Telluric Currents and healers doing damage - wut ? Part 2.

Back with some more information regarding Telluic Currents on Baleroc (should be Balecockblock) and Majordomo Loothelm and "Ragnaros the healer bencher". 

For Baleroc I switched to my holy paladin (which is pretty much BiS pre Firelands geared) in order to make the fight easier and a kill more likely for us, and putting aside the rustyness I can say that it feels a lot easier to make it work as a holy paladin than a restoration shaman on this fight, and Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath is just immensly powerful whenever something goes south (Ello Tormented). 

Here is a video that I frapsed during our kill 

I have killed Baleroc on hardmode on my shaman, and wih the tactic that we currently are using with the first ranged shard is being soaked by a shadow priest (nom nom stacks) I am usually able to push my stack of Vital Sparks to 50-60 for the first shard with heroism and a rotation being somewhat Riptide - HW HW, UE, Rip, HW HW, HS, Rip, HW HW - Rip, UE and then HS spam with Rip and UE on CD in order to get as many stacks as possible. It does take a chunk of your mana pool, but you have to look at it as an investment because the more stacks the harder your heals will hit and thereby you can use more HWs than GHW in the beginning and thereby saving quite a lot of mana. However, the best advise for that fight is /stopcast and that is honestly the biggest problem for a shaman because a disciplin priest overheal can grant Divine Aegis, holy paladin gives Illuminated Healing and a restoration druid relies on Clearcast procs a long with hots and the current design "wants" the druid to push out significant overhealing whereas a restoration shamans overheal is just completly wasted (beside Riptide).

However, you can find a use for Telluic Currents on this fight whenever you are on the "soakers" there is a little downtime between the spawn of the crystals and there can you throw in a few Lightning Bolts. 

Moving on to Majordomo Staghelm (Loothelm) where we ran 4 healers on the kill (I specced elemental with 23% hit due to no dps avaliable) and with the right tactic we took it within 15pulls. And with the buff you get then Telluic Currents is just retardedly good. Our last kill when I played restoration I gained around 250.000 mana of 32 Lightningbolts which is equal to roughly 7,6k mana pr. Lightning Bolt, and I had a DPS of 4100 (with an active time of almost 60%), however, this boss would be fairly easy to 3 man heal and I wouldn't be surprised if some guilds already is two healing it and a wild guess is that before the next content you will see a restoration druid solo healing it.

For Ragnaros you want Telluic Currents because a) It is hard on your mana, b) Damage comes in "bursts" and whenever you are in the "safe" zone (lol Guys - Taking trap in 3 *BANG* 2  1 * 3 people dead to knock back) there isn't any reason for 4 people to stand and be throwing out heals all the time because the only thing that grants is wasted mana and massive overhealing and less damage, which you can ill afford.

I forgot that I had frapsed a few of our kills from resto shaman pov: 

I haven't frapsed Shannox because it is such a dull fight, and I did only fraps our Baleroc kill on my paladin and Majordomo is me playing elemental, and sucking badly at it.

Telluric Currents and healers doing damage - wut ?

In one of my first posts I talked a bit about "healers doing damage" and how I could see some interesting uses for Telluric Currents, and that was back in the beginning of Cataclysm, but since I changed to a holy paladin just around the time my guild started to progress on hard modes I didn't really get to examine the usages of this spell. However, I am now back playing restoration shaman full-time now and while my guild is slowly progressing through Firelands, I want to give my point of view on Telluric Currents for what encounters it will be useful, and not downright dumb to take the talents. 

This is from my experience with the Hard Mode encounters.

Shannox: Hardly any use and because I am healing the person who is getting raped by Rageface I have very little "free time". 

Lord Rhyolith: At first glance it would be a stupid idea to spec into TC for this encounter because of the damage reduction, and when the damage reduction is reduced you end in a DPS / Healing race. However, you can get quite a lot of the talent if you can communicate with your fellow healers, and here is why: The Spark of Rhyolith (I cannot recall if this is the same on normal, however on HM this does apply) stacks a buff on themselves called "Infernal Rage" and it increases their damage dealt and taken by 10%, and if you can allow yourself to throw in a few Lightning Bolts at +6 stacks you will get quite a lot of mana back. However, I would only suggest this if you got very good communication between the healers. 

Beth'tilac: I am usually upstairs so it is not because I have a lot of time not casting GHW on the tank or CH on the melee crew we got up there, I might add that Riptide is golden there and it just gets better when you get 2-set bonus. However, when we approach phase 2 and she gets down on the ground, perhaps I should add that we run with either 2 or 3 shamans on this fight and it is mainly due to players at our disposal, and we pretty much just keep Riptide in the tank and Healing Rain on CD and then we push as much damage as we can with Fire Elemental and Lightning Bolts / Flame Shock / Lava Burst in order to make the fight as short as possible and thereby less likely for us to wipe. Our first kill was with the three shamans doing between 700.000 to 950.000 damage each which might not seem like a lot, but that is 1500-2000 DPs that we each were able to dish out, and whenever you are progressing on a boss you want to keep your DPs as high as possible, and a shaman in capable of doing so with very little effort and will gain something from it (If you spec into Telluric Currents). 

Alysrazor: Telluric Currents isn't really mandatory because of the "regeneration phase" in which you will be topped off after a few casts, and mana is not really an issue unless your melee plays "HOW MANY BRUSHFIRES CAN I HIT" or "INTERUPT - WUT IS DAT ?". Nonetheless, because of the many targets Hatchling, Meteor and Druids I will strongly recommend to at least try to keep Flame Shock up in the Hatchling and possible Alysrazor whenever she flies by if you got mana for it. 

Baleroc: We are currently progressing and after a 12% wipe the first night I do think that we should be able to kill him with in a raid night, however, it is brutal. Almost constantly spamming GHW to keep people with Tormented up and the tank taking just as much damage (I love whenever our tank dodges / parries the majority of Baleroc's Decimating Blade). This might be after his nerf, however, I will say this - Two restoration shamans is NOT optimal for this encounter, and I cannot say that I have found a use for Telluric Currents here simply because the damage input is so damn high that you cannot just say "All righty guys - I am going to regn." at least not without taking a rather big risk, and penalizing your fellow healers because you had to be a little to aggressive with Healing Surge to get a few more stacks. 

Majordomo Staghelm: I have only had a few wipes on this boss, and haven't really been pass the 70% marker, but with the damage and healing debuff TC might come out quite nifty, but I will make a repost when I know what I am talking about.

Ragnaros: 2-3 Months and you will have an answer ;)

However, to summarize - I do think it is immensely important for healers to squeeze out a little damage if they got mana, and furthermore if it does not jeopardize the tank / themselves or a raid member (DIEEE DKS DIEEEEE), and if you expect a damage dealer to use defensive cool downs / spec into damage reduction talents and optimize spec / gear and gems in order to squeeze out a few more DPs - Then should they not expect you to throw up a Flame Shock, Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Devouring Plague to gain 100 DPs or more ? (Yeah, I know I "forgot" paladins, but they get raped whenever they attempt to do damage with Exorcism)

3/7 Bosses down on HC.

Hard boss is hard, but communication is apparently harder.

So we are slowly progressing through Firelands, and with Lord Rhyolith down within a jiffy of 110+ wipes and a 5 healer tactic, which was because of the fact that we do not have good damage. In fact our kill (When I say our I do mean the guilds since I wasn't present at the kill) with 5 healers was just as long as the majority of guilds who take 6 healers - Now I wonder if that is a DPS problem and what obstackles we will hit in the furture (With this DPS I assume we would only use 2 healers for Baleroc). 

So the next natural step in this fast line of progression would be Beth'tilac HC, which so far around 300 guilds have killed and that mean - We are currently around 100 ranks lower than when this expansion started, and when the goal is to jump 100 ranks up we are now looking at a jump of 200 ranks, but I guess is is beyond our reach currently. 

However, Beth ze fun spider which is a cake walk - Oh wait, it isn't when logic is a city in Mother Russia and speed is a french word. Our Beth tank did in the beginning have massive problems with getting "fast" up to Beth, and we need to him to do that because of two reasons 1) The raid is taking shit loads of damage and that stops when she is meleeing and 2) We need as much DPS on her as possible, however, to illustrate the speed of our tank: I stood next to a "line" and waited 4 seconds before I pressed it believeing that "Hey - The tank should be up now ? Oh wait I am dead due to melee ... FML (At that time the tank still hadn't been able to get up). When the tank got "the hang of it" or at least were able to get up faster the next problem arose in that region.
Our resto druid were mindblowingly slow to get up, and didn't really understand the need for her to get up ASAP after the tank (One man healing 4 melee, the tank and yourself is easy peasy ? Yesh ?).  After 25 wipes she is still the slowest and that is despite the DPS who jumps up are waiting longer and longer, but I guess that the "I MUST HEAL HERP DERP" factor is engaged. This was "just" our problems upstairs. 

Downstairs the RL had assigned three rogues to taking care of the Cinderweb Spiderlings inspite inspite of the wast majority of logs on Worldoflogs is either a) Hunters, b) Hunters + Boomkins, c)Hunters+ Frost DK or a few with d) hunters+frost dk and  rogue. Now, I am not saying that it will work for us, however, there is quite a few problems with using rogues. One is the damage which is lower than hunters, and secondly they have to stand far far out, which will require them to be single healed by one healer, who again will have to stand outside the raid (And thereby the raidhealing) during Beth's Venom Rain - Is that good ? 

Now, we do have a few people frankly "Talking out of their arshes" with ideas, and it is very cute and adorable, but it is also a bloody pain in the rectum, so when a person asked "Why aren't we using the frost DK and the hunter on the adds" Well, he wasn't exactly getting a "positive" respons  - On the contrary infact the response was pretty rough and not at all constructive.

In the end Beth'tilac got bashed to the ground, and it is perhaps the "best" fight for a restoration shaman since our mastery really shines in p2.