torsdag den 19. januar 2012

Restoration shaman guide as of 4.3 - Dragon Soul.

Restoration shaman guide as of 4.3 - Dragon Soul.
I will in this guide cover spec and stats (as seen from my point of view).

Talents:
The "cookie cutter" spec for the vast majority of bosses http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhZfGbMsbcRsd without Improved Cleanse Spirit and the reason for that is the only bosses where the talent is needed is to some extend on Warlord Zon'ozz, Hagara the Stormbinder and Spine of Deathwing. Furthermore, in a 25man environment you should talk to your fellow healers about who loses the least on the encounter by grabbing dispel. However, shamans is usually a strong choice for dispelling since we "mainly" choose to go 1/2 Ancestral Resolve in order to grab Improved Cleanse Spirit, but we still lose 5% damage reduction while casting. Some people still swear allegiance to http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhMZfGbMsbcosd:M for "Ancestral Swiftness", but it is a wasted talent on the vast majority of encounters perhaps except on Hagara depending on your tactic, and I will say that "Telluric Currents" is amazing on Hagara so I wouldn't pick "Ancestral Swiftness" anyway due to Hagara's 100% extra damage taken in which you can gain a substantial amount of mana.

Glyphs:
Prime:  I've been running with "Glyph of Earthliving Weapon", "Glyph of Riptide" and "Glyph of Water Shield" with a chunk of the community going for "Glyph of Earth Shield" instead of "Glyph of Water Shield", but my logic tells me that "Glyph of Water Shield" is overall a better choice and let me elaborate on that: Earth Shield does little overhealing and glyphing it increases its efficiency with is a direct "Healing pr. mana" increase, however, it is an increase on one target plus you will usually have a druid running with "Lifebloom" in him along with a beacon so it does increase your healing ever so slightly, but it just adds more overhealing to your fellow healers. Now, "Glyph of Water Shield" grants me an extra 177mp5 in combat and that does not seem like a massive increase in fact it is 2124 extra mana pr. min.. Nonetheless, since the average fight lasts 5-12minutes it is an additional gain of anywhere from 10kish to 25kish extra mana pr. fight, which on progression fights where your mana is limited can be the GHW or Healing Rain which keeps the tank or a couple of raid members alive the last 5 seconds and making it a kill. What I am trying to say is that "Glyph of Earth Shield" is an increase on one target whereas "Glyph of Water Shield" grants the mana to toss out a heal on the entire raid, and thereby in my eyes being a better choice in terms of mana (Maybe except on "Yor'Sahj the Unsleeping" due to the mechanics of the fight). 

Major: 
There isn't much to discuss about these glyphs go with "Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem" since you will get a minor cooldown for yourself which can be quite beneficial and might save your ass. "Glyph of Chain Heal" if you are doing 25man then it is a must have, and finally "Glyph of Healing Stream Totem". Some might argue "But what about Glyph of Healing Wave?" in short - It is worthless, it might be mana neutral, but check your logs and see how many times you have been casting Healing Wave during the encounter and if it is more than 10 you are doing it wrong and this is why:  It heals for 10-11000 depending on gear, and crits for 21-23000 along with the "Ancestral Awakening" with adds 6-8000, but in the vast majority of cases you will be better of casting a GHW which is 30-35000 hits and 65-80.000 crits, and with our current health pools a Greater Healing Wave will most likely be the best choice in 98,54% of the time if you talk single target heals (Unless you are completely  out of mana) and beside that GHW costs around 3,5 times more mana than a HW it is the way to go. If you consider healing a person from 90-95% HP to full, and the person isn't a tank and it is a low damage phase, just stop and let the passive healing like Healing Rain, Earthliving, Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, Healing Stream do the job and spend your time casting a Lightning Bolt instead.

Stats:
Intellect is king as always since it increases your mana pool, spell power and is making your heals more potent.

Spirit, in Dragon Soul spirit has been my main secondary stat due to I am always in need of more mana since heavy use of GHW, Healing Rain has been required, but also because it also makes your "Mana Tide Totem" give more mana to you, but also to your fellow healers, which always is nice. The "rule of thumb" for spirit is "Did you have mana left the first time you killed the boss? If no when were you oom? At 2, 5 or 10% ? How much overhealing did you do and could you have weaved in a few more Lightning Bolts? If the answers is: No, 10% and no then you need more spirit or using your heals differently, but if you had mana left and it was above 5% then how many people died which you could have saved and how much healing did you do compared to the other healers? About equal, a little behind or several thousand HPs behind? Because there is a lot of factors varying in. As in general you want as much spirit as possible maybe except for a few encounters.

Mastery has been the stat I have stacked, after spirit, since Firelands because it is amazing for progress where mana will be short and people will be smashed below 70% HP quite often. In short it increases your heals HPM when the shit hits the fan and who doesn't love to see the +100.000 GHW crits? And it increases the potency of all your main healing spells like Greater Healing Wave, Chain Heal, Healing Rain, Earthliving and Riptide. In short - You want it !

Haste is from what I see on forums highly overrated at least when you talk heroic mode raiding unless you are massively overgearing the content, and this is why: Haste only affects the cast time on GHW, CH, HR, HW and LB outside the various haste breakpoints, but since HW and GHW usually is cast with Tidal Waves up and Healing Rain is such a short cast anyway it requires a huge amount to get the cast just 0,1 sec down, so basically it "only" buffs Chain Heal and yes, you will be able to cast a Lightning Bolt faster, but it isn't worth building your healing around. Now, I am not saying that haste isn't a good stat, but what I am saying is that outside the breakpoints for Riptide, Earthliving and Healing Rain the increase compared to e.g. mastery is really low.

Crit is from my perspective way to random, I know some people adores it but it is way to random for my taste, and furthermore mastery will yield you a better result and a more average result compared to crit.

In short: Int > spirit > haste (916 (740) or (1268 (1130) with 4-set bonus) > mastery > crit >  haste.

Numbers:
If you are stepping into heroic Dragon Soul I would highly suggest that you aim for 916 haste in order to get an extra tick on earthliving  (780 for goblins) and then go for as much sprit and mastery as possible. However, when you get your 4th piece of t13 I would suggest for at least Ultraxion, Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing that you adjusts your haste.
Breakpoints:
 Healing Rain                          Earthliving                                           Glyphed Riptide:
 % you get an extra tick    % you get an extra tick                  % you get an extra tick   
    10%                                       12,5%                                                         
    30%                                       37,5%                                                          
    50%                                       62,5%                                                50%
                                                                          (Only breakpoint which matters here,
                                                                       since you already got the first covered)

The percentages is unbuffed, but since Heroism / Bloodlust grants you 30% haste and so does "Spiritwalker's Grace" with 4-set you will see around a 20-25% uptime of a given fight, if you use your CD wise, which makes me suggest that when you get t13 4-piece you jump up to 1268 haste (1131 for goblins, leaves me at 50,04% with Bloodlust) (I might be slightly inaccurate by a few rating, but you can test it yourself - If you reach 50% haste with +5% haste from totem and either Heroism / Bloodlust / 4-set bonus running you got it) which means that when you are under the influence of Lust/Hero/Time and 4-piece bonus your Healing Rain and your Riptide will get more ticks, and thereby be "free" extra healing, whenever you need to increase the amount of HPs due to heavy damage phases.


//Any spelling mistakes and horrendous grammar violations is free.

lørdag den 7. januar 2012

Finally - An update.


 There have been rather quiet lately on this blog and it is mainly due to my exam period combined with Christmas and the amount of hours I've been putting into raiding.
However, Christmas has ended, exams done and my shaman has killed Madness of Deathwing on heroic so now I should have a little time to make a post.

How is restoration shaman performing in Dragon Soul, and how much can I whine ?
It is my personal point of view, and despite holy paladins with their "Holy Radiance, Holy Shock, Holy Radiance -> Light of Dawn" playstyle currently dominates every fight if we look at something like www.worldoflogs.com , and yes it is often most beneficial to run with 2 holy paladins, but back on track - restoration shaman. Nonetheless, I must admit that I haven't been progressing on all 8 bosses and I will tell why. 

The day the ban ended I had to hand in an exam paper which meant that I was unable to participate in heroic Morchok, Warlord Zon'ozz and at the time I got home they had already started pulling Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. When those were killed I was asked to go on my druid for Hagara, however, Hagara didn't take long and next and exciting boss was Ultraxion. 
Ultraxion is a fight which I think is quite fun; allow me to elaborate: When we reached him everyone and that meant including healers had to squeeze out as much damage as possible in the beginning before it became a healing race, which is something I usually do, but I like encounters which "requires" it. So we went with 2 x disc, 2 x holy paladins and me as restoration shaman. We spend the rest of the day on it, but our closest attempt was a 2% wipe. So when we made a few changes / optimizations we killed it at the 3rd pull of the next day. 

Next up:  Warmaster Blackhorn on which we started with 8 healers, and I was on my druid, however, when we started to have a rhythm and it became obvious that the issue was damage I was replaced and bam - 15 pulls later it was a kill. 

I also started on my druid at Spine of Deathwing, however, after several times suggesting that I would be more beneficial on my shaman I was finally allowed to log it instead, and beside a shaman can push almost the same HPS as a druid (I will give the druid that ToL + Tranqulity is might good) then Spirit Link Totem is simply godlike on that fight, however, there is also the aspect that the majority of damage is the "Burst" from Corrupted Bloods and with one shaman you can expect 40-50% uptime on Ancestral Fortitude (10% physical damage reduction), but with 2 you will see +90% which is less damage on the raid, and furthermore Ancestral Vigor which becomes increasingly good the longer we get into the fight due to the minus 6% HP that is triggered and stacks. Furthermore, the waste majority of a shamans healing on Spine will be from Healing Rain, Earthliving, Chain Heal and Healing Stream Totem, and when you get further into the fight and the tanks require more attention you are one of the classes which "looses" least in terms of shifting focus while casting the additional Healing Raid. 

This was also one of the reasons why I ended up being dispelbot after our first healer decided to quit, however, this also lead to what I can only describe as retardation beyond recognition. The guy who at the time was "in charge" of the healing aspect of Spine wanted us shamans to spec a spec like this for Spine: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhb0hZZcGbMsdsRsd:boM0mczM in order to push as much DPs as possible on Tendons and it is a very cute idea, however, the blistering idiot hadn't bothered to a) ask us (we already had tried a more DPs orientated spec and dismissed it due to it was nerfing us, and would become a huge issue when we would manage to get past the 2nd Tendon) b) He hadn't bothered to look at the logs and c) He didn't understand jack shit about shamans.
Now, let me tell you why this is retarded: In top 3 of our healing spells on Spine you would find Earthliving, which is why it is a mindblowingly stupid idea to remove Elemental Weapons . His idea was with Elemental Precision to make us reforge our spirit down, which is rather stupid on a fight which last for that long since it nerfes your passive regn, the mana that you + your fellow healers gain from Mana Tide and it relies on that you can slap out Lightning Bolts whenever you want to, which you can't and you gain somewhere like 20-30k damage extra on the Tendons, but you nerf yourself around 5000 HPs + - and in addition you remove the possibility that you will have mana beyond Tendon 1½. We tried to argue, but when people aren't willingly to listen to sense it is a lost battle, not that I do not want to try something new, but when it is so obviously stupid it is just a waste of time. So I called him a blistering idiot and specced to http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhZfGbMsdbRsd , now you might say  "Why aren't you picking Ancestral Awakening" and the answer is quite simple since from that data we had from the previous tries AA was around 1% and since I rarely used GHW due to I was dispelling plus Chain Heal would in 87% of the time be a better choice it wasn't a hard choice. 

However,  with people acting like a bunch of 12 year old girls and the constant bitching from people who were oblivious of the class, but yet still thought they knew everything I decided to take my leave a long with another, whom I also went from my previous guild with, and despite as a healer I was benched for progress due to the commonly known "No one takes a healer if they don't know how he plays" whereas as DPs if your class is good on the fight you are just thrown out in it. So I watched while Spine and Madness achievements popped up, yet I had the joy of killing them the next reset and thereby finishing of Dragon Soul in as a weird way as it had started.