The Murloc Healer Thread

Yesterday, while entering Thorim's Halls, I lost Gimil twice. Although he deserved those deaths for his "bike pulls" (runs to the boss on bike and pulls while the poor priest runs on foot to get in range), I was very unhappy, so I checked wws. Look:

3:08'22.698 Dark Rune Ravager #2 melee swing hits Gimilkhâd for 19767 Physical. (2239 Blocked)
3:08'22.807 Gimilkhâd gains 1769 health from Zuzuna Renew.
3:08'23.207 Zuzuna Flash Heal heals Gimilkhâd for 5865.
3:08'23.207 Gimilkhâd gains 419 health from Marveen Lifebloom.
3:08'23.207 Dark Rune Ravager #2 melee swing hits Gimilkhâd for 7464 Physical. (2239 Blocked)
3:08'24.796 Zuzuna Flash Heal heals Gimilkhâd for 5678.
3:08'25.059 Dark Rune Ravager #2 melee swing hits Gimilkhâd for 20561 Physical. (2239 Blocked)
So, maybe rust was eating Gimil's armor.

From wowhead.com:
"The Ravagers stack a Sunder Armor for 5% per application
They need to be rotated between tanks to avoid them instakilling them when the debuffs stack high."

Now, we know. Or was I the only one in the dark

They're meant to switch - if they weren't doing it it's their fault! Even if we can sometimes do miracles..

And when he charges in on his bike, insist he reserves you his slot on the sidecar.. Damn dorfs!

How did you find the gauntlet run on Thorim? I forgot to mention the strafing you need to do to stay out of his arm's fire (left or right depending on which side lights up), but figured you'd adapt fairly quickly. Bonus pleasure: watching Cardinal whimper when I said "Zuzu is doing the gauntlet today"...

Been using the addon GettingThingsHealed (beta) to set healing assignments. It's quite flexible, but doesn't save assignments automatically - so it tends to break when I start setting assignments for the next boss during trash pulls and get a whisper from a healer asking about the current, in-progress fight... >.< This should get better as I eventually have all fights saved, for now my apologies if it confuses you!

General Vezax

With 3 healers, I've been using the following rough regen "rotation". For this to work well we need the ranged DPS to be aware that we need them to kill the vapours for us, and who knows where to kill them (thanks Skathi!):

- One healer starts on standby (often me). Just follow the tank, try to stand so any shadow crashes on you can be reached by the ranged dps, and be patient.
- After two runs, I call the first regen break on Vent. For example, "Rynar go regen". This tells Skathi to go down a vapour, it also means I step in and take over healing from Rynar, and the third healer knows they're solo healing through a transition.
- Every run after that I tend to call a regen break, rotating between healers ("Zuzuna, your turn", "I'm going to go regen now", etc). Standby until the next healer goes to regen, THEN take over.

If everyone gets ready to go regen when called out, that means there will be plenty of green puddles for everyone - he enrages after 10 minutes, and there is a run every minute, so that's 8 runs/regen breaks.

I am wondering whether we should tie ranged DPS to healers for regeneration - I notice the casters have been running very dry here. An idea would be to tie us with them in pairs, with the regenerating healer responsible for topping up the DPSer after each soak. Example: "Rynar, go with Skathi", and Skathi kills the vapour, then "Zuzu, go with Kayte" and Kayte downs it for both, followed by "I'm going" and a third ranged or melee going to help me with it?

The way Marv coordinated was excellent, and i never had any mana problems. The difficult part is to get apool not very far away when your time comes - maybe the solution with "paired" DPS takes care of that.
It is also a matter of luck while one healer is away, or if she gets shadow bombed while replenishing etc. But it becomes easier each time, and will be a fun fight very soon
Last night we didnt separate "left and right" and was a bit overcrowded sometimes. Have we any data on hp leech from Vezax?

On Sara I can keep my group alive with Holy Nova while I dont run away from Sara's favour, and also help with group 2 by CoHing it etc. If we pay attention to Sara's favor and kill fast the adds, we dont get serious MC problems
Faze 2 is chaos for the moment but.. we will prevail :-)

Mark of the Faceless, full report: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Mf73bOGN5s7Ly3wF/spell/63278/ (127 hits)
Mark of the Faceless, kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Mf73bOGN5s7Ly3wF/spell/63278/?s=8240&e=8806 (28 hits)

On the kill, he received 28 ticks of MotF for 48k healing each = 1.3 million hp healed, or 16% (1/6) of his total hp. I was the one most hit by the Marks, so it means either someone near me got leeched a lot or I sucked at standing away from other ranged So yes, we need to ask the ranged spread out better. I think you're quite correct: having a left and a right side taking turns to regen would be a good way of doing this! However as we had 3 new people in and the fight is complex enough as it is, I tried not to confuse people with too much information..

Sorry to squeeze in here, but there is a reason that the ranged were ending up squeezed together. Well, two. Firstly, we had three whole ranged! *faint* That's more than I've ever been on a Murloc raid with before. These three whole ranged players were all running towards the same black pool to DPS from there. This meant that we were getting hit more with the Life Leech and with Shadow Crash if someone didn't move, but I do put that down to having new people in the raid (and crazy hunters who were so obsessed with green vapour that they forgot to check if they were leeched before racing chaotically towards a vapour to kill it...>.>)

Perhaps there needs to be some sort of organisation with sides where ranged stand, as I think it was causing a problem last night. Usually Kayte takes left and I take right, and we try and stay there, which works pretty well, and would mean less healers being crashed, squashed, molested, leeched, licked and fondled.

/runs away from the healer thread now

welcome pirate Skathi :-)

As we try to organise healers to go one by one to the green pools, so ranged must have a rotation too - leeching is too high to permit us the luxury of 2 casters on same shadow pool.
Idealy, ranged kills a saronite, and immerses in the pool - then the healer arrives, and for 1-2 ticks are together, then ranged goes away. (repeat if there is time) On shadow pools, if one is occupied, ranged goes elsewhere :-) 1.3 million hits are too much to afford.
But I liked the fight - we passed from the stage of despair, to the one that we know we can do it if we dont make any mistakes, and now we move towards the last faze: "We can do it whatever happens!"

*is quite lucky as Viper Aspect still works as regen, though dipping in a green pool is a good thing too!*

/re-pirates, arrrrghglebarglemurlocpirate!

I forgot to mention that on Vezax I used a Dark Rune acquired the day before from Scholo and was a nice addition to the mana pool.

From the Feedback thread:

Dahlaine wrote:Also it'd be interesting to get some feedback from D and Zuzu about why their healing was so much higher than mine in phase 1, aside from the fact that they're a lot better than me at it :p

I don't know much about shaman healing so take this with a large pinch of salt, but are you making your Tidal Waves work hard enough for you? From looking at resto talents, seems you need to keep up a "rotation" of CH+Riptide(if up) -> LHW/HW -> CH+Riptide(if up) to get the most out of those TW procs. You said your Chain Heal had a cast time of 2.x seconds, which sounds slow - maybe get more haste until it's less than a 2 second cast? Also, I'd shield myself (shields slow interrupts and may prevent you needing to be "saved" by Hodir, which takes you out of the healing "race").

Also, what I found helped healing here on Saturday was trying to figure out who takes the biggest hits (non-plate wearers usually, but not always) and focus on casting quick direct heals on them when not doing anything else (hah!). Zuzu is Holy here and spamming PoH/CoH like there's no tomorrow, which indiscriminately tops up everyone on two casts, and D's Holy Light glyph will add a tasty AoE to his regular HL spam. That is a lot you'd be up against.

Other than that, all I can guess is your spellpower is lower than the other two Oracles. I'm never sure whether to equip for spellpower or regen on any given boss (except Vezax), but I start with high spellpower and if we wipe due to oomness I'll swap out gear on the next attempt. If you end the fight with mana, means you have +healing potential you're not using... If you focus on haste you'll automatically get more healing output (but you'll oom faster, so make sure your regen keeps up).

Edit: Question - why don't you have 3/3 Healing Way ("Your Healing Wave spells have a X% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 18% for 15 sec.")? That seems like a nobrainer healing talent to me as it affects both LHW and HW... not sure what you could drop for it though.

Marveen wrote:You said your Chain Heal had a cast time of 2.x seconds, which sounds slow - maybe get more haste until it's less than a 2 second cast?

Chain Heal is a relatively slow cast - it's a 2.5s base, and it's realistically never going to end up as a super snappy cast time without truly insane haste stacking:

Haste Need to Reduce Chain Heal Cast Time at Level 80
2.4 seconds = 137 haste rating
2.3 seconds = 286 haste rating
2.2 seconds = 447 haste rating
2.1 seconds = 625 haste rating
2.0 seconds = 820 haste rating
1.9 seconds = 1036 haste rating

Marveen wrote:Also, I'd shield myself (shields slow interrupts and may prevent you needing to be "saved" by Hodir, which takes you out of the healing "race").

Mm, possible, though that comes at a fairly hefty cost in mana regen (Water Shield is worth 100 MP5) - and obviously means that you can't shield someone else like a tank (as you can only have one poo-shield up at once). Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more on someone who's poo-shielded, assuming it's glyphed, too.

Marveen wrote:Zuzu is Holy here and spamming PoH/CoH like there's no tomorrow

And with the raid tanking goodly amounts of damage, it's going to be insanely hard to keep up against that without fast/instant cast AoE heals, which simply aren't the shaman niche!

Marveen wrote:Edit: Question - why don't you have 3/3 Healing Way ("Your Healing Wave spells have a X% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 18% for 15 sec.")? That seems like a nobrainer healing talent to me as it affects both LHW and HW... not sure what you could drop for it though.

Bit of a misconception there, the talent is brutally honest - it affects your Healing Wave spells. Not "Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave". Situationally usefil if you need to nuke heal a single target, albeit there are other healers (hello paladins) better suited to that, and again, Healing Wave is a fairly slow cast; poo-shield + riptide / LHW spam is probably better in many circumstances.

There's a lot of good insight into the world of the resto shaman at Elitist Jerks' Theorycrafting Think Tank and also Mek of Ensidia's Guide; note that Mek's own talent spec doesn't include Healing Way (indeed he goes on to say "Healing Way is not used because of the Lesser Healing Wave Glyph and the fact that you will very rarely be able to land a long cast 20k effective heal").

Looks like Telluria has posted a lot of the stuff I was going to say for me, thanks!

Marveen wrote:You said your Chain Heal had a cast time of 2.x seconds, which sounds slow - maybe get more haste until it's less than a 2 second cast?

It's not really worth stacking anymore haste on top of what is on my gear, since it as Tell mentioned, it's an inherently slow spell. Thankfully once the add killing was sorted in phase 1 the slow Chain Heals were fast enough to heal the damage taken on each explosion. However it is probably true that I need a little bit more of it. I'm relatively sure that's there some better gear in Ulduar with haste on it - which I suppose I will get to once all the main-spec healers have their pick of the loot

Marveen wrote:Also, I'd shield myself (shields slow interrupts and may prevent you needing to be "saved" by Hodir, which takes you out of the healing "race").

I have Earth Shield glyphed. It is true that it's pretty pointless to have it on Card in Phase 1, though, since D had him pretty much covered. But as Tell mentioned it replaces a good percentage of my regen.

Telluria wrote:

Marveen wrote:Zuzu is Holy here and spamming PoH/CoH like there's no tomorrow

And with the raid tanking goodly amounts of damage, it's going to be insanely hard to keep up against that without fast/instant cast AoE heals, which simply aren't the shaman niche!

I guess this a fair enough point, since my only real AoE healing spell is my totem, hehe. My healing was on-par with the others during the other phases. WTB Drood HoTs.

Telluria wrote:

Marveen wrote:Edit: Question - why don't you have 3/3 Healing Way ("Your Healing Wave spells have a X% chance to increase the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on that target by 18% for 15 sec.")? That seems like a nobrainer healing talent to me as it affects both LHW and HW... not sure what you could drop for it though.

Bit of a misconception there, the talent is brutally honest - it affects your Healing Wave spells. Not "Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave". Situationally usefil if you need to nuke heal a single target, albeit there are other healers (hello paladins) better suited to that, and again, Healing Wave is a fairly slow cast; poo-shield + riptide / LHW spam is probably better in many circumstances.

I'm not specced in to Healing Way because the only time I use Healing Wave is during in MT healing (which isn't often - i.e Patchwerk/Mimiron - although with the latter I often spam LHW) or when NS is off CD (although often I'll just use NS with CH)

However your advice about Tidal Waves is probably true. I need to rejig some add-ons so it is announced to me when Tidal Wave procs. Thank you both

Telluria wrote:Chain Heal is a relatively slow cast - it's a 2.5s base, and it's realistically never going to end up as a super snappy cast time without truly insane haste stacking:
....

Still, there was the moonkin aura haste buff (3%), the shaman air totem (melee haste was high enough tyvm!), possibly a dk haste buff (vaguely remember Taq saying some specs had it), and add to that trinket procs/food it just seemed the cast-time Dahl quoted in raid yesterday was a bit too large.

Telluria wrote:Mm, possible, though that comes at a fairly hefty cost in mana regen (Water Shield is worth 100 MP5) - and obviously means that you can't shield someone else like a tank (as you can only have one poo-shield up at once). Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more on someone who's poo-shielded, assuming it's glyphed, too.

I didn't know shamans' shield interfered with their water bubbles (I thought Earth Shield was their version of PW:Shield... >.<) - learning something new every day! Anyway, Phase 1 is just about getting everyone through it and there's plenty of time to regen in P2/P3 - it's crucial that no one drops below 50% or they die to an explosion. The tanks are probably the safest in this phase - they have oh-crap abilities, they have plate and the most health, and they can probably soak two explosions in a row.

Telluria wrote:And with the raid tanking goodly amounts of damage, it's going to be insanely hard to keep up against that without fast/instant cast AoE heals, which simply aren't the shaman niche!

Yeah, not much can beat a Holy priest going all-out healing explosion on this phase.. not if the priest is awake!

Telluria wrote:Bit of a misconception there, the talent is brutally honest - it affects your Healing Wave spells. Not "Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave".

Ahar, the tooltip lies! Thanks for the clarification..

Marveen wrote:Still, there was the moonkin aura haste buff (3%), the shaman air totem (melee haste was high enough tyvm!), possibly a dk haste buff (vaguely remember Taq saying some specs had it), and add to that trinket procs/food it just seemed the cast-time Dahl quoted in raid yesterday was a bit too large.

Generally speaking in our raids I'll drop Windfury Totem (20% Melee haste - this also a buff given by Frost-spec DKs) rather than Wrath of Air Totem (5% Spell haste) because we're heavy on melee. However in Phase 2 and 3 I had the Spell Haste totem down, though not in Phase 1 (where my Enhancement mind came in to play). Considering the WF totem is completely useless in Phase 1 I really should have noticed this at the time /facepalm

In addition to that one of my trinkets is still a particularly bad Heroic blue . Since I never picked up the haste proc one from Maexnna in Naxx 10, and have thus far failed to find anything else on offspec rolls.

Marveen wrote: I didn't know shamans' shield interfered with their water bubbles (I thought Earth Shield was their version of PW:Shield... >.<) - learning something new every day! Anyway, Phase 1 is just about getting everyone through it and there's plenty of time to regen in P2/P3 - it's crucial that no one drops below 50% or they die to an explosion. The tanks are probably the safest in this phase - they have oh-crap abilities, they have plate and the most health, and they can probably soak two explosions in a row.

I might put it on Bal next time - he seemed to take the most damage :p

Dahlaine wrote:However your advice about Tidal Waves is probably true. I need to rejig some add-ons so it is announced to me when Tidal Wave procs. Thank you both

Not really worth getting it announced I'd have thought - assuming 5/5 talent anyway, it's guaranteed from Chain Heal or Riptide, and Riptide is too cheap and wonderful to not be casting when it's available

Though you do start hitting the GCD with speed-up'ed LHWs.

Shield wise, shammies can cast:

Lightning Shield: The caster is surrounded by 3 balls of lightning. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for 380 Nature damage. This expends one lightning ball. Only one ball will fire every few seconds. Lasts 10 min. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Water Shield: The caster is surrounded by 3 globes of water, granting 100 mana per 5 sec. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, 400 mana is restored to the caster. This expends one water globe. Only one globe will activate every few seconds. Lasts 10 min. Only one Elemental Shield can be active on the Shaman at any one time.

Earth Shield: Protects the target with an earthen shield, reducing casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 30% and causing attacks to heal the shielded target for 337. This effect can only occur once every few seconds. 6 charges. Lasts 10 min. Earth Shield can only be placed on one target at a time and only one Elemental Shield can be active on a target at a time.

Note that only one of those can be up on any given person though, so if (say) an enhance shaman had put up lightning shield, and then got poo-shielded by the resto shaman, the lightning shield would be removed.

Trinket wise - there's one from 40 heroic badges (Egg of Mortal Essence?) which is identical to the Maexxna one except that it only works on healing spells (I know this because Torix used to use it too ... for unknown reasons Arcane Missiles triggered it too!), well worth grabbing. Can't count on trinket procs happening at the right time, of course.

Telluria wrote: Trinket wise - there's one from 40 heroic badges which is identical to the Maexxna one except that it only works on healing spells (I know this because Torix used to use it too ... for unknown reasons Arcane Missiles triggered it too!), well worth grabbing. Can't count on trinket procs happening at the right time, of course.

Mmhm, that is my *other* trinket.

Well, if you feel really rich, Je'Tze's Bell is very highly regarded.

Darkmoon Card: Illusion is also pretty decent, and not always obscenely priced either.

Have to admit that my own shaman's second trinket is a grotty MP5/spellpower-on-use one from a heroic too, though.

Aye, it's either that or I start making Noble's Cards again and pick up the Intellect Greatness card. If not for the proc - then for the base intellect increase.

I just went on WoWhead and found:

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=46085

Titan-forged Rune of Alacrity:
Equip: Improves haste rating by 95 (2.9% @ L80).
Use: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. (2 Min Cooldown)

3% haste is quite tasty for a moo, and it has the trinket function of the pvp trinket. There's another 4 Titan-forged Runes that add +hit, +spellpower, +AP and +crit instead of haste. Might help with the MCs and random MCs in P1/P2 as well, if you don't mind grinding the 25 WG tokens it costs. Of course, this is a theoretical discussion - we already got Yoghurt down, so we CAN do it with the healer combo we had last night..

Edit: Hmm, time to update the gear list on Page 1 of this thread with a list of trinkets (Top 20 healer trinkets in WotLK ).

I think there's a similar one for 45k Honour, thanks! Might have a look into it.

0:06'39.933 Dahlaine Lightning Bolt hits General Vezax for 2380 Nature. (207 Resisted) #110099
0:06'40.422 Zuzuna Holy Fire hits General Vezax for 2130 Holy. #110102
0:06'40.917 Dahlaine melee swing hits General Vezax for 1508 Physical. (Critical) #110107
0:06'41.654 General Vezax died.

Dahl is semi-oracle, isn't it so? The kill to oracles!

Hehe, well-spotted. I'm still not happy with how the regen calls are working, especially getting the ranged to regen with us in turns - work in progress however. Also, I think I got the calls mixed up at the end - which probably accelerated the confusion.

/moo

HPS table

* = hard mode kill

Boss	7th May	14th May	21st May	28th May	11th June	Notes for this week's run
Razorscale	2530	3100	3350	2970	3200
Ignis	7560	7800	7850	6840	6600	First time with 2 healers only.
XT-002	3567	5200	4300	2980	6300*	First hard mode kill.
Iron Council	10060	9900	9560	5760	8300*	First hard mode kill, Steelbreaker last.
Kologarn	7800	8000	6980	7130	7200
Auriaya	5643	5900	5320	6475	5700
Hodir	6305	5700	6700	8080	7600
Thorim	4700	3900	3950	3530	6100*	First hard mode kill.
Freya	5530	5900	5240	6060	5800
Mimiron	n/a	"5000"	"4880"	"4810"	"4000"	Mimiron is special.
Vezax	-	-	-	-	2200
Yogg-Saron	-	-	-	-	5900

At present our Oracles can do ~3k hps sustained each (on average). I removed the colour coding because I couldn't remember what system I used - but will gladly redo it if you want me to make a new system (red = 3 healers, orange = 2 healers, green = 1 healer?).

Marveen wrote:...I think I got the calls mixed up at the end - which probably accelerated the confusion./moo

I think no vapors were getting "killed" for me to run into, that is why I transmitted SOS from time to time. Do coastrunners know who is killing what at what time? I dont think it was your calls mixed anyway