part of the reason why I’m currently asking, I’ve heard people say downranking is better, but I’m a little confused as to why.
I know some healing classes get talents that let them regenerate mana even while casting, so you know, spamming low cost heals, with +healing is generally allowing you to spam healing forever.
But as a shaman, I don’t get a talent like that, and it seems like just knowing how much you heal, and getting a good gauge on how much damage someone can take before you need to heal again is a better option.
Having healed in vanilla as a paladin I used to downrank heals all the time. The reason for this was just mana efficiency and speed.
It really comes down to knowing what heals will heal what amounts and just keeping people topped off. I don’t need to shoot a 2000 amount heal to someone who needs 1000 - if I’m smart about downranking I know what heal will heal the person for 1000 instead and just use that.
I think of it as less waiting for the big dip for someone to drop to 2000 life needed for the big heal before I heal but being proactive on the smaller amounts so I don’t have to scramble later kind of thing. It also adds another layer to the wack-a-mole that is healing and only good people who know what they are healing can pull it off right.
Different classes will handle this differently as well.
Mana usage and healing efficiency. Your max ranked spells will oom you faster, obviously. If your max rank heal can heal for lets say 60% of a person health bar, healing at any point above that 60% is an overheal. Overheals = wasted mana, wasted heals.
The sweet spot is finding a spell you can spam almost to keep people reasonably alive. People don’t need to always been topped off. Think if someone is at 80%, so you won’t heal w/ a max rank, if they take a big hit they could die if its in the sweet spot. Using a downrank can get someone closer to 95% w/o any overhealing.
You’ll still use your max rank heal for Oh crap moments, or w/ a Natures Swiftness. But after you start getting that +healing gear, the numbers all point towards downranking for all of your spells.
Procs are another thing thats great about getting more cast off, the guide has 10x better information then I do too.
At many levels you wind up with your current ranked heal healing someone at your level for like 90% of their health, with the prior rank healing them for like 50% of their health. Using your current rank heal often means overhealing or waiting until someone is like one hit from death before healing them. Even like on my level 18 druid, she has 280 health and heals for 230ish, but I usually self-heal with the downranked version of the heal that heals for 110ish. Often times after a pull I’ve got about half my health and all of my mana. I could either not heal and go into the next pull at half health or heal with a downranked spell and go into the next pull with full health. Usually I just use the downranked heal to heal myself. Different classes utilize downranking differently, not sure how downranking plays out for shamans.
I didn’t play vanilla but I mained a resto shaman in BC. Rank 3 chainheal was life. It healed enough and was mana efficient enough to be nearly spammable. I was put in with the melee group just for that reason and my ability to keep them all up.
I agree. People say you should have macros and all this extra stuff to have multiple tier spells, 90% of the time it’s not worth the bother. What a lot of people also forget is the more time you spend casting, the less your mana can regen because of the 5 second rule. I’d rather cast 1 rank 4 heal than 2 rank 2 heals because I’m spending about half the time casting.
In some instances downranking is beneficial- when you know you’re going to be extremely short on mana, if you need to be healing non-stop (no 5 sec breaks), or when you’re prehealing. I suppose maybe it may be better to downrank in later phases as well (with more +healing stuff), not sure about that. Honestly though, the PvE in this game isn’t that challenging- you’ll do fine even if you never downrank. The only people that might complain are those min/max guilds that want to do MC with 14 people.
Shamans dont downrank as much as druids and priests. They are different beasts than any of the other healers. Chain heal is the only aoe “smart” heal in classic. And, Paladins downrank even less than Shamans.
Here’s a question: If you add +spell power or +healing gear, does the tooltip for spells reflect this change? Or does it only ever show the base values?
Because you can’t make it thru a longer boss encounter using only max rank heals without going oom long before the fight ends. Max rank heals simply just cost too much mana to be your only source of healing (especially if you’re raid healing instead of tank healing).
However, downranking is almost exclusively a raid thing, and not necessarily worth it if your +Healing is low. The more you gear, the better it gets.
No. Tooltip values do not dynamically update with your gear (unless you have an addon like TheoryCraft). That change wasn’t actually made until Cataclysm surprisingly.
Does everyone have to be at 100% HP 100% of the time, though? Or can you safely let them get lower then cast a heal that will bring them to full HP?
Most of the fights in the game, your DPS shouldn’t really be taking that much damage, leaving just your tank who you should have a good feel for a couple pulls in, and if it’s someone you run with regularly, you know exactly how they take damage.
You downrank once you get enough +healing. You probably think it doesn’t really seem necessary because you havent been in a raid where fights are really drawn out. When I raid and heal dungeons, I use rank 5 healing touch (around 900 hp heal due to good gear) and rank 7 (about 1.1 or 1.2k). Trust me it prevents overhealing and you save a ton of mana. Its vital on shamans especially.
Generally no, but it really depends on the encounter, the raid damage going out, and how much health your raid actually has (ex. low geared mages/priests have very low total health making aoe more dangerous for them).
I use downranked heals all the time in dungeons. It’s significantly more efficient for topping off DPS. You should also be juggling a bit of +heal all throughout the game to make them better.
As far as the tank goes. I actually like to pop off a max rank after initial damage, then immediately throw him a couple more quick rank 1’s to get my healing way maxed out. It’ll make my highest rank healing waves 18% better for very little mana used right out of the gate. You can also spam rank 1’s to get a ancestral healing to proc if you have the time and a fairly full mana bar. Of course this is presupposing someone leveling as resto though, which is pretty uncommon lol.
Also, not really related. But every Shaman worth their salt who runs dungeons NEEDS to have a rank 1 Earth Shock on their cast bar for a low threat interrupt.