Topic
Resto Shaman Raid Healing in 10mans.
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Edited by Aquari on 01/04/11 20:30 (BST)
I posted this in the Shaman forums before the website's downtime over the weekend but it was deleted for no apart reason so I am reposting a revised version.
Constructive feedback is welcomed but please read the entire post first. I believe it would greatly help Restoration Shaman in 10man raids if Chain Heal's jump range was increased or if Chain heal was to heal like other classes' AoE heals such that it heals members within 30 yards of the target. In 10man raids Chain Heal is not used a lot due to there being minimal clumping due to the necessity to spread out on most fights where as in 25man you can pretty much guarantee your Chain Heal will jump as least once. My point being chain heal is currently an extremely weak raid heal for 10man partically on the fights listed below due to the inate necessitiy to spread out. * Omnitron with Electron and Magmatron active * Maloriak during Blue Phase * Chimaeron with Finkle's Mixture active * Halfus Wyrmbreaker * Theralion and Valiona with Valiona active (particularly after a Black out) * Ascendent Council * Cho'gall last phase * Al'Akir 8/12 fights (I have not experienced Neferian so I cannot comment for that fight). Take for example, Prayer of Healing, which heals all party members within 30yards of your target. On a fight like Chimearon with Finkle's mixture up. The party members must be at least 6 yards apart inorder to not cleave one another with the poison bombs, this leaves a 24yard error margin for the players to move about in before they fall out of range of the priest's PoH where as a Shaman's CH has a 6.5 yard error margin. That's almost 4x less than PoH. Now in 10man, when you have so much room it is a lot safer to just run to an area where you're clearly safe than to sneak close to someone. This is the why I believe shaman's raid healing is the weakest in 10man. It's not because we don't have the tools or the numbers aren't right; it's simply because the design of Chain heal doesn't suit the new fight designs. As soon as the raid is required to group up allowing us to use those tools we can raid heal perfectly fine. Until that moment we have to result to RT + HW/GHW spam and leave the rest to the other healers which, in my opinion, makes Shaman healer bland and tedious; We do not have to adjust to the situation, we just stick to RT + HW/GHW for most of the fight. Comparisons to other AoE heals: Shaman * Chain Heal (2.5 second cast) - Heals the friendly target for <amount>, then jumps to heal the most injured nearby targets. (currently 12.5 yards jump radius) Druid * Wild Growth (Instant) - Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 30 yards of the target for <amount> over 7 sec. Priest * Prayer of Healing (3 second cast) - A powerful prayer heals the friendly target's party members within 30 yards for <amount> * Circle of Healing (Instant) - Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 30 yards of the target for <amount> Paladin * Light of Dawn (Instant) - Consumes all Holy Power to send a wave of healing energy before you, healing up to 5 of the most injured targets in your party or raid within a 30 yard frontal cone for <amount> per charge of Holy Power. I have left heals out like Healing Rain, Effloresence and Holy Word: Serenity because these are all static HoTs, the raid can easily see where these are and adjust themselves accordingly to be inside the HoT AoE unlike the above spells. |
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Take for example, Prayer of Healing, which heals all party members within 30yards of your target. On a fight like Chimearon with Finkle's mixture up. The party members must be at least 6 yards apart inorder to not cleave one another with the poison bombs, this leaves a 24yard error margin for the players to move about in before they fall out of range of the priest's PoH where as a Shaman's CH has a 6.5 yard error margin. That's almost 4x less than PoH. Now in 10man, when you have so much room it is a lot safer to just run to an area where you're clearly safe than to sneak close to someone. tl;dr The spread outs may be <12yards but that doesn't mean people will stand <12 yards apart when the room is there. |
85 Troll Mage
3360
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I agree with Aquari, and i still wondering why they still haven't change it yet (Chain Heal of course...).
Chain Heal is a lackluster ability right now also in 5 man heroic compared to Druid, Priest and Paladin's aoe healing spells. This is how to fix it in my opinion: 1) Make it istant cast 2) Increase its jumping range to 30 yards from each targets (like all the other healers' aoe spell) 3) Give it a cooldown like 2/3 seconds to compensate the istant cast. This will not be overpowered and will help the Resto Shaman Aoe healing and a better playstyle as well. |
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I wonder if you take your race too much to heart. Chain heal is situational and I believe Blizz has said this is working as intended (correct me if I'm wrong though). If chain heal were instant cast and jumped 30 yards it would be insanely OP (even with a short cooldown - you'd have to double the mana cost to prevent it simply being cast on CD!). For me, part of the joy of playing a resto Shaman is having tools like Chain Heal which are situational but *really* work when used right (I'm thinking particularly of Maloriak's red phase). And, I might add, CH is useable on most fights. You've named 8 fights there but only 3 of them have the fight set up so it's completely unusable! (and even then I'd debate Halfus - it depends on specifics). Chain Heal is situational and should stay that way. |
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tl;dr The spread outs may be <12yards but that doesn't mean people will stand <12 yards apart when the room is there. Then they're just very bad players, and even in my - admittedly very mediocre raiding-wise - guild people can a) spread out and b) never be out of CH range. They do it reflexively, as should everyone who has raided with a Shaman more than 3-4 times. It's just natural to stay as close as possible for GTAE/CH purposes. So basically, while one could argue CH could jump more, bad players would still be bad players. You're fixing the symptom, not the root cause. |
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This. Chain heal is a situational spell and I quite like it as it is. (although I think they should change the spell graphic to fit with our new blue spells) We aren't the greatest raiders in the world, but our guildies are pretty good at making sure they're not too spread apart for chain heal to be worth casting. We're a 10m casual raiding guild with a mix of healing classes and I don't feel that either of our resto shaman are holding back the raid Resto shaman excel at getting people up after a decimate type effect as that's when our mastery is most effective. Healing Stream Totem, Healing Rain and spamming chain heal work really well together in this situation (4.1 mastery will also affect HST which will be great and the new Spirit Link Totem will help distribute those heals even more) |
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Edited by Aquari on 01/04/11 15:43 (BST)
All of our raid heals are exactly that, situational. We have nothing that we can use to put of raid healing regardless of the situation unlike all other healers. Like I said; it all results in RT+HW/GHW spam.
Why should you bring a Resto Shaman over a Priest or Druid who: * Don't force the group to stay clumped as much giving a much bigger room for error * Can raid heal regardless of the situation Mana Tide? The same argument applies to Spirit Link's Range. It ultimately has the same effect as Divine Hymn, brings everyone's health to about the same yet a Priest's Divine Hymn has a 40yard range and our Spirit Link has a 10yard range. |
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Is there any confirmation on this already? As spellhit doesn't affect totems, it stands to reason neither can such things affect HST. |
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Why should you bring a Resto Shaman over a Priest or Druid who: As other have said, if staying widely split is *that* crucial, don't expect a 40yd raidheal to save things. Shaman are fine healers in our own right. If we didn't have chain heal, our ten man healing would still be competitive (as it is right now). Considering our substantially useful mastery, you might ask why you'd want to bring a priest when shaman have this huge healing boost whenever they need it? What, a 40yd raidheal? Even if our raidhealing was a serious problem, making chain heal bounce further wouldn't be the solution. It would take out the character and interest of one of our most distinctive and interesting spells, making playing a resto shammy one step closer to the "just spam chain heal" lolfest that it once was.
And you aren't glad to at least be getting something? Hmm? |
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It works on the PTR - screen shot from someone on totemspot http://standinthebluecircle.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/hst-test-mastery-works.png |
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Edited by Aquari on 01/04/11 17:11 (BST)
Resto Shaman mastery is not that great. It doesn't give it's full value constantly, unlike haste. It's been recently shown on EJ that if you're healing someone from 0% to 100% you only get what's worth 50% of your points in mastery but this is not about mastery; this is the lack of a 10man shaman's raid healing. http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t110263-resto_cataclysm_raiding_discussion/p11/ Even if our raidhealing was a serious problem, making chain heal bounce further wouldn't be the solution. It would take out the character and interest of one of our most distinctive and interesting spells, making playing a resto shammy one step closer to the "just spam chain heal" lolfest that it once was. Our raid healing in 10mans is a problem; we cannot compete with the other classes consistently; only when the group if forced to clump. We have to result RT + HW/GHW in most situations. I'm sorry but I don't see how you can comment highly on our raid healing when you have only 2/12 bosses down on your shaman.
It's going to be almost useless and highly situational in 10man. |
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Compete? Isn't it team work? Our guilds 2 resto shaman aren't holding back our 10m raids. Admittedly we're a semi-casual guild and only have 8/12 as a guild (I'm sitting at 6/12), but quite honestly I don't find that we are in that bad a place and on Chimaeron especially I find it far easier and less stressful than our disc priest does. Personally I love how our mastery kicks in when it is needed most. Let's face it if someone is at 80% health you don't need any extra boost to your heal. |
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Tbh the most frustrating thing about using CH is when some dps like to stand miles away from everyone else because it makes them look really heroic, everytime my CH veers off to a right angle I want to strangle someone
CH is kinda underwhelming if you're going to compare it to stuff like PoH but as others have said, it's still a pretty nice tool in the right situation. Been an AoE healer & tank healer on Halfus HC 10man, most of what made it hard was people standing away from me due to the fireballs/proximity AOE. CH however is still a nice tool on Chimaeron HC 10 when stacked up with rain, stream and other healers AoE heals. |
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Edited by Eudaimonia on 01/04/11 20:46 (BST)
Chain Heal is a very powerful heal in 25 man raids. Buffing it for 10 mans would make it even more powerful for 25 mans. If the bounce range really was made 30y then there would be very little motivation for me to not just CH the MT nonstop the entire fight, since it would simply jump from the tank to the melee to the ranged, smart-healing all the lowest health people. (In fact, you could then just do this most 10m fights as well.)
CH is already 25%+ of my healing in 25 mans (another 25% is healing rain, then 15% is earthliving, and 10-15% is healing stream... and all of these abilities require absolutely zero thought to use), I don't want the few moments where the choice between CH and a single-target heal to disappear completely. |
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Edited by Aquari on 01/04/11 21:07 (BST)
Chain Heal is a very powerful heal in 25 man raids. Buffing it for 10 mans would make it even more powerful for 25 mans. If the bounce range really was made 30y then there would be very little motivation for me to not just CH the MT nonstop the entire fight, since it would simply jump from the tank to the melee to the ranged, smart-healing all the lowest health people. (In fact, you could then just do this most 10m fights as well.) I'm not saying buff the range to 30 yards. I'm trying to highlight the fact that Resto shaman in 10mans have little to none raid healing until the right situation. Where as the other classes do have raid healing. |
Well, I've cleared everything in normal 10m except nefarian (got him to p3 though), and the only fight where shamans have bad raid healing is on Ascendant Council during phase 3. All that moving around and spreading out renders HR completely useless and CH useless except to bounce off the tank and maybe 1-3 melee on average, but that requires that you stay close to them and don't move. It's a really bad phase to be a resto shaman during, especially since it requires very high burst healing relative to the gear you're likely to be using when you get there. But other than that ONE fight it's perfectly possible to utilize Healing Rain effectively, and often possible to get 3 bounces out of CH. Just to comment on your list there - * [1] Omnitron with Electron and Magmatron active [1] Easy to spread out while still able to both hit 4-6+ targets with HR and 4 targets with CH. Worst case scenario, you're not spread out perfectly and the guy with lightning conductor does damage for a tick or two to a couple of people, it's not a big deal even during magmatron aoe. [2] No AoE damage here, so... [3] If you really want to AoE heal here then there's nothing stopping you. The caustic slime has an aoe of 6y, so hitting 4 targets with CH or 6 targets with HR is easily achievable, though personally I just cast tidal waved healing waves and maybe a riptide. Healing Stream totem heals everyone in your group for 3-4.5k in between slimes, and you can easily have earthliving rolling on everyone in the raid if you are so inclined, so resto shamans are one of the best classes here. (In 4.1 healing stream will be affected by mastery too, so with two resto shamans in a group that group would *never need healing* to survive slimes, which is pretty funny, but I digress.) [4] No real need to AoE heal here, except maybe during the shouting, but in any case what little aoe damage there is has a small enough AoE that CH and HR are both perfectly viable. [5] Eh, the aoe you spread out to avoid is only 8y, bouncing CH and using HR is possible, though personally I never seen the need to use either of those heals during that phase. I suppose if you were 2-healing it in mostly blues it would be worth the trouble to have people stay within 12y of one another. [6] Like I've written above, during P3 I very much agree with you, but the rest of the time there is really no need to use AoE heals (though I still throw some around during the shields in p1, for the fun of it - there's barely any healing to do except on Ignacious' tank.) [7] Shamans are perfect for Cho'gall last phase, at least in all the ways I've seen the phase handled. People stack up as much as possible and the boss is positioned such that the stalks all spawn on top of the raid. CH (spammable smart heal) and HR are perfect here, and it's often possible to hit everyone with my HR. [8] During phase 1 AoE healing isn't really practical, and during phase 2 everyone stacks up anyway so shamans are excellent healers for that part. During phase 3 you'd be right though, HR is literally completely useless during P3 (since we can't even cast it...lol) and I don't think I've ever seen CH bounce for me during that phase either. TL;DR yes, shamans have bad raid healing in situations where there is either A - lots of movement, or B - people have to spread out over very large distances (above 12y, which is very large for spreading out), but the rest of the time there's no issue with shaman raid healing, even in 10 man. I suppose if they start designing a lot of fights to work like Asc. Council P3, or (pete forbid) have fights where you can't cast HR, we'd have a serious problem on our hands, but until that raid instance rolls around we're fine in the raid-healing department. Though it WAS really frustrating to raid heal Asc. Council P3 the first couple of weeks. |
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Edited by Aquari on 01/04/11 22:47 (BST)
[1] Electron's Chain Lightning jump range is 8 yards. That's 4.5 yards error margin for people to stand move in; 4.5 yards is tiny. People are probably not going to be able to keep this range between each other. So when Magmatron Incineration Security Measure we have to single target heal whilst all the other healers can just use whatever AoE heal they want because they have a 22 yards margin. And if people are having to kite poison bombs they're probably going to go inside this range.
[2] He does do raid damage; Arcane Storm. Yes this should be interrupted but if one tick does get through we've still got to raid heal. [3] Chimaeron. Right after a massacre and I have to heal my party up to above 10k. That's 5 people. I can't heal 5 people up to above 10k by myself in time by single target healing. RT, HW, HW is 3 people in 4.5 seconds and that's maybe 3 people healed up to above 10k. Where as if I could Chain heal I could heal 4 people up in 2 seconds. The poison bombs have a cleave range of 6 yards. That's 6.5 yards for people to play with. When they're constantly having to run in and out it's highly improbable that they'll be able to keep 6.5 yards apart but it's easy for them to keep 24 yards apart. [4] There's the fire bombs, the breath and possibly shadow nova. People can't stack because of the fire bombs. Again with people running about to be in range of whatever drake they need to be attacking it's a lot easier just for them to find a space, instead of playing with a tiny range to make sure the shammy can cast chain heal. [5] Right after a black out, people have to quickly spread out again to prevent meteorite cleaves. Now when they've just all taken 40k damage. You have to stay 8 yards apart for the meteorites not to cleave. Again 4.5 yards for us to play with. It's a lot safer just to single target heal and let someone else chuck their 30yard heal out once again because people will almost certainly be within 22yards of each other. [6] This is just a horrible fight all around for resto shammies. [7] I meant during his Shadow stance, sorry my error, when he does his big AoE that brings everyone low and there's an add out at the back. You have to spread out to minimize the people getting effected by Shadow Crash. That has a 10yard range. 2.5 yards for us to play with? Again a tiny tiny range. A lot easier if we just single target heal and let another healer deal with the raid damage. [8] You're constantly having to move for Al'akir's phase 2 to adjust to the Squall lines. I guess this is again just a movement issue. [9] I forgot to mentioned Conclave of Wind's Nazir. People have just jumped across and they need to spread out to avoid Ice Patches being place of everyone. These are huge and make Chain heal useless especially with that huge amount of raid damage going out. I conclude; it is ultimately a lot easier to bring another healing class who don't force the raid to play within these tiny margins. |
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My point is that chain heal is unique and useful in the right circumstances. In other circumstances, we have the tools for the job if used well and in conjunction with other healers. You don't gain any points for telling me we're *uncompetitive* when healing is a team job, and furthermore paladins Light of Dawn is just as situational as our Chain Heal is (it's *frontal cone*, man!). To the point where it's rarely used in 10-mans (our main hpally doesn't even have it on his actionbar; he's doing fine).
I think you need to stop worrying about specifics and look at the overall state of shaman healing: good. If you have good, reliable evidence (bear in mind I'm a scientist) that shaman have serious trouble healing in the fights you mentioned (since the previous patch), then I'll happily admit myself wrong and tell you that Chain Heal still isn't the way to fix it. Until then, I'm happy that shaman can keep up with the raidhealing and don't need a change like your proposal. I'm wholesale against the homogenization of healers in this way.
Armoury policing tells you nothing that you need to know about the background and skill of the player, and it's an insult to everybody's intelligence. |
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My point is that chain heal is unique and useful in the right circumstances. In other circumstances, we have the tools for the job if used well and in conjunction with other healers. You don't gain any points for telling me we're *uncompetitive* when healing is a team job, and furthermore paladins Light of Dawn is just as situational as our Chain Heal is (it's *frontal cone*, man!). To the point where it's rarely used in 10-mans (our main hpally doesn't even have it on his actionbar; he's doing fine). The overall state of Resto Shaman for 10man healing is that we are the worse healers. Only excelling on fights like Chimaeron during Feud. With various sources proving this. Surely a scientist would accept mathematical evidence. www.worldoflogs.com http://stateofdps.com/index.php?data=patch_dps&raid=10N&samples=200&spec=healer It's growing increasingly clear to me, every week that I raid that it's pointless for me even to try casting Chain Heal because people are never in range and that I'd benefit the raid more if I were to just let another healer in my place, I feel increasingly useless as we progress and begin to hate the tediousness of RT+HW/GHW for 4 and a half hours. This whole "situational" idea that you seem to be so passionate about is in comparison unfair. Why should we only be allowed to use our raid heal in a few situations when the other healers can use it almost regardless of situation. I'm not saying homogenize all raid heals. I'm saying me give me more chance to use my raid heal and be useful. Before someone comes up saying I'm a bad healer; you can see a months worth of logs below. http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/27176/
It does however tell me your experience with the fights in discussion. I never said you was a bad player just inexperienced with the fights on your shaman. |
