Resto shaman problem

[Pringols 0]

We are new to progress in ToT 10 man and we are starting the heroic progression next week.

So my guildie is having doubts about his healing being low for the ilvl that he is right now.

Logs

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/jaldranegygw7m6m/fights/

Armory

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azralon/shamusk/advanced

Im the raid leader and currently posting for him.

Considering the logs his healing is most from the healing rain, is that wrong?

Any advice will help.

[Stoove 347]

Hey there, thanks for posting and I'll have a look tomorrow sometime :)

[Tarazet 144]

It looks like he forgot to hit his Water Shield before the pull. That would explain a lot.

Not sure why he's going so heavy into Haste. Is he trying to hit a really high, specific breakpoint for some particular reason?

Healing Rain is a 25 man healing ability, and not something you should depend on in 10 mans. It has its uses, of course, but shouldn't be the #1 source of healing. Chain Heal is much more efficient for healing a smaller raid, as long as it's targeted on someone with an active Riptide.

Poor uptime on Earth Shield and Riptide, especially considering how much the latter would have helped his Healing Surge casts.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Tarazet

[Xinto 18]

My wife has been in a similar position.

I am not an expert so please take my advice with a pinch of salt.

But looking at the log, he looks to be pulling his weight, I've not looked at specific weighting of abilitys and such. But the first thing I look at on logs is the healing done graph. He is outputting a good amount of healing when needed, espeically if you notice he is topping the peaks in healing quite often, but then for the lower healing he is likely beaten to the punch by other healers (from competing with a disco priest). This reduces the value of his mastery as player 'generally' don't get to low enough health for it to kick in fully and stay low enough for him to be the first to get a heal off.

This is a good thing for the raid and I am not saying otherwise.

What worked for my missus was going for a crit build, this increase the effective heals of many abilities which aren't as likely to overheal (such as chain heal) in comparison to greater healing / healing surge. It also helps with mana regen meaning you can cut back on some of your spirit if you feel comfortable to do so.

Riptide and Earthshield are some must haves for tank survival as well as throughput (riptide then chainheal = 25% more effect smart heal).

I can kind of see why he may have chosen to focus on haste, he has good mana regen, he has ~50% mastery, so why not haste? But maybe try a bit more balance or from my experience, more crit.

In terms of rotation, it has already been said riptide+chainheal, healing rain if it will hit 4 or more people, greater healing wave when needed. I can't see why he is using healing surge when he has so much haste stacked, seems counter intuitive to me. Replace those for greater healing wave and he should have the same throughput (if pre-empting dmg where possible) but with less mana cost.

Anyway just a few hints but look out for others more experienced posters.

[grautod 6]

Let me start by saying while progressing in ToT I haven’t done Lei Shen in normal mode but have spent hours trying to get the best out of my Resto Shaman in ToT.

Healing assignment is important when looking at logs. I assume that with Monk and Priest, your Shaman was assigned as raid healer. Given he did he did 27% of heals on the tank that seems a sound assumption.

Shaman cool down allow them to be great burst heals and it is critical to playing them well to maximise the use of these during high damage section. There is a clear match of increased HPS to increased damage which suggest he is working hard and pulling his weight in the raid.

Here are some thoughts on how he could get more out of his toon.

BUILD

The haste is too high for restoration. I understand the high haste if the gear is being dual used for Elemental set but does take stats away from healing secondary stats

For better restoration performance - Less haste more Mastery – aim for 12.5 haste 50% mastery or a bit more then crit. I tried a haste build, it didn’t work as well as the CRIT build I now use. ACTION:- Reforge, Regem and change enchants out of haste into crit or mastery. Use Mr Robot CRIT build for a guide. http://www.askmrrobo...azralon/shamusk

Can’t see a flask used. Suspect there enough spirit on this build to be able to use Flask of Warm Sun rather than Flask of Falling Leaves to improve HPS.

Replace Glyphs – Use Glyph of Riptide instead of Glyph of Totemic Recall. Use Glyph of Water Shield instead of Glyph of Healing Stream Totem Glyph of Healing wave. Based on the log they are regularly and consistently taking damage in the fight which is the type of fight that Glyph of Water shield is good for and Glyph of Healing Wave is 0.1% of heals with 53% over heal.

HEALING STYLE

There is a lot of Healing Rain used and 74% of it is going to over heals. - that suggest it is being over used ACTION:- Less reliance on healing rain more on direct or HoT heals

Riptide up time is only 54% - this needs to be used more should be continuously on the tank being hit. It is important to keep up Tidal waves with riptide and chain heal this should be as close to 100% as possible. Cast extra riptides if necessary to keep it up. In this fight up time was under 60% ACTION:- Keep riptide rolling on tank at all times plus cast it to keep Tidal Waves buff up at all times. I normally have it rolling on both tanks in dual tank fights.

There is NO Greater healing wave used. – When used with Tidal waves this is an effective healing spell that should be used ACTION:- Use Greater Healing wave when HPS requirement in the fight is lower and you can maximise the use of GHW

Earth Shield was cast 6 times and had an up time of 62% - should be up as close to 100% as possible ACTION:- Keep Earth Shield up as much as possible.

Ascendance only used once. ACTION:- Use ascendance more. Three minute cool down.

Unleashed elements being used with healing rain which is good ACTION: Continue to use these in conjunction.

P.S. Agree with Stove comments below. .

There is no one cookie cutter solution for Glyphs and Talents. Different fights benefit from different combinations and styles. The suggestions above are based on the data in the logs and what I found works for me. You could for example use the Glyph of Chaining instead of Riptide if you want to use Chain heal to keep Tidal Currents up. I choose Riptide because it is quick and easy to cast plus I spam chain heal for when people are stacked. Try spamming Chain Heal with healing rain and with Ascendance for some truly impressive HPS. Note Glyph of Chaining adds a cool down to chain heal which prevents spamming it when you use the glyph and given that you have 5 melee class you probably don't need it in this specific situation.

I edited my earlier Glyph suggestion after checking the logs a bit more closely on the benefit from Glyphs used in the logs. Remember looking at your logs for your fights will be the best guide for what's working and not working.

There is definitely a role for Healing Rain in Ten Man raids especially when the raid is stacking.

Edited June 27, 2013 by grautod

[Stoove 347]

I like the tips that have been given already in this thread. However, I want to clear a few things up;

• Healing Rain is a useful ability if you can get the best out of it. Don't restrict your use to 25's. IF you're overhealing with it a lot then try only to use it in higher damage phases.
• The key with Resto Shaman is to experiment regularly to find what is best for you. We've said this in so many different threads it's starting to make my eyes water. Always ALWAYS remember that each healer has a different team; no advice should be taken blindly, so experiment with different approaches.
• Chain Heal is much easier to use in 10's with the Glyph. This is situational, and you will find that different fights are better glyphed/unglyphed.
• Healing Surge is not an optimal heal to use. GHW is better in every respect. If your Shaman isn't using Riptide a lot, then her Tidal Waves buff probably won't be benefiting her GHW - this is the reason we love to use Riptide.
• Stats are a contentious issue for Resto Shaman and always have been. The fact is that pretty much any well thought out build will work, but the key is to think it through. Haste stacking is generally sub-optimal at low-mid gear levels (i.e. anything below 510 it's out of the question). Above this level, you can consider it. The rewards for Haste are that your heals get there faster (i.e. you do more effective healing) but the problem is that you run OOM faster and lose the spread healing that Crit gives you. Haste does have it's fans, and they do give well reasoned arguments to support it. However, nobody can really prove that any stat is optimal in all situations. To reiterate point number 2; always experiment with new builds. I would agree that you're more likely to get a benefit from a Crit build though, especially in 10s.
• High Riptide and Earth Shield uptime is not an option. You must keep ES up as much as possible and you must use Riptide pretty much on cooldown throughout the fight.
• I don't think anybody's mentioned this yet; if she is not using Healing Stream Totem on cooldown then she needs to. That spell is insane.
• Glyphs; all glyphs are situational and you should always think carefully about which to use. Do not make the mistake of using the Riptide glyph or the Water Shield glyph without thinking. Totemic recall is great but ONLY if you're casting it a lot (which I'd wager she isn't). Glyphing Healing Stream Totem is excellent. It's all-round useful. Only replace it when you need to put in something extremely beneficial. For a guide on which fights the glyph for Water Shield is optimal, look here.
• Cooldowns; Shaman are cooldown machines. You must get your healers to plan when to use all of the truly insane number of cooldowns that a Shaman can use. Examples: Ascendance, Healing Tide Totem, Spirit Link Totem (extremely useful), Fire/Earth Elementals (when using the talent Primal Elementalist), Elemental Mastery (if specced for it), Ancestral Guidance (again, if specced). In addition, your Shaman should not be shy of using Mana Tide Totem early and often and Spiritwalker's Grace as soon as it becomes useful.

I don't have time to look at the logs yet, these are all just points that I've picked up from the other comments. I would repeat that your Shaman must always experiment to find what is best because we simply cannot tell her exactly what will work.

[Stoove 347]

A note from looking at the Armoury page:

Glyph of Telluric Currents is only useful when you need extra DPS from your healers. It is NOT a regen tool.

Glyph of Riptide shouldn't really be used to blanket the raid in HoTs - use it to keep Tidal Waves up 100%. Can be useful, but it depends on your style (I don't like it).

Edit: BTW the responses from Tarazet, Xinto, and Grautod are all excellent and have useful information in them. I gave them all likes for that :)

[Stoove 347]

Another thing I noticed:

Healing Tide Totem is logged as having 21 hits total on your longest fight. I find this odd, since I think it's supposed to heal 5 at a time. I also notice that it overheals by 40%, which is a lot. One explanation for this could be that the HTT was dropped in the intermission phase and could only heal a few people at a time (under 5). This is probably not an optimal use, but if it saved lives it's reasonable I suppose. Planning CD's is most important.

And one more thing!

I noticed that she uses Healing Surge eighteen times, which is roughly half a mana-pool of heals. That's a HUGE mana-waste. Doing the optimal single target rotation with GHW is far more efficient and is roughly the same cast time.

EDIT: One more thing!

I find the HST number is probably too low. In that timeframe (longest fight) HST should be doing a lot more healing than that when dropped on cooldown. I'll need to check, but you can usually get over 2M healing out of it on any one fight.

[Pringols 0]

First i want to thank you all for the replies, im gonna check the info and have a conversation with the shaman, as i said before im not him , just helping him improve as im the raid leader.

I must say that before the comments the focus of his reforges were all crit after 50% mastery, but i think when the people was checking he was already trying the haste build.

Like i said before, im getting some tips for him (because he cant speak english) and will translate the information.

Thanks everyone!!

Any additional tip will help! :)

[Pringols 0]

Can i ask why i see many top healers using the DMF trinket?

The ToT trinkets are bad or something like that?

[Stoove 347]

Can i ask why i see many top healers using the DMF trinket?

The ToT trinkets are bad or something like that?

Well for one thing it's extremely good. Fully upgraded it gives approximately the same MP5 value as any Normal mode trinket you can get, and also bearing in mind that the procs from two of the trinkets (Stolen Relic and Hydra Spawn) are kinda "meh". That leaves three trinkets which provide throughput and regen and which are easy to get hold of this tier;

1) The Relic of Chi-Ji

2) Horridon's Last Gasp

3) Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault

Most healers will already have 1), and 3) could get in the way of other Valour upgrades. 2) is ridiculously difficult to get hold of, especially on hardmode it seems. (Source: Derevka never shuts up about it on Twitter.)

[Stoove 347]

HST Data:

Primordius LFR, 3m 15s fight, 2.4M healing, +0.8M overhealing.

Dark Animus Trash, 2mins, 1.5M healing, +0.48M overhealing.

Dark Animus LFR, 5mins 34s, 4M healing, +0.57M overhealing.

Hopefully this shows how much healing HST can achieve in a short timeframe! Bear in mind that these numbers came from a Haste-stacking build which I'm trialling, you might expect to see less on lower Haste builds but more when the general healthpools are lower.

[grautod 6]

It is always good to look these things over.. This discussion has had me check a few things I do and given me an idea or two to try next time since I have got some new gear including Cranewing Cloak. I'm in ToT so thanks everyone for the comments.

Just in reply to "I can kind of see why he may have chosen to focus on haste, he has good mana regen, he has ~50% mastery, so why not haste" in addition to Stoves comments about fast heals advantage the other side of the coin is crit which is great with mana regen via Resurgence which helps regen and might be the difference to allow to flask for int rather than spirit and Ancestral Awakening which helps through put. I especially love the smart heal function of Ancestral Awakening and don't forget the 30% is of a crit heal.

In closing just remember guide and advice are great but you need to be flexiable and be ready to change spell/Glyph/Talents as required for fights.

p.s. even blanketing Riptide has its place sometimes I like to use it in Horridon before those stomps. It is amazing how many people cant seem to keep out of those spike that follow the stomp!

p.p.s Healing is team work. Make sure you coordinate cool downs with your other healers.

And for Healer fun play Tank Limbo..... How low can he go before he falls down .. Dead! Its not as much fun in 10 man as it was in 40 man but its still fun!

Edited June 28, 2013 by grautod

[Stoove 347]

In response to all the discussion about Haste; the current "orthodoxy" (so to speak) is that Crit and Mastery in general will outperform Haste overall and especially on progression fights. Haste is something that one should consider at higher gear levels (I'm at ~514 and I'm not sure if that's high enough yet). :)