too. If you do not agree with Haste being second best after Mastery, it still should be somewhere on pair with Crit.

Now the logs:

First thing: 5 healers for 20-man Normal are way too many even with your raid average ilvl. You know that resto shamans Mastery makes us great when the raid is on low HP and awful when the raid HP is higher than 70-80%. You have nothing to heal  - with 5 healers and low damage shamans unfortunately would be the worst.

The talents: the build you are using in raids is a 5-man build. For the raids it's High Tide, CBT and Ancestral Guidance mostly. 

You are extremely conservative with mana hardly casting Chain Healing and Healing Surge even that you sit on full mana most of time according to the logs.

 

Well, it feels like there are plenty little things all over the place and while every one of them is not that bad, all together they make a difference.

So let me just shortly sum the things:

1. There is no such a thing as 'rotation' for healers. I think that this idea ruins your performance a lot because you try 'push' things to the places they don't belong.^^

There are priorities though:

- always drop HST on CD - no exclusions. Use a Weakaura as a reminder

- always use Riptide on CD - no exclusions. If everyone is on full HP, use it on tanks.

- always keep Healing Rain on melee camp if there's no other specific place to use it.

- try to use major Raid CDs as much as possible, never keep them for some vague future possible damage that most of time never happens.

- if you have 3 or more injured people, use Chain Healing - your goal is to finish a fight with 10% of mana or less. There's no reason to sit on full mana all the time. Use mana pot when going OOM.

- learn to play with CBT - it does 10-14% of overall raid healing, there's no reason to avoid it. Start with just dropping it on CD after casting Healing Rain and then you can easily charge it with a couple of CH and the rest of healing you are normally doing. Get a weakaura that shows how much healing it stored - it will help you to plan your casts.

- grab your Artifact Gold Traits asap - don't get any more utility traits before Golds.

 

Enough for now I think :) If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

[Shirushi 7]

Thank you Pandacho, originally I was following the guide which is why I did everything I could to craft the mastery and crit gear. After reading the forums earlier this week I believe that you are absolutely right that it should be Mastery > Haste > Crit, which is why I have started putting on some of the Mastery and Haste gear.

Is there a soft cap for haste for shamans that we should be trying to reach, I have currently switched to Haste food to help bring my haste up and I believe when I am buffed with the food my haste is at about 11%.

We are in the midsts of going through our raid make-up and I do notice that a lot of the time there is nothing to heal or I am just triage healing. I honestly think that with 20 people in a raid group that 3 healers should be sufficient as long as you have the right 3 healers :P.

I am going to be making more crafted gear to replace some of the pieces that I have, just wish I had an endless supply of gold to make it a little quicker as patience is definitely not a strong suit of mine.

135k and I will the 2nd Gold trait.

Will keep you posted.

[Pandacho 286]

Hey!

Great that you are figuring out the things :)

3 healers for 20-man Normal are definitely enough. Same would go for HC progression up to Cenarius and Xavius. If you are really struggling, bring 4, but not 5-6. I saw guilds bringing 6 healers to HC progression and it never went very well because every additional healer means less dps -> longer fights-> more bad abilities goes out -> more stuff to heal and it just converts to an endless circle of trying to get a boss down by healing it to the death. 

And frankly, any healers comp would be fine while you are not stacking the same class.

Regarding the amount of secondary stats, i'd suggest you to look at raw numbers rather than percents because having passive 24% of Mastery and 5% of Crit makes the relative percentage a bit awkward. 

I'm trying to keep the difference between secondary stats 2-3K.

For example Mastery=9000, Haste=6500, Crit=4500, Vers=1500 (in percents you'll see a completely different picture for the same numbers as Mastery=101%, Haste=20%, Crit=23.6%, Vers=3.7%). You can see that if you rely on percents ratio, your gearing will pretty much go south because with exactly the same gear looking at numbers gives you Mast>Haste>Crit>Vers with a 'normal' gaps, while percentage changes it to Mast>Crit>Haste>Vers with 80% gap between Mastery and other stats and an awful 3% in Vers.

I would suggest you to run Mythics+ for gear, it doesn't cost gold and you can get really nice pieces. I run up to +8 so far and find a resto shaman completely fine on healing, great on utility and not bad on dps.

[KIbblsnblitz 0]

15 hours ago, Pandacho said:

- always use Riptide on CD - no exclusions. If everyone is on full HP, use it on tanks.

- always keep Healing Rain on melee camp if there's no other specific place to use it.

Debatable for max healing healing rain isn't even worth it don't take deluge take the raid CD Ancestral Guidance.

Only Riptide when mobile or needing to conserve mana

Cast chain heal

Also really important take high tide over Ascendance