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The latest patch 5.4 newsTotem Talk: Totems and heroics in Cataclysm
by Joe Perez 
Sep 28th 2010 at 3:00PM
Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and host of the BDTU: Lore edition podcast.
Last week, we talked about what to expect in the upcoming patch 4.0.1 and how healing felt in the new pre-Cataclysm patch. After that, we also got news of a very important update for us in the latest PTR build, patch 13033, with Mana Tide Totem's recent change to increase our spirit by 200 percent rather than just give a flat percentage of mana back when used. The cooldown of the ability was reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes. Last week, heroic dungeons were also made available in the Cataclysm beta for us to test out, including heroic Shadowfang Keep and heroic Deadmines.
This week, I would like to talk a little bit more about the changes to Mana Tide Totem and what to expect using it in the next expansion. I would also like to share with you my experiences healing through the new heroic dungeons as a restoration shaman in a new set of blue ilvl 333 gear.
Mana Tide Totem is full of spirit
With patch 4.0.1, in preparation for Cataclysm, MP5 will be disappearing from gear and instead will be replaced by spirit. This isn't anything new, and we knew this was going to happen for a quite some time -- but to see it in action is a whole other story. When we logged into the beta client for the first time, Mana Tide Totem was left unchanged and restored 6 percent of total mana every 3 seconds for everyone within 30 yards of the totem. The developers have been very up front about the fact that they want mana to be an issue for healers. They want it to be a concern and something that players think about before just throwing heals all over the place, and as it stood, our iconic totem just didn't fit any more.
Changing it to increase our spirit by 200 percent does a couple things. First of all, it makes this firmly a healer ability. Spirit is a healer stat now, and so this totem does not really benefit DPS mana users. Second, by having it add 200 percent of our spirit, the amount it returns will scale with our gear. As far as numbers go, since it adds 200 percent, it triples our spirit, and it essentially triples our mana regen every 3 minutes. Here are some screenshots to show how these numbers work with fresh dungeons blues.
Here in the picture to the left is my spirit total before using the totem. You can see my total spirit is 1,235. This is without any other buffs or any flasks. It makes my regeneration 1,110 per every 5 seconds when not casting anything. While casting with Meditation, that puts my regeneration at 555 per 5 seconds. That is quite a bit more than most endgame shaman see right now, but with mana at such a premium, it still isn't as much as it sounds like. Sure, this number will increase, but right now I can tell you from first-hand experience, it really isn't all that much right now. In the shot on the right, you can see that after using Mana Tide Totem, my
spirit has increased to 3,705 per every 5 seconds when not casting, meaning that while casting and with the totem active, my regen becomes 1,852 per every 5 seconds. Quite a big change there. Now, being able to do that every 3 minutes makes restoration shaman mana regeneration pretty much the best out of all the healers so far. I mean, who doesn't like being able to effectively give yourself a 300 percent total on your in combat mana regeneration every 3 minutes? Both of these changes really make it a great time to be a restoration shaman in the upcoming content changes. Cataclysm heroics: Now with more Heroism!
This past week, I spent a lot of time in the beta running dungeons and trying to heal through heroics. The highlight of the dungeon runs, though, was Frostheim. We were in Vortex Pinnacle, and every time I cast Healing Rain, he booked out of the affected area as quick as he could! Honestly though, running through the heroic and normal dungeons was extremely fun and quite informative as to what we can expect.
First lesson of the week: It is not so much knowing what to heal as it is knowing when not to heal. Sounds silly, right? Hear me out, though. Knowing how far you can let players go before you absolutely have to drop a heal is critical. It goes against all of our instincts, but your goal is not to top everyone off; instead, it is to keep them alive, no matter how barely that alive is. Even if everyone in the group is doing everything perfect, if you attempt to keep everyone at full, you will run out of mana very quickly. This goes beyond choosing the right heal for the right job; this is simply a fact.
This becomes painfully obvious in places like Grim Batol. The first boss, General Umbriss, hits like a truck while summoning adds. Everyone takes a decent amount of damage, but if you try to keep everyone at full, you will run out of mana before his health bar gets to the halfway mark. After healing through him quite a few times, at no time after his death was any party member in any of my groups above 20 percent of their health. The best thing I can compare this to is purple-lining the tank back in the EverQuest days. You kept the tank almost dead, and in return, the tank went into a sort of berserk rage, dealing a ton of damage. The best healers back then were the ones who could keep the tank at this level and alive without topping him off. You will have to get used to this, at least for now. This may change when we get better gear and everyone gets better numbers, but this is exactly what the developers said they wanted healing to be.
The second lesson is triage. Knowing when not to heal is the groundwork for our endeavors, but knowing who to heal and when you should do so is just as important. Traditionally, healers place the most emphasis on keeping the tank up, but what I've found over the course of my heroics in the beta this week is that it's OK to let the tank take a few hits. Our tanks have much larger health totals than before, and they do have some tools to help further mitigate the damage coming in for a few moments. It's OK to not heal them in favor of healing a DPSer; you just need to learn when to do it.
Each boss fight is different. Take as an example, in the Halls of Origination, the boss Rajh. He has quite a few fire-based area of effect attacks that deal a sizable chunk of damage. The tanks that I've been with have been able to blow a cooldown and make it through pretty well, but other classes aren't as lucky. I set other classes that don't have defensive cooldowns to mitigate damage at a higher priority before paying attention to the tank.
It is also OK to know when to let someone die. It is going to happen at some point, but it isn't your fault. If you know someone is going to explode (say, that elemental shaman who just stole aggro) and you can either heal them or save another party member who isn't a certain death, you may have to choose to let that first person die. If you can't save someone and you try, you are only wasting mana. Being able to recognize this is huge.
Our third lesson is learning what tools to use and for what. The very first boss in Vortex Pinnacle forces everyone to group up during his first phase. Healing Rain and Healing Stream Totem were perfect candidates to help even out the healing load and gave me time to stop casting and regen mana.
Beyond learning which heal to use and when, I also found something to be incredibly useful that may have previously been overlooked. Matt Low talked about this in his last article about healing rotations and adapting to the DPS-to-heal abilities. Shaman have a bit of advantage in this department, as well. Focused Insight allows us to cast any shock while reducing the cost of our next heal by 75 percent of the cost of the shock. It also super-charges our next healing spell by augmenting it an additional 30 percent. Now, something I had not previously considered was working Earth Shock in with my healing spells. Not only does Earth Shock trigger Focused Insight, but it also reduces the attack speed of melee and ranged attacks by 20 percent for 8 seconds. This may not seem like a lot, but there are a ton of bosses that can actually be affected by the spell effect. Those extra fractions of a second can allow you the extra time you need for a big heal like Greater Healing Wave to land. It has been very helpful on many of the encounters so far, and it really drives home the point of using every tool at your disposal.
Heroics are much harder than they were when we could first access them in Wrath, but at the same time, they are a lot more fun to heal. They require a lot more attention and planning on the part of the party and thinking outside of the box on the part of the healers. They are really setting the stage to force us to relearn how to heal again, and they do a great job at balancing difficulty and fun factor while doing it. I'm looking forward to seeing how these heroic dungeons transfer into raids. Every time I now zone into the heroics, I'm quite excited. Finishing them is rewarding, and each boss fight is exciting.
Show your totemic mastery by reading Totem Talk. Whether it's Sarah Nichol's elemental edition, Joe Perez's coverage of restoration or Rich Maloy's enhancement edition, WoW Insider's shaman experts have you covered.Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Boobah Sep 28th 2010 9:11PM
As I understand it, the five-second rule will be gone. Hadn't played with it on the PTR, though. We're supposed to get just in-combat and out-of-combat regen.
And crit is still a mana regen stat, too, since we've still got the crit-procs-water shield talent. Or at least we did last time I looked.
scr00chy Sep 29th 2010 12:13AM
That's what I was gonna say. I remember them saying they got rid of the 5 second rule and therefore standing around not casting wouldn't increase your regen in the slightest.
Asaron Sep 29th 2010 9:31AM
Not casting wont technically increase your mana regen, but you will of course not be spending mana so opting not to cast might still be benificial occassionally. I think in general you should be casting your efficient heal in those spaces though, you don't want to fall behind and rely on the costly ones.
Umbra Sep 28th 2010 4:06PM
Sees huge blue glowing structure. Sees lack of anything near it.
OH GOD BUILD DETECTOR NOW!!
Sorry for that outburst I have been playing SCII legue games again.
Joe Perez Sep 28th 2010 4:07PM
"Nuke heal detected!"
KPB Sep 28th 2010 4:10PM
How is mana regen working? I had read that the 5 second rule is gone but do you immediately kick into the higher regen rate as soon as you aren't casting or is that only out of combat? Is it a large single chunk of mana every 5 seconds or smaller amounts at smaller intervals?
Have you worked out the math on focused insight? Does it actually increase healing enough to cover the additional cost and thus increase efficiency? Does it matter which heal you are using?
Asaron Sep 29th 2010 9:33AM
In combat and out of combat. You wont get the higher rate of regen just because you stopped casting. In PvE there aren't that many ways to break combat, you need the encounter to end to get back on the higher rate.
PvP is a different ball game.
Joe Perez Sep 28th 2010 4:17PM
From what I can tell, as soon as you're done casting you're back at the higher regen. There is no more 5 second rule. Right now it shows a constant trickle, so it's always coming in, not just in 5 second clumps. Honestly I almost wish they would just rename it to mana per second for ease of understanding.
The best healing boost combination is Shock triggering FI and a Greater Healing Wave. Factor in deep healing bonuses and you have a recipe for a good, big, heal on a low tank. Taht said 30% bonus on any heal is good here when you get it.
As far as cost effectiveness you don't want to be willy-nilly with the shocks, but FI gives you the best mana return on Healing Wave (our cheapest heal). For exact numbers I'm actually working on a very mathy post in the next few weeks to give an idea of spell combination and effectiveness with FI and Unleashed weapon.
Eudeyrn Sep 28th 2010 6:42PM
Mana regen has always been on the standard tick timer - 2 seconds. The "bar filling" animation uses smoothing to make it appear as though the bar is always steadily growing while you regen mana, but in reality, your available mana only increases every 2 seconds.
Mp5 is definitely confusingly named, though. For example, an item with 100 Mp5 is more appropriate described as giving a base 40 mana on every tick (100 / 2.5). With the elimination of Mp5 as a stat, maybe we can start talking about regen as Mp2 again, which is more correct.
Boobah Sep 28th 2010 9:16PM
Mana ticks get dropped to something absurdly short when 3.0 dropped; it's short enough that it looks continuous. They changed mana regen the same time they changed energy for rogues and kitties. How do you miss that sort of thing? Or rather, how do you know about the old 2 second ticks, while simultaneously not being aware of how it works on live?
Jean_Luc_Picard Sep 28th 2010 4:37PM
Cool lookin nexus
gitsi Sep 28th 2010 4:43PM
I think you are correct about MT and the very low actual returns in combat. Don't forget you need to re-drop your water totem afterwords as well, which even further decreases the functional return. Looking at the pic and squinting it seems he has 66k mana, which makes it around a 4.5% return on mana every 3 minutes, or 7.5% every 5 minutes to directly compare it to MT on live. This is clearly a significant nerf, and unless other healers regen mechanics are changes to spirit instead of % mana this could be debilitating for balancing healer longevity in early raid tiers. Factor in a totem redrop ~1k mana iirc and it changes to 3% every 3 minutes or 5% every 5 minutes.
to be fair resto shaman longevity does seem to be better than any of the other healers on beta right now, so if nothing changes it will probably be fine, but if other healers base efficiency is brought up to shaman levels and keeps their mana return cooldowns, which GC claims encounters will be balanced around using on ones self, this could prove problematic.
Nashir Sep 28th 2010 4:48PM
Nice article, glad to hear that the doomsayers about shaman healing are off the mark. Has anyone found Telluric Currents (mana back as a proportion of Lightning Bolt damage) to be useful at this stage?
kabshiel Sep 28th 2010 5:01PM
The Earth Shock debuff isn't particularly useful in a group because every tank class already creates that debuff as part of their normal tanking rotation.
Vizzur Sep 28th 2010 6:58PM
Joe,
In your tests, how does unleash elements work into the rotation for resto shamans? Have you gotten a change to use it much?
Joe Perez Sep 29th 2010 10:29AM
Unleashed Elements, through my use, has been best served as an instant cast saving heal followed by a bigger heal. Normally on the tank. With my current stats it's hitting for between 4-6k which puts it on part with the initial "splash" of Riptide. Following it up with a Healing Wave or a Greater Healing Wave on a tank is pretty effective. It can be cast on the move without having to burn Spiritwalker's Grace, which gives us two instant cast heals to use while getting into position without having to blow an external cooldown so it's also been pretty handy when running in with a tank on a pull.
Best way to put it, like everything else, is it's a situational heal. Your mileage on it will vary on dungeon/content/group composition. As far as working it into the rotation, it wasn't that hard. After getting used to tidal force no longer being around I simply replaced the hot key with UE and anytime I think a heal needs a boost or I need a small instant heal I'll hit it.
Stryker Boh Sep 28th 2010 11:01PM
I, for one, am incredibly happy with the new changes in healing in general. I play both a resto shaman and a disc priest and am waiting with bated breath to get a chance to have a go at the new system. Too long have I had to stand by and watch people get told how awesome of a healer they are just because they spam one or two buttons incessantly with no fear of mana drain. It will be interesting, however, to see how many people "can't cut it" as both tanks and healers. Those two jobs already required at least a small step above complete mindlessness and now are going to actually (from what it appears at least) require people actually knowing what they're doing.
Vymiot Sep 29th 2010 1:58AM
So I dare to think how those all changes will affect the healer population in the game? 2 me it sound like survival of the fittest (or whatever it pronouces -sry my english is slacking I know). With all those "know who and when", " keep your eyes out of the frames to accualy see whats goin on around" - those will make real healers be at most wanted list 2 all the oter ppl playin. I'm glad to see this commin. Finally I and i'm sure lots of other ppl will have the final challange and answer to the q- Am I a good healer or am I just healing by fillin those raid frames all the way up.... Cant wait to see that:-)
kw Sep 29th 2010 9:33AM
Why does this picture make me want to re-watch Stargate?
Joe Perez Sep 29th 2010 11:52AM
See, for me the zone made me want to try to defend against a 4 gate rush.