Resto Healing in WoD

[Stoove 347]

Lots of people seem to be struggling with CBT at the moment, and you'd be in very good company with about 50% of the top-tier Resto Shaman I've talked to also struggling with it. It seems to largely come down to two things;

1. Execution. You have to drop the totem on cooldown to make it worth having.
2. Healing style. If you're running Glyph of Riptide and using Chain Heal a lot, it doesn't seem to synergize well with CBT in comparison to UF and EotE. If you're not using your quite efficient spells in your normal rotation then you'll find fitting the healing in the CBT duration to be too mana intensive and therefore not worth it. Adjust your healing style accordingly.

Remember also that it's definitely not a talent for all fights.

[Starrfyre 7]

It's the timing that gets me. When I was using it last night, the healers had healed everyone up and my CBT did nothing. I found myself frustratingly switching between CBT and HT constantly.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Starrfyre

[Pandaids 2]

Lots of people seem to be struggling with CBT at the moment, and you'd be in very good company with about 50% of the top-tier Resto Shaman I've talked to also struggling with it. It seems to largely come down to two things;

1. Execution. You have to drop the totem on cooldown to make it worth having.
2. Healing style. If you're running Glyph of Riptide and using Chain Heal a lot, it doesn't seem to synergize well with CBT in comparison to UF and EotE. If you're not using your quite efficient spells in your normal rotation then you'll find fitting the healing in the CBT duration to be too mana intensive and therefore not worth it. Adjust your healing style accordingly.

Remember also that it's definitely not a talent for all fights.ou

 

 

BUT, if you use CBT on CD many many times you gonna heal people with full LIFE right ?? The right way should be try to time it perfeclty 15 sec before a massive raid damage....but its too hard for my play skill to do it haha

[Starrfyre 7]

I believe it only heals people that have less than 100% health. I think I read that somewhere on this forum, not 100% sure though.  

[Normia 2]

What iwe understood from my reading, with CBT if u have all other players 100% health, and tank at 50% should all healing from CBT go to that tank? Since if it does, i think its totally worth using on cooldown when its almost always healing some one, and on hc modes without ewen counting mythic, there is almost always people needing for healing, becose if there isnt your healers are most likely ower healing and running out of mana, on what i have experienced (not counting those friking palas). So would count that to be best choise as lvl 100 talent. If what i sayd is true ofc

Edited December 5, 2014 by Normia

[Stoove 347]

Regarding healing players at 100%:

 

Why is your raid at 100% in the middle of a fight? Sounds to me like you either have too many healers or you're not on challenging enough content. :)

 

The same applies to High Tide: if the raid is at 100%, it's also useless.

[Grahmrook 6]

Here are my logs, any suggestions would be appreciated and anything you can take from them I hope is useful:
 
Kargath Normal
 
The Butcher Normal
 
Brakenspore Normal
 
Tectus Normal
 
Twin Ogron Normal
 
---
 
Kargath Heroic

 

I have not tried CBT at all, but thinking I will branch into it this weekend on Ko'ragh and Emperor.

 

 

[Regal 21]

Hey everyone! I haven't posted in awhile on here, been a really busy week (I'm sure Stoove can relate lol)

I'm not claiming to be an expert on Resto Shamans, but I have been doing it consistently since MoP and I am our guild's best/second best healer almost every fight. I've multi-quoted quite a few people so I'm hoping to be able to answer a lot of questions at once.

 

Also, I am a fan of CBT, so if you want some playstyle answers for CBT, I've got it covered!

Hello once again and thanks to all of you for your interesting ideas, especially @Regal.

 

 

 

Yesterday my guild started raiding and we were able to kill atleast 4 bosses on normal and I wanted to inform you abit about my experience and my talents (log: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PtY9MchZdXpn2ygJ#type=healing&source=2&fight=18- dunno if you can change the language to english somehow)

 

 

Note: I'm only playing Resto Shaman since this Expansion, was main Druid b4 and it was my first raid as Resto - and it really is a huge difference from healing 5 man! So forgive me playstyle mistakes because I need to get used to it first and gain some experience as resto - so some of my impressions might be incorrect and I simply do something wrong

 

 

 

I healed the challenge modes with rushing streams and CBT and was very comfortable with it.

I rarely used Chain Heal in 5 man dungeons, simply because I do not like the spell very much because it is so easily wasteable if you do not use it for its full potential.

 

So for the raid I wanted to switch to HT and Conductivity because I felt like for around ~20 player it might be better.

The problem I had with HT is that I wanted to use Chain Heal now whenever it felt reasonable.

I tried to have Riptide up on 3 targets and in the best case buff it with Unleash Life and then cast Chain Heal.

 

But now here are the problems I have with HT and Chain Heal in general:

Without the Glyph of Riptide I find it hard to have it up on 3 Targets, of course I have it on the both tanks most of the time and on another target. Maybe I am able to cast it 1-2 times on the tank, but then he is topped most of the time again and it ends in overhealing.

Also I think its so hard to manage if chain heal is actually healing someone or just overhealing. Because when I use it I try to use it on a camp (e.g melees) and I can never tell if it heals atleast 4 targets.

Also I found it very mana draining, but maybe I wanted to use it too much since I chose HT.

 

 

So dont get me wrong: It might be a very cool talent, but I simply don't know how to properly use Chain Heal yet - do you have maybe some handy tips for me?

So to list my problems again to make it easier to understand:

- hard to have Riptide up on 3 targets

- I'm not sure if it's actually healing someone or just overhealing

- I'm not sure if the range is enough

 

So these are the main problems I have with Chain Heal in Generel and HT.

Maybe some of you had the same experience or a complete different and would like to share it with us.

 

 

So now I come to Conductivity:

 

I think the talent is worth it. 

From what I saw it heals really much in a raid, even though I'm a fan of Healing Stream Totem.

The only problem I have atm is too keep track of it because the WA String out of the topic does not work for Healing Rain with Conductivity.

 

But for a really really movement intense counter I'd still switch to rushing streams.

So, I've almost completed normals in Highmaul and I've seen enough videos of the fights now. For the most part, there aren't any fights where people just stack attack. Don't get me wrong, my HR helps A LOT for the times we can stay together. But it's never long enough to use Conductivity. If you like it, then please use it.

From my experiences, if people are staying together and taking enough damage that you're not going to get a ton of overhealing from a 30second healing rain, then they're probably disregarding mechanics (which is near impossible in most of the HM fights especially on heroic).

 

To Nalesh:

 

I would suggest to get rid of Glyph of Chaining meanwhile. With proper Riptide managing and High Tide talent I would say that you'll never need double range that it provides, but 3 sec. CD for the Chain Heal makes things needlessly more complicated.

1. Riptide has 5 sec CD and 18 sec of ticks. So it seems to me that it's more 'a feeling' that you can't manage 3 Riptides up, but in fact you do 

2. One of the abilities of High Tide talent is to allow your Chain Heal to jump through 2 Riptided targets in addition to the first four targets it choses normally. So Riptide the people you want to Chain Heal - there is a big chance that it will bounce through them. Do not focus on 'tanks only', 'melee only', etc.- riptide any low HP targets in raid if you want CH to heal them. 

 

You are not doing wrong, you just do x9 more single casts than Chain Heals, while my amount of target and Chain heals is more or less equal. Try to plan your CH - remove Glyph of Chaining, cast Riptide on the specific targets you are planning to heal, cast CH. DO not afraid to run out of mana - your ilvl is higher than mine - I almost never was even less then 50% mana.

Jumps are 12.5yds unglyphed. You're right, this has always been the general problem with Chain Heal (as discussed extensively by theorycrafters like Dayani when Siege of Orgrimmar started).

So Nalesh, this is more of a response for you, but also many other shamans having similar problems.

AoE healing really takes two modes in WoD for shamans. Either you can focus on CH with maintaining riptides and High Tide, which I found difficult as well. Not overwhelmingly hard, but enough that it was uncomfortable for me to use my EotE procs on Riptide everytime and find my chain heals doing overhealing just to jump through targets.

 

I will talk more about the other mode of AoE healing, CBT and surgical healing, further down (Should I just turn that into a thread/guide Stoove?)

 

I don't remember who mentioned the difference between a druid's wild growth and a shaman's chain heal, but here are the WoWhead links to those:
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48438

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=1064

Keep in mind, CH includes an extra 50% to primary once you get the Draenor Perk (which every 100 has), an extra 25% for that target if they are affected by Riptide, and ANOTHER 20% if they have our earth shield on. 

I am not sure if I'm doing the math right (probably not, double check me Stoove?), but if you heal a tank, here's what you get:

257.5%SP on tank + 152.5%SP + 142.5%SP + 132.5%SP = 685%SP

Wild Growth = 280%SP * 5 targets = 1400%SP

Looking at that, yes, Wild Growth seems to heal for more. But you have to consider a few things: (1) that Wild Growth has an 8 second c/d where Chain heal has no cooldown (unless glyphed). (2) Chain Heal will actually go further than Wild Growth with its jumps. (3) Chain heal is 28% base mana and wild growth is 37.8% base mana. (4) Chain heal will burst heal much quicker than wild growth.

I would say that with all these differences, the two spells almost aren't worth comparing. And that's why the two Restoration specs have very different playstyles. 

 

Hey, I just wanted to ask if any of you had raided Highmaul yet? I did it last night (1/7 HC and 3/7 Normal). I'd be more than happy to share my experiences if you guys don't mind a wall of text 

Have you seen my walls of text? This one for example! Lol. We love it here!

 

I did terrible last night....almost always the last one on Recount =( Druid and Pally owned me !!

 

Often oom...maybe still playing with Pandaria style...should change my gameplay, it's a whole new game !! I cant just spam CH...I will try tonight, using Riptides, cyrurgical Healing Waves and stuff more simple !!

 

Any advice please ??

@Pandaids. Read further down this post. I will answer more about some effective healing tips.

However, I may forget to mention that you should frequently use UL/UF to conserve mana by increasing your healing output and mana efficiency (unless the healers you're with are so on top of it that you're hardly healing anways. Then it's almost unavoidable to be lower on the charts). 

Also, mastery helps tremendously to the same effect. There are many sites for checking WoD stat weights, but they'll all confirm that Mastery is definitely the way to go for Resto Shamans (and it stacks so easily with our 5% increase frpm all sources!)

 

Wall of text welcome!

 

 

Pandacho said that if you don't use Persistence, then you should cast HST instead. This is not the same as "the macro works". It would help a lot of you could explain exactly what these WA's are supposed to do.

 

By the way, those bubble plots were really cool earlier so I learned how to do those in Excel. There's more theorycraft afoot which uses it! 

Really?! Omg they are so awesome. Really helpful for displaying data effectively because they show up to 4 different data sets at once!

 

So fwiw, on our first kill of Kargath Heroic I topped the meter on healing by a significant amount, even though I'm inferior in ilvl and equal in skill to my compatriots. We did the rest of the instance on Normal, killed The Butcher and had a lot of attempts on Tectus (amazing fight!). Here are my ideas;

 

1. Kargath is totally about the sustained HPS you can put through. There's a lot of mild AoE which is basically constant and Cloudburst is perfect for that. It's really fun to use.
2. The Butcher is, likewise, about sustained HPS on a (smaller) group of players - mostly the melee. Cloudburst was really nice here, I didn't find that High Tide was so useful.
3. Tectus is such a cool fight, where you have both AoE sustained and burst! Yay! Did I say that I like this fight? High Tide works fantastically here, because it's a mini-cooldown you can use on every single Tectonic Upheaval! It's High Tide acting as a burst HPS tool, exactly like I've been saying it should. However, you sure can't spam it without a care. Despite this, Chain Heal was doing 15-25% of my healing on every attempt on Tectus.

In conclusion, use CBT rotationally until you find a fight (Tectus) where the burst is really important.

 

Also, I saw a lot of people on Twitter complaining about the fact they feel completely underpowered. All I'm saying is that I've been dominating on really difficult fights =3  Mastery is the best!

I loved Tectus too. But it took us a long time to get down! Just need so much dps to get him down fast enough. 

However, I did try both HT and CBT in the many attempts against Tectus. While I liked and saw value in both, I'm going to explain further down why I eventually preferred CBT for that fight. 

 

Soo, this is my first post in this forum. And iwe been trying to find some where i can help improve my healing since i seem to be lacking. Tho it just may be my imagination. My guild did today 6 out of 7 bosses in hc mode. And id like to link some logs from there. So u gyus can say what im doing wrong . 

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dyhbCvNWPa1wGtJR#type=healing

 

Bah didnt get butcher logs... that was actually the one i won at healing, used conductivity and healing rain under melee and tanks all the time.

 

Yeah one thing i noticed is that i havent maybe used enough healing stream totem. Have to fix that.

 

And otherwice about mana, i was oom after ewery fight, and in most of them i used mana potion. Tbh dont feel like iwe given my all if im not oom. And in my opinion my owerhealing compared to others wasnt high so i had used my mana well.

 

And in my opinion im worst of our healers. So thats why im really trying to fins help with healing as efficient as i can.

 

And awsome thread iwe already found alot stuff i can use on healing, which wasnt used on these logs, might add some more next week if ppl want to.

Look at my response to Pandaids above, that should help you out :)
Also, make sure you have the weapon enchant that frequently gives you 500 spirit. Helps quite a bit. 

And keep checking this thread. I feel it'll have a lot of answers you're looking for (hopefully!)

 

I'm really struggling to find a way to use CBT effectively. How do you use it?? I really don't find Resto to be smooth at the moment and my Mana is horrific. Having said that it's the same for most healers. Its not nice to realise your healing is subpar, however, I feel I just need to get used to this different style of healing.

 

I don't really have any other insights than what has already been provided here. What I would suggest with The Butcher though, is that you place a Resto Shaman within the Melee group soaking that cleave ability. Dropping Spirit Link works wonders! You can project it into the melee, but I've found that it can take a few seconds to actually hit and people can die in that time. We had a few tries on HC and the damage is a bit insane!

Lots of people seem to be struggling with CBT at the moment, and you'd be in very good company with about 50% of the top-tier Resto Shaman I've talked to also struggling with it. It seems to largely come down to two things;

1. Execution. You have to drop the totem on cooldown to make it worth having.
2. Healing style. If you're running Glyph of Riptide and using Chain Heal a lot, it doesn't seem to synergize well with CBT in comparison to UF and EotE. If you're not using your quite efficient spells in your normal rotation then you'll find fitting the healing in the CBT duration to be too mana intensive and therefore not worth it. Adjust your healing style accordingly.

Remember also that it's definitely not a talent for all fights.

It's the timing that gets me. When I was using it last night, the healers had healed everyone up and my CBT did nothing. I found myself frustratingly switching between CBT and HT constantly.

BUT, if you use CBT on CD many many times you gonna heal people with full LIFE right ?? The right way should be try to time it perfeclty 15 sec before a massive raid damage....but its too hard for my play skill to do it haha

I believe it only heals people that have less than 100% health. I think I read that somewhere on this forum, not 100% sure though.  

And here it is... "The other AoE Healing method: CBT and Surgical Healing"

 

I'm going to somewhat briefly explain what I can about healing effectively with CBT. If I get enough likes on this post or people request it, I would be willing to turn this into a lengthier, more in-depth topic. But for now I'm just trying to answer people's questions with relative ease :)

Edit: Posting this on a new post. Just so it's all together and this isn't ridiculously long. I ended up writing more than I thought!

[Regal 21]

"The other AoE Healing Method: CBT and Surgical Healing"

 

Starting off, here's some important pros and cons of CBT:

Pros:

Although it is not passive, it a is relatively easy way to increase your healing output because it stores your healing and explodes on its own.

*I'll talk about bursting it early in a bit*

Doesn't require LoS to heal. This makes it effective for fights like Tectus where you constantly have to move around and often have something blocking your vision. 

Low mana cost and Low c/d. Making this a very forgiving talent choice

 

Cons:
Tricky to use if you want to maximize every CBT you place down.

Will often overheal players.

Due to the delayed healing, is often hard to utilize during burst or raid-wide damage

(there are ways around all of these cons. Being able to do this is what allows CBT to really excel in healing output. If you find this too difficult and really feel that you're "wasting" CBT, then please switch to HT. It is a very viable talent and, in my opinion, can be much easier to use. But of course, it does come with its own drawbacks)

 

I think the biggest problem people are having is based on a simple misunderstanding. And I hope no one takes offense to that, this talent is really more simple than I think a lot of people are crediting it for.

 

The goal of CBT is to absorb as much healing as possible over 15 seconds. 

The goal is NOT to heal as many people as possible and the goal is NOT to quickly respond to burst damage.

 

To clarify, let's go over the "anti-goals" a little more in-depth (I'll probably reference the Tectus fight for these examples, for Stoove :) )

 

Anti-goal #1 and question #1: How many people should I expect to heal with CBT?

CBT should be a controlled AoE heal, just like HT with the Riptide managing to get 6 bounces that heal all of your targets. The only difference (I think) is that the High Tides talent makes it more apparent that there's a lot of managing to it with a paragraph of text lol. 

So here's the general example and the framework on how you should cast and manage CBT.

I know it's a delayed talent, but it's made that way for a reason. 

Drop it down and walk away (well, keep it in the back of your mind).

The range is huge so you don't have to worry about that for the most part. 

Focus on maximizing your own healing (to get the most out of CBT). This is done in 2 important aspects. 

The first is to prioritize healing lowest health targets. If you're playing Resto correctly, then you're stacking mastery so you're going to get a lot more healing out this way. The CBT totem healing, although not further modified by your mastery, does absorb the extra healing you get from healing low health players. 

The second is a little more complicated to explain. 

In simple terms, "pick your CBT targets". 

If that didn't make any sense to you, that's okay! This explanation should help.

So here's some basic facts about CBT. It's going to absorb your healing, so don't stop healing when it comes out. Spamming isn't necessary either. Continue your rotations as normal, healing low health targets, UL/UF (try to use as much as possible to increase heals capture), chain heals when appropriate, and almost always have HR in a good spot (this increase CBT healing A LOT if they're melees taking damage). 

This is especially where CH weaving is effective. Healing Wave/Healing Surge will be great to heal those low health targets, but when Tidal waves comes off, use CH through the tank to top many people off. 
No here's the part where all of that comes into play.

CBT will heal only those in 40 yards who are missing health. And it is distributed evenly among them. So if you know this, and I know many of you do, then why let people stay at 95% health? I know a chain heal, or even a riptide is going to overheal them, but not anywhere near as much as a division of that CBT burst. And one less person to divide the healing amongst means that more of your stored healing goes to the targets you didn't get to healing yet! (yaaaaay~!)

 

Anti-goal #2 and question #2: When do I use CBT?

Okay here it is. This is really the part that I think will make the world of difference for those struggling CBT.

CBT has a short cooldown, but that doesn't mean you should spend it every cooldown. Stoove pointed out that dropping it down at every chance will increase your heals. Well maybe, but if you have a good group, it'll mostly overheal.

CBT takes some planning, as I'm sure you've noticed from anti-goal #1.

Some instances to cast CBT:

- When you start noticing more than one or two people taking damage

- A damage spike occurs where a couple/several people took damage

- If you know there's about to be a raidwide damage mechanic (Tectus,Tectonic Upheaval)

- Low on Mana, but you need to keep healing

 

Setting up CBT in instances like this will increase your healing by so much and make your life easier. If multiple people are taking damage, then you know you're going to be healing people throughout the duration of cloudburst, making it very likely that either it'll heal a lot of people because everyone is taking damage, or it'll be able to narrow down on the few who didn't get healed yet. 

If there's a damage spike, you need to think before you place CBT. Asses the danger level of your targets. They may be low health, but are they in danger of dying? Just because a few raid members got smacked by the adds in the Tectus fight, doesn't mean they are going to need constant healing for 15 seconds and then a huge burst after that. They can be healed regularly so you can save your CBT for something more important (like Tectonic Upheaval!).

If you're low on mana, but people are still taking damage, this is where I find CBT to be a god sent. Where chain heal is going to cost a lot of mana, especially to keep up Riptides for HT, CBT will actually increase mana efficiency.

Keep a HR down (I know it can be mana intensive, but the healing will definitely pay off so long as people can stand in it).

Rotate Healing Wave x2 and Riptide to conserve mana. 

This will keep your heals going with the most mana efficiency and the CBT burst will help get everyone back on track.

Now, CBT can definitely be used on cooldown, but only if the encounter calls for it. Some fights, especially heroics, might require you to constantly be healing everyone and you'll be low on mana. 

Other fights you will only really need it for an add or two and the raid-wide damage mechanics.

 

Here's the last thing I want to add. Don't burst it early.

This is a great raid-wide healing tool as well as a concentrated heal. And yes, it is a "burst" heal. However, it is not reliable and not efficient to pop it early. 

#1 Reason you might think to pop CBT early:
People are dying and I NEED to save them! 
Well yes, it is your job to heal people, panicking won't help. And that's what you're doing when you pop CBT. you lose out on some of its healing potential and doing it frequently actually hurts you. Here's what I do in those situations: Pop ascendance. Increases your healing a lot and essentially will make use of the same rotation that you want to be using with CBT. Healing Waves with Chain heals that will heal targets and distribute even further with Ascendance. This is A LOT of healing capture by CBT and the durations match nicely.

Another thing is to pop HTT or HST (This is why I prefer totemic persistence). The healing isn't captured by CBT, but it does help sustain your raid party, assisted by your own heals, until your CBT pops. 

Honestly, I think having two water totems at times like this is much more useful than moving a CC totem (capacitor/earthbind) or refreshing the CD on any of the totems (now that HST has been nerfed).

And here's another thing if you're still worried. What did you do before when you needed burst healing and we didn't have these 100 talents? Many popped a primal elemental and got the 5% buff to healing. and then did everything else I said, popped ascendance and/or HTT/HST. Now the difference is, you efffectively get a delayed 20% buff to your healing output over the next 15 seconds! That should make up for it. Ideally, 30 seconds of 20% compared to 1min of 5% healing increase. That's pretty nice when you look at Primal Elementalist being the talent of choice for Resto Shamans in MoP. 

[Stoove 347]

Regal, you're a star.  <3

 

I'm still very much of the opinion that is CBT is overhealing regularly then you can afford to drop a healer or something. Our raid group (even when taking appropriate levels of damage - not failing mechanics) tends to stay sub-100% almost all the time.

 

Either way, fantastic post.

[Vixsin 4]

Awesome post, Regal. To add/clarify a couple points  about CBT usage:

• CBT, by definition, has low overhealing, because it chooses from only injured targets when distributing its heal. This is amazing because it means that you can use that smart nature to your advantage (like healing the current Cleave group on Butcher). 
• CBT's heal is centered on you, the shaman, not the totem. So your positioning matters, and you can use it to your advantage to direct CBT's heals where they need to go. 
• (Mentioned above but re-emphazising) CBT synergizes incredibly well with Ascendance. Although Ascendance won't redistribute the healing done by Cloudburst (because it's a totem, the no-totem rule appears to still apply), CBT's redistribution of Restorative Mists means that you're gaining a 240% boost (200% from Restorative Mists x 20% from CBT's heal) on all healing done while the two are active. 
• For raiding in particular, CBT works best in a triage environment, when every little bit counts. It is not going to be effective if you and your healing teammates are tripping over eachother and swimming in mana. It's not going to be effective in dungeons or CMs unless you're letting teammates sit at sub-75% HP. Likewise, the strength of CBT is determined by what you can put into its "collection pool" while its active, which makes it a lot like Ascendance, in that regard.
• If you're trying to make the most of CBT, absolutely get Totemic Persistence. (Stoove is going to snarl at me for saying this). But, when chaos is going on during an encounter, the last thing you want is to be cutting off your HST, or god-forbid, your HTT healing with CBT drops, or triggering CBT early by dropping HST/HTT. 

Lastly, I think it's important to remember that talents which require more management and thoughtful application, are, in most cases designed to result in a higher top-end payoff than passive talents. Watcher has mentioned this several times, but it bears repeating. CBT is hard to manage and it can be sniped despite your best efforts, but the payoff can be as good if not better than Storm Elemental or HT, if used smartly. Does this mean you should always run with CBT? Absolutely not. Your playstyle might not be conducive to CBT usage, or one fight might not reward it as much as another. (Have I mentioned how great it is on Butcher?!) But should you give CBT a shot? I strongly recommend it. 

Edited December 6, 2014 by Vixsin

[Stoove 347]

If you're trying to make the most of CBT, absolutely get Totemic Persistence. (Stoove is going to snarl at me for saying this). But, when chaos is going on during an encounter, the last thing you want is to be cutting off your HST, or god-forbid, your HTT healing with CBT drops, or triggering CBT early by dropping HST/HTT. 

 

I'm not going to snarl at you just for that! Perhaps Twitter's short-form messages made me seem annoyed about it - sorry.

 

I agree that it's going to be easier to play CBT and Persistence together, but I just like the safety of utility that comes with Projection. Personally, I think that I should be good enough at managing my totems that Persistence's bonus should be minimal (I'm not, but I should learn to be that good.)

 

I guess my attitude is that one should learn to play without Persistence so that if you have to play without it then you're already on top of it. Same goes for CBT vs HT: HT is easier to use and better in some situations, but one should learn to use CBT precisely because it is difficult to take full advantage of. That way, when CBT will be most useful (Butcher), you're already used to using it at peak efficiency.

 

For the record, though, I still think that there's more total potential HPS in High Tide than CBT (see previous blog post) and considering that CBT is harder to use, I think that the totem has been misdesigned... somehow?

[Nalesh 2]

Regal thank you so so much for your post, helped me sooo much you can't believe it!

 

Also thanks @Pandaecho, your Stream really helped me :) 

 

My next raid is tomorrow, I'll give tell you my further experience then

[Regal 21]

Thank you everyone for your replies :) I'm glad I could help.
I did have a question for you Vixsin:

Awesome post, Regal. To add/clarify a couple points  about CBT usage:

• CBT, by definition, has low overhealing, because it chooses from only injured targets when distributing its heal. This is amazing because it means that you can use that smart nature to your advantage (like healing the current Cleave group on Butcher). 
• CBT's heal is centered on you, the shaman, not the totem. So your positioning matters, and you can use it to your advantage to direct CBT's heals where they need to go. 
• (Mentioned above but re-emphazising) CBT synergizes incredibly well with Ascendance. Although Ascendance won't redistribute the healing done by Cloudburst (because it's a totem, the no-totem rule appears to still apply), CBT's redistribution of Restorative Mists means that you're gaining a 240% boost (200% from Restorative Mists x 20% from CBT's heal) on all healing done while the two are active. 
• For raiding in particular, CBT works best in a triage environment, when every little bit counts. It is not going to be effective if you and your healing teammates are tripping over eachother and swimming in mana. It's not going to be effective in dungeons or CMs unless you're letting teammates sit at sub-75% HP. Likewise, the strength of CBT is determined by what you can put into its "collection pool" while its active, which makes it a lot like Ascendance, in that regard.
• If you're trying to make the most of CBT, absolutely get Totemic Persistence. (Stoove is going to snarl at me for saying this). But, when chaos is going on during an encounter, the last thing you want is to be cutting off your HST, or god-forbid, your HTT healing with CBT drops, or triggering CBT early by dropping HST/HTT. 

Lastly, I think it's important to remember that talents which require more management and thoughtful application, are, in most cases designed to result in a higher top-end payoff than passive talents. Watcher has mentioned this several times, but it bears repeating. CBT is hard to manage and it can be sniped despite your best efforts, but the payoff can be as good if not better than Storm Elemental or HT, if used smartly. Does this mean you should always run with CBT? Absolutely not. Your playstyle might not be conducive to CBT usage, or one fight might not reward it as much as another. (Have I mentioned how great it is on Butcher?!) But should you give CBT a shot? I strongly recommend it. 

Are you sure CBT's range is dependent on the caster and not the totem?
I've never really paid close enough attention I guess, but do you have a source that clarifies that?

[Stoove 347]

Thank you everyone for your replies I'm glad I could help.

I did have a question for you Vixsin:

Are you sure CBT's range is dependent on the caster and not the totem?

I've never really paid close enough attention I guess, but do you have a source that clarifies that?

 

I gather Vixsin spent a lot of time on the Beta. When it comes to this kind of thing, usually Vixsin is the source ;)

[Pandacho 286]

Well, I'm going to spend today's raid with Cloudburst totem (+TPersistence+EhoE+UF) and WA string that shows the amount of healing absorbed by CBT. It's planned to be Ko'ragh(N), Kargath(H), The Butcher(H), Tectus(H).

Logs and stream are incoming. More data to compare in the epic battle CBT vs HT ^^

Edited December 7, 2014 by Pandacho

[Stoove 347]

Good luck with your raids! I'll also be raiding, but our guild is still getting into the swing of bigger raids. Normal mode Tectus and Brackenspore await! :)

[Normia 2]

going for hc imperator tonight, hopefully learned some thing about these posts and dont fall behind on healing, tho i think that fight is ideal for CBT since in normal mode at least u could run out of mana so easily, and thats when that skill does show its worth right? :D

 

Well gl for all for raids tonight, may they be plentiful of loots to get, since i wont be atleast getting anything, our raid prios dps getting all loot first, for butcher mythic check :(

[Normia 2]

Sooo, iwe got some hc imperator data for u gyus to chew on :D. And yeah got a little better healing done thanks for advices.

 

But yeah, second last phase is a kill, so much healing required becouse of those 3 arcane novas, even tho if people dont hit those mine, hitting mine is 80% sertain wipe, and eats mana too much from healers so that you dont have on last phase. Also last transition is sick, add aoe and all othert stuff just stack up, we found usin 2 tranqs on these 2 add phases that have actually have adds. tho i didnt get to use my HTT too much, it still did it work, and usin ascendanse drains last of ur mana that u might have on second last phase :D. And yeah as ppl were saying that timing on CBT is important, it truly is, kinda wasted few times it when dropped it few second early for the add that does aoe dmg... all that healing wasted :(. but in the end last 2 phases u will drop it on cooldown :D

 

Also cant really say enough that ranged need to stand on healing rain and druid aoe heals and stuff... if u start healing all that with chain heal, u oom before second last phase.

 

Well those are my thoughts, didnt even down it, but had few nice last phase pulls, but well.

 

And yes didnt even try high tide, couldnt have kept my mana up at all, And i actually did quite well on some pulls.

 

Heres logs, our logger dc:d so comes in 2 pieces.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zVQ6A3Gc1MLj28FB#type=healing

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FP9ytDC7YpgVzxw4#type=healing

[Pandacho 286]

Well, we killed Ko'ragh (N) and Kargath (H) today in 4 healers setup: resto shaman (myself), resto druid, holy priest and holy paladin. On both kills I was on the 1st place on healing with the lowest overheal (92% for Kor'agh and 98% for Kargath in ranks).

 

I changed my talents and glyphs like 5-6 times on Kor'gath until got to what'd work for me.

 

For Ko'ragh (N) it was: 

 

Talents:

Astral Shift - saves your life together with healthstone if you are not fast enough to move from bad stuff.

Windwalk Totem - you really need it here. Drop it to help your raid move out from the Frozen Orb.

Call of the Elements for double use of HST and WwT. Very valuable talent for this fight.

Ancestral Swiftness - well, this +5% to Haste worked for me really nice. I switched to it after 5-6 tries and it was really worth it.

Rushing Streams - a bit of extra healing without pressing buttons.

Elemental Blast - for Spirit buff. I did not have mana issues at all, having Glyph of Riptide and spamming CH. Even did not use a mana pot.

High Tide - raid wide damage was very high, I just have to raid heal all the time.

 

Glyphs:

Glyph of Riptide

Glyph of HST

Glyph of Healing Wave

 

One important thing: do not dispel low HP people - they will just die on dispel. Heal them through.

The rest of my tips for this fight you can see in the 'Resto tips' thread

 

Logs for the kill: 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/69MJBcmqLfzTtAgr#type=healing&fight=15

 

 

Kargath (H):

 

Talents:

1-2 tier: doesn't matter

Totemic Persistence - goes together with Cloudburst totem. So we can use another water totem without killing CBT.

Echo of Elements - for Unleashed Fury+Unleash Life

Rushing Streams - no need for +20% healing from AG and no reason to use Conductivity - the raid is spread out and move constantly

Unleashed Fury - for strong direct heals. There is much more personal damage in this fight, no significant raid AoE.

Cloudburst totem - no need to spam Chain Heals here.

 

Glyphs:

Glyph of Chaining - I wanted to cover all the fight area and did not find any other valuable glyph for this fight
Glyph of HST
Glyph of Healing Wave

 

Pretty easy fight, just normal healing mostly and watching stuff not to stand in ^^.

 

Logs for the kill (4 healers: resto shaman, resto druid, holy priest and holy paladin):

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/69MJBcmqLfzTtAgr#type=healing 

Edited December 7, 2014 by Pandacho

[Pandaids 2]

Pandacho, I really would love talk to you by e-mail ou something...Maybe I`m playing very wrong, because I cant do your numbers...

 

Any advice on spells usage ?? How did you spam CH and do not go oom ??

[Stoove 347]

'fraid my raid night last night was terribad. I've been struggling with massive framedrops in-fight all expansion, to the point where I'm going entire seconds between frames (and on Twin Ogron, that's bad). It's WeakAuras2 causing it, but I don't know why because I'm on the latest version and everyone else isn't having problems. Bleh.

 

Anyway, long and the short is that I won't have any additional info on healing for a week or so (unless you want to know how to guess what's happening in a fight you can barely see...)

[Pandacho 286]

'fraid my raid night last night was terribad. I've been struggling with massive framedrops in-fight all expansion, to the point where I'm going entire seconds between frames (and on Twin Ogron, that's bad). It's WeakAuras2 causing it, but I don't know why because I'm on the latest version and everyone else isn't having problems. Bleh.

I sorted this issue for myself yesterday after 2 weeks of struggling. It was Vuhdo causing huge lag and framedrop every time I was casting Healing Wave. In General Section-->Scanners I had to move my range scaner from 'Spell - Healing Wave' to 'Range - 40 yards'. A miracle - no lag anymore!

And one more thing for everyone who use VuhDo: be sure that you changed the number of HP for your Chain Heal AoE advice in General-->AoE Advice section - it's not SoO and 30K HP anymore.

[Pandacho 286]

Pandacho, I really would love talk to you by e-mail ou something...Maybe I`m playing very wrong, because I cant do your numbers...

 

Any advice on spells usage ?? How did you spam CH and do not go oom ??

You can send me PM here on forum for the start :) And if it's possible, please log out in your healing gear in Armory and link me some fresh logs from your raid.

[Cheze 6]

yeah, I was really hoping the proc shield from the SoO tier two piece bonus would wind up baked into the ability.  ES feels really lackluster compared to other healers' similar abilities.

 

The only fights in highmaul where cloudburst is really realistic are (imo) the butcher and brackenspore; it just takes too much mana to charge it up if you can't rely on a good HR stack to provide relatively cheap throughput.  I got decent results on both those fights by syncing its timer up with butcher's knockback (when you know the whole raid will need healing) and whatever bracken's spore aoe thing is called (heals done to mushrooms help charge it.)  It only really seems to make sense when paired with persistence too; otherwise you can't really use it when you want without sacrificing HST usage.