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.

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.

Looking for Raid.

Hey, I heard you liked Looking for Raid ?

An old gem, which was made at the beginning of Cataclysm, and which I think needs to be reposted a few times due to the recent "Looking for Raid (Raid should be "Retards")".

And no, I am not bashing the people who run the LFR, I am throwing the rocks at Blizzard for making a dumbed down version of their bosses. I can see the logic in making LFR so that more people can see the content, but you don't really learn anything from LFR it is "BOSS, KEEL KEEL - Boss dead - SHINIES NOM NOM". You don't learn jack shit from it, and the abilites which your gamedesigners made for the boss is clearly either not presented or they are so weak that you hardly notice them. So basically you get to see the reused animations, some shiney new places or well familiar places with enemies, yay?

I am rather bored since I am banned until the 14th so that is the reason for the QQing.

Amazing:

Funny:

On the LFR ”Exploit”

"Exploit"
So today quite a lot of players from the top tier of guilds noticed that they have had their accounts suspended, and that is including myself.

So what is this “exploit” – Well, since Blizzard didn’t bother to fix the obvious bug, which had been reported nor bothered to fix several bugs e.g. as on the Madness encounter where you still can die from jumping from one platform to another (But you can transmogrify your gear and look like you are in t2, t6 or whatever floats your boat ! IMPORTANT STUFF).

The “exploit” was confirmed by US guilds on patch day, which would be Tuesday and all the other European people started to do it as well when it was made obvious. Now, why ? Gear, it is as simple as that since some of the set-bonuses is quite good and despite being lower item level the bonus can make up for it.
It might be claimed that it would be obvious that it was unintentional and that we therefore should have restrained ourselves from doing it, sure, it is a great argument, but since there isn’t any “standards” regarding what is considered an “exploit”, and furthermore Nefarian, Atramedes and countless other bosses and instances have had bugs or exploits which have been far, far more abused. So the question is; Why now ? And 8 days ?

Why now? No clue, someone seems to have gone bonkers going “Es will nicht stand, Es war ein Befahlüng” (Or whatever). Furthermore, 8 days ? If the amount of days is correct it will be 5 days more than any previous bans, not counting permanent bans. And, it will give those guild a severe disadvantage in regards to world firsts due to the lack of one resets loot and valor points, and this might not seem like a big deal, but the first few heroic loots a long with valor point loot which currently will be some decent upgrades along the fact that they will have more tries and time to test tactics.

Now, why am I whining if it is my own fault ? Well, because I don’t think it is and this is for a number of reasons. First being – I am paying Blizzard for a service (World of Warcraft) and I expect to not encounter severe bugs (Hello random deaths while jumping from platform to platform at Madness of Deathwing). If I go to the baker and buy bread I do expect it to be fully baked and not be dough, unless it is what I specific want. Furthermore, Blizzard is gaining quite a lot of feedback and data from top50 guilds playing on PTR, and basically testing their stuff for free. Sure, you may argue that you juts could walk away and just try the encounter when it is released at the live server, but then again if you want to be competitive, well, I guess you get the idea.

I must admit I do really regret I signed up for the mount and a Diablo 3 beta key for as I see this level of customer service, mainly the bit in their mail that it is not up to discussion and in fact any inquires will be met with the same response. So I am getting banned for something you failed to fix before the release, and when you found out you then decided to wait several days before taking action, wow – really? Fucking pieces of shit. I remember back in Classic and The Burning Crusade that e.g. whenever the servers weren’t up according to the time plan you would be “refunded” in game time. Those days are long gone, and it looks like the preferred way of dealing with things is banning instead of taking responsibility for your own inability to release a product which is finished. What is it that companies usually do when their product isn’t finished? Oh, yeah they postpone it.

4.3 This week.

4.3 This week ! 

New content to smash and changes to a lot of classes, which can be found here: Right here

However, the most interesting for my part is those which I already have covered.

a) Shaman: Riptide buff and a unique buff with Ancestral Fortitude, which will be refreshed by CH, HW, GHW, HS, HR, Riptide, UE so if you keep your Riptide running on a tank, like you would do before, you give him 15-20k extra HP.

b) Druid: WG has been nerfed by 20% which is quite a bit and it should bring druids a little down from their "über" HPs. Nonetheless, druids are still very potent healers - Best mobility while keeping an impressive throughput - Tree of Life as an "oh shit" + Tranquility is still amazingly good. And with increased mana pools you will be moving closer and closer to WOLTK Rej spam style.

c) Paladin: Biggest change - Holy Radiance, which now makes them some wannabe raid healers. Furthermore, their Judgement was changed so it doesn't give mana back pr. judgement, which I think might become an issue further down the line, but for every paladin who thought it was hard to press the button more than once every minute I guess it is a welcomed change.

d) Priests: Attonment gets usable at big bosses like Al'Akir and Ragnaros, which I think is good because I think it is a fun spec to play. Holy gets Divine Hymn buffed equal to Tranquility so it now becomes worth using, and there is some addition buffs.

I look forward to progressing through new content !

Music:

Getting ready for Dragon Soul and 4.3

Getting ready for Dragon Soul and 4.3
There hasn't been a lot of activity on this blog for a while and that is mainly due to no content, and that I cba. to write about Mist of Pandarian and the changes which is coming. This is due to I am mainly focusing on Dragon Soul and by that I mean the joy of PTR, and the late hours that it gives you. Furthermore, since we are down to raiding 1 day a week I am trying to get ahead with my studies, and the exams which of course hits in December, and simply to attempt to get a better grade (and trying that "Not doing it in last minute" style I have been running the majority of my life).

Preparing for Dragon Soul.

Beside late night PTR and the "fun" it gives then I have been stocking up on pots, elixirs, flasks and food which didn't really take long. My shaman is standing in BiS (I do not have cloak from Alysrazor, however, I do not see that as bit for a lot of fights), my druid which is missing Shard of Woe (I feel like a baws when 24 people is forced to run BoT), Alysrazor Cloak and a Firestone and I should be good to go Rejuv spam style, and my former main, my paladin, is missing a few pieces here and there, but with almost every healer having a paladin as 1st alt and a few main paladins I don't really see it as a possibility that I will be playing that.

Nonetheless, I have found time to level a priest (Yes, I do have a priest on my old server, but since it is only 370 ilvl I simply didn't think it was worth spending 20+ 25 Euros on transfer and faction change (On a side note -Why the hell is Faction Change so damn expensive?). So I started level a priest and it dinged the 22th of November and the 25th I had one or two pieces which could be called an upgrade from ZA/ZG, and I am running around with ilvl357. I am mainly playing Disc on it while being specced into attonement which is just bonkers, honestly PW:S on the tank, Holy Fire and Smite heals for 12-25k (This is with Luck of the Draw buff, but rarely with +10% spl.) and that is almost sufficient to keep the tank alive, however, when DPS plays like retards (Which they will since I am pugging) 5 x PW:S and GHW spam is not enough, I mean there is just some mechanics you cannot heal through and as I usually say "I cannot heal stupid".
But back on track, I have stocked up on pots and so on ingame but I have also been stocking up with food since I guess my time will be Exam, WoW, Sleep more or less.
That will be all, sorry for it being a small post which didn't really say much. 

Experience from PTR, and how I see the changes to shamans in 4.3.

I have been playing around on PTR both with my shaman and druid (Yes, I got a resto druid as well – rej rej wg), but also the majority of bosses 10 normal / heroic – 25man normal / heroic (Not that I have tested all on every difficulty). So what is my experience so far? And is the QQ on forums in regards to resto shamans for 4.3 justified?

So far I think the changes to resto shamans looks rather promising, and I believe that it will be mandatory to run with a resto shaman for Ancestral Vigor on tanks (Stack the buff up before combat, and just keep a Riptide running = It will be kept up, and the buff gets refreshed / stacks with healing from other resto shamans).

Since I am mainly raiding 25man heroic I will make that the focus of my experiences:
 

Morchock: We ran with 6 healers (tried different combos 2 x hpala, 2 x hpriest 2x rdruid or 2x rshaman and I played both shaman and druid) . I started on my shaman, but since I was asked to help soaking crystals my HPs was suffering quite badly and despite Spiritwalker’s Grace (yay!). It is quite doable as a resto druid and you will spark out quite decent looking HPs + Treeform is very, very potent. However, when we tried 2 x rshaman instead of 2 x rdruid, and changed that healers were no longer soaking it was far more stable (As stable as playing with 2-300 ms can be). I want to point out a few things in regards to shamans a) Since you got a timer on stomp you can time a GHW on the tank = It is required because the boss hits like a truck, and if you can place HR smart (As in the run patch from orb to orb (ofc. Covering the lastest on your side) you will notice it becomes quite a lot easier. In the transition you are able to cast some LBs if you position yourself smart, however, if you are on soaking duty I will suggest speccing into imp. Ghost Wolf.

Yor'sahj: The fight seems a little overtuned (I have only tried as resto druid), and while ”learning” to bad comboes (red + green will rape you) and the hate for purple (You are able to cast hots before the buff ”comes” up and it is quite vital to throw out a few Rejs. before the buff is “reapplied”, however, ONLY if people got less than 4 stacks or else you will just wipe the raid so WG in that phase is a no go)
Nonethelss, I suspect that the shaman will be quite nifty if we went for a heavy mastery build.

Warlord Zon’ozz:

Bouncing isn’t really that much of a problem, however, making people move / dispelling them before they take an retarded amount of damage seems to be the biggest issue (and people not running in the same direction) in phase1. However, things changes in phase2 and the fights changes from “ladi da” to “AAAAAARRRRGH ALL COOLDOWNS NAUW!”. It seems slightly overtuned or we did a very poor job in reducing the damage taken since we only lasted roughly 90-120 seconds (That was with 2 x druids + Tranq and a shitload of cooldowns). It does look like a fun fight tbh., but all it takes is for one person being too slow to get out or a healer being trigger happy in regards to dispelling and BOOOOOOM.

Hagara: I do like the mechanics of this fight, allthough I have only done it in 10man heroic, phase 1 is pretty straight forward occasionally burst damage on the tanks, icecubes and frost damage which ranged should help soak to avoid melee dying like the small bithces they are.
Transition Storm: In one way I think it is a shame that they removed some of the lightning rods, but on the other side it was a nightmare with pets triggering the buff and pretty much making it unhealable.
Transtion Frost: Run run run, put some damage on the cubs and dispel people (Freedom works like a charm here). People might say that Imp. Ghost wolf is required, and in some way it does make it easier, however, Telluric Currents got more potential from my point of view. Since on 25man with druid roar, and the possibility that you can just jump into the blue circle – take the 20-25k damage and jump back to the outer ring when the spike has passed. It is really not that complicated (When they suddenly nerfed the speed of the spike during the fight we had 4 people running into the spike due to it being slower :] ). After each transition Hargara will take 100% extra damage, and this is where you want to hit your Lightninbolt. I gained 150k mana when we downed him @ 10man from these transitions, I say TC > Imp. Ghost wolf for that fight.

Ultraxion: PTR with 2-300 ms while trying to push your HPs lead to some stupid deaths (a few by meself). We ran with 2 resto shamans, and this is where Ancestral Vigor really shines, and why is that you might ask ? A) The aoe is quite high, people who needs to soak comes out with 10k more HP which is quite nifty, and you will be able to keep it up very very close to a 100% with 2 x resto shamans with 2 x HR and CH + Riptide spam (However, it is a little hard on your mana, and with A) The aoe is quite high, people who needs to soak comes out with 10k more HP which is quite nifty, and you will be able to keep it up very very close to a 100% with 2 x resto shamans with 2 x HR and CH + Riptide spam (However, it is a little hard on your mana, and with our WS proccing more often than on Beth’ well – you got enough buttons to push).

I am going to stop here in regards to the fights since I don’t want to hand out too many free hints, and then address the second part.

Is the QQ on forums regarding shamans for 4.3 justified ?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Oh hell no, with Ancestral Vigor most guild will want to bring a restoration shaman for 4.3 due to the extra HP on tanks (Anyone saying – Ah it is a gimmick and not worth it , well here is a question – Do you ask your priests to buff Fortitude, if yes – stfu. If no – Go play “Hello Kitty”.

The buff to Riptide is decent, however, since you will be using Riptide to keep Vigor running on 1-2 tanks quite a lot of it will be overhealing, but then again so would it be if you threw it on a raid member anyway.
Furthermore, since a big chunk of the fights is “gather and heal” we are in a very good spot. There will of course be fights that favor one class or the other, but it has always been so the only difference is that we now are applying more heavily for a raidspot.