Totem Talk: Restoration mastery and cooldowns in patch 4.1
by Joe Perez 
Mar 8th 2011 at 2:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and co-host of the Raid Warning podcast), shows you how.
Last week, we talked about two seemingly misfit restoration shaman talents, Telluric Currents and Focused Insight. It was great to hear your opinions on these two tallents and to see how you've been using them since they were given to us. Some have been using both for a maximum healing buff or to keep the mana flowing, while others have either avoided or pushed aside these talents.
This week, we got a bit of quite exciting news. With patch 4.1 around the corner and being tested on the PTR, we are starting to get a glimpse of what the developers at Blizzard have in mind for further restoration shaman tweaks. Namely, we got an update of the patch notes that contain not only a healing buff for restoration shaman, but also the very first look at our brand spanking new restoration cooldown.
Last week, we talked about two seemingly misfit restoration shaman talents, Telluric Currents and Focused Insight. It was great to hear your opinions on these two tallents and to see how you've been using them since they were given to us. Some have been using both for a maximum healing buff or to keep the mana flowing, while others have either avoided or pushed aside these talents.
This week, we got a bit of quite exciting news. With patch 4.1 around the corner and being tested on the PTR, we are starting to get a glimpse of what the developers at Blizzard have in mind for further restoration shaman tweaks. Namely, we got an update of the patch notes that contain not only a healing buff for restoration shaman, but also the very first look at our brand spanking new restoration cooldown.
I don't know about you, but I was quite excited this week when the updated patch notes for patch 4.1 were released. Shaman healing has been something that the developers have been watching for a little bit now, and it's nice to see that we aren't off their radar quite yet. This comes even after we've already received a little bit of a tweak to our live performance. Here's an excerpt from our latest update.
Restoration
- Deep Healing now benefits all heals, not just direct heals.
- Spirit Link Totem (new talent) reduces damage taken by all party and raid members within 10 yards by 10%. This lasts 6 seconds, and every second it is active the health of all affected players is redistributed among them, such that each player ends up with the same percentage of their maximum health. This counts as an Air totem and has a 3-minute cooldown.
Who's da mastah, Leeroy?
Mastery has been one of those things that has confused, dismayed or bothered restoration shaman since it was first announced. Deep Healing increases the potency of your direct healing spells by up to 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower-health targets are healed for more). Each point of mastery increases direct heals by up to an additional 3.0%. By itself, it isn't that impressive for a couple reasons.
First of all, it only affects our direct heals, meaning it was pretty much useless on what quickly became some of our most-used spells, like Healing Rain. Secondly, its effectiveness went up the lower health our healing targets were at. While this sounds great, it means that every time someone ran out of the fire or avoided damage, it became almost useless, especially when you consider that raiding scenarios involve multiple healers all topping off the members of the group. It also meant that as players gathered gear and content was slowly but surely defeated, the effectiveness of the ability was also dwindling.
The proposed change, however, breathes some new life into our mastery. Changing it to boost all healing done is a pretty big deal. Imagine a large chunk of raid-wide damage lands, and you throw down your Healing Rain and begin casting Chain Heal to try to bring the raid up past dangerous levels, only with further assistance from a boosted Healing Stream Totem. That's pretty sweet, if you ask me. I know I saw that change and was quite honestly ecstatic about it. There are many fights in which I could see this being quite handy, such as Chimaeron or Valiona and Theralion, where health totals routinely drop low as the result of either fight mechanics or raid damage.
Now I don't think that this means we're going to run out and start stacking mastery rating any time soon, but I do like the fact that it will now augment all of our healing. Everything from Riptide's HoT to Healing Stream Totem will get a little more juice from this stat now, and that alone is something to get excited about. It can only mean overall better performance from us as healers.
Spirit Link? Can it really be true?!
We were told last week that the developers at Blizzard were talking about giving restoration shaman a cooldown in order to keep up with other healers. At the time, nothing had been released or even hinted at as to what they had in mind, and we began to speculate about what it could be.
It would seem, though, that we had a couple of things right. We anticipated it being a talent rather than a pure spell, which makes sense when you think about it. It's a healing cooldown, so to make sure that not all flavors of shaman are utilizing it, you almost have to make it a talent.
Now, the speculation begins anew as to what talent will be removed to make room for this new one. The PTR has not been updated for this quite yet, so it remains speculation currently. Personally, I still think Riptide needs to be made a bonus for the player who chooses restoration as their specialization, and the new cooldown should be placed as the top tier restoration talent.
I was also quite happy when the words "spirit link" were uttered in accordance to our new cooldown, as it was something that was promised to us when Cataclysm was still in development. The spell first made an appearance in the closed beta for Wrath of the Lich King but was scrapped due to balancing issues. The idea was unique, refreshing and something many shaman latched onto. Back then, it was the top tier restoration talent and had the following effect.
It has certainly come a long way from its original incarnation, and personally, I love the new flavor of it. First of all, it is a totem -- and an air totem, at that. It is born out of our unique class mechanic of totems and helps add more utility to the air school of a shaman's spellcasting. Secondly, it is an area effect cooldown, protecting every party and raid member within 10 yards of the totem. That is pretty cool and helps distance it from other defensive cooldowns like Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit.Spirit Link (Rank 1) You link the friendly target with two nearby targets, causing 50% of the damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. After 2200 damage, the link will sever.
Lastly, it has a pretty unique effect. It does reduce incoming damage to all affected players by 10%, which is pretty good by itself, but it also rebalances health percentages. The concept is that it will keep all players in the same ballpark as far as healing priority. So let us say you have five players in the radius of the totem; everyone will hit the same percentages as they take damage. So if one player is as 90% health while everyone else is at 100% health, it will try to balance that out everyone in the group to be at about 98% health. No other cooldown does that right now, and I can already begin to see fights where this will be insanely useful. Nefarian phase 2 comes to mind there; just this past week, I was thinking to myself how much I would kill for a cooldown in that phase.
It hasn't been implemented on the PTR quite yet, and I suspect that it will get tweaked a bit before it ever hits live, but I for one am looking forward to playing around with this ability. I find myself already calculating which fights this will be good for, on everything from quest mobs to heroics to raid bosses. I think the 3-minute cooldown is right about where it needs to be, and I think it will suit us just fine. I'm hoping that it has a pretty killer animation, though -- maybe something like Power Word: Barrier.
So what do you think about these changes? Are you as excited as I am about the return of the prodigal son, Spirit Link? How do you think the cooldown will help us out? Are you already planning what fights and what phases to use it in?
Totem Talk: Restoration will show you the basics of endgame resto shaman play as well as how to find the expansion's best reputation gear for resto shaman and tips for easier leveling. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 2:07PM
I do want to first add, that subsequent to others correcting me on the forums, mastery has always affected healing rains. While most people think of it as a hot, it is considered a direct heal.
Second, SLT is a great idea, especially when used in conjunction with other cooldowns, such as nether ward or BH trinkets which could share the effect of other cooldowns across healh pools. Although, I can see it being a death dealer as well, on something like electrocute - where if one player is low and is going to die from it, and two players have just enough health - you could end up with three dead players instead of one.
Torr Mar 8th 2011 2:26PM
I haven't noticed this, and HR is one of my primary spells, it normally heals for about 2-3k per tick, 4k for crits, and never anything higher unless I pop a SP cooldown. Ive done the math, the ONLY spells Ive noticed that benefit in a noticeable ammount from mastery are GHW, HW and HS, with only the first hit from Riptide affected, and not the HoT. It doesn't affect the heal from ancestral awakening, earth living weapon, Earth Shield, or cleanse. And don't even get me started on chain heal....its dead.
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 2:36PM
The last post on this page of the Resto Shaman discussion thread on Ej provides a matrix of spell applicability for mastery and other effects.
http://elitistjerks.com/f79/t110263-resto_cataclysm_raiding_discussion/p2/
Torr Mar 8th 2011 3:14PM
I distrust EJ because their typical analysis of classes/spec/abilities is either dependent on specific GEAR setups, group composition, and raid strategy, skewing the results for every person who doesn't have EXACTLY the same circumstances available to them. Hell, their analysis of TC indicated that it was a useless talent because mana should never be a problem... Its likely that they factored that same bias(and yes, they are biased) into their calculations for mastery. If, for example, they factored in that the healers are keeping the ENTIRE raid between 30-50% health, then yes, mastery would have a different priority than say crit or haste, however how many raid groups can do that perfectly w/o losing ppl? The circumstances for the benefit of mastery for resto shaman right now indicate that is junk, except for tank healing, careful raid healing should mean that its bonus effect on the heals is marginal at best, nonexistent at worse...so why waste gems/enchants/reforge on it? I don't, and I am a better healer for it.
Joe Perez Mar 8th 2011 3:18PM
I'm going by my own observations. This includes dumping all mastery, having everyone in a 5 man group jump from the same height to take near leathal damage, cast healing rain, observe numbers. Put mastery back on, repeat experiment and seeing no change in the healing numbers. Not sure if something has changed, but as of a week ago I have no first hand proof that it does have an impact.
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 3:44PM
I agree on the observation, because it was also mine until I was berrated on my inaccuracy.
Hih Mar 8th 2011 3:58PM
I can't believe Shamans still don't know what spells are and aren't affected by Mastery :\
I'll go test it on my alt for you guys. For the first trial, I'll reforge all mastery into haste. Take off all my gear, put it back on (important to keep a consistent health pool when testing mastery) Cast Healing Rain. Reforge everything possible to mastery. Take off and put gear back on. Cast healing rain again. See if the heals are different. Simple.
Torr Mar 8th 2011 4:10PM
You could try testing it in the same place I did, the lava pool in IF. just have everyone hop down there, let their health get low, and start healing. It takes a while, but it works. Also H HoS, maiden of woe, stand in the void zones. All you really need is someplace with a void zone that does damage of some sort.
Hih Mar 8th 2011 4:37PM
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee45/hoticehunter/WoWScrnShot_030811_161203.jpg
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee45/hoticehunter/WoWScrnShot_030811_160901.jpg
High Mastery setup gave a potential +48% to healing. Low Mastery setup gave 36%. Tests were done at 40.1% health, so true mastery bonus was 28.7% and 21.5%, a difference of 7.2%.
Screenshot 1 is low mastery, 2 is high mastery.
The average tick for low mastery was (excluding crits) was 2246.4
Average tick for high mastery was (no crits) 2404.8
2404.8/2246.4= 1.0705. The high mastery tests were 7.05% stronger, a less than 3% difference from expected values, assuming mastery affected Healing Rain, which judging by these tests, it does indeed.
Your welcome.
One of the major problems I have with this community is that no one just... goes out and tests anything anymore. It's all heresay and gut feeling.
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 5:08PM
Appreciate the homework. I do trust EJ on binary calls like this, i.e. mastery works for a spell or it doesn't. I don't trust them on judgement calls since a lot of people discount the practical reality of raiding and make far too optimistic assumptions when peforming certain calculations.
Torr Mar 8th 2011 5:16PM
Hih, interesting screen shots, and your math is correct. However it actually Proves that stacking mastery is a bad idea, because a 7% increase in healing output isnt worth stacking mastery unless you stack NOTHING but it to absurd levels, the bonus is just not good enough to warrant it, better to spend time improving your heals elsewhere.
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 5:26PM
That's not true. His gear in mastery netted a 12% increase in mastery, which at 3% per point is about 4 mastery (not rating). Additionally, the target health was around 40%, so that mastery wasn't fully effective. It would net a higher value, closer to 12% if the target health were lower.
Mastery approximates spellpower with diminishing returns based on a player's health. You receive exceptional performance from this stat in high damage situations, such as hardmode raid encounters - but poor performance in low damage situations, such as farm raid encounters.
Torr Mar 8th 2011 5:37PM
Yet another reason why mastery is a situation stat Firestyle, the lower the health of the target, the more it heals, however if a target is REALLY low on health, do u have the time to cast what is essentially a HoT on them before they die, what if there is more background damage(think festerguts exhale) What then? A HoT wont cut it fully, you are going to need burst heals, something our mastery doesn't support right now except for single target.
Firestyle Mar 8th 2011 5:44PM
I've actually found most damage to be predictable, outside of tank damage from white hits paired with avoidance. I find mastery most valuable in recovering from nefarion's electocutes, picking up low health targets on halfus HM, it's absolutly critical on Chimaeron HM, and also useful on atramedes HM after 1 tick of searing flames to get people up before modulate, and then healing people up after modulate. It's also useful on maloriak's HMs flame breath to get people up quickly before the next breath.
I see this damage coming. I can pre-cast HR, and pre-cast big heals. If people are dying to random damage, it's their fault and likely if we lose a player in 10 man HMs, we're done anyway and things need to be flawless - so it's not my stat choices that need changing.
Yes, it situational - yes, the situations arise a lot. I have a standard resto set with mostly crit/haste, and a mastery set. Sometimes I mix and match depending on what trinkets I want and what I'm doing on a fight (raid vs. tank healing).
Our mastery is a tool, use it when it's the best choice. Stay away from it when it's not.
Boobah Mar 8th 2011 6:06PM
Wouldn't an easier test be to cast Heaing Rain, check the combat logs for the overheal amount, take off all your gear, put it back on, then cast Healing Rain again and see if it healed for more? Y'know, since the mastery effect is modified by how much health you have left? If mastery doesn't affect the spell, it'd be the same in both cases; if the latter was higher you'd know it was affected by mastery.
@Torr:
Now you're just moving the goalposts, from mastery is useless because it doesn't affect our big AoE heal to mastery being useless because we don't have an instant ginormous AoE heal.
The encounters reflect that lack. If a Healing Rain plus a Chain Heal (both of which get boosted by mastery) or two won't cut it, than your group is doing it wrong. Whether that means that the other healers in the raid need to do some group healing, people are standing in fire, or they're all running away from the scary blue poop on the ground.
Torr Mar 8th 2011 8:11PM
Boobah. Our mastery requires health to be missing, not necessarily a low Amount, so taking someone with 150k and someone with 50k, HR will heal them both the same amount if they are at the same Percentage of their maximum health. And at 100%, mastery has zero benefit.
And actually, what I meant by saying HR is essentially a hot was that: Even at low health, mastery isn't going to be boosting it enough to make up the difference all my itself, especially when we are talking about such low amounts being healed, mastery REALLY boosts big bomb heals, but HR not so much because the amount per tick is so comparatively small. So, essentially it DOESN'T affect out big AoE heal because the amounts its boosts are not worth the investment or effort, hence making it useless for our best heal.
On top of that, Shaman use 4 types of heals, Direct heals(HW, GHW, HS), HoT's(HR, ELW, Riptide), indirect heals(HST, Ancestral Awakening and Cleansing Waters proc) and AoE heals(CH), granted many of our heals have a Direct heal component(CH first hit, Riptide first hit, plus HW, GHW and HS) but those effects don't make up much of our healing unless we are doing triage, our real benefit is that we can place powerful HoT's around and have tons of smart heal procs going off when we crit and cleanse. Its those that really need the benefit from Mastery, along with clearly defining the various thresholds where the healing amount is boosted by x% of your mastery.
Face it, currently our mastery is useless to the majority of our toolbox, and for those heals it benefits, its either of HUGE benefit but situational, or so marginal that its not even worth mentioning.
Joe Perez Mar 9th 2011 10:47AM
I stand happily corrected on Healing Rain and mastery. In my previous testing I noted no noticeable change. Went back last night to retest and while the shift still isn't dramatic in my testing, but it is there.
Things not affected by mastery currently
Riptide HoT portion
Earth Shield
Earthliving HoT
Healing Stream Totem
That's still a very nice list of spells getting boosted.
Stardusted Mar 8th 2011 2:10PM
I won't be holding my breath for spirit link, even in totem form. I can see it being incredibly difficult to balance, not to mention the talent (or very similar talent) has been in the past two expansion's alpha/beta. If it goes live, it will only be a matter of time before some enterprising shaman figures out how to make it an overpowered spell, which will lead to its nerf or removal. Of course, I'm also not known for being the overly-optimistic sort, so I could be very wrong.
rodmin Mar 8th 2011 2:41PM
And PvP, oh the PvP!
5 mates on an arena team, one almost diying!
Enemy team: "Almost there, almost there!"
Spirit link totem! WHAM! All around 80% health!
Enemy team: What the?!?
thegatherer Mar 8th 2011 2:53PM
That's easy, PVP. how would you like it if you were killing people right before they got into the big chamber in Strand of the Ancients, and all of a sudden, a resto shammy drops this totem. now you have a much harder time killing anyone, and the opposite faction wins.
Not that I am saying that it would be too powerful, just that, like any AOE CD, it could create a huge backlash from the PVP side.