Totem Talk: Restoration crit and haste and mastery, oh my!
by Joe Perez 
Aug 16th 2011 at 8:00PM
Last week, we took some time to revisit the optional talents for restoration shaman. There were some good comments on the talents and many good questions in the comments. I hope you enjoyed the piece.
Continuing the reader-requested posts, this week we'll be talking about a restoration shaman's secondary stats. Reader Shazzyy asked for a discussion on this topic, which means that we will be talking about crit, haste and mastery and not only how they affect restoration shaman, but also possible builds concerning them. As always, if you want me to cover a particular topic or have any questions, feel free to email me or send me a message on Twitter.
The question that sparked this post was specifically about stacking crit and whether or not it is as viable as haste or mastery for restoration shaman.
Just how critical is crit?
When patch 4.2 became active on live servers, not only did it bring the Firelands raid, it also brought a change to how crit affects healing. Before the patch, a critical heal had an effect of 150% healing done on that heal. After the patch, that got bumped up to 200% on a critical heal. It's actually a pretty significant buff for the stat in regards to healers overall, but is it worth it in terms of replacing the importance of any of our other secondary stats?
The first argument for it is that it is a solid mana regeneration stat. As a mana regen stat, though, crit still falls behind our normal means of regeneration through spirit. It is true that the critical heals trigger the talent Resurgence, but the gains are actually less than if you were to put those points just into spirit. Overall, you just get more mileage out of pure spirit as far as mana regen is concerned than crit. Consider that Mana Tide Totem, which was nerfed to only give a boost of 200% to spirit, will require higher spirit totals to maximize returns to you and your raid. Also, spirit doesn't require random number generation (RNG) to give you mana back. Crit (and Resurgence) is meant to be a complimentary regeneration stat rather than one meant to take over. So we can rule this out as a factor in crit replacing haste or mastery as a primary secondary stat.
The second argument is that it gives you a solid boost to your healing throughput on par with haste and mastery. With the recent change to a 200% in the healing effect of your spells when they crit, this definitely holds some weight. There are a few principles that support that. First is the idea that if you heal for more with every heal cast, overall you have to cast less heals to make up health deficits. Basically, bigger boom, more mana saved, longer active healing time. Second, stacking more crit, you can lower the RNG curve and get more consistent healing numbers to work with. You'll still have an RNG factor, but you can sort of pad the curve a little and make it slightly more predictable.
I've seen crit build restoration shaman perform incredibly well in 10-man raids and even on some 25-man normal encounters. I've also seen it become a bit more frequent lately, as more players are starting to pick it up and play around with crit stacking. I've also seen some impressive numbers on this. We'll come back to this a little bit later, though, so just keep this in mind for a bit.
Fast as fast can be, you'll never catch me!
Haste has been a fan favorite of restoration shaman for a while now, lowering casting times, lowering your GCD and overall just being a workhorse of a stat. Our first haste plateau is reached when we hit 916 rating. This gives Healing Rain, Earthliving, and Riptide all an extra tick.
The second haste plateau is when we reach 2,005 haste rating, and to be honest, it's a bit of a struggle to push to that plateau right now. You can do it, but you're likely sacrificing something else that's also important to do it. At 2,005 rating, your Riptide will gain an extra tick, which will help with triggering the two-piece tier 12 set bonus. Honestly, though, the extra mana gained from the extra tick of Riptide equates to roughly 50 MP5 if you never miss a cast in a 6-minute fight. That's not that much, all things considered, and the amount of stats you'd have to move around to get to the second plateau right now could be better spent on more spirit or another secondary stat.
I honestly don't think stacking haste right now has the same kick that it quite did in the last expansion. Don't get me wrong -- I still enjoy haste like any good shaman. But after reaching 916 haste, you really don't have to focus on it too hard, at least for now. This may change in the next tier of content, but only time will tell.
Alright, Leroy, who is the one and only master?
Mastery for restoration shaman really shines in this tier, and that is thanks in no small part to the massive amounts of raid damage and the tweak to allow our mastery to boost every single one of our healing spells. The new kid on the block maxes out its bonus when targets are around 40% of their health totals, and with many of the fights, this is a pretty common occurrence.
The basic rule of thumb is that that on any progression fight, mastery is your strongest secondary. So any time you find yourself in a situation where you'll have a raid full of people at low health frequently, mastery is your new best friend. Now, dumping everything for mastery is something I would not advise, no matter how strong a stat it can be. If you take too much and dump it into mastery, just like haste, you'll be doing yourself a disservice.
At this stage of the game, your secondary stat choices are going to be dictated by a few things: your healing team, the raid size and the raid content. If you're on normal mode or farm fights in a raid, crit is a strong contender. If you're pushing through heroic mode content or a progression fight, mastery will be something for you to look at having on hand. Intellect will always be your most important stat, followed by spirit. After that, get your haste to 916, just like in tier 11, and then you can play with crit and mastery as you see fit. At the end of the day, crit is just as viable as haste or mastery; it just depends on your raid team, healing style and the type of content your doing.
Totem Talk: Restoration lets you Ask a Shaman about the tricks of the trade. We'll introduce you to the very latest pre-raid gear and show you how to manage your cooldowns. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
gobuywow Aug 16th 2011 8:10PM
crit and haste seems more useful for the new 85 shamans, and I am just one of them lol
Jeff (Not that one ^ ) Aug 16th 2011 8:52PM
The change to crit and mastery with 4.2 has brought some massive heals my way, in excess of 100K. I love them, but it makes my other healers seem weak when they can only crit for 65 or 70K. Of course, my other healers are about 10 iLevels below my Shaman.
fujugiki Aug 17th 2011 4:52AM
you're forgetting to mention crit and haste's scaling with TC-based builds
Minstrel Aug 16th 2011 9:55PM
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"Crit (and Resurgence) is meant to be a complimentary regeneration stat rather than one meant to take over. So we can rule this out as a factor in crit replacing haste or mastery as a primary secondary stat."
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I don't think your logic is right here. The fact that spirit is better than crit for pure regen doesn't "rule it out" in comparison to haste and mastery, because the mana regeneration from crit is *on top* of the throughput gains from it.
So if haste is even close to haste and mastery in terms of throughput (which, from your article, it sounds like it is) then the extra value of the mana regen from crit may well put it over the top for total value.
Minstrel Aug 16th 2011 9:56PM
Err, "...if crit is even close to haste and mastery in terms of throughput..." is how that should have read. Sorry for the error, wish I could edit that comment rather than writing a response correction.
TotemLover Aug 16th 2011 10:46PM
Kinda off topic sorry, but can anyone tell me the name of addon used for changing numbers' font in that ss?
Aenorn Aug 16th 2011 11:39PM
Looks like Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
Jcompguy Aug 17th 2011 12:16AM
While crit is much better now than it used to be, it will always be an inferior stat to haste and mastery. Arguments about regen aside, healing is all about keeping people alive. From a healing philosophy standpoint, reliability is the name of the game.
For an extreme example, which actually happens on a few fights, lets say someone is at 10k hp and is about to get hit for 100k. Haste helps you get your heals off faster, but they need to be big enough to keep the person from dying. Mastery makes your heal bigger, but they need to be fast enough to beat the lethal damage. Crit might give you a huge heal that does the job in 1 shot, but if it doesn't your heal will neither be big enough nor fast enough to keep someone from dying.
Speed and size can be controlled 100% of the time by haste and mastery, but crit will always be a gamble. If we're doing heroic deathwing and 5% away from a kill and I wipe the raid because I rolled snakeyes, that's not acceptable. Unless crit becomes clearly OP and worthwhile to stack up to reliable amounts, it will never be worth using.
Boobah Aug 17th 2011 3:04AM
And one of the advantages of crit is that you're less likely to ever be in that position, since it's not unlikely that your last heal crit and dropped an Ancestral Awakening on your about-to-die companion. After all, AA is a smart heal that targets itself at the end of the spellcast... which is after you've already committed to your next heal, whatever it is. From a raid-healing perspective, shaman direct heals crit for 260%, with 60% always going to the raider with the lowest health.
PodPeople Aug 17th 2011 12:01PM
I find your scenario rather limited and short-sighted when compared to the reality that is raid healing. If your single heal is what is the difference between wipe and win, your raid has other more serious issues, like what happened to the rest of your heals team. But I understand you're using it to illustrate a point. The simple truth is that for resto shaman crit is the most synergistic secondary stat. It gives us bonus healing in addition to the straight 200% (AA), we get bonus mana regen, the targets of your heal gets a damage reduction (albeit only physical), and if you have a TC build you can regain that much more mana. Those are bonuses that neither haste nor mastery can provide, with the exception of indirectly through a crit. Haste for the most part is a good stat, faster is always better when it comes to healing. It even works nicely with crit in that the more you can cast the more crits you will have. Mastery is much harder to deal with. The philosophy I have is that mastery is to a resto shaman as crit is to elemental shaman; yeah it's always nice to have more, but it doesn't help you out but maybe 10% of the time. Unless you're doing hardmode raiding and most of your raid is nearly always less than 50% health, at which point you should probably stack up on mastery and haste.
rogerlittlesmith Aug 17th 2011 1:43AM
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Hipponaut Aug 17th 2011 4:33AM
You are forgetting about other benefits of crit - more Ancestral Awakening procs and easier Ancestral Fortitude uptime.
G-VAN Aug 17th 2011 5:17AM
"At 2,005 rating, your Riptide will gain an extra tick, which will help with triggering the two-piece tier 12 set bonus."
In regards to the extra tick of healing from haste, I did a test between the thresholds with lifebloom. At 864 haste rating I got 4 ticks at around 1800 each and at 917 haste rating I also got 4 ticks but one of them was doubled(technically an extra tick). The only thing is I don't believe this gives and extra chance for riptide to proc from the tier 12 2 piece bonus...but like you said it's really not a huge impact
Genezen Oct 4th 2011 3:11PM
Lifebloom is on a different haste scale then Riptide so it doesn't use the same haste calculations. If you want to test with a druid you need to use rejuv and have the 5% haste buff which resto shamans bring themselves
G-VAN Aug 17th 2011 12:42PM
Shoot I meant I tested it with Earthliving procs...
dgcopter Aug 17th 2011 9:25AM
"Alright, Leroy, who is the one and only master?"
SHO NUFF!!
....That's all I had to say.
R. Aug 17th 2011 11:10AM
Q for the Resto shammy sensei:
Would crit be more helpful for a 10 man tank healing build? Last night I was working on normal Beth and since we have 2 shammies and a pally, i got picked to heal the Beth tank upstairs. I was struggling hard. I had gemmed for Int/spirit and reforged for mastery, but even with dropping greater healing waves, I just could not keep up. I know that tanks are not supposed to be at full health at all times ala Wrath but they shouldn't be 30-45% either as that then approaches one shot territory. It just seemed like the bars were not moving at all.
Also a secondary question regarding Water Shield. Why is it proccing so darn much? It seems like every 5th or 6th gcd, I get my Power Auras telling me its gone. I dont remember it popping like this in ICC even on aoe fights like Sindragosa or Fester/Rot.
Time Aug 17th 2011 10:32PM
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The new kid on the block maxes out its bonus when targets are around 40% of their health totals
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Pretty sure that is not correct:
At 99% health, the target receives [heal + 1% of shown Mastery %] = Total.
At 1% health, the target receives [heal + 99% of shown Mastery %] = Total.
It has never 'capped' at 40%. It does overtake Crit in terms of pure throughput on single target around 40-50%, depending on your stats.
Lee Aug 18th 2011 7:39AM
The bonus does not reach its maximum at 40%, it does at 0% (or 0.0000001% for the pedantic people).
tyvolpo Aug 31st 2011 11:11AM
The question of mastery vs crit is a lot like the question of "how much haste should I have". Much like haste, there are effectivity breakpoints between crit and mastery to the tune of "If a person is below x health, then mastery becomes more effective for y and z spells". Most of our meat (GHW, RT, CH) doesn't see noticeable from mastery until the 55-60% range of health. Like the blog said, you have to analyze the healing situation you find yourself in most often to determine what's best for you. Are your raiders often around half health? If so, then maybe mastery is the way to go for you.
It is for this reason that I believe shaman are both one of the toughest to play but also most rewarding healing classes. Unlike pallys that you can shoehorn into almost any encounter with success, or druids who can just lollerHoT all over the raid and do 20k HPS asleep, shaman have to tailor themselves to their specific raids. 10 or 25 man? Tank or raid healing? What fight(s) are we doing? How good is the dps at not standing in fire? How good are you at mana management? Do you use FI? What other healers are with you?
This is why it's so hard to get a straight answer about the haste v crit v mastery question. There IS no straight answer. It depends entirely on style and situation. True success healing with a shaman isn't as easy as picking the "right" spec and stacking the "right" stats, it's about understanding how best to use the class to fill the role your raid needs you too.