Healing Wave or Healing Surge for M+?

Classes Shaman
1

I’ve been playing a few healers before S1 to get a feel for them and decide which to main once the season begins. I will be exclusively playing M+, and I think I’ll be maining resto shammy this season.

My one concern is that mana efficiency with resto shaman seems lacking. I noticed playing my Holy Priest with Light Weaver that I can handle large pulls with significant damage without burning much mana. I can do similar healing with the resto shammy, but I often find I’m at half mana or below after similar pulls, where the priest is still at 80% plus.

I haven’t mained resto shammy since Shadowlands, but I’d like to understand if the recommendation for spot healing has changed. Should we be using healing wave primarily instead of healing surge now? I remember the old guides recommended exclusively using HS unless coupled with primordial wave for the HW cleave.

I know that HS can pump much more healing that HW, especially considering the HS crit buff from tidal waves, but should we be reserving HS for emergency situations even in M+ now? HW with tidal waves has a 33% longer cast time than HS, but uses 1/3 of the mana.

Appreciate any tips / advice here, as mana efficiency is the only real concern I have with resto shammy and it seems that using HW could dramatically reduce mana burn.

2

They added a lot of talent interaction for healing surge but almost none for healing wave. I don’t have the exact numbers but due to the increased crit chance, surge ends up being just as mana efficient as wave. If you’re overhealing a lot with surge then maybe you can try using wave but those globals could probably be used better in some way.

If you’re having mana issues I think the steps you would take would be:

  • Use mana pots
  • Get more crit
  • Farseer over Totemic
  • Get a mana trinket from somewhere
  • mana tide totem with the spiritwalkers follow up point. 3 free surges
1 Like
3

May I suggest that you look at your “riptide” use & spells? I do not mean this in any snarky way, only that riptide is a great healing spell that sometimes shamans do not press enough. Also, if you have any damage reduction totems, throw them out there.