Chuggin' along, healing heroics, flailing with limited success at raid bosses (Nomnomtron still refuse to fall over).
There's a lot of moaning about on the various fora concerning how hard this expansion is on healers. I think I've made my stance pretty clear on that (it isn't really, assuming your group can collectively outwit a catfish), but as I recently got my druid to 85 and started healing the odd normal dungeon to gear up for heroics I realised one other large factor that may be influencing my position.
My main, being a shaman, has many more tools to help out of the group is less than stellar; short cooldown interrupt, offensive purge, and a potentially long-duration CC (taking this opportunity to once again say how much I hate that I'm forced into enhancement subspec, making these utilities less reliable than I'd like). Add some totems that sometimes help (earthbind, grounding), and I'm actually pretty confident of my ability to cover for DPS or tanks that may lack in several departments. There are limits, of course, but just being able to take up a little bit of the slack helps immensely whilst pugging.
Of course, I don't have the priestly ability to move people out of fire, but such is life.
Now, I consider my resto druid. Being able to remove poisons is a lovely thing, and cyclone and roots are useful in a pinch. But that's basically the extent of the utility provided. Now if I end up with a group of marginal window-lickers, all I can do is heal through the uninterrupted spells/undispelled mob buffs/un-CC'd caster mobs setting fire to my face from afar...
Oh, and battle res. My experience with this from an outsider perspective is that it gets used to raise a DPS in the middle of a raid boss fight, therefore preventing me from reincarnating later when I take a fire bath.
Basically, I feel that I lack tools as a druid. All I can do is heal, and I'm not even convinced I enjoy that under the new healing regime. The joyous mobility of druid healing now comes with a hefty mana price-tag, whilst simultaneously punishing the use of any cast-time heals on a target without a HoT thanks to the mastery. Synergy: you are doing it wrong.
Underlying all this is the nagging suspicion that neither healing spec is actually that great when it comes to raw throughput. However, I'm absolutely positive that my (in)competence and gear are far larger factors in determining success right now. By the time such theoretical concerns as maximum sustainable throughput become significant, things will be patched to Hades and back.
Taking a positive stance, kitty is still lots of fun. Mmm, bleeds.
Showing posts with label resto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resto. Show all posts
Monday, 24 January 2011
Monday, 12 April 2010
Deep Healing
Right. So! The meat of the shaman Cataclysm preview has been discussed extensively and with much insight elsewhere. I'm (cautiously) excited; Spiritwalker's Grace, Healing Rain and Unleash Weapon have me all tingly, and Spirit Link making a potential comeback is... nom. Tank assisting cooldown for shaman, maybe?
But on topic, here's our third mastery:
And after a bit of digging on WoWWiki, here's Eyonix on the mastery stuff in general:
The important thing here is that shaman will always have some Mastery Rating from wearing mail (assuming you're wearing at least some and not pinching priest/tree gear exclusively, you naughty shaman), but that otherwise we should have some flexibility with regards to how much we acquire. Assembling a Mastery Rating-less gear set will probably be tricky or impossible (especially for ten-man raiders, assuming the current second-class citizen status obtains in Cataclysm), but with luck there will be adequate wiggle room that we can exchange most of our MR for additional haste, crit or spirit.
I really quite like the concept of Deep Healing. In a world where people don't have near-binary health, it plays into healing in ways I enjoy. 'Saving the day' with a massive heal on low-health targets is a nice feeling, and with Healing Rain and a bit of Chain Heal spam I can see our throughput being potentially monstrous after heavy raid damage. It'll help on tank healing, too, assuming tanks will not spend much time at 100% health.
One key thing is that it makes recovering from a bad health situation something shaman are intrinsically good at. I like this. I pick up Healing Focus today not because it helps when things go smoothly (it's generally useless then) but because it sometimes assists in turning around a raid when things go pear-shaped, and the mastery bonus seems to speak to the same philosophy.
It also discourages topping off of people who are not in danger. This is a good thing, to my mind. Let the HoTs and random smart heals do that, and not only will you save mana (I hear it matters in this crazy world, or something) but your heals will land for more when you do decide to heal someone. Bumping someone up from 95% will feel less satisfying than a beefier heal on someone who needs it more, and this kind of psychological feedback may be significant in mitigating the culture shock of returning to triage and mana management as constant parts of the healing play style.
All this said, who knows if Mastery Rating will be 'worth it'. Deep Healing is optimising for the worst case, which is not a place most theorycraft is done. Picking up additional crit or haste provides extra throughput all the time, and these ratings are supposedly going to be much harder to cap for all specs. Mana regen in general is going to be savaged; most or all spirit-boosting buffs are going away, including the current MP5 counterparts. Replenishment is being nerfed. The five second rule is going to be dead, replaced with in-combat and out-of-combat regen rates according to rumour... maybe stacking spirit and intellect will be vital. Can we even gem for Mastery Rating?
I'd like to hope it'll be an interesting choice. I love my current haste > all setup because it feels more responsive and fun to play. Bigger heals on nearly-dead folk doesn't appeal as much on a moment-to-moment level, compared to crazyfast casting. With other healers and the intrinsic randomness of raid damage, it's a factor beyond our control much like critical heals are, but it's also a reliable throughput increase when needed which crits are most certainly not, individually.
Like everyone else, I await details and numbers with bated breath. But so far, I'm voting 'maybe' to our Mastery.
But on topic, here's our third mastery:
"Deep Healing: Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points."
And after a bit of digging on WoWWiki, here's Eyonix on the mastery stuff in general:
"The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear."
The important thing here is that shaman will always have some Mastery Rating from wearing mail (assuming you're wearing at least some and not pinching priest/tree gear exclusively, you naughty shaman), but that otherwise we should have some flexibility with regards to how much we acquire. Assembling a Mastery Rating-less gear set will probably be tricky or impossible (especially for ten-man raiders, assuming the current second-class citizen status obtains in Cataclysm), but with luck there will be adequate wiggle room that we can exchange most of our MR for additional haste, crit or spirit.
I really quite like the concept of Deep Healing. In a world where people don't have near-binary health, it plays into healing in ways I enjoy. 'Saving the day' with a massive heal on low-health targets is a nice feeling, and with Healing Rain and a bit of Chain Heal spam I can see our throughput being potentially monstrous after heavy raid damage. It'll help on tank healing, too, assuming tanks will not spend much time at 100% health.
One key thing is that it makes recovering from a bad health situation something shaman are intrinsically good at. I like this. I pick up Healing Focus today not because it helps when things go smoothly (it's generally useless then) but because it sometimes assists in turning around a raid when things go pear-shaped, and the mastery bonus seems to speak to the same philosophy.
It also discourages topping off of people who are not in danger. This is a good thing, to my mind. Let the HoTs and random smart heals do that, and not only will you save mana (I hear it matters in this crazy world, or something) but your heals will land for more when you do decide to heal someone. Bumping someone up from 95% will feel less satisfying than a beefier heal on someone who needs it more, and this kind of psychological feedback may be significant in mitigating the culture shock of returning to triage and mana management as constant parts of the healing play style.
All this said, who knows if Mastery Rating will be 'worth it'. Deep Healing is optimising for the worst case, which is not a place most theorycraft is done. Picking up additional crit or haste provides extra throughput all the time, and these ratings are supposedly going to be much harder to cap for all specs. Mana regen in general is going to be savaged; most or all spirit-boosting buffs are going away, including the current MP5 counterparts. Replenishment is being nerfed. The five second rule is going to be dead, replaced with in-combat and out-of-combat regen rates according to rumour... maybe stacking spirit and intellect will be vital. Can we even gem for Mastery Rating?
I'd like to hope it'll be an interesting choice. I love my current haste > all setup because it feels more responsive and fun to play. Bigger heals on nearly-dead folk doesn't appeal as much on a moment-to-moment level, compared to crazyfast casting. With other healers and the intrinsic randomness of raid damage, it's a factor beyond our control much like critical heals are, but it's also a reliable throughput increase when needed which crits are most certainly not, individually.
Like everyone else, I await details and numbers with bated breath. But so far, I'm voting 'maybe' to our Mastery.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Only Several Months Late
I kind of got sucked into reading far too many healing blogs recently (I stumbled upon Tamarind being awesome somewhere on the internet and it spiralled out of control), and whilst reading backlogs found this questionnaire dealy. From October last year, making it least thirty seven years old in internet terms. Not one to be deterred by mere complete irrelevance, and more importantly finding both the questions and several sets of answers rather intriguing, I'm going to fill it out now. I will avoid impertinently tapping any other bloggers with this necro-not-a-meme.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Oomjin, shaman, restoration.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Ten-man raids, normal and occasionally hard modes. Elemental for PvP, pew-pew!
What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
This was actually really hard to answer because I honestly have a lot of love for every healing spell, but equally they all have downsides. Except one, of course, and when I realised this it took me by surprise.
Earth Shield.
Sure, it may look like a tiny malignant flying dung-golem orbiting the tank, it's not at the top of my healing breakdown, it's not flashy in any way. It's just there, easy to keep up, buffering the hits, being amazingly time- and mana-efficient for me. I heart poopshield.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Hmm. Tricky. I probably mis-time Mana Tide a lot more than I should, that's an area I'm trying to improve on. But recently I don't think I've been giving the practically-synonymous-with-shaman Chain Heal enough of an outing. It just feels slow right now, but it is amazing when used correctly.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Given my predilection for smaller raids, it has to be the versatility. I can raid heal, or keep a tank up, or share those duties. I can fling out fast, efficient heals to scattered damage across the raid, bomb a single target with (relatively) high throughput big heals, or keep a cluster of people alive with my bouncing love-beams. I can deal with a few nasty debuffs either directly or via totems. I can also help offensively dispel, ground or interrupt, albeit unreliably. This last can be very helpful, especially on trash/5-mans or when the assigned interrupt monkey elects to take a dirt nap. On fire.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Two things frequently bite me. The first is movement. In common with paladins, we don't have many options on the hoof - Riptide and maybe a Nature's Swiftness, and perhaps hoping Earth Shield will crit. On the whole, though annoying, it's not a huge deal on most fights.
More generally, the lack of an external mitigation cooldown for tanks (or DPS that do reaaaally silly things occasionally). Shaman provide many things, but our mitigation is very low key and entirely passive - Stoneskin Totem and the 10% physical damage reduction from Ancestral Healing. I'm far from unhappy with the tools we have, but I couldn't help but sigh wistfully when reading OS+3 strategies from the mists of prehistory and seeing constant mention of Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Divine Sacrifice (avec bubble, naturally). Being able to do something about damage before it even arrives is a powerful tool, so hug a disc priest for their mastery.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
I dislike 25 man raiding in the extreme. My laptop is slow and creaky, everything takes longer, the sense of personal responsibility and investment feels lower to me, and (because any 25 mans I do invariably involve a lot of pugging) there's a far greater chance of running into rampant douchebags.
I also dislike healing assignments. I like healing people I know, with other healers I know, where we just Do What Needs Doing. Being told to babysit a given person/group doesn't sit well with me, and those (thankfully rare) healers that absolve responsibility for anything other than their assignment and let wipes happen whilst overhealing their targets mindlessly... well. Less said the better.
That said, I'm a loot whore. I've pugged a fair number of TotC-25 groups in the recent past (Solace never even dropped, let alone had the basic decency to fall into my grubby troll-paws). I'm happiest when stuck on the raid, and end up just healing whoever needs it.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Until Icecrown rolled around, our healing team was essentially me and a holy priest. Seems to work well, and I can't wait to get back to two-healing everything once the fights are familiar enough to do so (three healers is cheating, somehow). That's probably more to do with healing styles and habits though. My most successful TotGC attempt was with pug, where my healing partner was an awesome disc priest. Some of our Ulduar hard modes were with a tree.
Mechanically, the answer has to be restoration druids. They complement my relatively immobile healing perfectly, have enormous healing output, and all the health bars sloooow riiiight doooown. Perfect for dumping those big ol' chain heals where they're needed without the painful internal process of "that person is very low on health, they may die before chain heal lands and waste the entire cast, but there's too much of an overall health deficit to waste a GCD on riptide argh argh argh I'll target someone else and hope it bounces argh argh they're dead and I'm terrible"
But really, it's more about the player than the class. Healing is healing, the colour of the name in Grid is largely irrelevant if your healing styles are complementary.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Resto shaman. Some I know well and are awesome, but in pugs I always seem to end up with people overwriting my poopshields (you said you'd shield the other tank, argh!), dropping a talented Mana Spring even though I spent ages begging for a Blessing of Wisdom off the retadin so we can drop the cleansing/healing/resistance totems preferable to the fight mechanics, dropping non-stacking redundant totems despite carefully arranging against this before the pull... I just don't think most shaman spend long enough working with other shaman, especially of the same spec. Maybe I'm unlucky. We don't stack particularly brilliantly, although at least we don't have Weakened Soul to contend with. /comfort the bubblers.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
I have many bad healing habits. Needlessly overwriting Riptide HoTs, or bouncing Chain Heals through fresh riptides when there are equally viable targets nearby, is something I'm trying to improve on currently.
But my worst habit is flinging a sad, non-bouncy Chain Heal out to some lonely soul on the fringe of the raid. It happens a lot when I'm not thinking. Having it fail to bounce because all the nearby damage was mopped up by other healers whilst casting is acceptable (still makes me wince) but my heal-beams grounding on a mage I knew was miles away from anyone else is dumb, dumb, dumb.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
"FFS I NED HEELZ!" Is, thankfully, becoming rarer even in pugs these days. My current largest complain would probably have to be... people not helping dispel. Some healers need to learn to do more than just heal. /grump
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Yup. Although I'm sloooowly levelling healers of the other classes, I love my shammies.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
World of Logs is very good for in-depth analysis, especially over multi-phase or particularly heterogeneous fights where an overall average HPS figure isn't as useful. I do use recount to compare my performance over time (eHPS and overhealing, basically) especially after picking up significant upgrades or changing my gearing strategy, or on repeated wipes to see if I'm dishing out more healing or getting relatively worse as the night wears on. At the end of the day the various different assignments, gear, talents and strategy tend to render comparisons between healers a bit meaningless.
I also take deaths - any deaths - as a sign I'm doing something wrong. Even if it was a DPS doing something really stupid involving fire or cleaving mobs, if it wasn't a one-shot I could have done something. Often stupid to think so, but whatever. No wipes, no deaths is my primary success metric. If that's the case, I work on reducing the number of times my 'ohshit' macro comes out during a fight. And once that's been minimised... the place is probably on farm and uninteresting.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Probably the "faceroll brain heal" thing. Chain Heal is very good indeed, but if that's all you use you're doin it rong. A shaman's various heals are all lovely, use them.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Totems, totems, totems. As resto, there's less to track and a lower chance of the dreaded Totem Pull than an enhancement shammy, but you still have to deal with the things. Making sure the appropriate ones are down and covering enough of the raid, pre-emptively placing tremor and cleansing if needed, avoiding excess redundancy with other shaman/similar buffs.
If you're already used to managing our buffsticks, the only other complication might be managing the Tidal Waves effect. It's absolutely key to a lot of fun shaman healing.
If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Of course it varies by fight, but generally a fairly hefty raw output and mid-to-large overhealing. I don't worry too much about the latter unless I'm actively trying to improve my time-to-OoM.
Haste or Crit and why?
Haste all the way! Shaman get a fair whack of base crit from talents, a crit-increasing cooldown, and extra crit on Lesser Healing Wave from the Tidal Waves buff. But until I get under the GCD cap, I can never have enough haste. In particular the enormous cast time on Chain Heal means it benefits wonderfully from haste stacking, but quite weakly from crit.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Priests, of either spec. I swear there're just too many options there. PoM, PW:S, Renew, CoH, PoH, the Hymns, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Holy Nova, Penance... I've probably missed a load. Anyway, they confuse me deeply with all those heals. I've no idea where most of them come from, how they interact, or when you'd use them.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid (with the HoT and raid debuff addons) and Clique are my main standbys. I have a macro for activating Nature's Swiftness and Tidal Force together with any on-use trinkets (but no healing spell inside the macro - I do that bit manually afterwards. Sometimes an instant Chain Heal is just what the raid-doctor ordered).
Oh, and of course a macro for "/y I have a snobold on mah face!". It doesn't actually work in ToC pugs, but I feel better for using it.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Haste all the way! Drawing close to 1k now, so just a few hundred more to find from somewhere and I'll be the happiest healspammer there ever was. Although I do tend to pick up socket bonuses (more often than I should) with Haste/SP and Haste/MP5 gems, the first question I ask of a potential upgrade is "How much haste do I gain? /dribble".
I value crit and MP5 about equally and try to acquire options with both as additional stats (after HasteHasteHasteHaste) for all sensible gear slots so I can tweak throughput and longevity for more tricky fights (such as when the raid includes no replenishment /sadface). The haste/crit gear has the advantage that it'll also be more useful if I ever change my dual spec back to PvE Elemental.
Haste is delicious. Have I mentioned haste yet?
Spellpower seems to convert almost directly to overhealing at this gear level so I don't feel the need to gem for it, likewise crits are often overheal (although talents provide some nice benefits from a crit regardless). But I have yet to complain about a heal landing earlier or being able to spam faster when things go wrong. Sensible use of Mana Tide, potions, and maybe a whinge for an Innervate from one of our friendly laser chickens are generally enough to avoid going OoM on a given fight with my current haste-to-excess gearing, but it is getting closer in Icecrown. Maybe I'll start picking up some intellect gems after I get my Lesser Healing Waves down to the mystical one second.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Oomjin, shaman, restoration.
What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Ten-man raids, normal and occasionally hard modes. Elemental for PvP, pew-pew!
What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
This was actually really hard to answer because I honestly have a lot of love for every healing spell, but equally they all have downsides. Except one, of course, and when I realised this it took me by surprise.
Earth Shield.
Sure, it may look like a tiny malignant flying dung-golem orbiting the tank, it's not at the top of my healing breakdown, it's not flashy in any way. It's just there, easy to keep up, buffering the hits, being amazingly time- and mana-efficient for me. I heart poopshield.
What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Hmm. Tricky. I probably mis-time Mana Tide a lot more than I should, that's an area I'm trying to improve on. But recently I don't think I've been giving the practically-synonymous-with-shaman Chain Heal enough of an outing. It just feels slow right now, but it is amazing when used correctly.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Given my predilection for smaller raids, it has to be the versatility. I can raid heal, or keep a tank up, or share those duties. I can fling out fast, efficient heals to scattered damage across the raid, bomb a single target with (relatively) high throughput big heals, or keep a cluster of people alive with my bouncing love-beams. I can deal with a few nasty debuffs either directly or via totems. I can also help offensively dispel, ground or interrupt, albeit unreliably. This last can be very helpful, especially on trash/5-mans or when the assigned interrupt monkey elects to take a dirt nap. On fire.
What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
Two things frequently bite me. The first is movement. In common with paladins, we don't have many options on the hoof - Riptide and maybe a Nature's Swiftness, and perhaps hoping Earth Shield will crit. On the whole, though annoying, it's not a huge deal on most fights.
More generally, the lack of an external mitigation cooldown for tanks (or DPS that do reaaaally silly things occasionally). Shaman provide many things, but our mitigation is very low key and entirely passive - Stoneskin Totem and the 10% physical damage reduction from Ancestral Healing. I'm far from unhappy with the tools we have, but I couldn't help but sigh wistfully when reading OS+3 strategies from the mists of prehistory and seeing constant mention of Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Divine Sacrifice (avec bubble, naturally). Being able to do something about damage before it even arrives is a powerful tool, so hug a disc priest for their mastery.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
I dislike 25 man raiding in the extreme. My laptop is slow and creaky, everything takes longer, the sense of personal responsibility and investment feels lower to me, and (because any 25 mans I do invariably involve a lot of pugging) there's a far greater chance of running into rampant douchebags.
I also dislike healing assignments. I like healing people I know, with other healers I know, where we just Do What Needs Doing. Being told to babysit a given person/group doesn't sit well with me, and those (thankfully rare) healers that absolve responsibility for anything other than their assignment and let wipes happen whilst overhealing their targets mindlessly... well. Less said the better.
That said, I'm a loot whore. I've pugged a fair number of TotC-25 groups in the recent past (Solace never even dropped, let alone had the basic decency to fall into my grubby troll-paws). I'm happiest when stuck on the raid, and end up just healing whoever needs it.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Until Icecrown rolled around, our healing team was essentially me and a holy priest. Seems to work well, and I can't wait to get back to two-healing everything once the fights are familiar enough to do so (three healers is cheating, somehow). That's probably more to do with healing styles and habits though. My most successful TotGC attempt was with pug, where my healing partner was an awesome disc priest. Some of our Ulduar hard modes were with a tree.
Mechanically, the answer has to be restoration druids. They complement my relatively immobile healing perfectly, have enormous healing output, and all the health bars sloooow riiiight doooown. Perfect for dumping those big ol' chain heals where they're needed without the painful internal process of "that person is very low on health, they may die before chain heal lands and waste the entire cast, but there's too much of an overall health deficit to waste a GCD on riptide argh argh argh I'll target someone else and hope it bounces argh argh they're dead and I'm terrible"
But really, it's more about the player than the class. Healing is healing, the colour of the name in Grid is largely irrelevant if your healing styles are complementary.
What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Resto shaman. Some I know well and are awesome, but in pugs I always seem to end up with people overwriting my poopshields (you said you'd shield the other tank, argh!), dropping a talented Mana Spring even though I spent ages begging for a Blessing of Wisdom off the retadin so we can drop the cleansing/healing/resistance totems preferable to the fight mechanics, dropping non-stacking redundant totems despite carefully arranging against this before the pull... I just don't think most shaman spend long enough working with other shaman, especially of the same spec. Maybe I'm unlucky. We don't stack particularly brilliantly, although at least we don't have Weakened Soul to contend with. /comfort the bubblers.
What is your worst habit as a healer?
I have many bad healing habits. Needlessly overwriting Riptide HoTs, or bouncing Chain Heals through fresh riptides when there are equally viable targets nearby, is something I'm trying to improve on currently.
But my worst habit is flinging a sad, non-bouncy Chain Heal out to some lonely soul on the fringe of the raid. It happens a lot when I'm not thinking. Having it fail to bounce because all the nearby damage was mopped up by other healers whilst casting is acceptable (still makes me wince) but my heal-beams grounding on a mage I knew was miles away from anyone else is dumb, dumb, dumb.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
"FFS I NED HEELZ!" Is, thankfully, becoming rarer even in pugs these days. My current largest complain would probably have to be... people not helping dispel. Some healers need to learn to do more than just heal. /grump
Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
Yup. Although I'm sloooowly levelling healers of the other classes, I love my shammies.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
World of Logs is very good for in-depth analysis, especially over multi-phase or particularly heterogeneous fights where an overall average HPS figure isn't as useful. I do use recount to compare my performance over time (eHPS and overhealing, basically) especially after picking up significant upgrades or changing my gearing strategy, or on repeated wipes to see if I'm dishing out more healing or getting relatively worse as the night wears on. At the end of the day the various different assignments, gear, talents and strategy tend to render comparisons between healers a bit meaningless.
I also take deaths - any deaths - as a sign I'm doing something wrong. Even if it was a DPS doing something really stupid involving fire or cleaving mobs, if it wasn't a one-shot I could have done something. Often stupid to think so, but whatever. No wipes, no deaths is my primary success metric. If that's the case, I work on reducing the number of times my 'ohshit' macro comes out during a fight. And once that's been minimised... the place is probably on farm and uninteresting.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Probably the "faceroll brain heal" thing. Chain Heal is very good indeed, but if that's all you use you're doin it rong. A shaman's various heals are all lovely, use them.
What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
Totems, totems, totems. As resto, there's less to track and a lower chance of the dreaded Totem Pull than an enhancement shammy, but you still have to deal with the things. Making sure the appropriate ones are down and covering enough of the raid, pre-emptively placing tremor and cleansing if needed, avoiding excess redundancy with other shaman/similar buffs.
If you're already used to managing our buffsticks, the only other complication might be managing the Tidal Waves effect. It's absolutely key to a lot of fun shaman healing.
If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Of course it varies by fight, but generally a fairly hefty raw output and mid-to-large overhealing. I don't worry too much about the latter unless I'm actively trying to improve my time-to-OoM.
Haste or Crit and why?
Haste all the way! Shaman get a fair whack of base crit from talents, a crit-increasing cooldown, and extra crit on Lesser Healing Wave from the Tidal Waves buff. But until I get under the GCD cap, I can never have enough haste. In particular the enormous cast time on Chain Heal means it benefits wonderfully from haste stacking, but quite weakly from crit.
What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Priests, of either spec. I swear there're just too many options there. PoM, PW:S, Renew, CoH, PoH, the Hymns, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Holy Nova, Penance... I've probably missed a load. Anyway, they confuse me deeply with all those heals. I've no idea where most of them come from, how they interact, or when you'd use them.
What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
Grid (with the HoT and raid debuff addons) and Clique are my main standbys. I have a macro for activating Nature's Swiftness and Tidal Force together with any on-use trinkets (but no healing spell inside the macro - I do that bit manually afterwards. Sometimes an instant Chain Heal is just what the raid-doctor ordered).
Oh, and of course a macro for "/y I have a snobold on mah face!". It doesn't actually work in ToC pugs, but I feel better for using it.
Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
Haste all the way! Drawing close to 1k now, so just a few hundred more to find from somewhere and I'll be the happiest healspammer there ever was. Although I do tend to pick up socket bonuses (more often than I should) with Haste/SP and Haste/MP5 gems, the first question I ask of a potential upgrade is "How much haste do I gain? /dribble".
I value crit and MP5 about equally and try to acquire options with both as additional stats (after HasteHasteHasteHaste) for all sensible gear slots so I can tweak throughput and longevity for more tricky fights (such as when the raid includes no replenishment /sadface). The haste/crit gear has the advantage that it'll also be more useful if I ever change my dual spec back to PvE Elemental.
Haste is delicious. Have I mentioned haste yet?
Spellpower seems to convert almost directly to overhealing at this gear level so I don't feel the need to gem for it, likewise crits are often overheal (although talents provide some nice benefits from a crit regardless). But I have yet to complain about a heal landing earlier or being able to spam faster when things go wrong. Sensible use of Mana Tide, potions, and maybe a whinge for an Innervate from one of our friendly laser chickens are generally enough to avoid going OoM on a given fight with my current haste-to-excess gearing, but it is getting closer in Icecrown. Maybe I'll start picking up some intellect gems after I get my Lesser Healing Waves down to the mystical one second.
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