Resto Healing in WoD

[Stoove 347]

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

 

High Tide makes it so that the base healing of every Chain Heal jump is the same.

[Regal 21]

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?

 

Thank you so much for testing this!

 

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.

I don't think there's every too much mastery. It only ever increases our healing! I got up to around 110% mastery in SoO and I'm pretty sure I made use of all of it. 

 

How come you didn't test crit vs. mastery? Looking at all the numbers out there, it's been pretty obvious that haste isn't as useful to Resto shamans in WoD largely because we don't really use HoTs. Especially now that Earthliving is gone. 

 

I also find it interesting that you came to the conclusion that Mastery works better than Haste on your own, but you use Elemental Mastery for your talent choice. I would highly suggest trying out echo of the elements more thoroughly because it can really help with a more consistent playstyle either by giving more people Riptide to keep them topped off or using Unleash Life to keep increasing the heal % of your spells. (You can almost think of Unleash Life as a huge boost to mastery! So if you find the mastery stat helping more, then you definitely want to try this)

 

As for Chain Heal, I really think you should think about using it. CH procs tidal waves so what I usually do is weave it into my spamming of healing wave. it goes: Riptide>UL>HW>HW>CH>HW>HW etc.. Obviously depending on the situation, that rotation will include a healing surge, or totems, or ascendance, or.. well you get the point.

CH also helps give a lot of healing potential to cloudburst. 

And so can Healing Rain for that matter if you position it where the melee are going to stay and take damage. 

[Stoove 347]

How come you didn't test crit vs. mastery? Looking at all the numbers out there, it's been pretty obvious that haste isn't as useful to Resto shamans in WoD largely because we don't really use HoTs. Especially now that Earthliving is gone. 

 

In truth, the extra HoT ticks weren't that amazing even in SoO. The main benefit from Haste (now and then) is the faster casting speed allowing you more spells. 

 

As for Chain Heal, I really think you should think about using it. CH procs tidal waves so what I usually do is weave it into my spamming of healing wave. it goes: Riptide>UL>HW>HW>CH>HW>HW etc.. Obviously depending on the situation, that rotation will include a healing surge, or totems, or ascendance, or.. well you get the point.

CH also helps give a lot of healing potential to cloudburst. 

And so can Healing Rain for that matter if you position it where the melee are going to stay and take damage. 

 

So, the main problem with Chain Heal as I see it is that it is so mana intensive. It's not the kind of thing that you can maintain for very long as a rotation. It's nice to use when you have to deal with burst, but I really wouldn't use that kind of rotation "normally".

[Cheze 6]

Haste was desirable in MoP/SoO because  1) getting additional HR ticks was a big deal and 2) getting additional HST/HTT ticks was a slightly-less-big deal.  Neither of those are terribly relevant concerns in WoD.

 

I don't think HR is really worthwhile unless it's going to hit 5+ targets, which makes it tough to use in the current healing environment (heroics/CMs.)  It doesn't do that much more heal per mana than a max-bounce high tide chain heal, and chain heal is much easier to use in a five man environment where you don't have a melee stack to lay it under.

 

conductivity+cloudburst might be really good in some highmaul fights where there'll be more people to heal, but for now I'm sticking with high tide and rushing streams.

[Pandacho 286]

I would like to point that healing style in 5-man instances and in 20-man (or 20+) raids is very different. Testing HR and CH in 5-man and deciding they are not worth the mana? Well... I think that we have to mention when writing a post to which auditory it's aimed (e.g. healing CMs / 5-man / raids)

I wouldn't plan my raid healing on 5-man tests. When we had MC 40-man guild run before a week, it was very different both in spell usage and mana spending.

Let's pull the logs after 3/12 and see what we really have to deal with :)

P.S.: Part of the solution for preventing of wild spamming of CH in raids is usage of the Glyph of Chaining. I know that it isn't its purpose but still its CD prevents you from wild mana spending.

[Stoove 347]

Haste was desirable in MoP/SoO because  1) getting additional HR ticks was a big deal and 2) getting additional HST/HTT ticks was a slightly-less-big deal.  Neither of those are terribly relevant concerns in WoD.

 

Ah, I did forget about Healing Rain ticks. This was rather important, thanks for correcting me on this. We did discourage anyone building Haste for healing totem ticks, though, because it worked rather oddly.

 

 

I would like to point that healing style in 5-man instances and in 20-man (or 20+) raids is very different. Testing HR and CH in 5-man and deciding they are not worth the mana? Well... I think that we have to mention when writing a post to which auditory it's aimed (e.g. healing CMs / 5-man / raids)

 

Good point about this, I've been conscious of the fact that 5mans and raids are definitely different. However, there won't be such a big difference between them when it comes to mana concerns - I think it's quite reasonable to extrapolate in this case. Hence my discussion of the frequency of use of Chain Heal above :)

 

P.S.: Part of the solution for preventing of wild spamming of CH in raids is usage of the Glyph of Chaining. I know that it isn't its purpose but still its CD prevents you from wild mana spending.

 

I don't think that's the intended logic - the cooldown is a punishment for Chain Heal suddenly being much better. Reducing the frequency at which once could cast it made it inherently worse in the WoD environment where we wanted to spam it a lot throughout the fight. In the current environment of some mana constraints, I don't know whether it's an effective nerf any more :)

[Regal 21]

So, the main problem with Chain Heal as I see it is that it is so mana intensive. It's not the kind of thing that you can maintain for very long as a rotation. It's nice to use when you have to deal with burst, but I really wouldn't use that kind of rotation "normally".

 

Thanks for pointing this out Stoove, I forgot to mention that I don't use Chain Heal that often. Typically, if only the tank is suffering damage, then Riptide is enough to upkeep tidal waves between the spot healing of another member that may be taking damage and maintaining the HoT on the tank. However, when there is damage to heal on multiple party members, I prefer to use a chain heal here and there to top off everyone's health instead of Riptides. But this may be a waste of mana, I'm not sure.

 

I would like to point that healing style in 5-man instances and in 20-man (or 20+) raids is very different. Testing HR and CH in 5-man and deciding they are not worth the mana? Well... I think that we have to mention when writing a post to which auditory it's aimed (e.g. healing CMs / 5-man / raids)

I wouldn't plan my raid healing on 5-man tests. When we had MC 40-man guild run before a week, it was very different both in spell usage and mana spending.

Let's pull the logs after 3/12 and see what we really have to deal with

P.S.: Part of the solution for preventing of wild spamming of CH in raids is usage of the Glyph of Chaining. I know that it isn't its purpose but still its CD prevents you from wild mana spending.

I don't think anyone disagrees with this, Pandacho. However, numbers for healing output (to a degree) and general mana efficiency in 5mans are reliable for determining trends in raiding. 

I do think that HR and CH will prove to be more useful in raids than in 5man. Currently, HR can't really be used except in certain challenge mode situations where everyone stacks together. In raids, there should be enough melee around the boss or another target to make it useful.

As for CH, I still see it as being hard on mana in raids. With High Tides, it may make it more efficient to use. But I wouldn't try to increase the use of it in a normal rotation. More for healing periods of raid-wide burst damage. 

 

Recently, I did try to use High Tides and found that I didn't much care for it. But when raiding starts, I will definitely be willing to give it another try. Right now there just aren't enough instances where I need to use chain heal, especially since I use CBT. That way I can focus on tank healing and CBT will top everyone off. In the event of large group damage, I do use chain heal, but I follow the same strategy for the most part. Cast Healing Rain (if the situation is appropriate), Pop Ascendance, CBT (and another water totem since I use Totemic Persistence), and then Riptide/Healing Waves with Chain Heal to refresh Tidal Waves.

 

Last thing I wanted to add: 

Now that I'm particularly interested in HR, I want to crunch some numbers and see if there really is an "efficient" range of people that should be within the radius of HR to make it worthwhile. I'm going to use my own character as a test model, ilvl 633 (I'll post more stats with it later)

 

Here's what I'm thinking, I'll graph how much healing you get out of HR for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. up to 10 people (probably never going to be this many people in HR in a raid, but just for the sake of it).

So that would probably have time(seconds) on the x-axis and healing output (assuming there is no overhealing) on the y-axis. Then overlay the 10 graphs. 

 

Then I can also calculate the ratios of how much healing per mana spent.

Compare that to the healing of Chain Heal, Chain Heal (with HT and max bounces), and Healing Wave (with Tidal Waves buff) and we should be able to get a better idea of how effective HR will be, at least mathematically. 

 

P.S. Actually, I can do this, but it might be much more beneficial is Stoove could run this? I know you handle a lot of theorycrafting so I'd trust your results a lot more. I'm still going to try, but I'd appreciate your input Stoove :)

Edited December 1, 2014 by Regal

[Pandacho 286]

I tried yesterday in HCs to switch between:

Ancestral Swiftness <-> Echo of Elements

Unleashed Fury <-> Elemental Blast

Cloudburst Totem <-> High Tide

 

My poor guinea pigs guildies ... ^^

 

My current ilvl is 633, 2 rings with Spirit, DMF trinket and Spirit trinket. I was spamming spells including CH without trying to conserve mana (for testing purposes).

 

- Echo of Elements was better than AS, even that I personally dislike very much the lack of Haste. But Echo was way better...

- Unleashed Fury was better than EB, because it saved a lot of time of additional direct casts. EB was a bit problematic to cast in 5-man in our current gear, when sometimes you just don't have a proper time to recast it, spamming GH in tank. But I'll give it another go in raid.

- High Tide was so much better, it's just insane. It wasn't some minor difference, but a huge one. I do Riptide all the group and cast CH. In this case it jumps through all the people. I was never less than 60% of mana through all the fights. The only time when I dropped to 40% was when our tank stood in fire and I had to spam HSurge for a long enough time - nothing to do with High Tide. I will stay with this talent on the raid, definitely.

[Stoove 347]

P.S. Actually, I can do this, but it might be much more beneficial is Stoove could run this? I know you handle a lot of theorycrafting so I'd trust your results a lot more. I'm still going to try, but I'd appreciate your input Stoove

 

I'd love to, but I don't think I will have time.

 

I'd recommend that you calculate it in units of % Spell Power (just to make things easier for you) and divide your results by the value for Healing Surge as a comparison. That way, once your values pass 1 you know it's more efficient to use Healing Rain than Healing Surge.

 

Edit: Oh, I see you already suggested to compare to other values. Yes, good idea!

 

Sound reasonable?

[Stoove 347]

- High Tide was so much better, it's just insane. It wasn't some minor difference, but a huge one. I do Riptide all the group and cast CH. In this case it jumps through all the people. I was never less than 60% of mana through all the fights. The only time when I dropped to 40% was when our tank stood in fire and I had to spam HSurge for a long enough time - nothing to do with High Tide. I will stay with this talent on the raid, definitely.

 

Nice post Pandacho, I always like seeing Experimentalcraft like this!

 

I have a followup question though - how much effort did you spend trying to make sure that your rotation with Cloudburst was well executed? One of the major problems I have with the talent from a design perspective is that it's actually harder to pull off than High Tide. If you didn't work really hard to get your rotation down, I fear it may have been an unfair test.

[Pandacho 286]

I have a followup question though - how much effort did you spend trying to make sure that your rotation with Cloudburst was well executed? One of the major problems I have with the talent from a design perspective is that it's actually harder to pull off than High Tide. If you didn't work really hard to get your rotation down, I fear it may have been an unfair test.

It was a big effort...

Even when we were remaining in place for 15-30 sec. and I was casting healing spells all this time, the final 'healing back' of the Cloudburst was so small, I could hardly notice it on my frames. And it feels less flexible and more attention demanding than High Tide right now.

But once more, I'll have to retest this in the raid environment to see the exact numbers in logs, and not to base my decisions on 'feelings'.

[Stoove 347]

And it feels less flexible and more attention demanding than High Tide right now.

 

This, I totally agree on right now. :)

[Regal 21]

I'd love to, but I don't think I will have time.

 

I'd recommend that you calculate it in units of % Spell Power (just to make things easier for you) and divide your results by the value for Healing Surge as a comparison. That way, once your values pass 1 you know it's more efficient to use Healing Rain than Healing Surge.

 

Edit: Oh, I see you already suggested to compare to other values. Yes, good idea!

 

Sound reasonable?

Alright then, I will get on that as soon as I can!

Btw, do you think HealCalc is a reliable source to estimate healing values of shaman spells? I noticed that earthliving is still listed there. Is there a more reliable source you can recommend I pull numbers from?

 

I tried yesterday in HCs to switch between:

Ancestral Swiftness <-> Echo of Elements

Unleashed Fury <-> Elemental Blast

Cloudburst Totem <-> High Tide

 

My poor guinea pigs guildies ... ^^

 

My current ilvl is 633, 2 rings with Spirit, DMF trinket and Spirit trinket. I was spamming spells including CH without trying to conserve mana (for testing purposes).

 

- Echo of Elements was better than AS, even that I personally dislike very much the lack of Haste. But Echo was way better...

- Unleashed Fury was better than EB, because it saved a lot of time of additional direct casts. EB was a bit problematic to cast in 5-man in our current gear, when sometimes you just don't have a proper time to recast it, spamming GH in tank. But I'll give it another go in raid.

- High Tide was so much better, it's just insane. It wasn't some minor difference, but a huge one. I do Riptide all the group and cast CH. In this case it jumps through all the people. I was never less than 60% of mana through all the fights. The only time when I dropped to 40% was when our tank stood in fire and I had to spam HSurge for a long enough time - nothing to do with High Tide. I will stay with this talent on the raid, definitely.

I personally love CBT and find it to be very helpful, but maybe it fits my playstyle better? Regardless, I really want to give High Tide a fair shot. Can you tell me how to use it more effectively? How do you know which targets to Riptide? or do you use the glyph and keep the HoT on everyone (which won't be possible in raids)? I just don't find it helping all that much in 5mans right now, but you seem to really like it!

So I really want to see what I'm missing.

[Stoove 347]

Btw, do you think HealCalc is a reliable source to estimate healing values of shaman spells? I noticed that earthliving is still listed there. Is there a more reliable source you can recommend I pull numbers from?

 

No. It's still listed as a calculator for MoP! I'd recommend you grab the spell power coefficients from WoWHead and use those - just calculate in terms of SP%, no need to actually calculate the whole spell value any more.

[Pandacho 286]

I personally love CBT and find it to be very helpful, but maybe it fits my playstyle better? Regardless, I really want to give High Tide a fair shot. Can you tell me how to use it more effectively? How do you know which targets to Riptide? or do you use the glyph and keep the HoT on everyone (which won't be possible in raids)? I just don't find it helping all that much in 5mans right now, but you seem to really like it!

So I really want to see what I'm missing.

I use Glyph of Riptide always. In SoO it was in combination with Glyph of Chaining, but now 3 sec. CD seems to me too problematic.

In our 20-25-man raids (starting from 6.0 Mythic) I assign a healer to every group. Not for healing this group exclusively, but for fast decision who will be your primal target for direct healing when more than 2-3 persons in raid are injured, but it's still not a raid-wide AoE damage. 

So, if you have specific group to pay attention, your targets for Riptide will be tanks and injured people in your group, not the whole raid. Or, if you don't have assignments, just riptide 6 most injured persons - with High Tide your Chain Heal will jump through these targets.

[Stoove 347]

I still think that the Glyph of Riptide isn't worth the loss of the upfront heal, which is really nice these days! :)

[Stoove 347]

By the way, this has been a great thread so far so I'm going to pin it. Well done y'all! :)

[Regal 21]

No. It's still listed as a calculator for MoP! I'd recommend you grab the spell power coefficients from WoWHead and use those - just calculate in terms of SP%, no need to actually calculate the whole spell value any more.

Alright I figured. And I'm not really sure how to calculate with SP%, I've only ever done it with my real values! 

So, for an example, if I took Healing Rain which is calculated on WoWhead as [((16.3882%SP)+(16.3882%SP)) * 2.5], how do I input that as a value that makes sense when compared to the spells that have only %SP

 

I still think that the Glyph of Riptide isn't worth the loss of the upfront heal, which is really nice these days!

I completely agree! Especially buffed with UL/UF

 

By the way, this has been a great thread so far so I'm going to pin it. Well done y'all!

Thank you! Glad to hear it!

[Regal 21]

I use Glyph of Riptide always. In SoO it was in combination with Glyph of Chaining, but now 3 sec. CD seems to me too problematic.

In our 20-25-man raids (starting from 6.0 Mythic) I assign a healer to every group. Not for healing this group exclusively, but for fast decision who will be your primal target for direct healing when more than 2-3 persons in raid are injured, but it's still not a raid-wide AoE damage. 

So, if you have specific group to pay attention, your targets for Riptide will be tanks and injured people in your group, not the whole raid. Or, if you don't have assignments, just riptide 6 most injured persons - with High Tide your Chain Heal will jump through these targets.

Okay so that's what I was figuring. I don't use Glyph of Riptide, for the reason mentioned above by Stoove. 

I used to, but now that the initial heal has been increased so much and the HoT decreased, I've really loved using Riptide as a helpful instant cast since it heals a decent amount. 

Without the Glyph, it just doesn't seem reasonable to do High Tide for the mana of it all (which I'll be posting the results of my statistics relatively soon).

However, HT does seem to have an immense impact and use for burst healing. So if that is what WoD raiding requires, then HT will definitely win it and I'll put the glyph back in!

[Stoove 347]

Someone suggested that I add a note at the start of the thread so people don't think it's a guide thread or something (which it's not, but could be confusing) so I hope you don't mind that I added that on the first post.

 

Alright I figured. And I'm not really sure how to calculate with SP%, I've only ever done it with my real values! 
So, for an example, if I took Healing Rain which is calculated on WoWhead as [((16.3882%SP)+(16.3882%SP)) * 2.5], how do I input that as a value that makes sense when compared to the spells that have only %SP

 

You can multiply it up so that it all folds into the spellpower coefficient. Example with Healing Rain; [((16.3882%SP)+(16.3882%SP)) * 2.5] = (16.3882%SP)*3.5 = 57.3587%SP. Since there are no more additive constants in the equations, it's super easy to fold them all up in that way and look at just the %SP as a proxy for total healing values.

 

However, HT does seem to have an immense impact and use for burst healing. So if that is what WoD raiding requires, then HT will definitely win it and I'll put the glyph back in!

 

Since the max n.o. targets from High Tide is quite low (compared to on Beta), you can use Echo of the Elements to keep that average Riptide number up near 5, which is more or less optimal.

[Jenstar 2]

While High Tide is likely going to be the "go to" raiding talent, there are some things that make Cloudburst Totem really strong as well.

 

First, many people are still confusing CBT with the old Condensation Totem talent announced originally.  Condensation was only going to absorb 25% of overhealing, but CBT absorbs 20% of all non-totem heals, so even if the raid is sitting at 50%, it has a ton of value.

 

Also, you can detonate the CBT totem at any time, you don't have to wait until it expires.  So this makes it strong so you can detonate when you need it, and not have to wait X seconds for it to expire when most of the healing has been done.  I use a weak aura to track how much healing the totem has absorbed, so you can gauge whether or not to detonate early or let it keep absorbing.

 

CBT also favors injured players rather than random (if you tested on beta, this wasn't the case).

Edited December 2, 2014 by Jenstar

[Pandacho 286]

While High Tide is likely going to be the "go to" raiding talent, there are some things that make Cloudburst Totem really strong as well.

 

First, many people are still confusing CBT with the old Condensation Totem talent announced originally.  Condensation was only going to absorb 25% of overhealing, but CBT absorbs all non-totem heals, so even if the raid is sitting at 50%, it has a ton of value.

 

Also, you can detonate the CBT totem at any time, you don't have to wait until it expires.  So this makes it strong so you can detonate when you need it, and not have to wait X seconds for it to expire when most of the healing has been done.  I use a weak aura to track how much healing the totem has absorbed, so you can gauge whether or not to detonate early or let it keep absorbing.

 

CBT also favors injured players rather than random (if you tested on beta, this wasn't the case).

I'll add the CBT tooltip here for better reference:

"When the Cloudburst Totem is destroyed, replaced, or expires, the stored power is released, healing all injured allies within 40 yards for a total of 20% of all healing done (not in raid but by the healer with totem) while it was active, split evenly between them."

1. Yes, you don't need to wait until it expires, but if you destroy it before, it doesn't get to its full potential.

2. It heals equally all the injured allies, not preferring the most injured. So if you have 2 people on 20% HP, 5 people on 45-55% and 13 on 90-95% - all of them will get the same amount of healing.

3. When CBT gets to 15 sec - it will detonate, no matter you need its healing or not and you'll have to wait another 15 sec. and to start from the scratch.

 

Once more: I'm not trying to say that CBT is a bad talent or that everybody have to move to High Tide. But we have to be aware of the situational usage of all the Tier100 talents. 

[Pandacho 286]

I still think that the Glyph of Riptide isn't worth the loss of the upfront heal, which is really nice these days!

I think that we have to go and heal some Normal together ^^

[Stoove 347]

Also, you can detonate the CBT totem at any time, you don't have to wait until it expires.  So this makes it strong so you can detonate when you need it, and not have to wait X seconds for it to expire when most of the healing has been done.  I use a weak aura to track how much healing the totem has absorbed, so you can gauge whether or not to detonate early or let it keep absorbing.

 

This WA string would be totally amazing if you could share it with us all! :)

 

Once more: I'm not trying to say that CBT is a bad talent or that everybody have to move to High Tide. But we have to be aware of the situational usage of all the Tier100 talents. 

 

I do agree with you on that point, and I think we agree more than it looks like. I just think that the balance is more in favour of using CBT by default and moving to High Tide when needed, rather than the other way around. I'm not advocating using just one or the other, either! ^_^

 

I think that we have to go and heal some Normal together ^^

 

I think it definitely varies with playstyle, they aren't that far off each other really. :)

[Regal 21]

 

I'll add the CBT tooltip here for better reference:

"When the Cloudburst Totem is destroyed, replaced, or expires, the stored power is released, healing all injured allies within 40 yards for a total of 20% of all healing done (not in raid but by the healer with totem) while it was active, split evenly between them."

1. Yes, you don't need to wait until it expires, but if you destroy it before, it doesn't get to its full potential.

2. It heals equally all the injured allies, not preferring the most injured. So if you have 2 people on 20% HP, 5 people on 45-55% and 13 on 90-95% - all of them will get the same amount of healing.

3. When CBT gets to 15 sec - it will detonate, no matter you need its healing or not and you'll have to wait another 15 sec. and to start from the scratch.

 

Once more: I'm not trying to say that CBT is a bad talent or that everybody have to move to High Tide. But we have to be aware of the situational usage of all the Tier100 talents. 

Well, I definitely understand your criticism of CBT, but I'm just going to share a little more about my play-style and maybe it'll be worthwhile!
So, as a Resto Shaman, to make the most out of our healing we want to focus our priority on low health targets. With our mastery, this gives us the most return for our time spent casting and mana spent. 

I follow this principle when I use CBT. I understand the tank is top priority usually, but nowadays they are all expected to use self-healing cooldowns and defensive cooldowns, so ignoring healing them to full and doing some AoE healing or just getting them to about 80-85% is good. 

Then I can focus on other, lower health targets. 

This means that when CBT goes off, my party members, and future raid members, will all be closer to the same amount of health, a more mid-range health level. (I don't think I've ever detonated it early. I just keep healing through it. That may not be the most efficient way, but I also don't waste the mana to top everyone off if I'm waiting for it to burst)

In this way, not only has CBT absorbed more healing, because we've done more healing by focusing on lower health targets, but it also has benefited everyone more equally and makes for a more controlled healing.

I know early some had said that the benefit of CBT is "knowing when to expect burst damage". I would also disagree with this.

Honestly, I lay it down AFTER some burst or party/raid-wide damage has started. Heal through it, using Chain Heal and healing wave on lower health targets, and my CBT covers the rest when it pops. 

If it goes off and no healing was needed, then sure I wasted CBT. BUT that doesn't really mean much since it's roughly a third of the cost of a chain heal and has such a short cooldown. 

 

Now, after saying all that, I have recently tried High Tide more and this time in a CM dungeon where there is more damage to heal. Not that CBT wasn't effective in the other Heroics/CMs, but I told you I'd try HT out some more :P

It's healing proves to be pretty solid, but did affect my playstyle somewhat.  I had to focus so much more on positioning and concentrating my EotE procs on Riptides (I didn't like the glyph because it made the draenor perk and EotE seem somewhat wasteful. But obviously if I used the glyph, the procs could've been used for purify spirit/unleash life). 

 

The immediate difference I noticed was that, as mentioned before, there was more of a concern with positioning. To elaborate, I had to make sure I could spend the time to prepare a chain heal that was going to hit as many targets as possible and position myself where I could safely cast it with LoS. With CBT, all I had to do was focus in on one target at a time and heal them quickly (1.8sec cast versus 2.26sec on my character). Since CBT has such a huge range, isn't affected by LoS, and doesn't require a cast time, it seemed to be a more mobile talent in my opinion. This could be the huge effect that may make it more useful in raiding though, I don't really know.

 

Obviously, we can use Spiritwalker's Grace to overcome some mobility issues with casting HT Chain Heal, but even when glyphed Spiritwalker's Grace can only be used every 60seconds. CBT can be used 15 out of every 30 seconds. 

 

 

I do agree with you on that point, and I think we agree more than it looks like. I just think that the balance is more in favour of using CBT by default and moving to High Tide when needed, rather than the other way around. I'm not advocating using just one or the other, either!

I like both talents, but I'd have to agree with Stoove. CBT seems like a better default. If High Tide fits more with your playstyle, then definitely go for that one. But I think it'll be more useful in fights that require constant raid-wide healing as opposed to just covering short periods of damage (CBT).