Ok, this is a shaman post.  More precisely a resto shaman post and probably most non-resto-shamans will be totally disinterested. I will give cookies to those resto shamans who manage to wade through my somewhat lacking evaluation herein of the relative merits of Lesser Healing Wave versus Chain Heal.

Since the patch I’ve been doing a lot of reading (in threads like this one at EJ)- shaman healing, depending on who you speak to, has not changed at all or has changed dramatically.  A lot of people, wishing to hang on to what they know and love, have insisted that all of the new talents are worthless at best, a nuisance at worst as they do not affect chain heal.  Others, though, have suggested that we might or could change our healing style - relying more heavily on lesser healing wave and on single target healing or at least having this as a viable option.

Personally, I’m quite new to healing so I’m quite eager to learn new playstyles in the hope that it’ll improve how I heal overall.

Much of this really is pie-in-the-sky thinking as, in reality, how we are specced at the moment does not reflect entirely how we will be at 80 and the encounters at the moment are somewhat dominated by priests and druids spamming AoE heals whilst their mana pool barely suffers - that, we are told, will change.

However, the point remains that we have a lot of AoE healing and less of the old-fashioned heavy tank healing going on - in our guild at the moment we only have two regular paladin healers and a tonne of druids and priests with myself the sole representative of shaman healing most nights.

Here’s how I’m finding my role, at the moment:  I’m AoE healing with chain heal if people are taking large hits predictably (i.e. Naj’entus style) or are too spread out to be effectively healed by CoH / Wild Growth.  The rest of the time I’m using lesser healing wave.

When I seen the posts concerning LHW (especially glyphed)I decided I’d go try some quick and dirty tests.  Unfortunately the two raiders who usually do our WWS’s hadn’t been able to attend many raids recently so I was stuck for a while with what I can test on my own (yes, I fail, I always forget to start my combat log).  The one thing I could test at least, I figured, was just how fast I ran out of mana when chain-casting each spell.

Results:

• 1 minute 18 seconds Chain Heal
• 1minute 28 seconds Lesser Healing Wave

This is with a mana spring, no mana tide, no potions, no replenishment and straight chain-casting - refreshing Water Shield when it was used up.  The reason for the longevity of the LHW spam is undoubtedly the procs on Improved Water Shield adding just enough to keep be going those few seconds longer - even though I need to refresh it more often and let my mp5 lurch for a second whilst it’s down.  Of course this is under a non ’stressful’ situation with no movement and no worrying about the tank dying if I stop healing to refresh water shield.  Of course, this was pre-T6 2pc so the numbers would likely now be more in the favour of chain heal (realms are down, so  I can’t test it) but even so, LHW is not entirely the useless mana drain it used to be.

When looking at the effectiveness of one heal over the other or how to use them in a given situations we have to look at both:

• mana pool / longevity
• effective healing

The new and exciting boost to  healing for LHW is very much affected by the super-glyph which caused all of this speculation in the first place - [Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave].  This very much ups the healing throughput of LHW and makes it more comparable to Flash of Light.  This makes it a rather nice tank-heal (as they are most often the person wearing my ES in ‘progress content’).

‘Testing’ Further

I know, calling it testing is a travesty.  I have no control numbers, have respecced, have played differently and was pretty damn ill tonight when I tried (running to the bathroom a few times between tries, erp Xx) but I did find some interesting changes nonetheless.

The first few bosses in Sunwell are a pretty good test of variability in healing, in  my mind, as they requires heavy AoE healing and also some strong tank healing.  Brutallus, in particular, was a fight we’d had trouble with last time we tried (successfully downing him but having a really hard time keeping the tanks alive).

This was where I particularly wanted to test how well my mana regen could cut it with the new ’style’. This week’s fight was a lot smoother, which I attribute to having an extra Paladin as well as people being a bit more ‘aware’ of the fight but I did feel that I ‘made a difference’.

Spec

I made a bit of a mistake when I respecced a little too quickly back from elemental after a weekend of pew-pew.  I forgot Riptide - realising where that extra talent point had come from when one of the other shamans mentioned it.  D’oh.  However, I had been feeling like I had been abusing it - using it as a crutch heal and not really thinking about when and where it would do best just “omg damage, instant heal!”. Whilst this is cool in a 5-man there’s really little need for it in a raid - especially when you can have a 1.4s (or lower) healing wave hit a target before they die at a much lower mana cost.

I also, perhaps controversially or perhaps just idiotically, didn’t spec for [Improved Healing Wave].  Why? Well, for one, I know I’ll be respeccing to elemental in a week for levelling so I can really play with my specs for now and secondly because… I never use Healing Wave.  Since I was going for what I’m calling my ‘tank haelz spec’ - that is focusing on improving LHW, mana regen and crit alongside a strong Earth Shield, I missed out Healing Way.  I’ve never liked that talent, if I’m honest, and the lack of downranking makes keeping it up tedious.  I do not like to be ‘locked in’ to maintaining a stack of healing like that, either, especially when I’ve got some newly discovered versatility in my healing!  I’m not saying I won’t go back to it when I have more points but, at the moment, talent points are thin on the ground and I wanted to play with something different.

So, I picked up [Totemic Focus] instead (which I’d previously not bothered with) because despite, yes, 5 minute totems, high mobility fights in large areas require you to reposition your totems and some fights require different totems to be placed at different times.  I was going for uber-mana-efficiency, remember.

I also picked up one point in [Imp. Reincarnation] which I was torn about.  On the one hand, if everything goes well, then it’s a total waste of points.  On the other I’ve helped finish two first kills by rezzing with nearly half mana and health. I really, truly, from the bottom of my heart wish they’d make this baseline.

2 points in [Imp. Water Shield].  I had read some ideas on putting only one or two points here to negate the problem of constantly having to refresh water shield constantly - it goes off, but  not often enough to make it a major nuisance.

[Cleanse Spirit].  We have the option to pick up another tool which means we become valuable secondary or even primary decursers.  This was a nice backup for Kalecgos, though I have a feeling that, dependent on how the raids are in Wrath, I might rather have that point elsewhere.

[Blessing of the Eternals] for the crit - the bonus to Earthliving is not something to sniff at but not really incredible.  Still, not bad for 2 points.

[Ancestral Awakening]… well, it’s based around all of those crit heals I’m going to be doing so why not? In  practice, though, less than 1% of my healing comes from AA if I’m only raid healing.  Still a bit undecided about it but I might switch these points to focused mind or something - again, though, FM is very situational.

[Tidal Waves] is nice and will be nicer with 3.0.3 (which goes live on EU realms today).  A chain heal when there’s heavy raid damage going on and then a nice, fast heal for a tank or a low dps.  This was really nice for Mount Hyjal and literally a lifesaver in SWP a few times (especially with no bloody Riptide!).

[Ancestral Knowledge] + two points in [Improved Shields] rounds out my current build.  Although that second point in shields should have been in Riptide I don’t begrudge it now.

Oh, and no [Healing Grace].

Tier 6

With the ‘easymode’ tier 6 instances now in effect I’ve come into some shiny T6 tokens pretty rapidly - shoulders and head are mine, gloves I already had (one for each spec because no-one else wanted them).  I have a very good healing helm but the tier 6 would be a bit of an upgrade and would work me towards that 4-set bonus.  However, with all of the above mentioned I began to wonder.  If I have elemental gloves and an elemental headpiece, whilst also giving some desirable stats (more crit etc.) would give me a two piece t6 elemental set bonus to play with.  You know, the insane one which gives:

Whenever you have an air totem, an earth totem, a fire totem, and a water totem active at the same time, you gain 15 mana per 5 sec, 35 spell critical strike rating, and 45 spell power.

That’s some nice set-bonus! I decided to buy the elemental headgear and use this setup (2pc T6 elemental) when I was primarily using LHW so as to gain the extra crit and mana regen.

Results

The figures for both Brut kills looked something like this:

The first is the fight on which I was using chain heal primarily and with gear with a little less crit rating.

The second fight I’m using t6 2pc elemental and crit gear and using lesser healing wave primarily.

Although my heals per second were reduced using mostly lesser healing wave (but as you can see, still using chain heal when appropriate) I did output more overall healing though the difference was negligible.   My overheal was up a little (as expected when tank healing) but I almost doubled my healing on our Paladin tank (from 185,820 to 272,003) whilst gaining a small increase on our warrior tank (178,518 to 195, 660).  Although these also reflect a slightly longer fight (the second kill was 18 seconds longer) I do think that the increase in healing is too big a difference to be brought by time alone.

The side effects of using lesser healing wave, too, were interesting.  As a lot of the new abilities happen on-crit for LHW, HW and now Riptide they played a much bigger part in the ‘lesser healing wave’ trial.

Ancestral Awakening with chain-heal spam made up less than 1% of my healing.  With LHW as my primary heal it made up 4% of my healing - not quite making up for the loss of ’splash healing’ from chain heal but certainly not something I consider a terrible side effect.

The death in the first try was deliberate, sort of.   I got the flame debuff and ran out of mana whilst healing from the flame spot.  I told the flame healers to let me die as I had reincarnation up and could get mana back by rezzing myself.

Despite the above, I ended the second try with more mana and it’s clear to see, looking at the WWS, why. From the first attempt, water shield was my fourth highest source of mana - providing 2,564 mana over the course of the fight.  On the second kill, with 2/3 Imp. Water Shield and 2/5 Imp. shields I regained 4,917 mana from water shield - over half of what replenishment also gave me.

I didn’t feel refreshing water shield was a big issue - using it every time I had a spare moment as I’ve always done out of habit (I reflexively tap that key when on all characters now…).

So…

Chain heal spam gives you a little more splash healing, it is the king of your raid healing arsenal and will be a very effective tool.  Even when full specced to take advantage of the new abilities via lesser healing wave I used chain heal 27% of the time and up to 60-80% on splash damage fights (like Felmyst).  Chain heal also spreads Earthliving Weapon more (and I only just now notice that I likely forgot to imbue it on the second Brut kill… something about it being an imbue means I forget it where I would never have forgotten mana oil, bah).

Lesser healing wave is now a viable and strong heal which can be utilised to effectively tank heal.  Whilst giving up on a little AoE healing and efficiency you gain more mana back and still have a little AoE healing going via Ancestral Awakening.

Why Bother?

Why even look into all of this now, it’s a bit useless, right?  In my mind, not really.  Yes, numbers and fights will change between now and 80 but by then all shamans will be able to pick up all of the new talents if they wish and will have to learn to use them.  I’d like to be ready to start the new ‘raiding season’ running.

TL;DR

Lesser Healing Wave spam seems like it could be viable and even preferable on some fights. Learning how and when to use it over chain-heal is a skill which any shamans not from pre-TBC should learn and they should understand how it will affect how they use the new talents and skills they’ve been given.

In 10-man healing this variability is going to be the bee’s knees - you got a druid or priest with you?  Let them handle any low level splash damage with their AoE’s and small top-off heals whilst you tank heal.  Have a paladin?  Throw out those beefy chain heals and Earthliving procs.

And, yes, I know I’m a terrible theorycrafter but I did enjoy being able to look at something other than chain heal and I’ll probably do some stricter and more controlled testing when I hit 80!