I’m looking over logs of the beta and it looks to me like shamans are kind of struggling in ehps for the p1 raids. I know their utility is crazy with BL/heroism + totems, but I was told they also have the highest throughput. TBH it looks like every other healer tops them through kara, gruul, mag.
Any reasons for this? Do shamans scale better into T5 and T6? Or is it the beta gear just not good for shamans? Missing an important piece? I also heard mag was possibly nerfed in beta due to the blue gear sets they gave out, but not sure if that’s correct at all.
Also just doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of raid-wide damage in p1 which may be the issue.
Dont they have the only “smart heal” in the game in the form of Jesus beams which led to wrath advancements of sharing out smarter heals to other healers?
Dont they have the only “smart heal” in the game in the form of Jesus beams which led to wrath advancements of sharing out smarter heals to other healers?
Holy priests have circle of healing which is an instant cast on 5 players in the same party and available on the GCD. And they’re far superior at ST healing tanks than shamans.
Edit - I forgot. You can cast COH while moving and it has a larger radius of effect.
I guess I should clarify what I mean by smart heal… a heal that will automatically prioritise the targets that need healing the most. Maybe if we break down the heal kits of the different healers it might help?
I don’t think Chain Heal does this. It bounces to nearby additional targets, generally focusing on the nearest valid target. It can and often does overheal these people since it won’t skip them for someone more injured.
CH lets you heal stacked targets quite well (for a lot), and lets you tank heal while bouncing to OT/melee.
Maybe that was in wrath they did that too then… been so long, I coulda sworn it preferred lower health targets (where as POM didn’t)… so coh’s only limitation is that its party wide, got it.
Party wide, but I don’t think it has the same high coefficient of Chain Heal - since that can be boosted and has a lot of support from tier too. I’m not sure what the base coefficient is for CoH, but I know CH tends to out-do it if they’re constantly casting. Plus, as it’s casted, CH has a higher coefficient naturally that way and has a larger base heal rate.
You can also snipe heals with COH. The moment raid damage goes out, you cast it. In p1 shamans will have a 2.5 second cast to wait out because they don’t have the haste until later in the expansion.
It may very well be that constantly casting chain heal has a higher throughput than COH (cast every 1.5s from the GCD) but it might not guarantee topping the meter.
It seems to me that once shamans starting hitting < 2s on their chain heals and down to 1.5s, it will outshine COH on heavy raid damage fights.
Generally, reactive healing is bad in terms of raid healing. Most people will constantly try to cast - at least, assuming it’s not primarily HoTs - and will cancel if it’s not really needed. CoH is great for sniping heals for sure, but it’s restricted to party based whereas CH is not - and CH heals for more. The Shaman should be bouncing in the melee/stacked group and off the tank constantly, only canceling if it’s really not necessary, so it should hit relatively often when damage is going out regardless whereas a Priest reacting with CoH will not.
Topping the meter maybe but it really depends on how the fight is going. If it’s predictable, high AoE damage then they won’t (since CH only hits three targets), but if it’s unpredictable then they could very well top the meters.
I came here shocked no one answered this and then you come in with the real answer. Good job.
Karazhan is 10man and it is insultingly easy. There is no damage going out on most fights. It’s not the right scenario for Rshaman to shine. Later in the expansion, when the Rshaman get some haste and they can pump non-stop chain heals into huge clumps of melee or ranged that are taking crazy AoE damage (Mother Shaz etc) their HPS goes through the roof. Even then, in Sunwell, I’ve seen Rdruid out parse Rshaman before. But Karazhan in crap gear are not the parses to be judging Rshaman viability on.
No, this is not correct. Chain heal is the only smart heal in the game until wrath; there are no other heals that have this particular functionality. What this means is that chain heal will always bounce to the lowest % health target within eligible bounce range, going across groups if necessary. The second and third bounces of chain heal are absurdly powerful for this very reason, as if you’re healing a stacked group they will almost never overheal. Targets at completely full HP will never get bounces, and the bounces will only overheal if there weren’t more injured targets in range. Not to mention there’s a minor anachronism with the classic engine in favor of the resto shaman: up until Mists of Pandaria patch 5.4, pets were eligible targets for bounces if they were the highest on the above criteria. It was changed at that time to always prefer players over pets, and that functionality was carried in to classic.
Furthermore, in terms of directly comparing it to CoH, Chain heal is has a considerably higher coefficient (165% to 117%) and comparable base healing (2059 over 3 targets @ r5 compared to 2174 over 5 targets @ r4) than CoH due to actual talent support in the restoration tree.
CoH is good because it’s instant and covers a wider area, but is group target locked. It’s no where near the same league as chain heal. TBC is the age of the jesus beam. If you’re healing stacked targets there is literally no competition.