R.I.P. Crit

In a previous post, I wrote about the stats shaman healers like. There are three different choices for shamans -- heavy crit, heavy haste, or a balance of the two. I've always tried to balance the two, but have leaned closer to the crit side.

As I get further into Ulduar, I am starting to see a new pattern emerge, and am expecting it to continue. The pattern is two-fold. First, MOVE MOVE MOVE. Second, damage spikes that need healed now. Both of these favor haste.

The benefit to crit is actually mana regen. With the right talents, the more often you crit, the more mana you get back. So what's changed? Mp5. Along with patch 3.2, items with Mp5 now return more mana. This means that you really don't need to stack so much crit for regen. It frees you up for -- you guessed it -- haste.

The result. I'm now swapping out crit gear for haste gear. I will also be playing with gems once again, as I find the balance between intellect\regen & haste. Yes, I will be starting to replace intellect gems with haste... something else that was a no-no prior to 3.2 .

Glyphs

There are 5 glyphs that are the most typical for shaman healers.

Majors:

• Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave -- Your Lesser Healing Wave heals for 20% more if the target is also affected by your Earth Shield. :: You want this one if you're doing a lot of tank healing. If raid healing, it's a bit of a waste.
• Glyph of Earth Shield -- Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%. :: This one is good whether you are tank healing or raid healing. Why? ES should always be on the tank, so making it heal for more will help out quite a bit.
• Glyph of Chain Heal -- Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target. :: If you are raid healing, this one is a must-have. A bit of a waste if you're tank healing.
• Glyph of Water Mastery -- Increases the passive mana regeneration of your Water Shield spell by 30%. :: More Mp5 from your water shield, which should always be up. Helps to keep from going OOM.

Minor:

• Glyph of Water Shield -- Increases the number of charges on your Water Shield spell by 1. :: This used to be bigger when crits consumed orbs. But for lack of anything else Minor, this one is still nice for the raid damage you do take.

There are a couple glyphs that others might take, I don't see them being as useful as the glyphs listed above.

Mana Tide: Mana Tide is dropped on occasion. And while more mana from Mana Tide is nice, you're going to take up a glyph slot that should be used by a more powerful glyph.

Healing Stream: There's a reason it's often called "Overhealing Stream". It is a party-only totem. If you happen to be tank healing, and are in the same group as the tank, and can always keep the totem up in range of the tank, it could be useful. Having it tick away on a raid group that's not taking much damage is a waste of a glyph slot.

Earthliving Weapon: An increased chance to trigger the earthliving hot is interesting... the problem though is that the HoT that results is somewhat weak. Not as powerful as, say, chain heal hitting a fourth target.

It's Been a Week!

Well, not a lot going on ... had you fooled for a moment.

Drama! Guild Drama! What else could it have possibly been?

A while back I left the guild I've called home for years, ever since the beginning of its, and my, very existence in WoW. We both started about the same time, and I have watched it grow up to what it has become.

I left because I wanted to raid. The leader of the guild I was raiding with made a sudden declaration one day that only those in his own guild could raid with them. Shortly later, he backed it down (after realizing they wouldn't have enough to sustain on their own, I would assume) saying that nobody outside his guild would be gauranteed a spot. So, whatever, I moved over to the other guild.

Things in that guild started getting rockier, little by little, until last weekend the threat to disband came, followed by mass desertion. Most everyone went and started a new guild. I did not join them. Instead, I returned home.

We seem to have accumulated enough quality people to start our own "progression" 10-man raiding. For the larger, 25-mans, we'll likely team up with the new splinter guild to get some raiding accomplished.

So here's to our new success... wish us luck.

Shaman, Shamen, Shamans

Thought this would be an interesting post. People can get confused about what to call more than one shaman.

Merriam-Webster may be of help here:

Main Entry: sha·man
Pronunciation: \ˈshä-mən, ˈshā- also shə-ˈmän\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural shamans
Etymology: ultimately from Evenki (Tungusic language of Siberia) šamān
Date: 1698
1 : a priest or priestess who uses magic for the purpose of curing the sick, divining the hidden, and controlling events
2 : one who resembles a shaman; especially : high priest 3

So now you know. And it can be pronounced shaw-muhn, shay-mawn, or shuh-mawn (don't call me a she-man please).

Of Paladins and Shamans

So I don't know much about paladin healers. My paladin is a tad bit low yet, and I don't think he will ever heal. But what I've gathered about holy paladins' gear is that Crit + Int is valued above all else. Doing a little reading, it would appear that has changed slightly with 3.2. It now looks like paladin's might start valuing Int + Mp5 more ... wait a minute ... that's what shamans want!

So what do I foresee? Typically Mp5 gear that is shareable by the healers (necklaces, rings, shields, maces, etc) has been viewed as shaman gear, as that's what's of great value to us. This may change, and we may find resto shamans being challenged for gear by holy paladins. Doesn't sound like much fun. :(

3.2 is Here!

3.2 has arrived -- not really news, unless you've been living in a cave (completely possible if you're a troll).

The entire patch was around 400MB, a pretty good size. Took about 5 minutes for me to download. Servers will be down though for at least another hour, but I would bet it will be longer based on past experience.

So what do we get? We get some new tier gear, a new 5-man and 10\25-man raid, a new 40-man battleground, and some new wallpaper. But what's in it for the shaman?! I've said a lot of this before in other posts, and I'm not going to go into everything, just wanted to point out some items of interest to us PvE resto shamans:

Chain Heal: Jump distance increased by 25% to 12.5 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.

Big Big Big. Chain Heal will be used again. What does this mean for stats? Haste Haste Haste.

Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Mentioned in a previous post. I think this will be helpful mostly to those mage tanks that don't have a lot of armor to start with. By making a flat damage reduction, armor won't matter.

Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.

This may make the resto\resto dual-spec obsolete. It will be a major improvement to Healing Wave. No doubt quite a few more shamans will be picking up this previously laughable talent.

Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.

One word -- macros. I macro Nature's Swiftness into most of my heals. Some will save it for an "Oh @*$&" moment. I usually find that by the time an "Oh @*$&" moment happens, the rest has already gone down hill so far that a single instant heal would not be enough to gather things back up. This, ultimately, will allow more heals to get out during an encounter.

Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.

I was in VoA this week. One other shaman in the raid discovered the dirty little problem with Tidal Waves. It's that Lesser Healing Wave is so fast on its own, with the haste you simply pick up on gear, that when you throw in Tidal Waves you end up hitting a wall on the global cooldown (GCD). What you end up with is a spell that casts faster than it can be used again.

So what this change does is remove the useless haste on Lesser Healing Wave and replace it with some critical strike - something that is always welcome.

Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Triggers on Chain Heal crits. No more need to refresh because of crit. Win.

Trinkets, Precious Trinkets

Trinkets, in my opinion, are the wildcards of a gear set. With most gear, you get a flat upgrade when you move up the iLevel ladder. But with trinkets, iLevel does not mean everything. Sure, I cringe when I see level 80s running around with level 70 PvP trinkets, so there's a practical limit to what is acceptable. It's often the case, though, that an iLvl 200 trinket may be better for an individual than an iLvl 213 or 219, or more. Trinkets give you that "little bit extra", and should be used to get that "little bit extra" you need.

The trinkets I run with look like this:

Energy Siphon
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Requires Level 80
Item Level 219
Equip: Restores 54 mana per 5 sec.
Use: Increases spell power by 408 for 20 sec. (2 Min Cooldown)

Soul of the Dead
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Requires Level 80
Item Level 213
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 95 (2.07% @ L80).
Equip: Your spell critical strikes have a chance to restore 900 mana.


I will be picking up a new one today:

Darkmoon Card: Illusion
Binds when equipped
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
Requires Level 80
Item Level 200
Equip: Increases spell power by 100.
Use: Absorbs 1500 damage for 6 sec. When the shield is removed by any means, you regain 1500 mana. (5 Min Cooldown)


Then, looking at the new PTR loot, (3.2 this week please!) I found a new one and wet myself:

Coliseum 25 Badge Loot Healer Trinket
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
+128 Intellect
Requires Level 80
Item Level 245
Use: Increases spell power by 599 for 20 sec. (20 Sec Cooldown)

128 Intellect will be more than awesome. It will be flat out Godly... and purchasable with emblems. I couldn't be happier.