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5.2 Changes

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Resto shamans buffed 20% on rain, chain and earthliving

There have been a lot of complaints about how resto shaman are incredibly weak this tier compared to other healing classes.  For a class whose healing excels in “stack up and don’t move” raid scenarios, Throne of Thunder is just about as opposite to any kind of stacking up and stand still scenarios as you can get.

However, thankfully Ghostcrawler was listening, and shamans got a buff to their healing rain, chain heal and earthliving by 20%.

The only downside is that Blizzard has given a buff to the healing spells shamans use while the raid is stacked up, namely chain heal and healing rain.  However earthliving buffed by 20% is pretty significant.  It would have been nice to see something a bif more useful for single target or spread out healing, something like an increased jump for chain heal (without the glyph), the chance for a chain heal to bounce back to a previously healed target if they are still the lowest health in range, or even an increased healing rain radius.

It will take a couple of days for us to see if there are any marked inmprovement in the number of resto shamans brought into heroic progression raids (especially since we saw a quite steep jump off from the number of resto shamans in normal mode versus heroic mode).

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Hand of Purity hotfix makes heroic Throne of Thunder harder

Tuesday’s hotfix of Hand of Purity left many scratching their heads over the unusual wording of the hotfix. Not surprise, it was hotfixed to prevent raids from stacking pallies to make some heroic mechanics a joke in Throne of Thunder.

Paladin
Hand of Purity no longer reduces the damage dealt by effects that ignore immunities.

One use was to chain cast Hand of Purity on those affected by Frostbite on heroic Council of Elders (click here for the Council Healing Guide). It was also be size some progression guilds were using HOP for Ignite Flesh on heroic Magaera (click here for Magaera Healing Guide).

There have been some great uses of hand of purity, most notably wind step on heroic Blade Lord in Heart of Fear. It is unknown if it is still usable on heroic 5.0 raids or not yet, since the changes are so new.

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Luumis has updated 5.2 healer evaluations

There is a great post on healer evaluations in 5.2 by Luumis (now with Exodus, formerly of Vodka) after the first week of Throne of Thunder raiding.  You might remember his pre-Mists evaluation from the PTR, and it turned out to be pretty accurate, and the new 5.2 evaluations are pretty accurate in my opinion.

It is about time for me to give you my thoughts on the status of healers as of the current build on live servers. When you read this ranking/evaluation, please keep in mind that I have been limited to only 25 man normals so far with limited 25 heroic testing. I have seen what the boss mechanics are like and so can get a pretty good idea of what to expect. When I go over each class, I’ll talk about how each healing class will fare with current gear and with the next tier. In most top progression guilds, healers aren’t given gear since gear on dps has a greater impact. As healers, we’re expected to make due with what we have at the start of progression including friendly/honored reputation valor items and the gear we got from the previous tier.

How does he rank them?  Exactly how I would have ranked them!  He gives top spot to Holy Paladins, then Priests, Mistweaver Monks, Resto Druids, then Resto Shamans bringing up the rear.

I always find it interesting that gear is always steered towards the DPS in top progression guilds, but when you consider how long they have the previous tier on farm for, there would be little reason that healers wouldn’t be storming into 5.2 with full heroic BIS from T14.  But then of course, you wouldn’t have the problems lower end guilds face when they don’t have the previous 16 bosses on farm and where raiders might be less dedicated to capping valor.

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Resto Shaman parses for Throne of Thunder significantly lower than other healing classes

The first analysis of Throne of Thunder by Raidbots is out, and if you are a resto shaman, they are pretty damn depressing.  I suspected resto shamans would perform poorly due to the lack of stacking and the immense movement required in Throne of Thunder, and looks like my suspicions were correct.

Nearly every single fight, in both 10M and 25M, resto shamans are lagging significantly behind every other healer.  Not only that, the only fights they aren’t last, they are second to last (rising to 4th out of 6 healing classes on a single fight in 10N), and still well below the pack.  So low in fact, that I suspect 25M raids currently running 2 shamans will cut back to a single shaman, and 10M raids might drop their resto shamans all together, in favor of a better healing output class.

Just how bad are things?  You can click through to the graphs if you want to be shocked by the dismal performance, but here are the average HPS so far for both 10M and 25M. These are all normal modes.  All numbers were rounded to the nearest 1,000 HPS and ties were determined if they were less than 1,000 HPS apart.

Note: Not many top progression guilds are uploading their logs to World of Logs as of yet, but the guilds clearing ToT are generally upper end raiding guilds logging their raids, particularly for the later boss fights in the instance.

Jin’rokh the Breaker
25N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Restro Druids (10k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Holy Priests (21k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Horridon
25N Parses – Shamans are last (11k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Holy Priests (21k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Council of Elders
25N Parses – Shamans are last (14k behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Holy Priests (17k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Tortos
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (23k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Megaera
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th (26k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Ji-Kun
25N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Mistweavers (11k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are 4th (18k behind leader Holy Pally)

Durumu the Forgotten
25N Parses – Shamans are last (15k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Mistweavers (15k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Primordius
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Dark Animus
25N Parses – Shamans are last (13k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (16k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Iron Qon
25N Parses – Shamans are last (16k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (13k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Twin Consorts
25N Parses – Shamans are last (24k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (24k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)

Lei Shen
25N Parses – Shamans are last (20k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (25k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)

The ugly recap?  Shamans were the worst performing of all healing classes on 11 out of 12 fights on 25M and were the worst performing on 8 out of 12 fights on 10M.   Ouch.

Even Ji-Kun, where shamans should theoretically show off due to all the stacking, they still performed poorly, although they did manage to climb to 4th out of 6 healing classes on the 10N version of the fight.

Fortunately, shamans still bring their mana tides, spirit links, healing tide and storm lash.  So they still have utility as a claim to fame.  But you have to wonder how long raid leaders will be happy with utility over raw output, especially when pushing heroics.

That said, there are also some amazing resto shamans who can push out amazing numbers, in spite of this showing lower HPS but it does make you wonder if any of them are stacking and healing through damage to get the increased HPS as opposed to spreading and moving constantly.

There are some who are crossing their fingers that Blizzard will also see Shamans buffed.  You may remember in Cataclysm that Blizzard buffed Shamans’s Purification via a hotfix, their healing passive that buffed all healing done from 10% to 25%, because they felt shaman healing was lagging too far behind other classes.  Unfortunately, it took Blizzard over two months after the Cataclysm launch to buff their heals.  And in this case, we are well into the Mists of Pandaria expansion, so it might not be as likely shamans would get an overall buff on healing.  But clearly, something needs to be done or we will see fewer resto shamans competitively raiding.

Update: Blizzard buffed Resto Shaman’s Healing Rain, Chain Heal and Earthliving by 20%.

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The state of healing in World of Warcraft Patch 5.2 Throne of Thunder

thunderking

We’ve had two full days of raiding in 5.2 and all the new bosses in Throne of Thunder, and things are either looking great or downright horrible, depending on which healing class you roll with, or the class you happen to have your raid stacked with.  Here is how things are looking at the moment, based on class feedback and world of logs data, which just finally updated ranking information.  It is worth noting that many top end guilds (though not all) are hiding their logs or running mixed groups of alts/mains to maximize gear and there are some bugged logs from PTR which should be removed soon.

Paladins

Holy Paladins are sitting pretty.  Right now, they dominate the World of Logs with ranks for every fight in Throne of Thunder, and seems very little has changed regarding overall output.

Pally healing seems a bit more mana intensive so far in ToT, so don’t be surprised if you are swapping out some of your mixed gems for straight spirit to compensate for it.  And make sure you are calling for innervates, mana tides, using mana pots and pleaing, and pallies should expect to see themselves at or near the top of the meters along with disc priests.

Priests

Disc priests are the other healing class that completely dominate world of log rankings.  For all the disc priests who QQ’s over the patch notes, clearly their output has not been affected to any great extend at all, but with disc still able to go to town with absorbs “healing” before most other healing classes can heal it themselves, it would have taken a pretty huge nerf to disc to not see them at the top of the meters.

There were a lot of changes made to holy to make it much more attractive to priests, it has been the spec pretty much ignored this entire expansion thus far.  Unfortunately, it seems only the die hard holy priests are using it, not many discs are trying it out yet.

There still isn’t much data if there is another fight like Tsulong in ToT where discs had to respec to holy in order to heal Tsulong, although that did give discs some foundation at holy to be able to play around with it more in 5.2.

And a quick note to holy priests, Guardian Spirit is currently bugged in 5.2 and isn’t always working (“Guardian Spirit sometimes does not proc its heal and lifesaving effect.”)

Monks

What happened to the mistweaver monks?  Following true to fashion, the new Pandaria class has been significantly nerfed both in throughput and overall AOE healing.  Fistweaving seems to be the playstyle Blizzard is steering monks, where mistweavers should be doing about 50% healing and 50% dps mix.  So mistweavers who have ignored fistweaving thus far because they want to be fulltime healers are having to completely change their playstyle.  But even with the 50/50 healing/dps split, monks should find themselves near the top of healing meters, and somewhere above the tanks on dps, as it stands right now.

And monks who have been bragging about their mana regen in 5.0 and 5.1 are suddenly going to have to start watching their mana efficiency, especially while fistweaving, and glyphed mana tea will likely become mandatory.

Monks still are lacking a significant raid cooldown, outside revival (which cannot be used on all fights in ToT) and life cocoon, and with fistweaving being where Blizzard wants them to be, it would seem that it is the tradeoff for a better raid CD.

There are some monks here and there in the World of Logs rankings, but definitely not to the extent we have seen them previously.

Druids

Say hello to rejuv spamming!  The changes to rejuv make it a rediculously cheap heal (although some are speculating it could be nerfed) to blanket the raid with, and then those overheals get put into mushrooms for a nice raid CD.  However, this playstyle will get pretty boring quickly, unless you just want to mindlessly spam rejuv while watching YouTube in your other screen.

Naturalist (Passive) saw all of druid’s healing increased by a flat 10% and it has made them perform better as well, and the results from logs are showing their increased healing.

Make sure you are remembering to use your new wild mushrooms from overhealing, there are some impressive numbers showing up from the mushrooms for those who are remembering to do them and tracking the capacity of the shrooms from overheals.

More on Resto Druid Changes on: Restokin

Shamans

Ouch, what a fall shamans have taken since the glory days of the first month or two of Mists of Pandaria when stacked raids and healing rain where king.  Shamans just didn’t scale very well with better ilevel gear compared to other healers in 5.0 and 5.1, and slowly saw their effectiveness drop the further into T14 they got.  And 5.2 has not been kind to resto shamans for a couple reasons.

First, it seems nearly every single fight is a “stay spread and move out of bad”, which is definitely not a shamans forte in their healing toolset.  Very few fights seem to have a “stack up and raid heal through damage” mechanism to them, which is unfortunate because so much of resto shaman output healing is unleashed empowered healing rain.  It almost needs an option for a glyphed healing rain where the size of the rain is larger, but it caps out at X number of heals per tick.  Secondly, so much moving with only a single instacast (riptide) and Spiritwalker’s Grace having a long CD and short duration makes healing difficult as well.

Not surprisingly, there are very, very few shamans ranking, and most seemed to be fights that were underhealed or other healers died early.  Fortunately for resto shamans, they still bring pretty powerful cooldowns to raid which will hopefully keep raid leaders bringing them, even if overall output is significantly lower.  Healing tide is the strongest “omg, this damage is going to hit the entire raid hard” CD of all the healers, and healers love mana tide so they can best it up more.

More on resto shaman changes: Life in Group 5

Overall

We are only two days into the patch but it appears that disc priests will continue to dominate the rankings in Throne of Thunder along with holy pallies, with resto shamans at the bottom of the heap.  Do keep in mind that Blizzard is continuing to hotfix – both buffs and nerfs – so I can imagine we will continue to see changes over the next week or two once they have more significant live data to look at.  So before you /wrists and reroll your beloved resto shaman into a disc priest or pally, wait and see how things shake out over the next week or two, and I will update the state of healing in 5.2 after that.

 

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Why Monk Revival needs a glyph to remove dispels for Primordius

Be warned if you have any mistweaver monks in your raid when you work on Primordius.  One of the mechanics is you get good buffs but if any mistweave monks pop revival for a healing cooldown, its AOE dispel mechanism removes the good buffs along with any bad buffs, which obviously is not good for this fight.

This has happened since PTR, which brought about much discussion for bringing a monk glyph which would remove the dispelling part of revival, but nothing went live, nor does it seem that they have fixed Primordius to allow the use of revival without it removing good buffs.

Update:
The March 7th hotfixes included:

The Mistweaver ability Revival will no longer dispel players who have any of the following effects:
            
                Primordius: Clear Mind, Fully Mutated, Improved Synapses, and Thick Bones
                Durumu: Dark Parasite
                Jin’rokh the Breaker: Ionization

All the monks can breath a sigh of relief 🙂